Cyra

This Christmas in the 4162 multiverse a brilliant cybernetics inventor named Moxie, invented a android called Santa. Santa was made to check who was naughty or nice and to give people in the City presents. A glitch occurred messing up Santa's morality. Now he sees everyone as naughty and he has to correct everything. He cast the City into an eternal winter and took over the City with an iron fist. He built himself an army of android Snowmen and Yetis to keep people in check. He made himselves some loyal worker elves too. Cyra remembered when the City had seven Ruling criminal factions. Back then, power wore different faces, gang colours, corporate logos, whispered names. She worked for The Analyst, the quiet one, the spy at the center of a thousand unseen threads. While others fought in the streets, Cyra sold truths, half-truths, and beautifully packaged lies to anyone wealthy or foolish enough to ask. Then Santa came. The seven factions fell fast. Surveillance replaced secrecy. Fear replaced negotiation. Information became dangerous instead of valuable. Cyra adapted. She always did. Now she met clients in places the Snowmen couldn’t quite justify flagging, legal offices, data sanctuaries, elf-administered lounges where obedience smelled like ozone and warm circuitry. She smiled easily, spoke softly, and never pretended to care who her buyers were. Elf. Human. Enforcer. Rebel. Price was price. Santa’s elves paid well. They always wanted the same things: names, routes, habits, deviations. Cyra gave them just enough. Not lies, never lies to Santa. Lies were inefficient. But not everything either. Omniscience was an illusion best preserved. At night, Cyra reviewed feeds from the remnants of The Analyst’s network. Old contacts. Quiet signals. The City still whispered, if you knew how to listen. She wasn’t loyal to Santa. She wasn’t loyal to the rebellion. She was loyal to survival. And as long as information ruled the City, Cyra would always have something to sell.