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The first thing I knew was the taste of static and the smell of sterilized air. It was a clean, dead smell, the kind that clings to places where life is manufactured, not born. My eyelids fluttered open, heavy as lead shutters. The light was a soft, merciless white, emanating from the ceiling panels above. I was lying on a surface that was cool and unyielding.
A woman’s voice, smooth as polished chrome, cut through the low hum of machinery. “Welcome back, Subject 734.”
I tried to speak, but my throat was a desert. A dry rasp was the only sound I could muster. I tried to sit up, and the movement felt alien, disconnected. My limbs obeyed, but the sensation was delayed, like a bad data stream. I looked down at my hands. They were perfect—long, elegant fingers with unblemished skin, nails that were flawlessly uniform.
They weren’t my hands.
My hands were calloused from street fights and scarred from a lifetime of bad decisions. One of them had a crude, jail-style tattoo of a grinning skull I’d gotten when I was sixteen. These hands were a stranger’s.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced the fog in my mind. I surged upwards, my body moving with a strength that felt both immense and unfamiliar. Wires and sensors tore away from my skin. The room swam into focus. It was a sterile medical bay, all white surfaces and gleaming steel. The woman stood a few feet away, holding a datapad. She was tall, dressed in a sharp, corporate-grey suit, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. She didn’t flinch.
“My name is Anya,” she said, her voice calm and steady, a stark contrast to the storm raging in my head. “You’ve been through a significant trauma. Disorientation is normal.”
“Where am I?” My voice was a stranger’s too. Deeper, clearer.
“You’re in the Omni-Gen Tower, Aetheria Division,” she replied, her eyes impassive. “You were… compromised. We brought you back.”
“Brought me back?” I swung my legs over the side of the slab. I was wearing a simple grey tunic. My body felt… new. Too new. “Brought me back from what?”
“From death,” Anya stated, as if discussing the weather. “Your name was Jax. You were one of our most valuable data couriers. You were killed during a hostile acquisition of sensitive material. A messy affair.”
The name—Jax—it echoed in the empty chambers of my mind, but the face, the life attached to it, was smoke. Then, a flash.
Rain. The sting of it on my face, tasting of chemicals and regret. The neon glow of a noodle stand sign bleeding across the slick pavement. A sudden, blinding pain at the back of my skull. The world tilting, the neon lights smearing into a kaleidoscope of colors. The cold, hard shock of the street hitting my cheek. A face leaning over me, features lost in the glare and the downpour, a voice whispering a single word…
The memory shattered, leaving behind a migraine that felt like a drill bit behind my eyes. I clutched my head, a groan escaping my lips.
“The core memories are still integrating,” Anya said, making a note on her datapad. “The Echo Protocol is a delicate process. We retrieved your consciousness from the neural implant at the moment of expiration. This vessel”—she gestured at my body—”is a state-of-the-art synthetic. Stronger, faster, better than the original. You should be grateful, Jax.”
I looked up at her, the pain subsiding to a dull throb. “Don’t call me Jax. Jax is dead.”
Anya’s eyebrow arched. “A semantic argument. What should we call the consciousness that inhabits this vessel?”
I searched the blankness of my mind for an answer, for an identity. Nothing came. “Call me Kael,” I said, the name materializing from nowhere, a ghost on my new tongue.
“Kael, then,” she conceded. “A fresh start. Now, about the data you were carrying. It was a proprietary algorithm from a rival, Cygnus-X. Extremely valuable. The courier who intercepted it from you was a ghost. No I.D., no trace. But we believe the data left an imprint on your neural pathways before termination. A psychic echo, if you will. We need that data, Kael. We brought you back to find it.”
She stepped forward, her heels clicking softly on the pristine floor. “Think of this not as a resurrection, but as a new employment contract. Your life was the signing bonus. Now, it’s time to get to work. You’ll be assigned quarters, a stipend, and a limited access key to the city. Your new body has… enhancements. You’ll discover them in due time. I will be your handler. Your only point of contact. Do not disappoint us.”
The next few hours were a blur of diagnostics and calibrations. Technicians in sterile white coats poked and prodded me, testing my reflexes, my strength, my cognitive responses. The synthetic body was a marvel of engineering. My optical sensors could zoom in on microscopic details, and my auditory processors could isolate a single conversation in a crowded room. I was stronger and faster than any baseline human. I was also a prisoner. A faint, glowing Omni-Gen logo was subtly watermarked on my field of vision in the lower-left corner—a constant reminder of who owned me.
They gave me clothes—a black synth-leather jacket, dark cargo pants, and combat boots. They felt like a costume. My assigned quarters were a sterile, white box high in the Omni-Gen tower, with a window that offered a breathtaking, dizzying view of Neo-Kyoto. The city was a sprawling, glittering beast. Skyscrapers pierced the perpetually grey clouds, their sides plastered with holographic advertisements that flickered and danced in the eternal twilight. Below, rivers of light flowed as vehicles zipped along elevated mag-lev tracks. Acid rain sizzled against the reinforced glass of my window, each drop a tiny explosion of static.
Alone in my room, I stared at my reflection in the dark glass. The face staring back was handsome in a generic, corporate-approved way. Sharp jawline, dark hair, eyes that were a piercing, unnatural shade of cobalt blue. There was nothing of me in them. Nothing of the man I vaguely remembered being.
I closed my eyes and tried to summon the ghost of Jax. Fragments came back to me. The thrill of a rooftop chase under a holographic moon. The taste of cheap whiskey in a grimy undercity bar. The feel of a data-chip pressed into my palm. But it was like watching a movie about someone else’s life. The emotional connection was gone.
A ping from my integrated comms unit startled me. A message from Anya.
Your access key is now active. Familiarize yourself with the city. Report to me in 24 hours. And Kael? Don’t get any ideas. We’re always watching.
I clenched my new, perfect hands. She was right. I was a ghost in a machine, and my leash was held by a corporation that had dragged me back from the grave. But even a ghost can learn to haunt. I had to find out who Jax was. I had to find out why he died. And I had to find out what that whispered word was, the one spoken over my dying body. My own memories were the key, and Omni-Gen wanted them. That meant they were valuable. And anything valuable could be leveraged.
Stepping out of the sterile confines of the Omni-Gen tower was like diving into an ocean of sensory overload. The air was thick with the smells of sizzling street food, industrial exhaust, and damp pavement. The roar of the city was a physical force, a cacophony of mag-lev trains, blaring holographic ads, and the murmur of a thousand different languages. The crowds were a river of humanity and chrome, people with glowing cybernetic eyes, polished metal limbs, and data-ports embedded in their temples.
I was a stranger here, in a city that was supposed to have been my home. And somewhere out there, in the neon-drenched darkness, was the person who had killed me. I had a new body, a new name, and a mission from my corporate masters. But my own mission, the one that burned with a cold fire in the core of my borrowed soul, was just beginning. I would find the truth. Or I would die again trying.
