Kai's fingers trembled across the holographic keyboard, and he couldn't tell if it was fear or the disease.
The apartment sat in shadows, lit only by the pale blue hum of his setup - three tweaked servers piled up like an altar, their fans howling a steady drone. Rain slammed the pane at his back, sliding down the thick glass in sharp glowing trails, picking up the neon spill from Shibuya's roads way beneath. The Kuroda Syndicate ran three full zones somewhere out there. Down in that sprawl, they held exactly what he was after.
Somewhere above, Kai was going to take it.
His left leg jumped - just a tiny jerk, almost invisible, yet he sensed it: that old signal zipping through his nerves, like something inside him was close to snapping. Despite the jolt, he clenched his jaw and stayed on the keyboard. Only three weeks remaining. Could stretch to four, assuming things went right.
The gene therapy in Singapore was his last chance - a costly, brand-new experiment. 50 million yen worth. Inside the Kuroda Syndicate data vault, their wallet codes could release precisely that sum in digital cash, just chilling in offline storage, ready for anyone desperate enough to grab it.
Kai was desperate.
He'd always been desperate groing up in the projects. Life in Chiyoda's cheap housing towers ran rough, sharp and constant. Ma had juggled shifts at diners, clinics, late-night warehouses - anything to cover rent. Kai fought back different: brain first, mouth second. Smarts got him through fights his body would've lost. That kind of mind catches eyes, especially ones hiding in dark corners. Before fifteen hit, he was swapping secrets like candy. At sixteen, he ran illegal server setups in abandoned places. When he turned eighteen, doctors found he had Stellaris Syndrome - a rare condition passed through genes, with no fix or therapy, meaning his life was already ending before it started.
The quantum firewall popped up on his screen - waves of bright light twisting together, kinda like a glowing sea creature floating in cyberspace. Regular company setup he could handle by now. Only thing? Kuroda wasn't some regular corporate firm. The Kuroda Syndicate was the type that buried folks in cement while erasing every trace they were ever born.
But impending doom changes how you weigh dangers.
"Come on, sweetheart," he muttered to the machine. His breathing was fast, almost shaky. Sure, Kuroda's defenses were tough - yet no system stayed locked forever. Not one. For 3 weeks straight, he'd traced every wire, dug through hidden corners online, traded bits of crypto he barely owned plus promises he'd later hate. Now, he held the way in. He'd already built the attack program, sitting there waiting. All he required was a minute - no distractions.
His hands moved fast on the keys - actual buttons, not those fake light-up kinds. Physical clicks. Pressure you could feel. His setup? Outdated, cobbled together using stolen parts and gear pulled from Harajuku's back-alley markets. No Wi-Fi signals. No voice commands. Totally cut off from the town's main digital web. If he stayed wired like this, the Kuroda hunters wouldn't find him - at least, that's what he kept telling himself. Right now, belief was something he needed plenty of.
The flat felt like a cry for help, boxed in by silence. Empty vials of painkillers piled up - leftovers from late-night tremors. A thin sleeping sack on bare tiles; he had traded the mattress for better hardware ages back. Notes everywhere, scribbled wild, tangled with crude wiring sketches. Network plans crammed into edges, drawn when nerves were fraying. This dump became his whole life lately - three weeks deep. This spot plus that machine. Here, along with a wild shot at fifty million yen keeping death off his back.
The exploit code built without issues. Green letters against a dark screen. Everything worked fine. His fingers shifted toward the payload step - then stopped.
A spike of fire erupted down his spine.
It wasn't the usual pain. It wasn't that constant sting from his nerve condition creeping through him like a quiet sickness either. Nope, this felt off. Something shifted - his whole left side jerked hard, muscles clenching then releasing in wild bursts. Air stuck in his chest. His head whipped backward, sight fading to bright haze around the rims.
The chair moved back away from his desk.
"No. No, no, no—"
His hands grabbed at the desk's edge but hit nothing. Instead of holding on, his arms swung free. Legs turned limp, like they'd forgotten how to work. They hung heavy from his hips, no strength left. Twitching spread through him - stronger now, quicker than expected. The doctors claimed it wouldn't move this fast.
Kai's elbow slammed into the concrete, sharp pain zipping up his arm like a jolt. He clamped his teeth shut - this place didn't block noise, especially not on what he paid. Folks next door had already grumbled about the machine's noisy fans. Yelling might draw attention he couldn't risk dealing with.
He pulled along toward the table, just using his right arm - each motion shaky, twisted. Cramps slowed up, melting into that dull ache he always carried now. Not even half a minute. Just fifteen ticks of time. Glanced at the gadget strapped to his wrist, the thing keeping score on his estimate for how fast he was falling apart: 21 days, 14 hours, 47 minutes before it ends.
Or when the fits became so severe he could barely cope - whatever happened sooner.
The screens kept flickering. Even though the code finished building. Not disconnected - but he'd lost precious seconds.
Kai sucked air fast, short bursts while dragging himself up - his fingers gripping the desk to shove his sluggish limbs into the seat again. Beads of sweat crawled along his temples. Tremors hit his hands hard now, though it wasn't illness causing them. Fear sat clearer than agony ever did. Unlike pain, fear felt like a tool he might use.
His hands hovered above the keys once more.
Half a minute until the firewall reset itself. During that gap he had to slip in the payload. 30 seconds feels endless when you're inside the system. But it vanishes if you blink.
Kai ran through the steps.
The code slipped in like a hacker's kiss, weaving through the quantum shield's defenses as if it'd run this exact move endless times before. Streams of commands flooded his display, rushing fast toward the heart of the system - like water cutting down a slope. His setup chewed through the feedback in sharp spikes - the barrier now aware, firing back, smart routines rising up to stop the unseen intruder crawling inside.
Yet Kai moved quicker.
The wallet codes popped up on his main display - 256-bit hex numbers, every single one unlocking fifty million yen in crypto you couldn't track. His pulse jumped. Just then, maybe half a second, he actually thought this might pay off.
After that, the quantum shield formed again by itself.
Sudden. Not bit by bit. Everything together. Like seeing a stronghold rise out of fog, sped up. The firewall didn't just adjust - scratch that - it changed completely, studying the breach, altering its own code on the fly. Kuroda hadn't hired implemented cheap cyber security. Kuroda had put in the kind of cybersecurity that learned from its mistakes in real time.
And Kai had just made a spectacular mistake.