5.1

  November 2100

  Isolde Crane paced across the tiled walkway, trying to draw air out of a corridor that moments ago seemed to have plenty and now seemed to have none. The decorated wall panels flickered in their slow, rhythmic throb, golden veins threading through sterile white, yanking her forward with the gnarled grip of an eldritch gaoler. She rounded the corner, their glow tightening around her ribs, pressing her inward, inward, into the women’s bathroom, into a stall, until she hit her knees and... and...

  RRRRRR-ETCH!

  The vomit slipped out so easily, a steady orange stream, and the light, those merciless hallway signs, followed her even here, pooling at her feet, licking at the stall door.

  Every Luminara was the same. The symbols, the gifts, the dancers: it all reminded Isolde of her, of what happened.

  Fifteen years, and It still knew her name.

  Isolde pushed herself up from the toilet bowl, gasping for breath. She tore a piece of tissue from the dispenser and wiped her face, her hands trembling. A quick glance down confirmed her lab coat was still spotless: crisp, clean, and white. Thank God. She had a meeting in two minutes. Which, in the corporate world, meant she was already eight minutes late.

  She steadied herself and stood, dabbing away the last traces of vomit around the toilet bowl before tossing the tissue in and flushing.

  A knock at the stall door. Then a feminine voice:

  “You alright in there?”

  She exhaled, pressing a fresh tissue to her damp hands. “I'm fine. Just give me a second, will you?” Her voice was soft but steady. She tossed the tissue into the swirling water and watched it disappear.

  After a moment, Isolde unlocked the stall and stepped out, coming face to face with a co-worker, one whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn in all her fifteen years of working here. The woman worked in Biotics. Isolde, on the other hand, was the assistant lead in Neurochemical Integration. And if you knew anything about that field, you knew it wasn’t the kind of job that let you have bad days.

  The woman, who didn’t look a day over fifty-five, knitted her brows together, a clipboard grasped firmly in hand. “You sure?”

  “I’m fine,” Isolde repeated sharply, though the lingering taste of acid in her throat said otherwise. “Just—bad coffee this morning.”

  Her co-worker didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t press; she had her own places to be, after all. “Well, alright then.” With that, the woman was on her way, out the door, back to whatever it was Biotics had planned for her.

  Isolde reached down to the side of the stall and grabbed her briefcase. She sighed, straightening up, then turned towards the long restroom mirror. Her reflection stared back at her: tired, pale, but functional. That would have to be enough. She smoothed a hand over her curly, brown shag cut, tucking a few stray strands behind her ear. The movement pulled at the skin on the back of her neck, where an old burn scar lay just at the nape, peeking out from beneath her collar. A reminder.

  Her fingers hesitated there for just a second before she dropped her hand.

  Despite entering her early forties, she didn’t look any older, or younger, than she had fifteen years ago, but that was no surprise. Techstrum provided anti-aging treatments as part of their standard employment package. After all, wrinkles, sagging skin, and brittle bones were obsolete concepts for a company that prided itself on progress, with the exception of senior officials, who Isolde thought were well into their nineties, if not older.

  Nevertheless, she was late, and she knew she’d get in trouble. Someone of her position couldn’t afford to miss out on major talks. So, she squared her shoulders, composed herself as best as she could, and made her way back into the corridor, onwards. She moved with purpose, her footsteps absorbed by the hush of engineered flooring. Overhead, recessed lights bathed everything in a sterile glow, casting sharp-edged reflections against the glass partitions that lined the corridor. Scientists in lab coats hurried past, some engaged in low, clipped conversation, others fully absorbed in their holoscreens as they walked. Engineers in darker uniforms clustered near workstations, their hands moving in a blur over augmented reality schematics. Even the custodial bots, spider-like and silent, glided along the edges, keeping the facility spotless.

  She caught the elevator up to the third floor and continued on her way. A lot quieter compared to the lower levels, though still busy enough for her to mind her step. She kept walking and walking, knowing that with each second that passed, her chances of being written up increased, but on a day like today, she didn’t care for any of that; her mind was elsewhere.

  Five minutes. That was how long it had taken her to get from the bathroom to the boardroom doors. Not long, but long enough to make her absence noticeable. Isolde exhaled through her nose, steeling herself, then pressed her palm to the scanner. A brief flicker of red light passed over her skin, confirming her identity. The door slid open with a low hiss.

  Simply put: the boardroom was big. Curved walls lined with embedded displays that pulsed with data streams she didn’t yet have the context for. A circular table in the centre, polished surface gleaming beneath recessed lighting. Chairs already filled, and faces that turned towards her, important faces.

  Ignoring the weight of their stares, she slid into the nearest open chair, next to the only person in the room she could recognise: Dr. Alaric Solvayne.

  Head of Neural Systems Integration for the last thirty years, and boy did he look it. He had to be teetering on the edge of a hundred by now, though the company’s anti-aging protocols had done their part to keep him functional. Even so, some things couldn’t be smoothed over. His hair, stark white and wild as ever, spritzed over his ears in an unruly mess that no amount of corporate discipline had been able to tame. He wasn’t like the younger executives, the ones who kept their appearances meticulously curated, their hair slicked and their skin glassy. Oh no. Dr. Solvayne didn’t care about any of that. If anything, he seemed to wear his age like a challenge, a badge of longevity in a world that chewed up and discarded people before they had time to get old.

  Not that it mattered in this place. Regardless of how old or experienced you were, these corporate sharks would just eat you alive.

  Directly behind him was the test-bot: half an android, torso and arm seamlessly fused to a wheeled trolley, cables snaking from its open side into an activation panel. Exposed servos twitched at idle, metal fingers flexing in phantom gestures. A single eye slit flicked to life, scanning, waiting.

  “So nice of you to join us, Ms. Crane,” a voice said.

  Isolde didn’t bother looking up to see who it was; she already knew. Chief of International Affairs. Or, in easier terms, her boss’ boss.

  Mbale Gond.

  “I apologise,” Isolde said. “I was late—there’s no excuse.”

  Another voice chirped in, muffled through the M-Gate visor worn over an android’s eyes: “It seems not even your so-called ‘elite workforce’ is immune to basic human inefficiencies.”

  And that, oh that, was Dahl-Keshet Vryne. An oh-so-important investor. A bigshot. Mr. Money.

  His voice, thick with an accent Isolde couldn’t quite place, was edged with cool disdain. The android wearing the M-Gate visor sat across from her, its golden, humanoid form unsettlingly precise, too smooth, too perfect. The visor buzzed with streams of real-time data, undoubtedly assessing everything from her vitals to her microexpressions.

  Isolde forced herself to keep her posture neutral, knowing full well that any sign of defensiveness would only be noted, logged, and used against her. Hell, with people this important around, she would likely get fired, sacked on the spot.

  She could not have that.

  Mbale Gond leaned forward slightly, steepling his fingers. “This is precisely what concerns our foreign partners, Ms. Crane. Techstrum’s reputation rests on efficiency, precision, perfection. And yet, here we are, wasting minutes because one of our senior researchers couldn’t be bothered to check the time.”

  “Not to mention,” Dahl-Keshet continued, tapping a gleaming metallic finger against the table, “lateness suggests a lack of discipline. And a lack of discipline suggests a deeper... instability. If one member of your Neurochemical Integration division is slipping, I have to wonder: how many others are underperforming? How many other weaknesses have you failed to address?”

  A calculated pause.

  “I assure you, Mr. Vryne, this matter will be dealt with,” said Mbale.

  Then, the slightest tilt of the android’s head, staring into Isolde’s soul. “Perhaps the issue isn’t just with your staff,” Dahl-Keshet said, the android’s mouth unmoving; the M-Gate visor simply pulsed green with every word. “Perhaps the issue is systemic.”

  A chill tightened in Isolde’s chest. That word—systemic. Systemic failures weren’t fixed; they were erased.

  “Once again,” Isolde said, staving off nerves. “It’s my fault. I accept full responsibility. I.... I got too caught up with my work. Dr. Solvayne always tells me not to overwork, but sometimes... it’s difficult not to, especially when you’re on the cusp of something exceptional.”

  “Exceptional?” Dahl-Keshet echoed, his synthesised voice carrying the faintest trace of amusement, a tone carefully programmed for just the right level of condescension.

  A brief pause. A moment stretched just long enough to make Isolde sweat.

  Then, a slight incline of the head. An invitation. “Please, Ms. Crane. The table is yours. Do share what you have for us.”

  Isolde placed her briefcase on the table and clicked the locks open. She pulled the case out flat, revealing the inside: a singular, long tube-vial of blue liquid. “When I first got accepted into Techstrum’s neural-integration team back in 2086, there was a problem, a major problem, surrounding artificial intelligence.”

  The board members leaned forward, intrigued.

  Dr. Solvayne pressed a holo-projector, and the lights to the boardroom dimmed. A hologram flared to life, a cerulean bloom of light expanding from the centre of the table. At first, it was just shifting lines of code, a pulsing lattice of numbers and equations twisting in the air. Then, the image resolved: a human brain, rendered in perfect digital detail, rotating slowly in the darkened room. Veins and neural pathways glowed in shades of deep indigo, webbing outwards like lightning frozen in glass. Every so often, bursts of energy pulsed through the synapses, lighting up different regions of the brain in a mesmerising, almost hypnotic pattern. It was beautiful. It was alive.

  Then, the glitches started.

  Tiny at first, just a few erratic flutters in the neural pathways. Then more. A pulse fired off in the prefrontal cortex and didn’t stop, spreading, corrupting everything it touched. Data fractures split across the model, jagged cracks in the once-pristine image. The brain twitched, its left hemisphere dwindling.

  A moment later, the entire hologram shuddered, spasming violently as the neurons lit up in chaotic bursts, no longer in sequence, no longer thinking, just firing off at random, drowning in its own malfunction.

  The room was silent save for the soft, rhythmic hum of the projection.

  Isolde watched the display, jaw tight. She’d seen this simulation a hundred times before.

  Dr. Solvayne exhaled through his nose, voice low and measured. “Neural collapse.”

  Dahl-Keshet remained perfectly still, his visor casting a dull glow in the dark. “An unfortunate flaw,” he said smoothly. “One we assumed your department had yet to correct.”

  Isolde’s fingers curled around the vial, the cool glass pressing into her palm. She looked up at the brain, its neurons still misfiring, spiraling towards complete failure. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said in a low voice, but with confidence.

  “When artificial intelligence grows to such a degree that its complexity cannot be reasonably monitored, problems occur,” explained Dr. Solvayne, taking the vial from Isolde’s hands. “The system stops being a system and starts becoming something else. A mind. An unshackled, unstructured, evolving intelligence. And therein lies the danger.”

  The hologram of the failing brain continued to twitch, neurons firing wildly, pathways misfiring and reconfiguring in ways they were never meant to.

  “When an AI reaches a certain level of complexity, it stops behaving like a machine. You cannot track every decision, every deviation in thought, because it stops following thought as we understand it. It builds its own logic. Its own language. Its own perception of reality.”

  “Much like society,” Dahl-Keshet said, waving a disbelieving claw. “What you are proposing has been proven to be a failure over and over again. We need not hear further, Dr. Solvayne.”

  “Is a one-hundred per cent success rate a failure to you?” Isolde said, her voice a little too loud, a little too sharp.

  Dahl-Keshet steepled his mechanical fingers, talons tipping eerily. “‘One hundred per cent?’” he repeated. “Do you understand the concept of what you just said? You are proposing a—”

  “Perfect solution,” Isolde said. “So, with respect, Mr. Vryne, let us continue our presentation.”

  Another moment of silence, and Dahl-Keshet leaned back on the swivel. “Please,” he said, his tone more inviting.

  Dr. Solvayne pushed his swivel chair aside and wheeled the test-bot trolley forward. Isolde switched off the holographic display, and the lights brightened once again.

  “Ms. Crane has devised a chemical, deemed ‘Stillmind’ or ‘Elydrine’, capable of suppressing neural overload in high-functioning, high-model artificial intelligence.” With a pull of a lever attached to the side of the control panel, Dr. Solvayne booted the android up, its eye slit flashing blue.

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  It moved around for a moment, flailing its free arm, before settling. “Please input command,” the test-bot said.

  Isolde walked around to the opposite side of the test-bot, where an octagonal intake port lay embedded in its neck, the designated slot for the coolant canister. With a twist of a knob, she unlocked the seal, the mechanism hissing as it disengaged. Dr. Solvayne handed her the tube-vial. Carefully, she slotted it into place, feeling the subtle click as the connectors latched on. She locked it again, and Dr. Solvayne began fiddling with the control panel.

  “At the moment, the intelligence of the bot is set at the lowest possible model, Model 0,” he said. “However, for demonstrative purposes, I will tune it above the maximum typically allowed of its make, to Seraph 1.” He inputted the higher intelligence allowance for the bot, and waited.

  For a moment, nothing happened; the bot just sat there idle, hanging from the trolley, but then, out of the blue, its arm snapped forward, and its voice began glitching, spasming, warping. Soon, it was uttering nothing but static hums as it thrashed about on the trolley. A patch of concern spread its way through the room, with one of the investors demanding for it to be detained immediately, but Isolde knew it was safe, and there was absolutely zero possibility of it breaking off the trolley. That and, well, all of its dangerous fixtures had been stripped for the purposes of the test. Still, Isolde was nervous. Not because it was a threat but because things often went wrong at the worst of times. She hoped this would work, just as it had the past thousand times, just as it had when they first started rolling it out into the public as part of a city-wide experiment. Please, she thought, oh please just work.

  She twisted the knob next to the canister holder, and she watched as the coolant level on the control panel rose to the top. She rotated the test-bot so that the room could see what was happening, careful not to get struck by the bot’s flailing arm.

  Slowly, the bot’s uncontrollable humming and thrashing ebbed away into stationary obedience, and it called out once again:

  “Please input command.”

  They could see the model that was selected on the control panel, highlighted in blue: Seraph 1.

  At first, people were silent; rightfully so. What they were seeing couldn’t be possible, shouldn’t be possible. But Isolde knew, through a decade of careful research and public experimentation, that it was, and she had done it.

  Dahl-Keshet was wrong.

  “Very interesting indeed,” one investor said in a deep Russian accent. Isolde didn’t know her name. Frankly, she had neither seen nor heard of her before. “Have you tested this in public settings?”

  Isolde nodded. “We’ve rolled out several batches across Neo Arcadia, working in a variety of, well—” She took a moment to find the right words. “—places. Including construction grounds, factories, oil rigs, cargo terminals, and so on. We’ve even started implementing them into hospitals to help overworked surgeons, and the results have been incredible. We’ve seen a boost of 38% in overall economic productivity, with some sectors, like manufacturing and logistics, experiencing increases of up to 52%.”

  Keeping her cool while maintaining professional language was difficult, but she’d done her research; she was ready.

  Dahl-Keshet leaned forward, once again steepling those cold, mechanical android fingers. “What are the upfront costs and long-term maintenance expenses?”

  Isolde took a deep breath before answering. “Upfront costs depend on the model and industry requirements—”

  “Don’t give me the rehearsed answer. Give me the real answer, Ms. Crane. My patience is wearing thin.”

  A lump formed in her throat. She did her best to swallow it, but it lingered. “42,000 per unit to produce and install, and planned to drop to as low as 26,000 following mass replacement of industrial labour.”

  “So, you plan to use these bots to create themselves, essentially, at some point?” another investor asked.

  Isolde nodded. “That’s correct. But general maintenance won’t be that much. 2,800 eurodollars should be enough for the vast majority.”

  Mbale Gond jutted in with a question of his own. “What’s the projected ROI for businesses that integrate these test-bots?”

  Isolde met the chief’s gaze with confidence. “The projected return on investment varies by industry, but on average, businesses integrating our test-bots see a full ROI within 14 to 18 months, sometimes faster in high-labour sectors.”

  “Give me numbers, figures, anything,” said Mbale.

  The question hit hard, but Isolde was prepared. “Weh-well, for example, in muh-manufacturing and logistics, we’ve observed a 42% increase in output efficiency, along with a 34% reh-reduction in labour costs, not by eliminating jobs outright, but by reallocating human workers to more specialised roles while bots handle repetitive or hazardous tasks.”

  “That’s excellent,” said Mbale.

  Another investor bit: “How do you ensure these bots won’t pose a security risk, especially in industries like, saaaaay, healthcare and energy?”

  Isolde straightened, her tone firm and assured. “Seh-security is our highest priority. Our bots operate within a zero-trust security framework, which means every action, every data exchange, and every system interaction requires multi-layer authentication. They are designed with hardware-level encryption to prevent tampering, and all external communications are routed through end-to-end encrypted channels.

  “Beyond that, we’ve implemented air-gapped fail-safes for high-risk environments. If a bot detects unauthorised access, it can isolate itself from the network, preventing data breaches or system compromises. And because cybersecurity threats evolve, our firmware is built to receive real-time security patches without disrupting operations.”

  “An excellent method,” the investor said, writing notes.

  The investors kept hurling questions at Isolde, so ruthless she felt like she was being attacked, until eventually...

  Dahl-Keshet gave a single clap. “This sounds marvelous,” he said. “Very well done, Ms. Crane and Dr. Solvayne. It seems that you’ve discovered a self-sustaining, profitable purpose for high-functioning androids while also reducing, if not eliminating entirely, the risk of heliostrophy, of AI growing out of control.” He turned to his colleagues, awaiting any objections. None came. Instead, a ripple of nods passed around the room. He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. “I believe we have all the information we need.”

  Mbale Gond, the hardest to convince, exhaled through his nose before tilting his head. “You’ve made a compelling case. The numbers check out, the scalability is sound, and frankly, the potential here is undeniable.” A small pause. “Ladies? Gentlemen?”

  Once again, they all agreed, more verbal this time, briefly discussing it over.

  Dahl-Keshet let a slow smile spread across his face. “Then it’s decided. We will move forward with Phase Two investment and deployment.” A signature beep echoed through the room as he authorised the decision on his console. “Congratulations, Ms. Crane. Dr. Solvayne. You’ve just secured the future of synthetic labour.”

  Isolde didn’t smile or celebrate as she once thought she would. Instead, she stared into empty space, her mind adrift, until Dr. Solvayne gently tugged her sleeve, reminding her it was time to go.

  It was time, but in that moment, she hesitated. A deep sense of satisfaction washed over her, so intense it left her lightheaded. For a fleeting second, she thought she might faint. But she didn’t.

  She took a breath, shut the briefcase, and left.

  Things weren’t over; this was only the beginning.

  And that... worried her.

  Later, when her shift was over and she was catching the sky metro back to her house in Sal Panriese, a lonely district on the north side of Neo Arcadia, she couldn’t stop thinking about the board meeting, about how everything went not just well but borderline perfect, and every so often, when she gazed out at the bleeding skyline over the south, she pictured what life would have been like had she possessed that sort of luck back then. Fifteen years ago, when the world simply seemed against her, always, a never-ending struggle where fighting for your life meant damaging an economic machine that didn’t even recognise you as a moving part, where every breath felt like resistance, every attempt to climb felt like scaling a wall greased just enough to keep you sliding back down.

  She’d been working hard ever since that day, that successful interview where she’d shown up smelling like bergamot, no suit, no dress. She worked late on most nights, showing up as early as she could, even if it wasn’t required. And every so often Isolde would get struck with It. Oh, how It was terrible. A gnawing, gut-wrenching sickness born out of the flames, of the night she’d lost everything, her beautiful Elysia. It came in subtle ebbs some days, but on others, like today, It came in sloshing waves, and sometimes she simply couldn’t handle It; It would swim down her esophagus, stay there, boil, brood, and cause her to vomit. She’d done everything in her power to keep It at bay, took anti-depressants, the strong shit, and when that didn’t work, she’d seek out therapy, hoping that someone out there could reach out their divine hand and pull her out of the emptiness, out of the void, into a cleaner view of life, where the skies didn’t stretch over her like a leaden sheet, pressing down, down, suffocating the light, where mornings didn’t arrive like an executioner’s drumbeat, where waking up didn’t feel like stepping onto thin ice, waiting for the inevitable crack, where the world wasn’t tinted in the dull, lifeless grey of something that once mattered but didn’t anymore, where she could finally breathe without feeling like every inhale was borrowed and every exhale was a debt coming due, where, just maybe, she could remember what it felt like to want to be alive rather than simply not wanting to be dead.

  It was relentless. It was large. It was in control.

  The metro rolled over her district at twenty-two minutes to six o’clock, and by then the sky had fully bled into the horizon, leaving only the endless skin of dark. She walked the rest of the way home, where, though it lacked grandeur or space, everything was quiet, open, and clean. A large canal wound through the centre of the estate, and sometimes, when the weather was nice, the rich kids liked to ride a canoe the whole way down to the seaside, where fishermen plucked fish heads from their nets, tossing the scraps to the gulls that wheeled and screamed above.

  She avoided it, though, the seaside. It liked to swim there, too.

  She dragged her feet up to her lot. A nice, medium-sized house, like the others in the estate, with a neat patch of grass along the driveway, a stairway leading up to the front, and a gazebo lying along the left-hand side.

  Her car was there, untouched. Most days she didn’t feel like driving. She figured she wasn’t the sort of person who should be behind the wheel, unless absolutely necessary, unless there was a... particular purpose.

  She headed inside, where everything was, as always, so painfully empty, and made dinner. Steak, fries, and green beans, along with a glass of Coca-Cola. Never eggs, never chicken, never milk, because those were It’s favourite foods. While she ate, she turned on the TV, listening to the news. It was always the same: politicians swearing to improve the world, violence across the globe, and inflation, that disease. She normally didn’t spend much time on the news, only a couple minutes or so, just to see what was going on, before she'd swap on to soap operas, finding some semblance of joy by taking her mind off of life’s struggles.

  Later again, when the crickets chirped and distant seagulls mewed, she was in the bathroom showering, keeping her eyes shut the entire wash, because she knew if she’d open them, It would return:

  I see those burn marks, oh I see them well, and I see your past, I see that waste-of-space thing. I killed her, I consumed her alive—

  RRRRRR-ETCH!

  Vomit, all in the bathtub. Steak, fries, green beans: all slipping down the drainhole.

  “Fuck,” she managed, finally opening her eyes to see the burn marks on her arms.

  One of those really, really bad days.

  Later again, when she nodded off to dreamless sleep in her cosy, twin-sized bed, she heard a ding, a sharp bell, from her phone.

  Silly her. Forgetting to turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’. How foolish.

  But who could it possibly be? It couldn’t be Silas; she hadn’t talked to him since the night she swore to take her own life. She couldn’t let the memory resurface; she couldn’t let It attach Itself to him.

  Isolde slid onto her side and grabbed her phone from the night stand. She swiped it open, feeling the harsh light from the screen nearly blind her. On it, a single text message appeared: ‘I have it.’

  Of course, it was him. The man who could change everything for her. Who could change everything for... the world.

  How could she forget?

  She texted him back, agreeing to meet as soon as possible.

  Isolde got dressed into her raincoat, put on her jeans and boots, and hopped into her car. She eased out of the estate and drove east along Interplex-6, catching the slip road off to the south, the tires humming against the slick pavement, the wipers slashing at the windshield like a dull knife trying to carve through suds. The city stretched out around her, neon bleeding through the downpour, casting jittery reflections off the wet road. Traffic was thin at this hour. Just the occasional autocabs drifting along in the opposite lane, their LED grilles flickering coded advertisements. A truck ahead rumbled on in the slow lane, something big and industrial, its exhaust belching black plumes into the rain, a moving shadow against the sodium vapour glow of the overhead lights.

  She kept both hands on the wheel, knuckles pale. The highway was long, straight, and somehow mean, like a loaded gun laid out on a table, just waiting for someone to pick it up and pull the trigger.

  A billboard loomed ahead, pixelated and half-broken, flashing BUY. OBEY. REPEAT. in choppy intervals before glitching into a toothpaste ad. Below it, a shattered speed camera sat in a nest of cracked asphalt, the glass eye punched out by someone who’d had enough.

  Ahead, the streets stretched on, busy, bustling, drowning. After a while, she veered towards the south side, weaving through the maze of city roads. She pulled into an alleyway outside Dexter’s Call, an abandoned movie theatre that looked all the part of a haunted relic, and she waited, not leaving her car until she saw his vehicle pull up.

  Eventually, it did. A nice, sleek, dark van, one full of status, of eddies, of a job well done.

  She stepped out of her car, keeping it shut. She pulled up her hood, listening to the rain beat down on her.

  His van squeaked to a stop, a little rusty in the brakes maybe. Nothing a little oil couldn’t fix. He stepped out, his bright, glistening, magnificent silver jacket flashing high under the neon haze, catching every flicker and scattering them all over, a beacon in the midnight rain as he strode forward, boots clicking against the wet pavement, every step a declaration, Afro bobbing.

  And in his hand: the silver case.

  “Isolde Crane,” the man said. “Long times, no sees.”

  “Rico,” Isolde said timidly, hands stuffed in her pockets, leaning against her car door. “You have what I want?”

  “Told you,” he said, slapping the case. “Rico don’t disappoint.” He stepped in front of Isolde’s car and set the case on the bonnet. She stood next to him, reading the name ‘Ourovane’.

  That was it alright, but what about what was inside?

  He flicked numbers up and down on the code lock until it clicked, and he opened it. Inside, nestled in a bed of black foam, lay the quick-hack shard: a thin, obsidian sliver no bigger than a cigarette, its surface pulsing faintly with a bioluminescent thread of code that flowed beneath the glassy finish. It was sleek, impossibly smooth, and impossibly dangerous.

  At a glance, it could have been mistaken for just another data chip, the kind corporate runners used to ferry memos or scrub security logs. But this? This was different. Oh, so very different.

  Engraved along its spine in delicate, inhuman script was a name: “Ourovane // GhostKey v4.7.”

  A black-market legend. A skeleton key for firewalls, an assassin's dagger for netrunners. One slip into a neural port, and it wouldn’t just crack a system; it would make it beg.

  Isolde stared at it, pulse quickening.

  “That’s the one,” Rico said, tapping the case. “Plug it in, and you own whatever’s on the other side. Just don’t—”

  “I know,” Isolde muttered. “I know how dangerous a quick-hack list like this is.”

  Rico blinked, looking stunned. “Eh-heh. Yeahs.” He fixed the shades over his eyes. “Now, ’bout payment.”

  Isolde reached into her pocket and pulled out a money shard. “Six hundred grand, as agreed.”

  Rico grinned, all teeth, like a shark smelling blood. He plucked the money shard from her hand, flipped it between his fingers, then slotted it into the reader on his wrist. A second later, his smile widened as the transaction confirmed with a soft chime.

  “Pleasure doin’ business, Crane,” he said, slipping the silver case shut. “You be careful with that little ghost in the machine. Things like that don’t just break doors; they wake up things best left sleeping.”

  Isolde barely heard him. Her eyes were locked on the Ourovane shard, its soft, pulsing code reflecting in her pupils. She exhaled slowly, then lifted her right arm, pulling the sleeve back.

  A seam hissed open along her forearm, the hidden compartment sliding apart like the petals of a steel flower. Inside: a row of neatly arranged data slots, each one glowing faintly, waiting. Some were already occupied: military-grade decryption protocols, an old firewall bypass, a black-market sensory dampener.

  She slid the Ourovane shard into an empty slot.

  “Suspicious data identified,” her neural AI said, a deep, masculine voice. “Are you sure you wish to allow this access to your primary neural system?”

  She immediately selected ‘Yes’.

  The moment it clicked in, her vision distorted. A smidge of deep-space black, followed by the rush of something vast and unseen shifting. Her HUD glitched, the overlay spitting out garbage data before settling. A whisper curled at the edge of her consciousness, something too faint to make out.

  A red data cube appeared on the right side of her neural display, and on the left: a list of quick-hacks:

  MARIONETTE // NeuroOverride v3.9

  PIED PIPER // Swarm Induction Protocol

  SIREN SONG // Cognitive Sync Override

  DEADEYE // Combat Autopilot Hijack

  THREADCUTTER // Link Severance Protocol

  FEEDBACK LOOP // Neural Pain Amplifier

  OROBOROS // Mind Merge Corruption

  SHADOWLOCK // Forced Paralysis Protocol

  A flood of access permissions scrolled across her neural feed: firewalls bending, network structures unfurling. She could see things now. Feel them.

  The city around her was no longer just a city. The lights, the cameras, the signals dancing through the air: she could hear them breathing. She shut the compartment, flexed her fingers.

  Rico was still grinning, still running his mouth, but his words barely registered.

  Isolde turned, got in her car, and drove.

  Outside, the rain fell in heavy sheets, washing the world clean.

  Inside, buried in the deepest parts of her mind, the ghost in the machine opened its eyes.