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The rain in Neo-Alexandria didn’t so much fall as it did seep. It was a perpetual, greasy drizzle that clung to every surface, slicking the grimy chrome of the monolithic skyscrapers and running in rainbow-hued rivulets through the trash-choked streets of the Undercity. For Kaelen, it was the soundtrack to his life—a constant, mournful hiss that promised nothing but another cycle of rust and decay.
His workshop, a cramped, converted shipping container tucked away in the labyrinthine alleys of Sector Gamma, was a sanctuary of sorts. The air within was thick with the smell of ozone, hot metal, and the cloying sweetness of counterfeit bio-foam. Here, amidst the tangled nests of fiber optics, the scavenged cybernetic limbs hanging from meat hooks, and the flickering glow of a dozen cracked monitors, Kaelen was a surgeon. A butcher, some might say. He was a chrome-jockey, a purveyor of illegal and unregistered cybernetic enhancements. He was the man you came to when you wanted an upgrade that OmniCorp wouldn’t sell you, and the authorities would kill you for having.
Tonight’s job was different. It felt… heavy. The client had been a whisper, a distorted voice on a secure channel, a ghost in the datastream who had offered a sum of credits that could wipe his debts clean and buy him a ticket to one of the off-world colonies—a place where the rain was just water and the sky was something other than a permanent, smog-choked bruise. The payment was contingent on one thing: the successful installation of a piece of chrome Kaelen had never seen before.
It sat now on his workbench, nestled in a sterile, shock-proof case. It was a small, intricate device, a lattice of iridescent filaments and what looked like crystallized data, all converging on a single, obsidian shard. There were no markings, no serial numbers, no indication of its origin or function. The client had called it a ‘perceptual filter.’ A new way of seeing the world. Kaelen called it a risk, but one he had to take.
He prepped his own body for the installation. This was another of the client’s stipulations: Kaelen had to be the first recipient. A test run. He stripped to the waist, the faint light of his monitors glinting off the patchwork of his own second-hand chrome. His left arm, a dull, gunmetal gray construct, whirred softly as he attached the sterile auto-doc to his temple. The machine’s metallic fingers were cold against his skin.
“Here we go,” he murmured to the empty room, the words swallowed by the hum of his machinery and the ever-present hiss of the rain. He uploaded the installation protocols—a heavily encrypted file provided by the client—into the auto-doc. The machine whirred to life, its needle-fine manipulators extending towards the delicate skin of his temple. A sharp, cold sting, and then nothing. The process had begun.
He watched his vital signs on a nearby monitor, his heart rate steady, his neural activity spiking as the auto-doc began to weave the implant’s filaments into his cerebral cortex. It was an invasive, yet familiar, sensation. A slight pressure behind his eyes, a phantom taste of copper in his mouth. He’d done this to countless others, and to himself a dozen times before. But this time was different.
A wave of vertigo washed over him, so intense it made the contents of his stomach churn. The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and for a terrifying second, the code scrolling on his monitors dissolved into a chaotic mess of unrecognizable symbols. He blinked, and it was back to normal. A standard synaptic hiccup, he told himself. Nothing to worry about.
Then, he saw it. In the reflection of a darkened monitor, a flicker. A distortion in the air behind him. It was a man-shaped silhouette, but it was made of static, of broken data, its form impossibly tall and thin. It was there for a fraction of a second, and then it was gone.
“Just the chrome settling in,” he said, his voice a little too loud in the sudden silence of the room. The auto-doc beeped, signaling the completion of the installation. He detached the machine, his fingers trembling slightly as he touched the new, smooth socket at his temple. There was no pain. Only a faint, persistent hum at the edge of his hearing.
He stood up, taking a tentative step. The world looked… sharper. The colors of the neon signs outside his window were more vibrant, the hiss of the rain more distinct. But there was something else. A subtle, almost imperceptible wrongness. He looked at his own reflection in the polished surface of a cybernetic arm. His own eyes stared back at him, but for a split second, the irises seemed to glow with a faint, corrupted-data blue. He shook his head, and the effect was gone.
He was just tired. Jittery. The money would be in his account by morning. Then he could sleep for a week. He powered down his main console, plunging the workshop into near darkness, the only light coming from the perpetual neon twilight of the city outside. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw it again. Not a reflection this time. Standing in the far corner of the room, half-hidden by a hanging tangle of cables, was the same tall, thin silhouette of static. It wasn’t moving. It was just… watching. And this time, it didn’t disappear.
A cold dread, colder than any rain-soaked night in Neo-Alexandria, trickled down his spine. The client hadn’t just given him a new way of seeing the world. He had given him a key. And in his desperate, greedy hands, he had just unlocked a door that should have remained forever closed.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The figure was still there. It was a tear in the fabric of his reality, a patch of visual noise that his brain screamed was wrong. He could see the wall behind it, but it was as if he was looking through a heat haze, a shimmer of corrupted light. He reached for the heavy wrench on his workbench, his knuckles white.
“Who’s there?” he called out, his voice hoarse. There was no response. He took a step forward, and the figure seemed to… stretch. Its form elongated, its limbs becoming impossibly long and spindly. It was like watching a video file corrupt in real time. A low, static-filled hiss, like a dead channel on an old radio, emanated from it, growing in volume.
He didn’t think, he just reacted. He hurled the wrench with all the force his augmented arm could muster. The heavy tool flew through the air… and passed right through the figure, clanging loudly against the metal wall behind it. The figure didn’t even flinch. It simply retracted to its original shape, its silent observation continuing.
Panic, raw and primal, seized him. This wasn’t a hallucination. It was real. Or rather, it was something that was making his reality unreal. He scrambled for the door of his workshop, fumbling with the lock. The static hiss grew louder, filling the small space, vibrating in his teeth. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The figure was now drifting towards him, not walking, but gliding over the floor, a silent, horrifying omen of broken code.
He burst out into the alley, the cold, greasy rain a shocking but welcome sensation on his skin. He ran, his heart hammering against his ribs, his synthetic leg pounding against the cracked pavement. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he had to get away from the thing in his workshop. He ran until his lungs burned and his vision swam, the neon lights of the Undercity blurring into a chaotic smear of color.
He finally collapsed in a heap in a darkened doorway, gasping for breath, his body trembling. He was alone. The alley was empty, save for the usual detritus of city life. He leaned his head against the cold, damp wall, his mind racing. What was that thing? What had that implant done to him?
He tried to contact the client, but the secure channel was dead. The datastream address was gone, wiped clean as if it had never existed. The credits, he discovered with a sinking feeling, had not been transferred. He was left with nothing but a hole in his head, a terrifying new perception of the world, and the chilling certainty that he was being watched by things that shouldn’t exist. The hum in his skull was still there, a constant reminder of the alien technology now fused with his own mind. He was marked. He was a beacon. And he had a dreadful feeling that the thing in his workshop was only the beginning.
