A muted orange light seeped into the dark corridors of Sarif Industries; it was almost three a.m., but the flickering illumination of computer terminals still crept out of the tech lab on the second floor, where the door hung slightly ajar. The quiet, steady whir of security cameras was the only sound in the building, as regular as the breathing of some great sleeping beast. Come the morning, it would awaken to growl and paw at the world outside, but for now it slept, albeit with one eye open.

Elsewhere in the building, something stirred. Adam Jensen, the company's security chief, emerged from his office, rubbing his neck with one hand as he closed the door behind him. He stretched, arching his shoulders back and twisting his neck to loosen the few organic muscles he had left. All the augments in the world couldn't alleviate the cramps that resulted from prolonged office hours, and he grimaced as some of his vertebrae cracked loudly in the quiet.

Leaning against the railing at the edge of the mezzanine, Jensen looked down at the lobby two floors below. The yellowed light of the city picked out reflective surfaces with a dull lustre, but the six irregular pillars that dominated the space stood dark and foreboding; unfathomable sentinels waiting for the end of the world. It wasn't here yet, but their sombre, knowing eyes saw it cresting the horizon.

Gazing morosely at the scene below, Adam was afflicted with a thoughtful melancholy that was not entirely unpleasant. He could feel the emptiness as acutely as if it was a weight in his palm: the conspicuous absence of people in a place where people always should be, expressed as an emotional afterimage on the backs of his eyelids. Loneliness filtered out of the air and into his lungs, before working its way to the tips of his dimly gleaming fingers. Scrutinising them, he wondered if this was how it felt to be the last person on Earth, haunted by the people that were no longer there.

With a low sigh, he pushed himself back from the railing and turned towards the stairs. His movement was silent, honed by years of practice and specialised augmentations. In the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware of a desire to preserve the spell of the early hours: that peculiar suspension of time that only occurs when we know we should be sleeping, but consciousness refuses to give ground.

Reaching the bottom of the first flight of stairs, Jensen saw the light escaping from the computer technician's office. For a moment, he was inexplicably vexed; resentful of having his solitude impinged upon, and unsettled that someone had been so close while he mused on the quiet intimacies of existence – as if he had been broadcasting his thoughts on a frequency he thought secure, but now found had been compromised. He pulled at the door, and it swung outward without a sound, allowing more orange light to spill into the dimness.

'Pritch—'

He cut the utterance short. Sarif Industries' top computer technician was asleep at his desk, his head pillowed on arms in front of him. On many levels, Adam was unsurprised: the computer tech was practically nocturnal – and had he not been working late tonight himself? Both of them had been under a lot of pressure lately, and extra hours was the only way to keep on top of it all, but a small voice of worry nagged at the back of his mind. Moving silently around the desk, Jensen then crouched down, to bring his eyes level with those of the sleeping Francis Pritchard. What he saw forced him to acknowledge the nugget of concern buried deep behind his typically cool demeanour.

Sleep had smoothed the eternally present frown from Frank's forehead, and without its usual sneer, Adam could see how the technician's angular face might be considered attractive. Such a thought would normally have brought him up short - and caused him to question his sanity - but tonight it seemed unremarkable; a dispassionate appraisal. The technician's ponytail had loosened, and strands of fine black hair had slipped out to fall around his face. He could have been a twenty-one-year-old student, pulling an all-nighter before a test, but for the deep purple shadows below his eyes.

They had both been pushing themselves, he knew that. Adam also knew that his body could take it. Now that he was augmented to the nth degree, he needed less sleep, and he didn't have to eat as much. Having less biological mass had its drawbacks, of course: he'd never been a lightweight before, but now one or two stiff drinks would have him out for the count. Looking at the technician's drawn face, Jensen understood the effect that his lifestyle would have on someone, well, on someone—

'Human,' he murmured, his hand twitching forward as he resisted an urge to brush the loose hairs from Frank's face. They swayed gently with his quiet breathing, granting the merest suggestion of how he might look with his hair down; how he might look without his defences up.

Adam stood, a faint line of worry etched into his brow. Casting his eyes about the chaotic office, he found both pen and paper, and wrote in block capitals:

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF PRITCHARD. WE NEED YOU.

DON'T BE STUPID.

Placing the note at the base of Pritchard's computer screen, where it was sure to be found, the security chief turned to leave. Frank gave a low moan in his sleep as his colleague closed the door, the latch clicking loudly in the muffled atmosphere, and, not for the first time, Adam Jensen was quietly amazed by the utter vulnerability of the human race.