NANITE

When the chronometer on his HUD neared 19:00, Ray stood, careful not to disturb his mother's fragile rest, and left for Julia's clinic.

The clinic was dim when he arrived, lit mostly by the soft, ethereal glow of multiple active monitors and the cold, indifferent neon underlights that lined the examination bay. Julia sat hunched at her main workstation, her fingers flying across the keyboard with brisk, efficient precision, lines of cascading emerald code reflecting off her smart lenses like a digital waterfall.

Ray took a seat in a worn chair nearby without a word. He knew better than to interrupt her when she was like this—locked in, fully submerged in her element, her mind navigating the complex, invisible currents of data and diagnostics.

But as he sat there, the silence of the clinic pressing in, the doubts started whispering, insidious and persistent. Maybe this is stupid. Maybe she'll laugh in my face. Or worse, shoot it down with cold, hard logic. Still, he needed to try. He couldn't afford the luxury of silence, of inaction, anymore. Time was a luxury they didn't have.

Minutes stretched, marked only by the soft click of Julia's keys and the low hum of the clinic's machinery. Then she leaned back, stretching her arms high overhead, a muffled groan escaping her lips as she let out a long, exaggerated yawn. She turned, her eyes, magnified slightly by the lenses, blinking in surprise as she saw him.

"Ray. Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, a slight frown creasing her brow.

"Remember the last time I interrupted you when you were deep-diving a diagnostic?" Ray replied with a faint, tired smirk.

Julia rolled her eyes, a flicker of amusement in their depths, but didn't respond to the jibe. Instead, she pushed off from her workstation with her chair, gliding silently towards him on the polished floor with a low hum of well-oiled wheels—her seat, he noticed, had been cleverly modified with high-performance inline skates.

"You said you wanted to talk biz," she said, coming to a smooth stop before him. "So, let's talk biz, then. What's on your mind?"

Ray leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his gaze lowered for a moment as he gathered his thoughts, his words. "I've been thinking," he began, then looked up, meeting her sharp, intelligent eyes. "You've got a bunch of broken mods in storage, right? Stuff no one wants, just taking up space and collecting dust. I want to buy them off you. All of them."

Julia raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow but stayed quiet, her expression unreadable, waiting.

"I'll fix them," Ray continued, his voice gaining a quiet intensity. "With my nanites. Fast and clean. Good as new, maybe better. Once they're fully functional, I will give them back to you. The ones you want to use. The others, I can sell them—to other buyers. Maybe you know a few independent clinics, smaller outfits, that'd be interested in buying reliably repaired mods without the corporate markup? You get rid of junk, I make some cash, and we both win." He watched her closely, already bracing for the doubt, the dismissal. "What do you think?"

Julia's initially amused expression faded, replaced by a look of serious consideration. Her eyes narrowed. "No, Ray," she said finally, her voice flat, firm, leaving no room for argument. "This won't work. You really don't want to step into that kind of market."

Ray blinked, his shoulders tensing, a knot of disappointment tightening in his chest. "Why not? It sounds like a solid plan."

"Because it's not a market, Ray," she corrected him, her voice taking on a hard, cautionary edge. "It's a goddamn battlefield. A shark tank. You have no idea what you'd be walking into." She turned her main monitor towards him, the large screen displaying a rotating, dizzying feed of encrypted forums, clandestine dead drop boards, and black-market trackers. Names, affiliations, and bounties scrolled by—gang tags, corporate black ops acronyms, kill orders. "You think you're the only one out there with an angle?" she asked, her voice laced with a grim irony. "I've seen independent clinics, good people, burned to ash for selling knockoff implants without 'approval' from the local syndicate. I've seen street medics, skilled ones, vanish without a trace for installing the wrong piece of tech in the wrong person, or for undercutting the wrong supplier."

She leaned in then, her green-blue eyes sharp, intense, her voice dropping to a low, urgent whisper. "And you and I both know what happens if they—any of them—find out how you're fixing those mods." Ray stiffened, a cold dread washing over him. "Your nanites," she said, her voice barely audible. "If anyone, anyone, learns what they can really do—how fast, how clean, how impossible it is—you won't just be a target, Ray. You'll be a resource. A walking goldmine. They'll hunt you down, dissect you, pick you apart molecule by molecule to get at the tech. And they won't stop until they have it."

Ray looked away, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. Her words weren't cruel. They were just… real. The brutal, unvarnished truth of their world. He imagined it—men in sterile corporate suits, or worse, faceless figures in tactical gear. Unmarked black-ops trucks with no plates. A cold, sterile metal table. Restraints. Labs. Pain. Forever dissected.

"Too good to be true," he muttered, the words a bitter admission of defeat.

"It always is, Ray," Julia said quietly, her voice softening with a familiar, almost maternal concern. "I know you want to help her. I do. More than you know. But this… this isn't the way. It's too dangerous. For all of us." She crossed her arms, her gaze drifting away for a moment, a flicker of discomfort, of old fears, in her eyes. Ray nodded slowly, the weight of reality, of his own limitations, crushing whatever fragile hope he'd managed to bring into the clinic. He'd have to find another way. There had to be another way.

"I can give you some cash for fixing the mods in storage," Julia said after a moment, her voice back to its usual brisk, professional tone, though her eyes still held a hint of sympathy.

"No, Julia. You've already done more for me than I could ever ask for. I'll do it for free," Ray replied firmly. Then, after a beat, a new thought occurred to him, "Actually… do you happen to have a Z-Dragger in that junk pile of yours?"

Julia raised an eyebrow, a faint flicker of curiosity, and perhaps surprise, breaking through her usual cool detachment. Her smart lenses glowed briefly as lines of inventory data scrolled across her vision. "Yes. An old model. Why?" she said at last.

"How much?" Ray asked, his tone casual, but his eyes sharp, focused.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Two thousand NEX," Julia answered without hesitation. "Would usually cost you more, even for a used one. But I'm guessing you won't be needing the installation fee, or the usual 'risk assessment' surcharge."

Ray nodded. He had the money, or rather, Red's money, tucked away. Enough for this, at least. He turned toward the door. "Let me get the NEX from my stash—"

"Wait." Julia's voice, quiet but firm, stopped him in his tracks. He turned, and she was standing now, her expression unreadable. "Ray, we've known each other for years. I know you always pay your debts. Just… come by in the morning. We'll settle up then." Her voice was softer now, almost gentle.

He hesitated. A part of him, the part that craved order, that hated loose ends, wanted to insist, to pay her now. But Julia's tone, her unwavering gaze, left little room for protest. Still, it left a knot of unease in his gut.

"Alright," he said finally. "Tomorrow morning."

"Good." Julia nodded. "Now, let's put you to work. Those medical stabilizers aren't going to repair themselves." She motioned for him to follow her back towards the storage room.

Two hours later, the job was done. Ray wiped his hands on a rag, the faint, metallic scent thick on his fingers. The pile of broken, discarded mods he'd worked on were all fully functional now, restored to a condition that was likely better than when they were brand new. As expected, Julia's inventory of broken tech was purely medical. No combat enhancers. No illegal augmentation weaponry. Just patient stabilizers, organ filtration units, respiratory supports– the mundane, essential tools of her trade.

Still, tucked away near the back of a dusty shelf, almost hidden behind a crate of expired synth-skin grafts, he found the Z-Dragger.

"How'd you even get this?" he asked, picking up the small, sealed data chip and turning it over in his fingers. It was unassuming—barely bigger than his thumbnail, a tiny sliver of black plasteel. But once slotted in a compatible neural link, it would amplify motor commands exponentially, allowing the user to move in sudden, unpredictable, lightning-fast bursts. Speed, reflex, burst movement—it was a mod made for escape artists, for acrobatic infiltrators, and for first-strike assassins.

Julia's lenses flashed again as she pulled up the acquisition log on her datapad. "Guy came in about two years ago. Some low-level street goon, all chrome and attitude. Claimed the Z-Dragger fried his neural link during a 'high-stakes extraction.' Said it nearly left him paralyzed from the neck down." She shrugged, a small, dismissive gesture. "It wasn't that dramatic, just a minor short-circuit due to a fairly common factory flaw in that particular model series. I tried fixing it back then, but it's an old model. Wouldn't have sold for much anyway, even if I'd gotten it working perfectly."

Ray pressed the chip into the palm of his hand. His nanites responded instantly, a silent, eager swarm—flowing from his fingertips, engulfing the chip in a shimmering, silver-black tide. In moments, it had been absorbed, analyzed, and seamlessly integrated into his neural system. His eyes narrowed as diagnostic data, schematics, and operational parameters flooded his mind. Then he spoke, his voice calm, precise, imbued with understanding:

"The problem was in the primary regulator node—it wasn't calibrated for synaptic bounceback delay. That creates a cascading voltage echo, which interferes with the limbic impulse relay. Most modern systems have automatic dampeners for that kind of feedback, but the firmware on this one was dangerously out of date. One line of rewritten code to adjust the timing buffer. That's all it needed."

Julia gave only a faint nod, her expression unreadable, but her lips curled just slightly at the corners, the ghost of a smile, like a master artisan watching an apprentice display an unexpected, elegant solution.

Ray held his breath for a moment, a purely human reflex. The Z-Dragger pulsed faintly, a new, potent rhythm inside his neural link, a silent promise of speed and power. It wasn't just about moving faster. It was about options. It was about creating distance when things got too close. It was, potentially, a way out.

He was about to turn and leave when a thought struck him, a loose end from his earlier, desperate plans. "Hey. Do you know where I can get a decent deck? Nothing too fancy."

Julia tapped a few commands into her datapad. Moments later, Ray's interface pinged with an incoming data packet – a secure, encrypted location marker.

"You should find something useful there," Julia said, her voice carefully neutral. "Don't expect anything amazing. The place is known for cheap, refurbished Netstrider gear and back-alley, custom-built mods. Not exactly top-tier quality—but I have a feeling you wouldn't mind that. And they don't ask too many questions, as long as your creds are good."

Ray smirked faintly. "Sounds perfect." He nodded his thanks. "Thanks, Julia. For everything. I'll see you tomorrow."

"See ya, Ray," she said, already half-turned, her attention shifting back to her work. But her voice, he thought, lingered just a little longer than usual, a subtle, almost imperceptible note of something that might have been concern. Or perhaps, just curiosity. With Julia, it was always hard to tell.

On his way home, the city's oppressive atmosphere pressing in on him, Ray made a detour.

It was a small, weather-worn, automated clinic, nestled like a forgotten scab between two towering, derelict residential blocks. Its flickering signage blinked erratically in a pale, sickly blue: AURA MEDICARE – DISCREET, DIRECT, DIGITAL. The paint had peeled from its dented steel frame, and the grimy glass doors bore the faint, greasy smear of countless unwashed hands and acid rain. Crude neon graffiti tags from local street punks littered the lower panels like angry, territorial scrawls. It looked more like an abandoned, automated public toilet than a place of healing—a perfect, anonymous gray-market clinic.

He stepped inside. The interior was sterile, bare, and unnervingly cold—not hospital clean, but machine cold. Unfeeling and impersonal. The walls were unadorned, utilitarian gray. The air was stale, recycled, smelling faintly of ozone and desperation. Metal shelving, holding rows of anonymous, unmarked medication containers, sat locked behind thick, translucent plasteel panels. A single, heavily reinforced touchscreen terminal stood embedded in a scarred, metallic counter. No chairs. No receptionist. No human presence whatsoever. Just the quiet, indifferent hum of the automated dispensing system.

Ray approached the screen. For a fleeting moment, he saw his own distorted reflection on its dark, unresponsive glass before it flickered to life, a generic welcome message scrolling across its surface. He typed in the list of his mother's medications: Neurolexin-A, Tetraxinine, Breathe-EZ Synth Support, and the immuno-regulator Florentex.

Only two results came up. A cold, emotionless text box appeared: "THE FOLLOWING PRESCRIPTIONS HAVE BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM CIRCULATION DUE TO UPDATED REGULATORY PROTOCOLS: FLORENTEX, NEUROLEXIN-A. CONTACT YOUR LICENSED MEDICAL SUPPLIER FOR AUTHORIZED REPLACEMENTS."

He selected the suggested alternatives. The system whirred and buzzed, a series of soft clicks emanating from within the dispensing unit.

SUGGESTED REPLACEMENTS: NEURACLINE-B – 800 NEX PER VIAL (STANDARD DOSE) RESPIRA-VENT – 920 NEX PER CYCLE PACK (30 DAY SUPPLY) IMMUNOCORE X6 – 1,100 NEX PER CAPSULE (WEEKLY DOSE)

His jaw tensed. They were nearly four times more expensive than her previous medications. Four times the cost he was already struggling to meet. Ray's hand curled into a fist, his knuckles blanching white as he pressed them against the cold, unyielding edge of the terminal. He could do it—override the system. His nanites could slip past the encrypted payment layers, and could manipulate the dispensing mechanism. It would be easy. Too easy.

But the small, almost invisible camera lens embedded above the terminal had already seen him and had already logged his presence. And this place... it reeked of unseen watchers, of silent, corporate surveillance. One wrong move, one unauthorized access, and he'd have the security, or worse, on him before he could even make it back to his own block.

His hand hovered over the screen… then dropped, defeated, flat against the cool glass. He paid. The confirmation beep rang in his ears like a gunshot, each pulse a nail in the coffin of his dwindling finances. He turned away from the terminal, his stomach tight with a helpless, burning anger. He wanted to spit on the floor, a gesture of futile defiance. But he couldn't. His body didn't produce spit anymore. Another small, constant reminder of his altered state.