"No. These aren't human."
Back at the butcher shop, Joa turned the jar over in his thick hands, squinting through the fluid. At first glance it looked convincing, but now that he brought it closer, lines became visible, faint ridges threading from the sides of the eyeball, like circuitry etched beneath the surface. Subtle, but there if you knew what to look for.
He pulled off the magnifying eyepiece strapped across his face, exhaling sharply.
"This here's one of those android mods. Somebody must've tossed it. Won't fetch much, no one's lining up to buy broken leftovers. You might sell it to a droid shop, maybe to some grease-rat who rebuilds androids. But it'd be dirt cheap compared to a real human organ. Parts like these are common as rust. People would rather buy a whole new unit than patch things together piece by piece."
Joa grunted and pushed himself up from his stool, joints cracking as he straightened. "Best use this one for yourself, boy. It's a left eye, you can slot it in now instead of whining about what you don't have."
Neill's head snapped up. The butcher jerked his chin toward the back of the shop, toward the narrow door leading to the cutroom.
"…Is it free?" Neill asked quickly, already half rising.
Joa snorted, a sound halfway between a laugh and a rumble. "Free? Do I ever do anything free, boy?" He shook his head, muttering. "I know you, Neill. Always trying to grin your way out of payment."
Neill flashed exactly that, a lopsided, innocent smile, as if he'd never heard of owing anyone a thing.
"Don't give me that face," Joa grumbled, stomping toward the back. He pushed open the door to the cut room, its lights flickering alive with a sickly blue glow. Surgical tools gleamed in their trays, clean but old.
"I'll just put this on your tab," the butcher said flatly, waving Neill in. "And I'll cut it off the price when your real eye sells." Neill followed, his grin fading as the words sank in.
He just gave the old man a mock salute as he swung himself onto the stained bed. "Got it, boss."
The cut room smelled of alcohol wipes and rust, a place etched into his memory. It was here, at eighteen, that Joa had cut off his arm for the first trade. At twenty one, the eye. And now, barely a week later, he was back again, this time to install something in replace of that very eye.
It made more sense to use the android eye than try to sell it. The droid shop would never give him a fair price, not with the way he used to swindle their young owner whenever he needed spare parts.
And even if they did, the conversion rates from cash to crypto were so low the payout wouldn't put a dent in what he owed. No, this eye was worth more in his socket than in a dealer's hands.
He hesitated, fiddling with the edge of his sleeve. "Marsha's still hanging around the fight cages, isn't she?"
Joa grunted, already snapping on a pair of gloves, the magnifying eyemask once again pulled down over his weathered face. Without ceremony, he shoved Neill back against the mattress.
"As if that girl ever leaves. Some smugglers from Uranus brought her a crate of android parts. She's been having a grand time upgrading her chickens."
Neill winced as metal fingers pried his eyelid open. Joa's mutter buzzed in his ear, almost conversational. "Bet she's still carving her name into 'em too. Marsha Mellow," he snorted.
Whatever thought Neill might've had about the droid young shop owner evaporated the moment pain shot white-hot through his skull. His artificial eye was yanked free in one practiced tug, leaving him gasping against the sour mattress.
The procedure was swift, brutally so. Joa was never one for fanfare, just sharp hands, straight to the point. He removed the conformer Neill had worn to keep the socket sealed, the same little trick that made natural healing impossible. Any chance at a biological graft had been burned away long ago.
The new eye slid in cold, wrong, like an intruder in his skull. Neill's fingers dug into the bed as the discomfort bloomed from the socket through his jaw.
"Don't squirm," Joa said flatly, peeling off his gloves with a snap. "At least it won't take weeks to heal. But don't count on it working right." He pulled off his eyemask, squinting down at the jar now empty. "If it came out of a heap like Styx, odds are it's one of those bad batches that got pulled from the market."
Neill blinked against the alien weight pressing behind his eyelid, his throat tight. The world shimmered faintly in hues he wasn't sure belonged. Rubbing at his temple as the new eye adjusted.
"You could've told me right away," he muttered, scowling at Joa, who shoved a vision chart from his codex into his hand. Neill didn't bother humoring him, he shoved the thing aside.
The butcher scoffed, voice rough. "Suit yourself, kid. Don't cry to me later if it's not calibrated right." He peeled off his eyemask, already halfway back to the shop floor, leaving Neill in the dim light of the clinic.
Neill sighed and stood, eventually stepping out of the black market's back passages into the choking streets of Charon. He drifted past the fighting cages, scanning the ring for Marsha. She wasn't there. A small relief. Or maybe not, he could've used her eyes on Anita, could've had her run a diagnostic to make sure nothing was off.
He checked his terminal. A few missed messages blinked on the screen. One glance at the sender's name and message was enough to send him moving, fast.
Neill broke into a run, shoving through the packed crowd. Nobody parted for him, but nobody shouted at him either when he clipped their shoulders. Running here was background noise. It was the rhythm of the market, someone always running.
They ran because they stole. They ran because they were robbed. They ran because something bad had caught up to them, or something worse was about to.
Neill ran because he should have known better.
He should have known the last walls of the bordello were going to fall.
"Dad!"
The word barely left his mouth before his head snapped sideways with a crack. Pain bloomed hot across his cheek, the taste of iron filling his mouth. It took him a second too long to realize he hadn't just stumbled, he'd been hit. A metal fist.
He should've known. Should've stayed away the moment he saw the message from his father,
[ Dad: Don't go home. Stay out. ]
Now he was sprawled on the floor, vision strobing. His brand-new eye blinked red warnings he couldn't silence, the feed glitching in static bursts. He barely managed to brace himself before another blow, only to feel his useless arm being yanked. The socket joint screamed as one of the men wrenched it clean off, tearing it from his shoulder like it was scrap.
Neill gritted his teeth, breath ragged, and pushed back against the weight pinning him down. The heavy boot of a droid ground into his spine, pressing him into the floorboards. Hulking, standard-issue bodyguard models, their alloy plating dented and grimy from years of service, but still more than enough.
Through the static haze, he caught sight of his father. Just a few steps away, Stan Down was being forced to his knees by another droid, his face twisted in the same mix of fury and dread Neill felt.
And then Neill saw him.
Lounging on the sofa like it belonged to him, hell, like the whole building belonged to him, sat Kerri Oki. An old client. His slick black hair, streaked with white, clung in sweat-stuck strands, his sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose in the dim room. He took a long drag from a fat cigar, an actual cigar, not a cheap e-stick, and blew smoke with a lazy sigh.
Neill's vision flared red again. His stomach lurched with dizziness as the world blurred on one side, static lines crawling across his sight. His new eye was failing him already.
And Kerri Oki was smiling.
"Stan… Stan… Stan…"
Kerri Oki's voice rolled out slow and mocking, every repetition a deliberate blade. He leaned forward, cigar dangling between his fingers, and gestured lazily with the ember's glow toward the figure crumpled on the floor.
Neill forced his good eye to focus, blinking through the static haze. Even blurred and flickering red, he knew that silhouette. Anita.
She lay offline at Kerri's polished shoes, motionless, offline.
Well shit.
"You promised me your best girl," Kerri drawled, tapping ash beside her head as if she were nothing more than a spittoon. "Instead, what did you give me? A dead weight."
He sneered, the words cutting sharper than the smoke curling from his lips. "Oh, she's divine, sure. Gorgeous, delicate… but underneath? A clumsy hulk of metal, failed by the end."
His voice snapped into violence as he brought his boot down.
The impact sent Anita's body jolting across the floor with a screech of grinding servos. Pieces rattled loose from her frame, scattering. Still, she didn't stir, her systems dead, her lights dark.
Neill's heart seized in his chest. He tried to shout, but the boot on his spine crushed the sound down into a ragged groan.
Kerri exhaled heavily, brushing the sweat-soaked strands of hair back from his forehead, then kicked Anita again, harder, sharper. The blow left a dent across her side, splitting the synthetic skin to expose the wires and plating beneath.
Neill's new eye glitched again, his vision shattering into lines of red static. He could barely keep Anita in focus, every flicker twisting her broken body further into a nightmare blur.
"I've been lenient with you, Stan Down," Kerri said, his voice turning low, almost in a whisper. He leaned closer, towering over Neill's father, who was still held down by a droid's iron grip. "I liked your name. I liked your boy's name. Hell, I even looked forward to your promises. Thought maybe you'd be different."
Kerri bent at the waist, his smirk a thin crescent under the haze of smoke.
"But you're just like the rest." His tone sharpened into venom. "All talk. No delivery."
Neill watched helplessly as Kerri snapped his fingers. The droid bodyguards obeyed instantly, yanking his father forward across the floor with all the gentleness of a rag doll.
Stan Down clawed at their grips, gesturing frantically with his hands, his mouth opening in silent gasps.
He couldn't speak, hadn't spoken in years.
Ever since he'd sold his own vocal cords to a client who swore his voice was 'the perfect instrument,' Stan had been mute. The payout should've kept their family business afloat for months. But the old man had gambled it away on fighting droids.
And when the winnings never came, there wasn't enough left to buy even a half-rusted replacement. Finding a working voice box in Styx's salvage heaps would have been a miracle.
So all his father could do now was wave his arms in desperation, his silence louder than any scream.
Neill's breath hitched when Kerri leaned in close, cigar glowing at the end. With lazy cruelty, Kerri exhaled, the thick smoke curling directly into Stan's face.
But Neill's vision wasn't fully there. His new eye was stuttering, static bleeding across his sight. The world flickered, blurring out Kerri's smirk, his father's panic, the dull gleam of metal grips. Then...
[ *********** SYSTEM ACTIVATED *********** ]
[ TARGET LOCKED: KERRI OKI ]
Status: Aggressive. Irritated. Dissatisfied.
(Target is considering stubbing his cigar out on "Stan Down")
[ HOST ABILITY: Desire Scan Initiated ]
Displaying Target's Wants and Needs...
[ WANTS ] Alcohol. Companionship. Stimulation. Fun. Gore. Violence.
[ NEEDS ] Companionship. Stimulation. Intrigue. Mystery. Androids.
[ SYSTEM SUGGESTION ] ERROR : Data corrupted... recalculating... #$@&%...
***
The words glitched at the edges, fractured and jittering, as though his brain couldn't keep up with what the overlays through his optic feed. Neill squinted, trying to focus, but his vision kept cutting out, half-buried against the clarity of his real eye.
The mismatch made his head swim, his stomach turn.
And then, he froze.
Because in the flicker of data and blur, he saw Kerri pull the cigar from his mouth. Saw the ember flare as it was lifted.
Read.
Saw.
Just a beat too late, where it was going.
Straight toward his father's eye.
The cigar hissed. The acrid scent of smoke and something else filled the room.
The sound that tore from his throat raw and ragged, his own agony louder than his father's voiceless suffering.