NANITE

He gently took her hand, its coldness a stark contrast to the unnatural warmth that now seemed to permanently reside within him. He tried to warm it in his, but it was like trying to warm marble. She attempted a smile, a brave, heartbreaking façade—tried to make it look like this wasn't hell, like she wasn't being consumed from the inside out.

Ray looked down at her trembling limbs. The once-steady tremors were worse now—violent, unrelenting. Her muscles locked and released in unpredictable, agonizing waves, as if her own body had become her torturer.

"I—I tried to stand earlier," she said, her voice cracking, thick with unshed tears. "Just to... to reach the kitchen. For some water."

Ray's throat closed, a knot of helpless anger tightening within him. She gave him a look, a fleeting glimpse of her old strength, but it was quickly washed away by a fresh wave of pain. "I didn't want to be a burden."

"You're not," Ray said firmly, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn't name, couldn't process. "You're not a burden, Mom. Never." He wrapped his arms around her gently, holding her fragile, shaking body as the tremors slowly, reluctantly, began to subside. She shook in his arms like a leaf caught in a winter storm, small and breakable. He needed to be strong. For her. Because if he broke, there'd be no one left to hold her together.

He reached for the nearby syringe of muscle relaxant, his movements practiced, efficient, and injected it into her thigh. As the minutes passed, her breathing steadied, the harsh, ragged gasps softening. Her eyes fluttered shut, exhaustion finally claiming her. Ray remained still, holding her hand, until the lines of pain on her face eased and sleep, a temporary reprieve, finally took her.

Outside, the city growled and blinked, vast and uncaring. But here, in this flickering, forgotten corner of a dying building, a son fought silently against a storm he couldn't control, a future he couldn't predict.

He picked up the datapad from beside the couch, its screen still lit, casting a faint, ghostly glow against the worn, faded upholstery. The soft light illuminated the deep, cruel lines etched on his mother's face as she slept—fragile, finally at peace after the brutal, exhausting flare-up.

Ray's eyes drifted to the text she had been reading. It was an article—another one—about experimental treatments for multiple sclerosis. His first instinct was to close it, to shield himself from the false hope. The net was overflowing with scams, with charlatans peddling miracle cures, with black-market elixirs that did more harm than good, preying on the desperate.

But then he saw the logo at the top of the page. Aethercore Biomedical. Cold. Corporate. Unimpeachable. No ads. No pop-ups. No sketchy third-party links. Just stark white text on a severe black background—clean, sterile, ruthlessly professional. The site was real. Legitimate.

Ray leaned closer, his gaze sweeping across the dense paragraphs of medical jargon. The article detailed a new, clinical-grade treatment utilizing advanced, spinal-injected nanites. Not mods. Not tissue grafts. Actual regenerative nanotech, designed to repair and restore even the worst neurodegenerative damage—to not only halt the progression of MS, but to potentially reverse its devastating effects.

For a dizzying second, something flickered in his chest. Hope. Real, tangible hope, so potent it almost made him gasp.

Then he saw the price. Clearly displayed at the bottom of the article, a single, brutal line of text.

700,000 NEX. Per month.

His breath caught in his throat, the hope dying as quickly as it had been born. His fingers clenched around the edges of the datapad, the plastic creaking in protest.

That's not a treatment, he thought, a bitter, savage anger rising within him. That's a fucking ransom.

He looked over at his mother—her hand resting limply on the thermal blanket, her fingers curled inward from the last agonizing bout of spasms. She had looked up this article herself. She had read every word, absorbed every detail of this impossible cure. And still, she had said nothing to him. Because she knew. Because she always knew that they could never afford it. That hope, for people like them, was a luxury they couldn't indulge in.

Ray lowered the datapad slowly, resting it beside her. The screen light dimmed, plunging the room further into shadow. His jaw tightened, a muscle pulsing in his cheek. His mind. sharper, faster than ever before, began building a plan. Cold. Precise. Desperate.

He had nanites. Nanites that adapted, that evolved, that restructured hardware, that consumed and assimilated organic matter. If those Aethercore nanites were injectable… then he didn't need months or years of prohibitively expensive treatment. He just needed one dose.

Get them. Absorb them. Break them down. Understand their programming, their function. Then… replicate. Create his own. For her.

He stood, casting one last, lingering glance at his sleeping mother. The way her chest rose and fell now, soft and steady, as if the pain had finally, truly loosened its cruel grip—if only for a moment. He walked to the door, each step heavy with a new, terrible resolve.

I will fix this, he vowed, the words a silent, burning promise in the cold, sterile core of his being. Whatever it takes.

His bike, the Kamigami Strike-Z, roared to life beneath him, its powerful engine purring like a caged predator as he weaved with newfound confidence through the sluggish, indifferent morning traffic. The city never truly slept—it just shifted gears, its rhythms dictated by the relentless demands of commerce and survival. Delivery drones, like metallic insects, buzzed through the smog-choked air overhead, and tired, gray-faced workers flooded the crosswalks beneath neon signs that still glowed with the false promises of the night before.

He arrived at a residential block in a slightly less decayed sector a few minutes later. The apartments here weren't luxurious, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they were leagues above the crumbling tenement where he and his mother lived. No peeling paint here, no creeping black mold on the walls. The lighting in the corridors wasn't broken, and the light switches actually worked. A silent, efficient cleaning bot glided down the corridor like a miniature, automated warden, its sensors diligently scooping up discarded food wrappers and other minor debris.

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Ray stepped into the hallway, his boots echoing softly on the relatively clean floor. Most of the doors were unmarked, plain metal slabs with integrated keypads. "This is the one," Ray muttered, the information pulled effortlessly from Red's absorbed memories.

He stood before a door that looked just like all the rest. Featureless. Forgettable. But he knew the access code. Red's memories delivered it to his consciousness with the ease of a deeply ingrained habit, a muscle memory that didn't belong to his own muscles. He punched in the sequence. The lock clicked, a soft, welcoming sound.

The apartment inside wasn't lavish, but it was a definite step up from the squalor of basic survival. It was the kind of anonymous, transient place someone used between jobs, not to live—but to store themselves, and their gear. A faint, sharp chemical scent clung to the air—gun oil, industrial cleaning solvent, the lingering metallic tang of sweat. The walls were bare, unadorned concrete, stained with time and neglect. Gear was piled haphazardly along the edges of the main room—discarded harnesses, weapon belts, half-disassembled firearms, and old, scuffed combat boots hardened with layers of dust and grime. Everything was just a bit off, slightly askew. Nothing overtly rotten. Nothing obviously broken. Just… uncared for.

Ray stepped deeper into the room. His eyes, sharper now, scanned every detail—a small metal table littered with empty food wrappers and unopened, high-protein ration bars. A cracked, synth-ceramic coffee mug filled with spent shell casings. A digital calendar, its display blinking a frantic, ignored red in the corner, never updated, perpetually stuck on some forgotten date. Clothes, stiff with grime, draped over a cheap plastic chair, unwashed and discarded. A narrow cot in the corner, its thin sheets rumpled, the single blanket half-hanging onto the dusty floor.

He remembered his own home. The constantly flickering lights. The way his mother's body shook, uncontrollably, during her agonizing flare-ups.

"This feels… strange," he whispered, the words barely audible. It was his first time physically here. But the sense of familiarity in his bones, in his borrowed memories, was unmistakable, deeply unsettling. Red's life, Red's choices, Red's failures, were now part of him.

He moved to a small, unassuming side table and crouched down, his fingers tracing along its underside. His touch found a slight indentation—a cleverly recessed button, almost invisible to the naked eye. He pressed it. With a quiet click-thunk, a portion of the wall slid open, revealing a hidden, climate-controlled compartment. Inside, racks of well-maintained weapons gleamed under soft, pale LED lights.

"Nice stash, Red," Ray muttered, a grudging respect mixing with his disgust. It was more than impressive. It was a personal arsenal. Each gun looked meticulously cared for, cleaned regularly, perhaps even… loved, in whatever twisted way Red had been capable of such an emotion. There were no junk pieces here—just brutal, functional, high-end killing tools.

He picked up a worn, heavy pistol. A Colt M1911. Pre-collapse. Old-world craftsmanship. Its blued steel scuffed and scarred, but its lines still elegant, timeless. Red's first gun. And as Ray's fingers closed around the checkered grip, the memory surged, unbidden, unwelcome.

A boy—thin, wiry, hungry, his eyes too old, too knowing, for his young face—slipping a heavy pistol from the waistband of a passed-out, drunken corporate wageslave in a piss-soaked, garbage-strewn alley. The tremor of adrenaline, sharp and addictive. The surprising weight of the weapon in his small hand. The gut-wrenching terror that the man might wake up, that this desperate gamble might be his last.

Ray blinked hard, pushing the alien memory away. It wasn't his. But the fear? The desperate heat of that moment? The surge of defiant pride? They were undeniably real. They were echoes, clear, intact, and terrifyingly vivid, now resonating within his own mind. His hand trembled as he carefully returned the gun to its rack. He wasn't unraveling. No. He was processing. Compartmentalizing. Holding the weight—and somehow, not breaking under it.

He reached out and pulled free a larger weapon—heavy, matte black, its blocky design somehow still elegant. Its name was finely etched on the side in old, tarnished silver script: Dirge M1 "Street Gospel." A beast of a gun. A high-caliber, custom-modified revolver designed to fire explosive, caseless rounds that turned heads—and anything else in their path—to a fine, crimson mist. It was the kind of weapon that made a statement, a bloody exclamation point. Ray held it up, examining the intricate custom engraving: faint silver inlays running along the barrel like whispering, metallic wires. The heavy cylinder clicked with a soft, precise mechanical purr as he checked the chamber. Empty.

Ray exhaled slowly, the air hissing through his teeth. Red hadn't just liked this weapon. He had trusted it. Believed in its power, its finality. Ray looked down at the Street Gospel in his hands. And now it was his. Another piece of Red, absorbed, integrated.

He pressed another almost invisible button on the side of the hidden compartment, and a smaller drawer slid open, revealing a neat stack of NEX bills and a few anonymous, untraceable data shards tucked beside them. The soft, pale lighting from the hidden cache flickered over Ray's face as he crouched down, his expression unreadable. About 5,000 NEX. Not a fortune, not in this city. But more than enough for his immediate needs.

Ray's eyes narrowed as he sifted through the crisp, new bills, more fragments of Red's life surfacing smoothly, unpleasantly, in his mind—the smoky haze of underground gambling tables, the burn of cheap, synthetic whiskey, the desperate, late-night calls to loan sharks, begging for another extension, another chance. A man clawing desperately for control while his own fractured mind slipped inexorably towards snapping. Red had never planned for the long-term. This meager stash was never for an escape, for a new life. It was just for the next gamble, the next fleeting high, the next temporary reprieve from the crushing weight of his own failures.

"This can be handy," Ray muttered, sliding some of the NEX into a hidden side pocket of his fused coat before turning his attention to the data shards. Standard, anonymous design—dark blue, unmarked casing, scratched from careless use. From Red's memories, Ray knew they contained private, encrypted data: contact codes for fences and fixers, back-alley clinic locations, lock routines for other minor stashes, a few heavily encrypted personal files. Emergency options Red had never used—except, perhaps, when feeding his various addictions.

"Stupid bastard," Ray whispered, the words tinged not with anger, but with a strange, detached sadness. He closed the compartment with a quiet click and pressed the panel. The wall slid back into place, the hidden cache now sealed behind smooth, featureless concrete once more.

"Good. Now I have a new apartment I can stay in, if I need to," Ray said to the empty room, sinking into the stained, uncomfortable couch with a tired sigh. The cushions were stiff, the synth-leather cracked and peeling, but for now, it felt like something close to peace, a temporary refuge from the storm raging both outside and within him.

He thought of Red. The man had been dangerous, yes. Reckless. Volatile. But not entirely evil. Not in the way some were in this city. He had lived his life with his back against the wall, clawing for respect, for control, for a place to belong. And in a different world—a world without Johnny's gruff guidance, without Julia's steady presence, without the anchoring love for his mother—Ray could have easily become him. Another lost soul, consumed by the city's insatiable hunger.

Red had embraced too many mods, the kind that frayed the already thin line between man and weapon, between sanity and psychosis. The kind that inevitably led to isolation. To paranoia. To madness. Ray had seen it before—mod-heads pushed too far, their minds cracking open from the inside, their humanity leaking away like so much spilled oil. Red hadn't snapped, not fully. But he had edged close enough to start burning bridges, to betray the few people who had ever shown him a shred of loyalty. He betrayed Johnny, betrayed Ray, because he wanted to matter, to seize control of his own spiraling destiny. Ray understood that impulse. Perhaps too well.

But Red had made his choice. And now, Ray was alive, changed, evolving. And Red… Red was a collection of memories, a ghost in Ray's machine.