X
The rain in Neo-Kyoto tasted of acid and regret. Kaelen felt it on his synthetic skin, a familiar, unwelcome caress as he navigated the narrow, crowded walkways of the lower sectors. Below, the mag-lev trains hissed and sparked, their lights a fleeting river of promise in the perpetual twilight of the undercity. Above, the corporate towers pierced the smog-choked clouds, monolithic testaments to the power of the few. Kaelen was just another ghost in the machine, a data courier with a past as fragmented as the holographic geisha glitching on a nearby billboard. His life was a series of fleeting moments, stitched together with the flimsy thread of cred-chips and stimulants. He was a courier, a deniable asset in the perpetual shadow war fought between the city’s monolithic corporations. His body was a patchwork of second-hand cybernetics, each piece a reminder of a deal gone wrong or a close call in the rain-slicked streets.
His memories were the worst part. They came in flashes, unsolicited and jarring, like a corrupted data stream. A woman’s laughter, the scent of real cherry blossoms, the cold steel of a pistol pressed against his temple. None of it made sense. His official records, the ones he’d paid a slicer a small fortune to access, said he was a clone-decant, an off-the-shelf body with a blank-slate neural pattern. But the glitches in his wetware told a different story. They whispered of a life lived and lost, a ghost in his personal machine.
Tonight’s run was supposed to be simple: a data chip exchange in the back alley of a noodle joint called “The Glitching Dragon.” The client was anonymous, the pay was good, and the risk seemed minimal. But in Neo-Kyoto, “minimal risk” was a lie you told yourself to keep the tremors in your cybernetically-enhanced hands at bay. He clutched the small, cool chip in his palm, its surface smooth and featureless. The contents were encrypted, of course. Ignorance was a shield in his line of work. He navigated the labyrinthine streets, the neon signs of noodle bars and implant parlors reflecting in the perpetual puddles. The air was thick with the scent of synthetic ginger, ozone, and desperation.
He found the alley, a dark maw between two crumbling residential blocks, the air thick with the smell of synthetic noodles and ozone. A single flickering lantern cast long, dancing shadows. Leaning against the damp brick wall was a figure, cloaked and hooded, their face obscured. Kaelen’s optical sensors zoomed in, but the shadows were too deep. A flicker of static ran across his vision, a familiar prelude to one of his memory glitches. He ignored it, focusing on the task at hand.
“You have the package?” a voice, distorted by a modulator, rasped from the darkness.
Kaelen nodded, his own voice a low, steady monotone he’d perfected to betray no emotion. “You have the creds?”
A sleek, black datapad was slid across the grimy pavement. Kaelen picked it up, his cybernetic fingers interfacing with the device. The promised amount was there, a number that would keep him fed and his implants maintained for another cycle. He tossed the chip to the cloaked figure. It was snatched out of the air with unnerving speed.
The deal was done. He should have walked away. But something in the way the figure held the chip, a sense of reverence that seemed out of place in this grimy alley, made him pause. “What’s on it?” he asked, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them.
The figure chuckled, a dry, synthetic sound. “The ghost of a dead man.”
Before Kaelen could process the cryptic answer, a searing pain erupted in his chest. He looked down to see a blade, humming with an almost imperceptible energy, protruding from his torso. His vision flickered, red static washing over his optical sensors. The cloaked figure was a blur, already retreating into the shadows. Kaelen’s legs gave out, and he crumpled to the ground, the datapad slipping from his grasp. The last thing he saw before his world went dark was the cloaked figure pausing at the edge of the alley, turning to look back at him. And in the split second before the shadows swallowed them, the lantern light caught their face, revealing a chillingly familiar smile. It was a smile he had seen before, in the fragmented, glitching memories that haunted his dreams. It was the smile of the man who had killed him the first time.
Darkness. And then, a reboot.
He awoke with a gasp, the sterile scent of recycled air and antiseptic filling his nostrils. He was lying on a cold metal slab, his body feeling both alien and intimately familiar. He sat up, his movements stiff and uncoordinated. Looking down, he saw not the familiar patchwork of his old cybernetics, but a seamless, unblemished chassis. This body was new. Top-of-the-line. A corporate-grade shell that would have cost more creds than he’d ever seen in his life.
A holographic interface flickered to life in front of him, a stylized dragon logo swirling before resolving into text.
[SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE. WELCOME, NYX.]
The name sent a jolt through his neural network, a cascade of fragmented data. A face, his face, but older, more world-weary. The hum of a custom cyberdeck. The thrill of a successful data heist. The name of a woman… Anya.
“Who… who are you?” Kaelen stammered, his voice coming out in a smooth, unfamiliar baritone.
[I AM THE CUSTODIAN. YOU ARE NYX. OR, MORE ACCURATELY, YOU ARE THE ECHO OF NYX.]
The holographic dragon pulsed with a soft, blue light.
[THE DATA PACKET YOU WERE TASKED TO DELIVER WAS NOT MERELY INFORMATION. IT WAS A FAILSAFE. A SOUL-CATCHER, FOR LACK OF A BETTER TERM. IT CONTAINED THE BACKUP OF THE NETRUNNER KNOWN AS NYX. UPON THE CATASTROPHIC FAILURE OF YOUR PREVIOUS CHASSIS, IT INITIATED A REBIRTH PROTOCOL.]
“Rebirth?” Kaelen, or Nyx, looked at his new hands, flexing the unfamiliar fingers. “So I’m… him?”
[YOU ARE A CONVERGENCE. THE MEMORIES AND SKILLS OF NYX, IMPRINTED ON THE NEURAL SCAFFOLD OF THE COURIER, KAELEN. THE DATA PACKET IS NOW A PERMANENT PART OF YOUR NEURAL ARCHITECTURE.]
A new message scrolled across the interface.
[WARNING: EXTERNAL SYSTEMS ATTEMPTING TO TRACE YOUR SIGNATURE. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE EVACUATION.]
The sterile white walls of the small chamber around him suddenly seemed like a tomb. He was a dead man in a new body, and his killers were already looking for him. The memories of Nyx were still a chaotic storm in his mind, but one thing was crystal clear: he had been betrayed. Twice. And now, he had the tools to find out why. He stood up, the new body humming with a latent power he was only just beginning to comprehend. The ghost in the machine was awake. And he was angry.
