By the year 2150, the world hadn't ended.
It had just worn itself out.
Three more world wars had come and gone, not in one final explosion that erased everything, but slowly, piece by piece. Cities vanished without ceremony. Some were reduced to ash after months of bombardment. Others were swallowed by rising seas when floodwalls failed and evacuation orders came too late. Borders stopped meaning anything. They became arguments people still had online, long after the places they referred to no longer existed.
Entire countries faded off maps. Their names survived only in archived files, conspiracy forums, and the memories of people too old or too stubborn to let them go.
The governments that remained were shadows of what they used to be. Thin, tired institutions that struggled to keep power grids running and water flowing. They released statements no one trusted and promised reforms no one expected to see. Whenever things collapsed further, they gave it a new name. Chaos became "transition." Collapse became "adjustment."
People learned to survive without believing in anything official.
Money, however, never stopped moving.
It just stopped pretending to be clean.
Banks collapsed and were replaced by crypto rails and encrypted ledgers that never slept. Jobs disappeared from public listings and resurfaced in private channels, locked behind invites and favors. Survival no longer depended on citizenship, laws, or rights. None of that mattered anymore.
What mattered was leverage.
And in the broken world that followed the wars, the greatest form of leverage came from an illegal brainchip known as QUANTUM.
The chip didn't just enhance people. It rewrote how they interacted with the world. Once implanted, a digital overlay appeared at the edge of a user's vision. A heads-up display that tracked everything. Strength. Speed. Awareness. Intelligence. Numbers that reduced the human body into readable data. Levels and reputation followed soon after, turning people into walking profiles.
But the real change wasn't the numbers. It was the missions.
QUANTUM transformed the criminal underworld into a living system. Gangs, fixers, syndicates, and anonymous clients pushed encrypted contracts through the network, masking them as opportunities. If a job was illegal, dangerous, morally questionable, or politically inconvenient, it didn't go through normal channels.
It went through the chip.
Transporting packages across restricted sectors. Smuggling illegal tech past checkpoints. Collecting debts that no one wanted attached to their name. Retrieving stolen equipment, bodies, or people who didn't want to be found.
Complete the job and the system rewarded you. Stats increased. Credits transferred instantly, untraceable and clean. Sometimes new weapons became available. Sometimes combat techniques were uploaded directly into the nervous system, altering reflexes mid-fight.
Failure came with consequences.
Sometimes you lost money. Sometimes equipment. Sometimes parts of yourself. In the worst cases, everything you had earned was transferred to the person who killed you. The system didn't care how. It only cared that the outcome was efficient.
But QUANTUM always demanded a price. Especially the cheaper chips.
Low-tier models were assembled from scavenged hardware and stolen military code. They were unstable by nature. Some glitched, flooding the brain with static. Others overheated, cooking neurons beyond repair. A few detonated outright.
The worst cases involved viral fragments. Corrupted code that rewrote users from the inside out. Those who succumbed became ferals—human shapes occupied by fractured ghosts.
Movements became erratic and unnatural, like corrupted footage skipping frames. Eyes glowed an unhealthy green. Their voices turned into static-laced shrieks. They attacked anything warm, anything close.
The government banned QUANTUM publicly. Loud speeches followed. Emergency alerts. Sweeping legislation that promised safety. Then, quietly, they paid hunters to erase the evidence.
That was the world LeRoy Annan grew up in.
And today, he chose to step into it.
The tech shop sat wedged between two condemned buildings like it was trying not to be noticed. Its neon sign flickered above the door, missing letters turning Quantum Upgrades into something closer to a warning than an advertisement.
LeRoy pushed the door open.
The hinges groaned loudly, announcing his presence whether he liked it or not. Inside, the room smelled of solder, wet concrete, and old desperation. Neon light leaked through half-closed blinds, staining the walls purple in a way that made everything feel sick and unreal. Tools lay scattered across every surface. Disassembled tech sat in uneven piles, some of it still faintly humming.
Behind the counter stood Raina.
She looked to be in her mid-thirties, wearing black gloves that never seemed to come off. Her eyes were sharp but tired, the kind of tired that came from seeing too many people gamble their lives and pretending it no longer mattered.
"You're late," she said flatly.
LeRoy shut the door behind him. Water dripped from the hem of his hoodie onto the cracked floor. His shoulders stayed tense, posture alert. The streets didn't let anyone relax for long. Tattoos traced along his jaw and neck, inked years too early, each one marking a choice he couldn't take back.
"Had to walk around a checkpoint," he said.
Raina snorted. "Sure you did." She raised her hand and held up the chip between two fingers. It was small. No bigger than a fingernail. Unassuming. Easy to underestimate.
"This is low-tier," she said. "Bottom shelf. If it glitches, best case you hear static every time you try to think. Worst case, your brain cooks and you start chewing through drywall until someone puts you down."
LeRoy lowered himself into the cracked leather chair across from her. The cushions sagged under his weight, like they remembered better days.
Nineteen years old. But the city had carved another decade into his face.
His thoughts drifted home without his permission. The apartment door that never closed properly. The peeling paint. His mother's cough, getting deeper and more frequent. His little sister, Keira, pretending not to hear it while she did her homework.
The landlord's message blinking on the old tablet.
PAY IN SEVEN DAYS OR VACATE.
LeRoy didn't fear violence. He feared that knock on the door.
"I know the risks," he said at last. "I need the chip."
Raina studied him. Not his clothes. Not his tattoos. His eyes.
"You got family?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"They know you're here?"
"No." He met her gaze. "If this works, they won't have to."
Raina exhaled slowly. "Brave," she muttered. "Or stupid." She stepped closer, tilted his head back, and pressed cold metal against the base of his skull.
"This is your last clean second, LeRoy Annan."
The injector hissed.
Pain exploded through him like lightning, ripping down his spine in blinding white flashes. His vision collapsed inward as the world disappeared.
A boot sequence unfolded behind his eyes. Symbols and code streamed past. Progress bars filled. A sharp, crystalline chime echoed, sounding like glass breaking underwater.
[QUANTUM v3.7 INSTALLATION COMPLETE]
User Registered: LeRoy Annan
Level: 1 (Unranked)
VITALITY: 100/100
ENERGY: 40/40
STRENGTH (STR): 10
AGILITY (AGI): 12
INTELLIGENCE (INT): 14
PERCEPTION (PER): 10
Neural Mesh: Syncing... (100%)
Viral Shields: Basic (Active)
Combat Techniques: Locked/Unavailable
Mission Board: Connected
The room snapped back in fragments. Buzzing lights overhead. The smell of antiseptic. Raina's face hovering above him.
"You still present?" she asked.
LeRoy blinked, breath uneven. "Yeah."
"Congratulations," she said, stepping back. "You're illegal."
He stood slowly. The world felt different. Sharper. Sounds layered over one another. Edges cleaner. Like life had been running in low resolution until now.
"How do I get work?" he asked.
Raina leaned against the counter. "You don't. Work gets you. The network reads your stats, your location, your desperation. Then someone with money decides you're useful."
"So I'm just waiting?"
"Welcome to the bottom of the food chain." She raised a finger. "Rule one, if the payout looks pretty, it's bait. Rule two, don't let anyone trace your chip to your family. Rule three—"
"If my HUD flickers green and black," LeRoy said. "Run."
"That's the virus," she confirmed. "And it doesn't ask twice."
Before he could respond, his vision pulsed. A notification bloomed into view.
NEW CONTRACT RECEIVED
Client: [HIDDEN]
Objective: Neutralize Corrupted User ID FKA-772. Retrieve body or implant confirmation.
Location: Sector Nine (Floodline)
Payout: 20 Credits
Bonus: Agility proficiency bonus available.
Raina swore quietly. "Tell me you didn't just get that."
"Extraction," LeRoy said. "Client's hidden."
"Decline it."
"Why?"
"Floodline is feral territory. You're level one. No techniques. No backup."
"It's twenty credits."
"It's a death certificate."
LeRoy hesitated. His mother's tired smile. Keira wiping fog from the window. The landlord's message glowing in the dark.
"I can't walk away from my first contract," he said quietly. "It's a bad look."
"A closed casket is worse."
But the fear wasn't of dying. It was of staying stuck.
He accepted. The timer began counting down. Raina stared at him like she'd just watched someone step off a rooftop.
"You're either in love with your family," she said, "or trying to die with a reason."
"Both," LeRoy replied.
Rain hammered the street outside as the navigation arrow appeared in his HUD, thin and white, pointing toward the drowned edge of the sector.
"LeRoy," Raina called.
He paused.
"If your HUD lags," she said quietly, "if the static starts sounding like words, don't fight smart. Just run."
He gave a small smile. "No promises."
He stepped into the rain. Neon smeared across wet pavement. Sirens moaned somewhere far away. Trash danced in the wind like it wanted to escape too.
The HUD pulsed.
Target unstable. Possible viral contamination.
LeRoy exhaled.
"Welcome to the grind."
And followed the arrow toward Floodline. Toward the first move in the blueprint.