The rain hissed against the cracked pavement, flowed down the gutters, and gathered in the same puddles that had been there for years. The city looked washed out — as if someone had taken all the color and left it to drown.
Aiden sat on the edge of a broken bench, half under a flickering streetlight, watching the light blink on and off. He was holding a protein drink, labeled "balanced formula for modern diets." It was gray, bland, and technically could be counted as food. He took a sip, grimaced, and muttered:
"Tastes like shit."
The city didn't care — not about the drink, and certainly not about him. It just kept moving— towers humming in the distance, maglevs sliding like ghosts across wet tracks, and the air filled with drones displaying ads no one listened to.
A woman's hologram appeared on a nearby wall, her smile too wide to not be fake.
ECLYPSE DIVE — Start Fresh.
Her eyes tracked him as he raised the bottle in a mock toast.
"Cheers, sweetheart."
People said Eclypse Dive was the next revolution — a neural world where your power and status came from your emotions. Real feelings, not artificial substances or cheap shows.
It sounded stupid. Then again, everything did when you didn't feel anything.
The doctors had told him it was called emotional disassociation. A side effect of the trauma treatment that was supposed to make things better. They'd burned out his fear, his grief, and his pain. Also, apparently, everything else that made him human.
Now there was just silence.
Sometimes he thought he'd gotten used to it. Other times, he wondered if that was just a lie he told himself to make him feel better.
He looked up at the rain, blinking through the neon haze. Across the street, an old billboard was flickering, another Eclypse ad — showing some happy couple laughing over dinner. The slogan changed every few seconds. "Taste Emotion," "Own Your Resonance," "Eclypse Dive — Where You Matter."
He snorted. "Yeah, sure."
The world was obsessed with feeling happy, accomplished. They wanted to matter. Aiden just wanted to feel anything. He sighed and checked his wristband:
[Eclypse Dive Neural Interface — Order Confirmed — Delivery: 9AM Tomorrow]
It was a terrible idea, spending the last of his savings — which were usually reserved for food, on a neural interface. However, the possibility of feeling something again — no matter how small it was, led him to take his chances.
His apartment was what you'd expect from a peniless loser — one small, almost empty room. The only pieces of furniture were: a grey, rusty wooden chair in the corner of the room, seemingly about to break any second, a filthy bed resembling those in mental hospitals — holding only the bed frame and a mattres tattered in several spots. All of this completed by a large, full body mirror planted opposite to the bed.
Aiden dropped his jacket on the floor and sat on the bed, staring into the mirror, rubbing a hand over his face, feeling the stubble scraping his palm. The mirror across the room caught his reflection: lean, pale, and a little too hollow in the cheeks. His hair had grown out unevenly, dark and messy. Eyes, the color of washed-out slate stared back at him. They looked like they belonged to somebody else.
Aiden used to be stronger. Not bulky — but wiry, fast. Now he just looked like a kid who hadn't eaten any food in months. He tugged at his shirt collar. The collarbone stuck out like a blade. It wasn't ugly, but it certainly didn't look healthy.
***
When the knock came the next morning, he was already awake. Not that he slept much. Even with the merged ambience of heavy rain and thick neon haze, he still could just barely sleep. He opened the door to the delivery drone hovering at eye level, humming quietly. A sleek black case rested in its clawed grip.
[Eclypse Dive Neural Interface — Model X3]
"Right on time," he muttered.
The drone scanned his wristband, chirped once, and dropped the case into his hands before gliding off into the mist. The trunk was a lot heavier than he expected, causing Aiden to almost drop it. Its surface was smooth and cold, embossed with the company's logo — a stylized eclipse. He pressed the latch, and the case opened with a hiss of sterile air.
Inside was the neural link crown. Not a headset. Not a helmet. A crown. Thin arcs of silver laced with black crystal, and faint blue light beaming like moonlight. It looked... expensive, almost disgustingly so.
On the inside of the case, a line of text glowed softly:
Once installed, this interface cannot be transferred or removed. Permanent neural bonding required.
Aiden whistled under his breath.
"Till death do us apart."
He set the case on the floor and stared at it for a while. Permanent. That made this situation a lot more serious, even for someone who didn't feel much. Once he bonded with this thing, no one else could use it.
The company's ads had called it "exclusive immersion," while the forums called it "a neural tattoo." Aiden ran a thumb over the etched eclipse symbol, then reached for the crown. It was lighter than it looked. The metal was weirdly warm, as though it had been waiting for him.
He turned it in his hands.
"This is it… No going back," he said quietly.
He sat on the bed, pressed the crown against the top of his head, and waited — it clicked into place with a soft, almost organic sound, then a small jolt raced down his spine, his expectation rising with every passing second.
A panel of text appeared across his vision:
[Neural Interface Detected.]
[Bonding Sequence Initiated.]
[Warning: Permanent Installation. Removal Not Possible.]
[Confirm? Y/N?]
"Yes"
Light bled into the edges of the room, subtle at first, then bright enough to illuminate the rusty chair in the corner of the room. He felt a flutter in his chest, the crown tightened, then melted into his skin — vanishing along with the light.
[Bond Complete]
[Welcome, Aiden Vale.]
He exhaled slowly, a small, doubtful breath.
Then the world broke.
The air shimmered like the northern lights, bending everything around him until the edges of his apartment began to melt away. The walls turned into bright colors, while the ceiling peeled back like silk. Everything — his bed, his hands, the chair in the corner — dissolved into cascading shards of light that floated upward, weightless.
Aiden blinked, and the room was gone.
He was now standing in an ocean of glass, stretching infinitely in every direction, reflecting a sky that didn't exist. Above him hung a sun, black and blinding, surrounded by gorgeous rings of orange flame. Below, those same rings rippled across the glass like echoing shockwaves, lighting up faint patterns that looked like constellations.
The horizon folded in on itself. Distant towers made of silver strings rose and fell like waves, whereas in the distance, threads of light twisted together, forming enormous, luminous veins that pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
A voice came out of nowhere — calm, careful, and too human to be AI.
[Connection Established.]
[Welcome To The Nexus.]
[Your gateway to the emotional plane. Your reflection of truth.]
The sky shifted, and for a moment, he could see faint silhouettes moving behind the light — shapes that were almost alive, but they flickered and vanished before he could confirm. Aiden stared upward, lips parted, his breath fogged even though it wasn't cold.
"This… is this really a simulation?" he whispered.
The Nexus responded.
[Calibration in progress.]
[Analyzing emotional resonance…]
[Baseline detected — Flatline.]
The glass beneath his feet rippled outward, as though recoiling from him. He hurriedly took a few steps back.
[Error.]
[Emotional Resonance not detected.]
[Classification: Null.]
[Warning — Anomaly Registered.]
The lights suddenly dimmed, and something started vibrating behind the black sun — a quick, heavy beat, as if a gigantic heart was about to suffer cardiac arrest — the entire world trembled and the glass ocean beneath him began to shatter.
"... For fuck's sake," he muttered.