NANITE

Later that day, after a quiet, blessedly normal meal with his mother—during which he recounted a heavily edited, significantly less gruesome version of his junkyard adventure at the municipal landfill, which actually made her laugh, especially the parts involving Arty's unique hazmat fashion sense and his theories on sentient tea dispensers—Ray headed back out into the city's neon-drenched embrace. He left out the gunfire, the body, the gold-plated cybernetic arm. She didn't need that particular darkness in her life.

He sold the various low-grade pistols he'd stripped from the wannabe Kuro Yasha thugs to Larry at The Long Barrel. The price was, as expected, dirt cheap, barely worth the effort, but Ray could tell Larry was doing it more as a favor, a gesture of goodwill, than a legitimate business purchase.

Rex's jewelry was still on him—carefully hidden inside a concealed pocket formed by Ray's nanites along the inner lining of his coat. It wasn't just a fold or a stitch; it was a seamless compartment. Anyone hoping to find it would have to slice the coat open—and even then, they'd need to know exactly where to look.

But the pieces inside were unmistakable.

Rex had been flashy, almost iconic. The kind of man whose rings and chains were recognized across entire districts. If Ray tried to fence them in the open market, the trail would lead straight back to him.

He'd need to sell them somewhere quieter. Somewhere discreet.

A place where questions were never asked.

But first, he needed to get the golden-plated arm.

One thing at a time.

It was finally time to deal with the Kamigami Strike-Z. Time to make it his. Officially. Or as officially as anything ever got in the Virelian underworld.

He pinged Arty on his secure comm.

Ray: Did you empty out the back of your van yet?

Arty_MechaManiac_01: Just now, my dude! Sparkling clean! Well, Arty-clean, anyway. Why, what's up? Got more… 'recyclables' for me? 😉

Ray: I need your help moving a bike. A special one. I want to get it properly registered.

Arty_MechaManiac_01: Hell yeah! A bike adventure! On my way! Location?

Ray could have taken the bike to the registration shop Johnny had recommended, the one run by the contact who "owed him a favor." But he'd taken enough risks lately. If the machine got flagged on his way—if it showed up in some corporate or VPD database under someone else's name—it could all be over before it even began. He couldn't afford to lose it. Not now.

When Arty arrived, his van rattling and spewing a plume of suspiciously colored exhaust, and laid eyes on the Kamigami Strike-Z for the first time, he let out a low, appreciative whistle that seemed to echo in the grimy alley. "Dude. Oh, wow. Dude. This thing's… this thing's a goddamn ride and a half. A work of art. A mechanical symphony." The bike crouched like a coiled, predatory beast on the cracked pavement, its custom gold-metallic finish gleaming even in the dim alley light, its matte black streaks absorbing the shadows. Its smoked visor glinted enigmatically. The twin headlights pulsed faintly, rhythmically, almost like a slow, steady breath. The nanites in Ray's own system seemed to buzz in a subtle, resonant response.

Ray just smirked. It looked beautiful, undeniably. But what was under the hood? That was another story entirely.

He carefully rolled the heavy machine up the rickety ramp into the back of Arty's van and strapped it down securely with a set of reinforced, magnetic anchor cables. Two stressful, paranoid hours later, after navigating a labyrinth of back alleys and unregistered service tunnels, they rolled out of a shady, unmarked registration garage in a particularly notorious sector of the lower city. The kind of place where new identities, clean data slates, and untraceable vehicle credentials could be bought, no questions asked, if you had the right amount of NEX and the right, discreet contacts. Ray paid the exorbitant fee, in untraceable credits. And walked out with a set of freshly minted, surprisingly legitimate-looking registration tags for one Kamigami Strike-Z. Now, at least, he wouldn't be automatically flagged as a vehicle thief just for riding his own damn bike. Speeding, on the other hand—that was probably inevitable.

As Ray expertly guided the bike out onto the crowded, chaotic street, Arty leaned against the side of his van, arms crossed, a proud grin on his face. "So, you're heading out to break some land-speed records, Ray-man? Test her limits?"

Ray swung his leg easily over the saddle. The powerful engine rumbled beneath him, a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through his very bones, alive and eager. "Thanks for the help, Arty. For everything. I'll see you around." He dropped his helmet visor down with a soft click, the world tinting a cool, tactical blue.

"Hey! Take me for a spin sometime, dude!" Arty shouted over the sudden, rising roar of the bike's engine.

Ray responded with a quick, affirmative thumbs-up as the Kamigami Strike-Z peeled off with a guttural growl, disappearing into the dense, swirling river of Virelian traffic. Arty laughed, a joyous, unrestrained sound, and climbed back into his neon-bombed, sticker-covered van. The vehicle, a testament to one man's unique vision and questionable taste, rumbled away in the opposite direction, its brightly colored panels and dangling charms glinting like personality scars in the fading afternoon light.

But back in the deepest shadows of the illicit registration garage, someone was still watching. A man—lean, nondescript, mid-forties, with sharp, intelligent cheekbones and cold, observant eyes—stood in utter silence. He wore a weathered, utilitarian maintenance vest over a plain, dark shirt, oil-stained gloves, and held a slim, unmarked datapad in one hand. He watched the Kamigami Strike-Z, and its rider, disappear down the crowded street. Then, with a single, almost imperceptible tap on his datapad's screen, he closed an active surveillance and data-uplink call, and melted back into the deeper shadows of the garage, disappearing as if he were never there.

Ray never saw him. But someone else, someone unknown, now had his name, his new registration, his face. And in Virelia, information, especially the compromising kind, always had a price. And a purpose.

The first thing Ray did after parting ways with Arty was find a hiding place, a forgotten wound in the city's decaying flesh. He rode the newly christened, yet-to-be-truly-tested Kamigami Strike-Z to the outskirts of a ruined industrial sector, a graveyard of rusting skeletons and shattered ambition. He found an abandoned fabrication warehouse—its walls half-collapsed, twisted rebar reaching towards the polluted sky like broken fingers, shattered plasteel windows weeping grime. A place the city had long since chewed up, digested, and forgotten. No cameras. No patrolling drones. No prying eyes. Perfect.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He stepped off the bike, the sudden silence of the cavernous space closing around him like a shroud. Then, he placed his hand on the cool, smooth metal of the machine. His nanites, a silent, invisible extension of his will, surged forward—white-hot veins of internal energy crackling faintly as glowing, ephemeral circuit lines spread across the bike's chassis like a living, alien network.

There it was. A tiny, almost undetectable tracker, tucked beneath the bike's sleek tail panel—nearly invisible to the naked eye. Smooth, gray, matte—standard-issue, corporate-grade surveillance tech. Ray pried it loose with a fingernail, turning it over and over in his gloved fingers, his lips tightening into a thin, hard line. The only place it could have been planted was the illicit registration garage. They hadn't just registered his bike.

They'd branded it.

Tagged him.

His jaw tensed as he let his nanites consume the tiny device, breaking it down molecule by molecule until it no longer existed, its data stream abruptly, permanently silenced. He sent a curt, encrypted message to Johnny.

Ray: Bike registered. Came with a free tracker. Place you recommended is compromised.

Johnny needed to know. In their world, compromised contacts were death sentences waiting to be signed.

Then, Ray turned his attention back to the bike. The custom gold finish, the aggressive matte black accents—too distinctive now. Too easy to spot, too easy to track, even without the physical bug.

He drove to a dingy, back-alley hardware supplier, a place that sold industrial-grade paints, illicit chemical compounds, and restricted chromatic sealants off the books, no questions asked as long as your NEX was good. He bought what he needed—several canisters of deep-spectrum, light-absorbing matte black paint, and a vial of reactive, blood-red nano-pigment—and returned to the echoing silence of another abandoned warehouse.

Then, he let his nanites work, their silent, tireless industry a stark contrast to the decaying ruin around them. The bike crouched in the shadows like a sleeping, predatory beast. Under Ray's focused will, the brilliant gold-metallic sheen dissolved like fire peeling through heated foil. The deep matte black of its original finish melted and reformed under the shimmering, almost liquid caress of the nanite-infused paint.

In its place: an obsidian black so deep, so absolute, it seemed to absorb the faint ambient light, cut through with streaks of visceral, blood-red circuitry that seemed to almost pulse with a faint, internal light along the bike's aggressive, aerodynamic frame. The smoked visor of his helmet deepened, becoming almost perfectly reflective, a mirror to the world's ugliness. The bike's twin headlights flickered back to life, no longer a cool white, but a menacing, predatory crimson, glowing like a cybernetic predator's eyes in the deepening dark. The stamped label "零式 // Zeroshiki" had been subtly, perfectly erased, leaving no trace. Now, it truly looked like a street demon, a machine forged in shadows and fueled by vengeance.

Ray stared at it in silence for a long moment, his arms crossed, a grim satisfaction warring with the cold knot of unease in his chest. Same model, yes, but the difference was stark.

It was still a Kamigami Strike-Z, but now it was his.

Next, his clothes shifted, the nanites integrated within his own body responding to a silent, internal command. His worn, utilitarian jacket morphed, its fabric darkening, thickening, becoming a synth-leather black rider's jacket, zipped tight against his frame. His faded black jean pants shifted hue, becoming a dark, urban-camo blue, and his scuffed, worn boots repaired themselves, the cracks and abrasions vanishing as the material re-knitted at a molecular level.

Still, the knot in his chest, the cold residue of paranoia, didn't go away. They might not be able to track the bike anymore. But they still had his face from the registration garage's security feeds. If they'd bothered to plant a tracker, they weren't just casually watching. They were actively planning. Tracking wasn't just about catching someone—it was about timing. About choosing the perfect moment to strike.

He slid on his helmet, the crimson HUD blinking to life, an echo of the bike's new, menacing optics. The engine roared beneath him, a deeper, angrier sound now—an extension of his will, his burgeoning power and cold resolve.

When Ray arrived back at the municipal landfill, the sun was a bloody smear on Virelia's polluted skyline, beginning its slow, reluctant dip below the jagged horizon. Rusted, skeletal towers of compacted metal and forgotten dreams cast long, distorted shadows across the jagged, unnatural hills of trash. His HUD pinged softly: 20:21.

He parked the transformed Kamigami Strike-Z out of sight, concealed behind a mountain of crushed vehicles, its new, light-absorbing finish making it almost invisible in the deepening gloom. He made his way across the decaying, treacherous field, his boots crunching over shattered plasteel and scraps of discarded, iridescent plastic. He reached the half-buried, dented industrial freezer where they'd hidden Rex Future's cooling corpse. The heavy door hissed in protest as he pried it open with a grunt of effort.

The body was still there, curled and pale and disturbingly pliant, like a piece of meat forgotten too long in the cold, unforgiving dark. Ray stared down at it, his expression unreadable behind his helmet's visor. The dead man's golden-plated cybernetic arm glinted obscenely in the fading, lurid light.

Without a word, without hesitation, Ray extended his hand. His nanites, a shimmering, silver-black tide, slid from his palm like liquid mercury, wrapping around the cold, metallic limb, and severed it cleanly from the corpse's elbow with surgical, terrifying precision. Once detached, he stepped back, cradling the heavy, ornate arm like some strange, macabre trophy.

But then he stopped. Rex Future. He'd been a fixer, a dealer in information and influence. He'd had contacts. Deep ones. Dangerous ones. Contacts that could prove… very useful for someone like Ray, someone operating in the city's deepest, darkest shadows. His gaze shifted from the severed arm to the corpse's lolling head—the gaping, ragged bullet hole, a grotesque third eye carved into the center of its forehead.

Would it even work? he wondered, a cold flicker of scientific curiosity mixing with his grim pragmatism. Would the nanites be able to extract anything coherent, anything usable, from a brain that broken? Ray hesitated, then clenched his jaw, a familiar, stubborn resolve hardening his eyes. He had nothing to lose. And potentially, a universe of secrets to gain.

He pressed his gloved hand to the corpse's cold, clammy forehead. The nanites surged, a silent, hungry current. They began their gruesome work with a low, almost subliminal hum, a subtle vibration that traveled up Ray's arm like icy static crawling beneath his skin. Then came a sudden, violent jolt—like a high-voltage spark snapping against the inside of his skull. A choked scream, raw and animalistic, tore from his throat as a universe of agony exploded through his mind. Pain, overwhelming and absolute, slammed into him like a collapsing, burning building. He doubled over, clutching his head with his free arm, his body convulsing as the nanites finished their rapid, brutal consumption of the dead man's neural pathways. Strange, incomprehensible letters and symbols, alien and disturbing, flashed behind his eyes—recursive, non-human, like fragments of corrupted code spoken by something ancient and unknowable.

Then came the memories. Not like the others he'd absorbed. Not clean. Not coherent. These were like shattered, razor-sharp shards of glass scattered along a wet, bloodstained pavement. So incomplete, so fractured, he could barely make sense of any of it. He collapsed to his knees, then onto all fours, gasping as if drowning in a sea of someone else's dying thoughts. He saw flashes—flickering, disjointed scenes of glittering, neon-drenched nights, of clandestine deals gone catastrophically wrong, of firelight glinting off a glassy, obsidian mask worn by a figure of terrifying, silent menace. Rex's final, terrifying moments exploded behind Ray's eyes—the cold, sickening wave of fear, the shouted, unheard name, the deafening roar of the gun, the searing impact of the bullet.

And for a single, terrifying, disorienting moment, Ray wasn't Ray at all. He was Rex Future. Dying. Again.

Then the bullet struck—and everything went mercifully, blessedly black.