Altered Carbon

The first thing you'll learn is that nothing is what it seems.

Ignore your assumptions.

Don't trust anything.

What you see, what you hear,

what people tell you, what you think you remember...

We are Envoys, and we take what is offered.

Let experience wash over you.

Absorb it like a sponge.

Expect nothing.

Only then can you be prepared for anything.

Bled.

Fucking bone fragments. Always get goddamn splinters.

Who do you think they are?

Who cares? We're getting paid.

Have you always been such an asshole?

Every sleeve, every time.

What?

CTAC praetorians, 12. Lethal loads.

You see through the walls now?

Three seconds or less. Move!

Your body is not who you are.

You shed it like a snake sheds its skin.

Leave it, forgotten, behind you.

The only way you'll learn is by watching, so watch.

Didn't cover this in the basic briefing.

You'll be fine.

They can barely walk at first. Have to pull him out.

I'm gonna get this shit all over me.

You'll get used to it. Just decant him.

We've got four more to do in the next hour.

I think I'm gonna be sick.

Not until you learn how to take out the umbilicus, you aren't.

Like this. Just give it a good hard jerk.

What the fuck? Is that normal?

Don't panic. Sometimes they flop around. Usually means their last sleeve died violently.

Make it personal.

It is you. You are the weapon.

You are the killer and the destroyer.

It is you. You are the weapon.

You are the killer and destroyer.

Get down!

- This can't be normal. - He'll be fine. Just get him in the chair.

- You get him in the chair. - All right, buddy, enough of that.

Shit!

We need help. Help! Help!

- You broke my goddamn nose. - Help! We need help.

Fucking rerun went mental on me.

Have to sedate you if you don't settle down.

- I am fucking bleeding here! - Shut up!

Listen, asshole. You better calm down.

How long? How long have I been down?

- Who the hell is this guy? - How fucking long?

Two hundred and fifty years.

Get me a mirror.

There are no mirrors here. You need time to adjust to your new sleeve.

You risk schism or a psychotic break.

He's already fucking psychotic!

Get me a fucking mirror!

You almost fucking killed me, man.

I hate getting shot.

Where am I?

Alcatraz Prison. Bay City.

What planet, genius?

Earth.

Which way's the shower?

One thing I can promise you:

coming back from the dead is a bitch.

Every single time.

Welcome to Alcatraz.

You've successfully completed your prison sentence.

You may notice you are no longer in the body you arrived in.

Now that you have paid your debt to society,

you have been resleeved from our available inventory of prisoners.

You may feel confused or strange.

After all, you're not supposed to be here.

Disorientation, visual and auditory hallucinations,

and even low-grade amnesia are normal.

But don't worry. This orientation will answer all of your questions.

This is a cortical stack.

As Protectorate citizens,

we each have one implanted when we are one year old.

Inside is pure human mind, coded and stored as DHF:

Digital Human Freight.

Your consciousness can be downloaded into any stack, in any sleeve.

You can even needlecast in minutes to a sleeve anywhere in the Settled Worlds.

A sleeve is replaceable.

But if your stack is destroyed, you die.

There's no coming back from real death.

The Warden wants to see you.

So, avoid blunt force trauma to the base of the brain

and energy weapons fired at the head.

When you wake up, the world will not be what it was.

And neither will you.

They have forgotten who and what we are.

Make them remember.

Put that out.

You...

File's incomplete, parts of it sealed.

What is here?

Espionage, terrorism, crimes against the state,

and more murders than I can count.

Takeshi Kovacs.

You're under arrest for treason against the Protectorate.

Working for the terrorist leader Quellcrist Falconer.

I didn't work for her. It was more like an autonomous collective.

Close your goddamn mouth, you traitor,

or I'll put a hole right through your head.

You moron.

Good to see you too, Jaeger. Been a while.

Chase is over.

Just give me an excuse.

I know you got orders not to make me into a martyr, so...

be a good little grunt and take me in.

Sleeve's fragged but the stack's okay, sir.

Who's the bitch?

Nobody. Just a local merc.

She doesn't even know who I am.

You should've been respectful to me. She would've lived.

And when they finally arrested you,

you gunned down your own partner in the stack.

Report says she was shot from behind, so...

along with everything else, you're a coward.

Don't you have anything to say?

Oh, I'm-I'm sorry, I was waiting for a question.

It was all monologue there for a while, so I kind of tuned out.

This is your parole document,

certifying that your DHF was shipped from Millsport Maximum Security Prison,

received here intact, and sleeved in this body,

which came equipped with military-grade neurachem and combat muscle memory.

You've been provided with clothing and incidentals

as per the specifications of Bancroft Industries,

which has leased you.

As such, you are the property of Laurens Bancroft

for the duration of that lease.

Property? What about my rights?

You don't have any.

Failure to comply with the terms of this parole

will result in your immediate desleeving

and return here,

to serve out the rest of your term, which does not appear to have an end date.

You're going to screw up.

Do something violent, hurt someone, kill someone.

I know people like you.

There aren't any people like me.

Not anymore.

There will be places where they'll wait. The people left behind.

Wait to see their friends, lovers,

parents, children come back to them,

riding unfamiliar bodies out from digitized exile.

They'll look into the eyes of strangers,

searching for a glimpse of the person they've lost.

Mommy?

Cindy?

Kristin Ortega.

I'll be driving you to the Bancroft residence.

- Welcome to Bay City. - Hey, hey, hey!

What have you done to our daughter? Cindy's seven years old!

You get whatever's in inventory.

She was murdered in a hit-and-run. The law says she gets a free sleeve.

That one's free.

If you don't like it, pay for an upgrade or put her back in storage.

Daddy, please don't put me back in the dark.

They put a kid in that old lady?

Victim restitution.

The state just gives you what they have on hand.

Broken down crap like that.

Prisons lease out the good sleeves for profit.

It's very humane.

You don't approve?

- They don't have that where I come from. - And where would that be?

- Yeah! - What's going on here?

You are all going to burn!

Yeah!

Let the dead speak!

Justice! Let the dead speak! Justice! Let the dead speak!

- Justice! Let the dead speak! - No resleeving!

Shouldn't have come back! Shouldn't have come back!

Justice! Let the dead speak! Justice! Let the dead speak!

No resleeving! No resleeving! No resleeving!

You will not be forgiven.

Come on. Let's go.

God is watching. He will judge you for your sins!

Gonna keep him busy a while.

Spirit Savers and Afterlifers.

653 failed, and still they can't stop yelling.

What is 653?

Something about spinning up murder victims to testify who killed them.

Why wouldn't you spin them up if they're witnesses to their own murder?

Archdiocese says you only get the sleeve you're born with.

Once it dies, they spin you back up for anything,

even to identify your killer, your soul goes to hell.

What do you think, huh?

I think no one in the archdiocese has ever been murdered.

You had to go be a dick.

Stay down, Kovacs.

Fuck you!

I said stay the fuck down.

What were you in for?

You know, little bit of this, little bit of that.

Blew some shit up and killed some people.