In the quiet afternoon at the Liminal Lake's cafe, Oren ordered a pork sandwich with mustard and no tomatoes. He was holding an ancient gear in his left mechanical hand and inspecting the deep pink firefly glimmering inside the glass panel of the gear.
Oren graduated from the archaeological department of the infamous Apricity Academy along with Aeron. It was just while he wanted to go out and explore the world that Aeron decided to stay and become a Neuromancer.
He glanced around the cafe and spotted the large charcoal bird he needed to give a bath to today.
......
The problem with early mornings, Aeron decided, was that they encouraged optimism. He personally believed optimism should be illegal before noon.
Which made the young man now standing in the autopsy room doubly suspicious.
"Hi!" the stranger chirped, smiling with enough wattage to power a small workshop. "I'm your new partner!"
Aeron stared at the hand extended toward him. It did not go away.
Captain Bhrithi dragged a hand down her face. "I said assistant, not partner."
The stranger gasped. "Assistants and partners are the same thing in spirit!"
"No," Aeron said. "They are not."
"Absolutely not," Voss added.
The young man beamed anyway, as if disagreement were a fun social interaction.
He was around Aeron's age, with rumpled white hair and a coat that tried very hard to look mundane while clearly being tailored with expensive hands. Aeron did not know fashion, but he did know when someone did not buy their clothes from the discount stalls.
"Name's Leo", the young man said brightly. "Just Leo."
Aeron squinted. "Is that a fake name?"
"No!" A pause.
"Probably!"
Bhrithi emitted a noise halfway between a groan and a plea for divine intervention.
Aeron attempted to explain what he'd seen in the dead man's mind. He tried describing the melting city, the mechanical tendrils, the woman's voice whispering help, and the metal hand that had grabbed him.
Leo listened with the wide-eyed delight of someone being told a bedtime story about eldritch horrors.
Bhrithi listened like someone adding more names to her "I am going to fight God myself" list.
"And then", Aeron finished with dignity, "the corpse sat up."
Leo clapped. "Incredible!"
"Not the word I'd use," Aeron muttered.
But the worst part wasn't the talking corpse.
It was the scorch mark the corpse had left on his autopsy table — a small, dark, irregular stain that twitched like it had somewhere to be.
Aeron prodded it. It twitched twice as hard, like a personally offended insect.
"Nope", he said, scooping it into a glass jar. "Absolutely not"
Leo peered in. "It's kind of cute!"
"Do you know what kind of organism this is?," Leo leaned in.
Aeron shook his head. He was an archaeology and neuromancy graduate specializing in neuro-romantic adaptations of the brain and behavioral modification, not a biology graduate.
"Well, they kind of resemble skin flies in the north waking city."
Leo nodded cheerfully. "You're right. Especially when the files mate by tearing open the other's genitals." He answered so casually that Aeron had to check his ears twice.
Aeron considered the possibility that Leo had simply never met danger before. Or normal relationships.
.........
They headed into the waking city: Bhrithi leading with military precision, Aeron dragging his feet with existential dread, and Leo skipping slightly, like someone heading to a bakery rather than a murder site.
Verrinth at dawn was… uneasy. The sky was cloudy; the streets were vacant and smelt like cotton. The gigantic water clock tower of the capital was visible from the messy brass alarm bells hanging on the top of the buildings.
Steam drifted low along the ground. Valves hissed. Pipes clanged loudly. Shadows stretched too long, like they wanted to follow.
Aeron stopped. "Wait."
"What?" Bhrithi asked.
"The street is humming."
Leo crouched down immediately, pressing his ear to the cobblestones. "Oh! It is! That sounds like something flipping its wings against a hot flame."
"No," Aeron corrected, "I think it's against something cool."
Bhrithi touched the stone with her metal fingers. Her jaw tightened. "But the surface is warm."
Aeron recoiled. "Streets should not be warm."
The sound grew louder — a deep vibration that thrummed through their shoes and climbed up their bones.
Then, the streetlamp beside them flickered.
Flickered again. Then turned its metal head — ever so slightly — toward Aeron.
Just a fraction.
Just enough.
Aeron pointed at it like a man discovering betrayal. "It. Looked. At me."
Bhrithi did not look convinced. The lamp, smug in its inanimate stillness, swayed gently in the breeze.
Leo patted Aeron's shoulder. "Maybe it likes you!"
Aeron wished desperately for a time machine.
Just then, from the alley came a sound.
Tick—scrape. Tick—scrape. Tick—scrape.
Bhrithi had her weapon out instantly.
Something stumbled into view.
It was a man. Or something that remembered being one.
Half his face was flesh. The other half was metal — gears chewing slowly under the skin, a strip of bronze fused where a cheekbone should be. Filaments pulsed in and out of his jaw like mechanical worms. The worms were slowly grinding into his flesh, pulling his veins out one by one. The blood droplets from the veins paddled like another worm beneath Aeron's boots.
Aeron's stomach dropped.
"Help…" the man rasped.
Help…us…"
Before anyone could move, he collapsed at their feet, twitching.
Leo crouched beside him, eyes wide, not horrified — just heartbroken. "Aeron… can you save him?"
"Yes", Aeron whispered, throat tight. "We need to bring him to the academy."
Bhrithi scanned the alley, tense. "We need to get him into containment. Now."
The humming beneath their feet pulsed again.
Louder. Closer. Hungry.
Aeron looked down the street.
The cobblestones were shifting. And twisting like snakes. Enabling the rough texture of the stones to melt and reunite.
Not dramatically — not enough to alarm anyone but someone who paid attention to the wrong details.
But they were definitely moving.
And Aeron realized with sickening certainty, that whatever was beneath the city knew his real name.