[Act I: Spinning Up] Two centuries iced in storage; wake hard, wake wrong. Same Kovacs in a new sleeve, same bruise, same song. I woke in borrowed skin, hardwired to the ache. New sleeve, same scar, same ghost in the wake. Stack in the neck, memory bleeding through chrome and grime — the self is a file with a hinge, a theft in time. A body’s just a sleeve. The soul? A question with teeth. The body is just a sleeve. The body is just a sleeve. You can wear it out, tear it down — the stack remembers what the flesh can’t keep. The body is just a sleeve. The body is just a sleeve. Die hard, return colder, still you breathe through the coded dark. [Act II: Bay City Wet Neon] Bay City rain on a borrowed face. Someone paid my way through the rotten place. Envoy reflex, calm in the shock. Knife-edge reading of every locked block. Needlecast ghosts in the city, memory sold by the byte, faces swapped, guilt carried light, then carried all night. Falcon-sleek towers above, where the rich keep their distance; down in the wet neon alley, every answer costs a resistance. “Death is not the end.” Only the market pretending to bend. The body is just a sleeve. The body is just a sleeve. You can wear it out, tear it down — the stack remembers what the flesh can’t keep. The body is just a sleeve. The body is just a sleeve. Die hard, return colder, still you breathe through the coded dark. [Act III: Double-Sleeving] Re-sleeved a killer. That's what they say. Stack up on ice. Another day. Digital human. Data stream. No less. Who owns the life? Who owns the code? Another debt. Another load. If the body breaks, the self still bites. If the world lies clean, I read the night. Hands full of ash, eyes full of rain, I don’t come back soft — I come back changed. The dead do not sleep long. Same mind. Different meat. Power down.
