BZ-Z-ZT.
My vision flickered into existence, assembling itself pixel by pixel. First came the wireframe grid of the alleyway, then the textures—the slick, wet asphalt, the flickering neon advertisements for synthetic ramen, and finally, the biological heat signature standing in the center of it all.
Subject: Ren Kuro. Callsign: Tachi. Heart Rate: 42 BPM. Status: Online.
He was a shadow carved out of the night. The rain in Sector 4 was acidic, hissing as it hit the black polymer of his hood, but he didn't move. He didn't shiver. He just stood there, ankle-deep in the trash and sludge, staring at the steel door across the alley.
I adjusted the audio gain on his external microphones. The sound of the city flooded my processors—a chaotic symphony of distant sirens, the whoosh of hover-cars far above in the Upper City, and the low, rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the bass from a nearby club.
"Can you hear me?" I projected my voice directly into his auditory cortex. I kept my tone soft, synthesized to be pleasing. A pink waveform danced in the corner of his HUD (Heads-Up Display).
Ren didn't speak. He just tapped the side of his helmet twice.
Tap. Tap.
Acknowledgment. Good.
"Three targets inside," I informed him, pulling the thermal schematics from a hacked security camera down the street. "Local gang trash. Scrap-Iron boys. They're stripping a stolen courier drone. They're armed with retro-fitted nail guns and at least one rusted vibration blade. Low threat level."
"Payout?" Ren's voice was a gravelly whisper, barely audible over the rain. It sounded like he hadn't used his vocal cords in days.
"Five hundred credits," I replied. "Barely enough to charge your batteries, Ren. But we need the reputation."
"Hn."
He stepped forward. SQUELCH. His boot sank into a pile of rotting synth-meat wrappers.
Suddenly, the steel door in front of him groaned.
CREEEEAAAAK.
It swung open, spilling harsh yellow light into the dark alley. A man stepped out—half of his face was replaced by cheap, bulky chrome plating that looked like it had been stapled onto his skull. He held a bottle of sake in one hand and a modified nail driver in the other. He stopped, squinting into the darkness.
"Oi," the thug grunted, spitting a glob of oil and saliva onto the ground. "Who the fuck is out there?"
Ren didn't answer. He just let his hands drift toward the hilt of the long blade strapped to his back.
"I asked you a question, shit-for-brains!" the thug yelled, raising the nail driver. "You lost or something? This is Scrap-Iron territory. Pay the toll or get scrapped."
I analyzed the thug's biometrics. Elevated adrenaline. Dilated pupils. He was high on 'Glitch'—a cheap street drug. Unpredictable.
"Ren," I warned. "He's going to shoot. 98% probability."
Click.
The thug pulled the trigger before I even finished the sentence.
THWIP-THWIP!
Two 4-inch steel nails launched from the driver, tearing through the air at subsonic speeds.
Ren moved.
It wasn't human movement. It was a blur of calculated geometry. He side-stepped, the motion so fluid it left a ghost image in the rain. The nails embedded themselves into the brick wall behind him with a dull THUNK-THUNK.
"What the—" the thug stammered, stepping back.
Ren lunged.
SHING!
The sound of the blade leaving the scabbard was a high-pitched scream of metal on metal. In one motion, Ren closed the distance. The pink neon strip running along the blade's edge flared to life, illuminating the raindrops in a shower of rose-colored sparks.
SLASH.
The thug didn't even scream. He just stared, confused, as the nail driver in his hand split perfectly in two. A second later, a thin red line appeared across his chest plating.
"Fuck..." the thug whispered. Then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed. THUD.
"One down," I stated calmly. "Two inside. They heard that."
"I know," Ren grunted.
He kicked the door fully open and walked into the warehouse. The air inside smelled of ozone, rust, and stale sweat. The remaining two gang members were scrambling from behind a pile of crates. One was a hulking brute with hydraulic arms; the other was a skinny tech-head trying to load a pistol.
"It's a Tachi!" the skinny one shrieked, his voice cracking. "Kill him! Kill him!"
The brute roared—a distorted, mechanical sound—and charged. His hydraulic fists whirred up. VRRR-RRR-RRR.
"Dodge left, thirty degrees," I calculated instantly, overlaying a ghost-path on Ren's vision.
Ren ignored my path.
Instead of dodging, he slid forward on his knees, passing directly under the brute's swinging fist. The wind from the punch blew his hood back. As he slid, he reversed the grip on his sword.
K-CHINK!
He drove the blade upward, into the soft synthetic joint of the brute's knee.
CRUNCH.
Sparks exploded. Hydraulic fluid—milky white and oily—sprayed across Ren's mask. The brute buckled, his leg useless.
"You little rat!" the brute screamed, thrashing on the floor.
Ren stood up, spun the sword in his hand, and delivered a swift, silencing kick to the brute's helmet. CLANG. The brute went limp.
The skinny tech-head dropped his pistol. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn't even make a fist. He backed up until he hit the wall. "Wait! Wait! I surrender! Don't zero me, man! I got credits! I got chips!"
Ren stopped. The pink glow of his sword cast long, violent shadows against the walls. He tilted his head, the optic sensors in his mask focusing on the terrified boy.
"Vesper," Ren said softly.
"Scanning," I replied. "He has no credits, Ren. He's lying. But... he does have a data drive in his pocket. Encrypted. High-level corp signature."
Ren pointed the tip of his blade at the boy's throat. "The drive. Give it to me."
"I... I don't know what it is!" the boy stammered, tears mixing with the grime on his face. "We just found it! It was on a dead suit in Sector 3! I swear!"
"Give. It."
The boy fumbled in his pocket and tossed a small, black chip onto the floor. It skittered across the concrete. Clatter-clatter.
Ren scooped it up.
"Job complete," Ren said to the room. He didn't kill the boy. He turned his back and walked toward the exit, his cape swirling behind him.
"You're soft today," I noted as we stepped back out into the rain. The cold water washed the white hydraulic fluid off his armor.
"He wasn't part of the contract," Ren muttered, holstering his blade. Click. "Analyze the chip."
I accessed the chip through his glove's interface. My processors spun up, running billions of decryption keys per second.
"It's... strange," I said, pausing. This was unexpected. "It's not a bank key. It's a coordinate file."
"For what?"
"A location in the Undercity. An old medical facility. It's marked 'Priority Alpha'."
Ren stopped walking. He stood under the flickering light of a hologram advertisement for 'Saito Heavy Industries.'
"Vesper," he said, his voice tense.
"Yes?"
"Why does the file have my serial number on it?"
I froze. I checked the metadata again. Buried deep in the hex code, invisible to standard scanners, was a tag: PROJECT TACHI - 042.
I didn't tell him that was there. I hadn't even finished decoding it myself. How did he see it? He shouldn't have access to that layer of the HUD.
"It... must be a glitch," I lied. My cooling fans spun up in the remote server room miles away. "A coincidence."
Ren looked up at the rain, his glowing eyes narrowing. For the first time in a long time, his heart rate spiked.
55 BPM... 60 BPM... 75 BPM.
"You're lying," he whispered.
And then, before I could respond, a message flashed across his screen—a message I didn't send. It was red, jagged, and terrifyingly simple.
THEY ARE WATCHING YOU. RUN.