Mary

## Personal Status

The first depiction of Mary is found within the Fifth Comic book

### Prologue

Only the founders have full access to the Network of Bridged society, and my range is such that I could go outside of the walls of Utopion and tell you exactly what our dear Mary is doing at this very moment. Mary Bridged because she was Lucifer’s mistress. He sponsored her surgery. But Bridging alters brain chemistry, and once on the other side, their connection was severed. Mary is currently pouring whiskey for one of those slum rats that never Bridged and rather than making a case for himself to us, chooses to live in squalor with his resentment thinly cloaked as dignity. I see him every night in Mary’s bar, the business she began when her sex work no longer suited her or her clientele. She calls it The End of the World. Mary likes working in the slum, at the crossroads of us and them. She likes humans. Especially the one she pours the whiskey for, with the dark hair and sneering smile, the one that throws knives at the dart board when everyone else has gone home. I have my eye–my Mary–on him. – Eve, *The Journals*

### Mary - first Chapter

If you were to make the pilgrimage across sprawling plains and freezing lakes to get to Utopion, you would first have to cross The Hook, the slum that curves along the Bridged city walls. You would be tired. You would be hungry and thirsty. You would have one choice of a destination to satisfy your human needs before you made a case for yourself to undergo a Bridging surgery.

Mary did her best to keep The End of the World a friendly place. Situated on the cusp of Utopion and The Hook, it offered refreshment for Bridged and humans alike with a strict no violence policy. Like those that had their bodies shot through with glowing Omnium, her bar was a wooden masterpiece with neon veins, meant to represent the joining of organic matter and technology.

Though she was Bridged herself, Mary made an effort to stay connected with those that styled themselves “Forgotten,” the humans who, by choice or by exclusion, would never Bridge. On more than one evening, she found herself especially connected to Cain, a surly twenty-something that visited the bar nightly. Though he openly claimed to hate all things Bridged, he routinely sat before her, night after night, always with the same request.

Pour, Mary.

Cain didn’t look good tonight. As she poured his whiskey, Mary clocked the shadows under his eyes and a swollen cut on his lower lip, the kind made by chewing a wound. He was anxious. She finished the pour and, with a frosted pink smirk tilted the bottle one more time. A friendly top off. An invitation. “What’s on your mind?”

Cain dragged the tumbler to himself, drinking half in one sip. “Another quack surgeon,” he growled. “Another idiot dead.” He threw back the whiskey with a scowl. “Another body in my alley. I’m sick of it.” “You can’t fix stupid.” “Stupid people want to fix themselves.” “You callin’ me stupid?”. Grey eyes flicked up to meet hers. She held his gaze. The irony of her challenge pooled unspoken between them. Mary could roll her eyes back to receive infinite intelligence if she wanted to.

Cain huffed a dry chuckle. “No, Mary. I am not calling you stupid.” “I could get you in, if you wanted. To the real surgeons.” “And risk a thirty percent chance of no neural network? Come out the other side a convenient machine? I’ve seen what happens to the people who don’t have ‘full success’ in their surgery. Utopion’s labor force. I’d rather my mortal coil flame out.” Mary topped off his tumbler and waited. Cain slurped the liquor down like water.

“At least machines don’t have demons.”

As she spoke the last word, she sensed something dark, an incoming presence. A headache pressured between her ears as she tried to register the intention. Tar. Fury. Storm. Ajax. With superhuman strength she grabbed Cain under the arms and pulled him over the bar. “What the fuck?” “Get in!” she hissed, pulling up a sticky rubber mat to reveal a trap door. Cain obeyed, scrambling down dark stairs. “Do you have light?” “Yeah. Mary, what–” “Ajax.” “Shit. Thanks.”

“The fourth exit on the right leads to a grate near your alley. Get your shit and go. He knows it was you.” “Mary–” “GO.” Mary straightened up and swept Cain’s glass away just as the door opened with a bang. A body towered, filling the frame. “You hidin’ a rat Mary?” “Ajax. Away from your Outpost again.

Drink?”