Dead Signal Every Camera Is Lying to You

Your desk holds feeds from 23 cameras across the building, all of them hacked, all of them yours to watch. Something changes on a feed: a window stands open, a wallet sits on a table, a stranger lingers where no one should be. Spot it, pick the right report category, send it up the chain. Do that often enough each hour or your employer considers the arrangement over.

The feeds do not always cooperate. Connections drop and satellite dishes drift out of alignment, which means leaving the desk and climbing to the roof to fix things by hand. Meanwhile the clock keeps running. Reports you spot early carry over, so a sharp eye buys you breathing room, but there is no pausing a city that never sleeps.

Your employer has noticed you live in a rough part of town, so between reports you play courier: ride the elevator to the roof, collect a package, leave it at a tenant's door before the deadline. The building is not empty. A professional sniper named Lucas targets you with a laser sight and punishes an unlocked front door. A masked pair, the Noirs, slip inside and only leave if you handle them exactly right, standing still or holding your light on them for the count. And Mr. Delfalco whistles in the dark; when you hear him, kill your flashlight and hide.

Every threat has a rule, and learning those rules is most of the game. The first few deaths teach you. After that, you start reading a dark hallway the way a sailor reads weather.