Kalen woke to a soft ping and vibration in the dark. He sat up in the warm LED light that lined the corners of his room, looking at his wall display.
12:43. [1 new message]
Rika: It's time.
Below it, a file decrypted revealing schematics for their latest job. He got up and went to his compact closet to dress quickly, grabbing his rig coat, soft step boots, and his tool belt; then headed out the door. At the end of the hall, he stepped into a matte black elevator. One wall was reinforced glass polymer that showed a view of the city. The adjacent wall was a fully dynamic screen currently playing the local news station, The Gridline. The anchor's voice cut in.
""—confirmed, thirty-seven injured in last night's market riot near Chroma Lane, with authorities still investigating reports of illicit tech exchange and a possible Red Vein presence."
He pressed the ground floor button on a digital screen.
"And finally, missing persons reports across New Vire continue to rise, with over 900 filed in the last thirty days. Officials cite 'voluntary relocation' and simulation fatigue as likely causes."
The cities' skyline unfolded across the wall as the elevator descended. It's official name was New Vire, but everyone just called it the Grid. It was a place built by corporations, maintained by debt, and ignored by anyone lucky enough to live in the heights. Down low, things were different. Some people escaped into simulations the way others escaped into sleep, logging hours jacked into synthetic dreams where they could be rich, powerful, and wanted. Out there in the real, though, there was nothing waiting for anyone that wasn't willing to take it.
The elevator doors slid open to a flood of midnight neon. He stepped out into the curved mezzanine floor of Stack Nine, heading for the parking garage. Raya, one of the shop owners, stood outside of her storefront under the pulsing soft lavender light from her overhead sign. RAYA MODS. Behind her, modular displays rotated behind crystal-clear smartglass, showcasing various neural injectors and microspine upgrades.
"Working late again?" she called as Kalen passed.
He flashed a crooked smile. "What can I say? I always make more on the nightshift."
Raya smirked, brushing a chrome tipped braid behind her ear. Her violet eyes caught the light.
"Got some interesting new tech in," she said, voice low and smooth. "Scav sweep from a gutted corp vault. Nothing you'd find above tier four."
Kalen slowed his stride just slightly. "Hold it for me."
"Count on it. Be safe out there."
They'd known each other for years—two survivors of Stack Nine, trading favors, patches, and black-market whispers since before either of them had proper IDs. He gave her a parting glance, then continued towards the garage. Outside, he got into the only vehicle he ever purchased, a Drayden Vectra sedan. The dash lit up as he got in and started the car, displaying real time city maps, weather pulses, and fuel data as he headed towards the city's outer district edge to meet Rika.
Buildings lost their glow and ads flickered with half dead life as he went out past district 18. Streets cracked into layered concrete veins and the stoplights had malfunctioned years ago. He turned off the main path and descended a sloped service road flanked by fencing. The Drayden Vectra's HUD cast route markers across the dash, and thread lines pulsed over rooftops tracking heat signatures. It was all cold out here. A dead zone.
At the base of the slope, a rusted sign leaned sideways against a chain-link fence.
NEURODYNE CORP
PROPERTY CONDEMNED
TRESPASSING VIOLATES CIVIL CODE 6.4.79
He eased the Vectra to a stop beside a collapsed loading bay. She was already there. Rika leaned against her ride—a speed demon of a cyberbike; the Kunoji Spectre-88. It sat wrapped in matte purple plates and exposed coolant coils, its chassis scarred with old plasma scoring. A glowing blue pulse ran beneath the frame like a heartbeat. The front visor was slit-thin and armored, and her toolkit hung from a custom side mount
Rika smirked. "You're late."
Kalen shut the door behind him. "Traffic."
She eyed the Vectra. "You finally clean this thing?"
"I let the rain do most of the work."
She tossed him a micro-signal scrambler. "Well, don't let it get too pretty. We're parking under thirty meters of corporate rot."
He caught it, nodded, and glanced past her at the dark vault ahead.
"I've got eyes on two security drones still pinging from the deeper sector. Probably running corrupted watchdog loops."
"Can you ghost them?"
"Already wrote the script," she said, patting the side of her head. "You just worry about the manual locks. I'll handle the code."
Kalen looked at the looming corpse of Neurodyne, faded lettering like a forgotten threat across its walls.
"Let's find out what they left behind."
And with that, they stepped forward into the dark mouth of the vault.
Kalen adjusted the strap of his tool belt as they walked, their boots echoing against fractured tile. A long corridor stretched ahead of them.
"Can't believe this place is still standing," she muttered. "You'd think someone would've leveled it out of paranoia."
"They did try," Kalen said, nodding toward a collapsed service wing. "Looks like someone put a demolition charge there, but it didn't take."
"Neurodyne used Deepcore steel in Tier Threes. Stuff's rated for orbital heat. Whoever hit it didn't bring enough fire."
They moved past a rusted biometric gate. Kalen stopped briefly to shine his flashlight into the cracked reader.
"Ever think about why places like this get buried instead of salvaged?"
Rika raised an eyebrow. "Always."
He ran his glove along the scorched frame. "It's cleaner if it disappears. No one asks what it was built for."
Rika's eyes followed his hand. "Yeah, well. I ask."
They turned down a side corridor, the ceiling lower now. The cables hung like veins, dripping condensation from above. Their lights caught a faded wall sigil: NEURODYNE INTERNAL | R&D ACCESS RESTRICTED.
"Do you think this is connected to the disappearances?" Kalen asked, voice quieter.
"I don't know" she said.
Kalen studied her face for a moment, but didn't push.
Instead, he drew his silenced sidearm and checked the slide, just in case. Rika crouched beside a sealed blast door, examining the half exposed locking mechanism.
"Here," she said. "Manual pressure seal. Give me a hand."
Kalen dropped beside her. Together they cranked the wheel, the metal groaning like a thing in pain. The door finally gave with a loud shunk, sliding inward just enough for them to slip through. Inside, the dust gave way to obsidian floor tiles. Wall lights pulsed faint white as they stepped through. The power was still active. Must've been in low-cycle mode. Along one wall stood a row of black glass tanks, each about six feet tall, sealed tight. Condensation streaked the interiors, but the outlines of complex wiring and tubing were still visible. Something had been housed here. Rika paused mid-step. "Wait…"
She moved closer to the nearest tank and wiped the fog from its surface.
Inside was a human-shaped frame—skeletal and chrome, spine arched like it had grown wrong. Dozens of black-threaded neural cables ran from the back of its skull to the walls of the tank. The eyes were blank.
Kalen stepped beside her, voice low. "Synthetic?"
"Too lean. That's a husk," she said. "Neuropuppets."
"Like shell drones?"
"Worse. Human nervous systems strung into autonomous chassis, connected direct-to-spine. Neurodyne used them in blacksite testing before they got outlawed. Cheap soldier meat, wired up with combat routines and synthetic muscle."
She moved to the next tank. "Empty. This one too."
A chill crept in behind the static. Kalen swept the room with his light. "How many?"
"Seven tanks," Rika whispered. "Only three still occupied."
Something cracked—like a slow snap of power recharging.
Then the floor shook.
From the far side of the chamber, a recessed panel ground open with a metal-on-metal shriek. Hydraulic fluid spilled out like blood, and from the dark, a husk dropped to the floor in a mess of tangled wires.
It twitched once.
Then stood.
Kalen pulled his weapon fast. "Go!"
Rika broke for the next door, slamming her palm on the override switch. The husk turned its head toward the sound, awkwardly smooth and slow. It was designed to be something between a man and machine, built to operate without conscience or fatigue.
It charged as Kalen fired three times, center mass. The husk absorbed the rounds like pressure points, stumbling only slightly. Its chest cavity opened mid-sprint to reveal a thin, needle-like weapon arm retracting into place. Another husk dropped from the ceiling vent.
"Backup path!" Rika shouted, rerouting the building layout on her scanner. "This way—east corridor!"
They broke right, Kalen tossing a flash-charge behind them. It burst in a wave of heat and strobing white. The husks staggered, screaming from feedback loops gone wrong. Distorted human voices echoed from the open speaker grills in their necks, all clipped mid-word:
"–do not—belong—here—system—"
They cleared the chamber, breath ragged, the door slamming behind them on emergency override.
A few halls deeper, Rika collapsed against the wall.
"That was not part of the file."
"They were dormant," Kalen said. "And someone left them primed."
She nodded slowly, still catching her breath. "Vault's got to be close. This deep in, they were protecting something."
Kalen turned toward the end of the corridor. And there it was. The vault door. It was a brute of a thing, built to challenge everyone who thought they knew what they were doing.
"Okay," Rika muttered, stepping forward. "This is the part where you don't breathe on anything until I say."
Kalen kept his distance as she crouched beside the lock housing. Her fingers moved fast—unspooling a snake of microcables from her toolkit, fitting probes into small, recessed ports hidden beneath a corroded faceplate.
She clicked her tongue. "Mag-sequencers are still active. They're slow, but stubborn."
"How stubborn?" he asked.
She smirked. "Stubborn enough that a brute force would fry the internal relay—and cook whatever's inside."
He stayed quiet.
Rika tapped a diagnostic unit on her wrist. The lock housing flickered, its lights chasing patterns along the seam of the door. She let it run twice, then cut the feed.
"There. You see it?" she said.
Kalen leaned in.
"Top loop is cycling off-rhythm. A manual override should give us just enough time to drop the main bolt."
"You sure?"
She gave him a flat look. "I'm never sure. I'm just good."
He reached out, placing both hands on the bolt ring, waiting for her signal.
Rika counted under her breath and watched the flickers, timing the rhythm.
"Now."
Kalen twisted hard.
There was a deep metallic thunk as the bolt disengaged.
A low hiss followed as the pressure seal broke for the first time in years. Air that hadn't moved in a decade slipped past them. They stepped inside, boxed in by rows of outdated data cores along the walls. Rika's eyes widened. "Bingo."
To the left, a container held Jewel stacks. 30,000 in clean, untraceable chips. Next to it were hard copies of Neurodyne legacy blueprints: corporate security schematics, off-grid server coordinates, and archived contract hits that had never been executed.
This was leverage, not just a payout. In the last crate, they found stim vials, a prototype injector, and a sleek, untagged neural rig that was still dormant in mint condition.
Rika whistled, kneeling beside it. "Forget a year. We're talking exit visas and blackout housing."
Kalen gave a single nod. "Pack it."
She pulled up an old engineering schematic from the files they'd just stolen, filtering through flickering floor plans until her eyes locked on something.
"We can't go back the way we came." She said, pointing at the map. "Here's a maintenance crawlway that's off grid. We can bypass the husks if we drop into it from the relay alcove we passed on the way in."
They doubled back, then descended in silence, metal rungs groaning under their weight. Distorted and mechanical voices echoed faintly above, just past the panel they'd left.
"breach...vault integrity… reconfirm...trace"
Too late. Rika and Kalen were already gone. One layer deeper in a world no one was supposed to see.
They emerged in a drain tunnel behind a collapsed service road, thirty meters from their original entry point. Kalen stood first, stretching his shoulders.
Rika spat dust. "Okay. Now that wasn't in the plan."
Kalen glanced back toward the slope, already fading in the mist and neon haze. "Let's make sure we still have one."
She gave a tired smirk and hoisted the duffel over her shoulder, heading towards his sedan. He popped the trunk as she swung it in.
"Same meeting place?" He asked.
"Gotta celebrate, right?" She replied.
The two of them had a habit. Maybe even a ritual, of scaling the old industrial scaffolding laced around a long-dead Virelink News tower.
She keyed into her Kunoji and swung one leg over. The engine revved awake, soft and deep; a feline growl beneath her.
Kalen nodded once. "See you at the tower."
She peeled off first, taillights cutting a single violet streak through the fog.
The tower came into view like a ghost as they drove north. The Scaffolding still stood wrapped around it like a skeleton in fog. They pulled up to the scaffold base together, parking like they'd done so many times before, and began the trek. The wind picked up as they climbed, and the city fell away below them. It wasn't a dangerous climb, but it was time consuming. Twenty stories above the district fog, they reached the platform. Rika dropped her bag and leaned into the wind.
"Now this," she said, "is worth the climb."
Kalen didn't respond. He walked toward the edge, scanning the skyline. From up here, everything looked still.
Rika sat down cross-legged, her voice quieter now. "Do you ever wonder," she asked, "what it would've been like to grow up in the upper tiers? Not just survive. Actually live?"
Kalen took a breath. "I try not to waste time wondering about what never was."
"Yeah, but don't you think about it?"
She turned to him, her profile outlined against the rising glow of Sector 12.
"We pulled thirty thousand jewels out of a dead vault tonight. Risked everything. And tomorrow we'll still be ghosts in someone else's empire. Hiding. Hustling. Selling stolen pieces of a system we're never invited to touch."
Kalen watched the way the light shifted across a distant tower. "We weren't born into a system that cares who we are," he said finally. "So we learned to take up space anyway."
Rika gave him a look. "You going philosophical on me now?"
He didn't smile. "This is our life. Thinking about what could've been doesn't fix what is. Have you seen the slums lately?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
"We're lucky enough to still be choosing," he said.
They stood together in silence then, watching the Grid pulse beneath them like a living circuit board. It was a wounded world, but it was all they had; and it still glowed.
1 HOUR LATER
They made their way back through the haze that filled New Vire's lower districts. It pulsed under synthetic skies, lit by drifting ad-screens and walls speared with color. Kalen and Rika passed through it like racing shadows. Vendors flashed burner IDs and chemical stimulants. A woman in a glittercoat with LED eyes leaned out of a booth on the corner flashing implant deals. A flash passed of two men arguing in an alley near a power junction. Kalen pulled up next to Rika at a red light and nodded toward a crumbling alley arch marked with red glyphs, symbolizing the Red Vein Syndicate.
"Sector Nine is shifting again. Turf lines moving east." Rika said over the idling Kunoji.
Criminal scouts leaned in doorways, sipping synthshine. They didn't stop Kalen and Rika, but they noticed them as they passed on into an entertainment zone. Towering ad-walls streamed the real-time game feeds of citizens jacked into gaming rigs. The city was alive, but it wasn't free. Stack 9 rose at the end of the corridor. They pulled into the garage, finding two spots open that were side by side. Kalen cut the engine. Rika dismounted and grabbed her pack. She was first to say something with a nod.
"Good pull tonight."
He returned it. "Likewise. Get clear."
They were home.
Kalen stepped into his apartment and sealed the door behind him, hearing the lock click. He dropped his gear in its place, stripped off his coat, and sank onto the bed without a word, closing his eyes and letting the silence take him.