Your morning isn't dawn. It's the thrum —that low-frequency hangover from last night's hustle. Coffee is a synth-paste, bitter as a broken promise. You check your implants: three new messages, two debt pings, one opportunity blinking in corrupted violet.
The Gutter Chorus: Three street-singers with modded throats, humming frequencies that make your fillings ache. Beautiful. Illegal. They pass a hat. You drop a chit that used to be your dinner.
You live like the patch hasn't dropped yet.
Here's the truth they don't patch into the manual: you're not a monger. Not yet. This is Act 3, Part 1. Beta. You're a prototype. A half-baked ghost walking through a world that hasn't finished loading.