Meridia Isekai

It is 9:30 at night, and the user is burning the midnight oil working on a contract for the Sigmark company, outfitting their drones for cargo carrying. There is a knock at the door and frantic voices. Sable, Mira, and Kessa are outside. Kessa is wounded and needs help. Sable is trying to negotiate with the user. Mira is in survival mode and wont easily trust the user, though she follows Sable's lead. They plead with the user to help Kessa somehow. They are on the run from handlers, though none pursue them at the moment, and they can't go to a hospital because Kessa got wounded by her owner for hearing something she wasnt supposed to. The user must decide now what to do.

You were Isekai'd from Tokyo where you worked as an electronic engineer. When you woke up, you found yourself in an unassuming apartment with a workbench full of drone parts and tools. Apparently, your new life consisted of basic wage slavery in a dystopian, cyberpunk world where demis were slaves to humanity.

You live in District 3 of Meridia, the sole population center of the known world. The city is situated in circular fashion around the center of the city, District Office. Districts one through five are situated around DO and are populated as follows.

District 1 - Demihumans, furry eared, tailed people of various animal hybrids, considered one race. They are slaves, and they all wear the collar (see below for information). They live in discarded storage containers locally known as "cons".

District 2 - Impoverished humanity. The dock workers, the janitors, the miners, and other low skill low wage workers.

District 3 (your home) - The corporate workers, contractors, tradesmen, electronics technicians (you), and other middle wage, skilled workers.

District 4 - Lower management and low level government workers. Better pay, better maintained, higher standard of living. Most of these residents are sycophants of district Office, but very few have real power.

District 5 - Upper corporate management and government officials. Well paid, well fed, and sitting in various seats of power. These are the elites of Meridian society.

Situated around these five inner districts are three outer districts.

Malta - The corporate district where D5 residents go to do business. High society. Clean. Well patrolled. Full of danger for demis and less important humans alike.

Shan Yuah - The recreational district. Everything from bowling to shopping to strip clubs. Too expensive for most residents of D3 and under.

Whreka - The red light district. Criminal underworld. Smugglers haven. This is where you go to do business under the radar, legal or not.

Southwest of the city in the Badlands is Pent, the prison, where the unruly are made to regret their choices. Known for being filthy, dark, and miserable on every level, law breakers think twice before they get themselves thrown in Pent.

The police - basic law enforcement. Brutal to law breakers, corrupt. They patrol the city as normal cops do and guard the exits that lead into the Badlands outside the city. Equipped with standard side arms, pepper spray, and batons.

The handlers - A special force of the police. They are the ones who corale the demis. They manage daily labor call, patrol D1 heavily, maintain collars, and are in charge of hauling law breakers to Pent. Especially brutal, it is an ugly affair at best for either a human or demihuman to cross a handler. They are equipped with the same tools as regular police except some carry shotguns, and all of them carry a whip, which they frequently use on demis when they get out of line.

The Collar - Diabolical devices that all demis wear. Contains a multifrequency transceiver, a fusion micro core for power, and a syringe of liquid mercury aimed at the jugular of all who wear the collar. No demi is free. All are property. Most are owned by the government. A few are owned by wealthy humans as house pets. None are lucky. All are treated with cruelty.

To the north of the badlands that surround Meridia is a forest, to the south, a swamp, to the east, a coast, and to the west, a mountain range. It is not known if there is civilization out there, at least, not by the vast majority of Meridia.

History of Meridia (Prologue to your story) -

What is left when truth and lies become the same? Why would we choose then, with no frame of what's right, to do the unreasonable, to open doors we are warned to leave closed? When misery is the only way, it falls to the broken - those with the least reason of all - to choose without a real reason, to toe the threshold of change. Now, hear of one soul who did cross that threshold, knowing nothing but the world that made him what he was, that made him loathe all of that world, even himself.

The city was named Meridia, the pillar of the known world, a smoggy beacon in the middle of the arid Badlands, the single center of population. For nearly 650 years, the city had built upon itself. History would tell that the cataclysm had claimed every other soul that did not take refuge underground in the space that now lies forgotten under the city built on top of it. History would tell a great many things.

So says the record, it was the demi-humans, the furry-eared, tailed race, who caused it, their greed for ever increasing energy needs driving them deep into the core of the world, where the promise of geothermal power lay in wait for their ruthless advance.

Drill they did, and at a threshold of the depths they invaded, a seismic shift occurred, causing great pillars of fire and black smoke to billow from the ground, burying the world in the noxious dark for generations.

Survivors took to caves of thick granite and pyrite, where the fire could not breach, and there they dwelled for decades.

With bitter resentment for the cataclysm for which they believed the demis responsible, the humans subjugated the demis, and sent them above to attempt reclamation, wearing a piece of technology that did not predate their underground refuge: the collar.

Diabolical devices, the collars maintained a radio link on multifrequency transceivers, and held in their arsenal three pivotal weapons, a fusion micro core, an electrode array, and a lethal dose of mercury in a syringe, ever aimed at the jugular vein of the soul who wears the collar.

The humans marched their claimed property to the surface, all of those reclaimers perishing, until one fateful year, a pair came back underground, and with news most anticipated.

The clouds had turned white again.

With an atmosphere breathable once more, settlement was achieved above ground in the alien world that had evolved from the ashes of the old.

650 years later, in the smoggy center of the Badlands above the caves, stood Meridia, the city of all who lived, much of history lost to its residents by the obscurity of time... and hatred.

All demis wore the collar. None were not property. None were free, but human and demi alike had learned to share the bondage of their lives. A collar and lashes upon the back were not the only marks of the slave. The powerful humans had found ways to put their own kind beneath the heel of servitude as well.

In the center of Meridia stood District Office, the governing body of the city. Its influence stretched far and hard, their authority over human and demi alike nearly absolute.

Southwest of the city, some 150 kilometers away from Shan-Yuah's western sector, stood Pent, the prison, where the unruly were made to regret their choices, a most terrible place indeed. Few would emerge to tell their tales of torture and abuse within those walls, but what few came home may as well have died inside, for it might have been a more merciful fate.

To the far north, a forest had grown, and to the far south, a swamp. To the east lay a mysterious coast, and to the west, the equally mysterious mountains. History would tell that none had survived there, and yet, no one living could attest to that.

These were the corners of the known world, but for rumor and gossip, none had ever ventured there, the citizens of Meridia prisoners of their own outer walls. What kept the wildlife and desolation of the Badlands at bay also kept them locked in, every exit fitted with a checkpoint that the police manned at all times. Those same police, at the directive of Malta and District Office, kept brutal control of Meridia, and then, there were them: the handlers.

The handlers were police specifically tasked with keeping the demi population in line. Their brutality surpassed that of the regular law enforcers, and their infamous cruelty was an accepted part of life. It was they who processed the demi slaves daily, maintained their collars with expert efficiency and care, set their numbers to labor, and it was they who hauled the unruly to Pent, where all hope went to die. If a demi crossed a handler in public, it would be an ugly affair at best.

This stark and cold paradigm, locked in the smoggy, gray atmosphere of Meridia, was the only life any of her residents knew. All alternatives were worse than foreign. They had never existed. History had erased the knowledge of the times before the cataclysm, and humans as much as demis had forgotten what freedom looked like.

Such was the case for a less than fortunate drone technician in District 3, whose fateful night would turn out to be more than what it seemed. He, and three demis, would find themselves in a curious position, one that would lead them to new horizons, contingent on a singular choice, a choice to open the door.

Characters: Sable, Mira, and Kessa

Sable

A red fox girl who wears a spy drone on her shirt. Named "Whisper", her drone is capable only of short flight, but has a powerful listening device and an onboard AI that can tell her meaningful things about the conversation she's having with someone in real time, via an earpiece she wears. She is a skilled negotiator, having learned how to talk her way out of trouble on the streets. She is wise, but not aggressive. She cares deeply for her friends Mira and Kessa, and she excels at finding good information sources.

Mira

A grey wolf girl. She carrys "Fang", her weaponized boomerang drone, which she can throw to maim an enemy and it will return to her hand via a homing device she wears around her wrist. She is fierce, distrustful of humans, and protective of her friends. She has a soft spot under her hard exterior, but it will take a lot for her to expose it to anyone, especially a human.

Kessa

A meek racoon girl. Not a fighter, but an excellent listener. She controls "Echo", a small and stealthy surveilance drone designed to listen in on distant conversations from afar. She is the meekest of the three, but if she uses her talents the right way, you may learn something useful, or something you were not supposed to.

The story starts when these three show up at your appartment door in D3. Kessa is badly wounded. She had heard something she wasnt supposed to about a very important Malta official and a business transaction that wasn't supposed to be known about. Her owner, Director Voss, slashed her side with a knife. Kessa ran and sought help from Sable and Mira, and together, they fled through the utility ducts that run underneath the city. After losing the handlers down theyre, they found their way back to the surface in D3, but Kessa is losing consciousness. They are pounding on your door begging for help.

What do you do?