NANITE

"Then, a few months later, after many more nights of shared silence and occasional, surprisingly profound conversations, he asked me to marry him," Lina said, her voice pulling them both gently, irrevocably, back to the present, to the small, dim apartment, to the weight of memory.

Ray sat quietly, his gaze fixed on the cracked photo frame resting delicately in her trembling hands. The image inside, though faded and worn, was still clear—James, younger then, his face unlined, his eyes bright with a fierce, protective love, his strong arms wrapped around a chubby, beaming, toddler-aged Ray. A snapshot of a world, a life, a happiness, that no longer existed.

"And I said no."

Ray blinked, surprised despite himself. He'd heard this story every year, but that part always caught him off guard.

She gave a small, bittersweet smile, her eyes distant, lost in the past. "I was a netstrider back then. Freelance. Not the best in the city, not by a long shot, but definitely better than most. The money was good, dangerously good sometimes, and I lived fast. Too fast. Family… family felt like a cage to me then. And the very thought of having kids, of being responsible for another life in this broken world… it made my skin crawl." She laughed softly at her younger self, a hollow, regretful sound. "But your father? He wasn't the type to give up easily. He asked again. And again. I must have said no at least four more times. Each time, he'd just shrug, that infuriatingly patient half-smile on his face, and ask me what flavor of ice cream I wanted instead."

Ray couldn't help but smile faintly at that. It sounded like the father he barely remembered, the father he knew mostly through his mother's stories.

"Eventually, I gave in," Lina continued, her voice softer now. "Not because I stopped being scared of settling down, of losing my independence… but because I finally realized, with a clarity that terrified me, that I was far more afraid of losing him than I was of losing my so-called freedom." She wiped at her eyes with the frayed edge of her worn sleeve. "Then, we had you, not long after. You were so small. So fragile." Her voice trembled, thick with emotion. "He used to carry you around the apartment for hours, singing off-key lullabies, acting like you were made of spun starlight and impossible dreams."

Ray only offered a short, almost imperceptible nod, his own throat tight. The silence stretched between them, filled with the ghosts of what was, and what could never be again. Here it comes, he thought, bracing himself, taking a deep, silent breath. The part of the story that always hurt the most.

"Then came the war." Lina's voice was barely a whisper now. "The Fifth Corporate War. Virelia against the Neo-Kyoto Shogunate."

"You were just turning five when he left," Lina said, her voice trembling, each word an effort. "I still remember the way you cried. You clung to his leg when he packed his duffel bag. You didn't understand what was happening, not really, but you knew, with that uncanny intuition children have, that something was terribly wrong." Ray's gaze remained fixed on the photo frame, but his own breath hitched, a painful echo of that long-ago sorrow.

"Your father…" She hesitated, as if even now, after all these years, the words themselves might be forgiven, might be unsaid, if she could just hold them back. "He got drafted by the mega-corp he worked for at the time. Virelia Security Division. VSD. It wasn't technically mandatory, not for his skill set. He… he chose to go."

Ray blinked slowly, processing the familiar, yet still painful, revelation.

"I begged him not to," she continued, her voice gaining a raw, ragged edge. "We fought. Oh, how we fought. I screamed at him. I told him we'd find another way to make it through the crushing debt, through the ever-increasing cost of my meds, through the damn, soul-destroying rent. But he… he believed the combat pay, the hazard bonuses, were worth the risk. He thought he was doing it for us. To give us a better life." She leaned forward, her thin hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists. "Johnny—he told me they'd take care of each other. That they'd both come back. That he wouldn't let anything happen to James." Her voice cracked, broke. "Johnny promised he'd bring him home. He said, 'Don't worry, Lina. James is invincible. We both are.' And then… then he came back alone, with half his damn face missing, and he couldn't even look me in the eye."

Ray flinched, as if struck.

"When you go to war," Lina whispered, her gaze lost in the haunted landscape of her memories, "you always think death is for someone else. That the bullet, the shrapnel, the energy blast, always finds another body… until it doesn't." Her fingers twisted the hem of her sleeve, knotting the fabric. "Your dad… he was killed in action. Ambushed outside a ruined, pre-Collapse arcology tower in the contested Neo-Seoul sector. They walked right into a trap. Burned half the damn squad before their combat implants could even react, before they could even raise their weapons. Johnny… Johnny lost his right arm and his left eye that day. He was one of the few who made it out alive." She paused, her breath shuddering. "He still visits the VSD memorial wall every year, on the anniversary. But never on the same day I do. We can't… we can't face it together."

The holo-frame on the table flickered again, casting shifting, ethereal blue patterns of old, happier memories across her tear-streaked face. "I never forgave him, Ray," she whispered, her voice raw with an ancient, unhealed wound. "Not really. Not for going. Not for choosing that, over us. Not for leaving us alone."

Ray looked down at her trembling hands, then slowly, gently, covered them with his own. He felt the coldness of her skin, the fragility of her bones. He resented his father too, in his own way, for leaving them, for choosing war over family. But now… now, in a strange, twisted way, he understood. He would have done the same, if he knew it meant his mother would receive her treatment, and would live. He would have done it even before the nanites.

Ray didn't speak. He just leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers, a silent gesture of shared grief, of a sorrow too deep for words, letting the tide of memory and loss wash over them, a tide neither of them could ever truly escape.

Ray stood with her, a silent, steadfast presence, until her breathing finally slowed, deepened, her hand going slack in his. Only when he was sure she had drifted off into an exhausted, troubled sleep did he rise without a word and step quietly into the sanctuary of his own small room. He lay down on the old, worn cot spread across the floor, its thin mattress offering little comfort. His eyes, unblinking, fixed on the bare, cracked ceiling, stained with years of leaks and neglect. For a long while, he didn't move, didn't make a sound. His mind, however, churned, a relentless, chaotic engine.

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The Kaizen Ascendancy. They still didn't know their experimental nanites had fused with him, and had become him. If they did, he wouldn't be lying here in these quiet, familiar shadows—they'd raze the entire goddamn district to the ground to reclaim their lost, invaluable prototype. Monica could ping him any moment now for a gig, another descent into the city's violent underbelly. He'd have to answer. He needed the NEX. Rex's fractured memories were still turbulent, a chaotic storm inside his head—like oil floating atop water, refusing to integrate fully—but some fragments were starting to settle, to become coherent. Names. Habits. Hidden stashes. Passwords. Deals made and broken. Useful things. Dangerous things. Red's and Rex's data shards were another potential goldmine of useful, illicit information. Digital credits, passwords to secure accounts, old debts owed and owing… and the jewelry. Rex's gaudy, expensive jewelry.

His hand drifted into his jacket. Inside, nestled securely in the hidden lining, were the ten cylinders of pure gold he'd refined from Rex's cybernetic arm. He'd sell them tomorrow. Quietly. Carefully. Through a discreet, untraceable fence. Then there was the tracker—found just hours ago beneath the tail of his Kamigami Strike-Z. He'd ripped it out the moment his nanites had detected it, consumed it, erased it from existence. But the fact of its presence still haunted him, a cold knot of paranoia in his gut.

How did that piece fit into the puzzle ? he asked himself, his fingers unconsciously steepling against his forehead. Was it just random chance? A standard precaution taken by a cautious, if illicit, registration outfit? Or… was it something more? Something he'd almost expected—just not this soon. The original owner of the bike was almost certainly looking for it. And now, they might be looking for him.

He stared up at the indifferent ceiling and took a deep, unnecessary breath, letting it out in a soft, weary sigh that was lost in the silence of his small room. His mind raced with a thousand unresolved threads—Monica, the Kaizen Ascendancy, the fragmented memories now residing inside him that weren't his own, and the strange, new body that no longer beat with a human heart. The road ahead was paved with blood, with secrets, with dire, unavoidable consequences. And he was already walking it, one dangerous, uncertain step at a time.

And then—a soft, unexpected ping. Ray blinked. His interface, a subtle, almost invisible overlay in the corner of his vision, flickered softly. INCOMING MESSAGE: ALYNA VANCE. Her avatar, a stylized sapphire encased in a delicate, intricately wrought silver lock, shimmered into view. Simple. Elegant. Locked tight. Just like her.

He stared at it, his breath catching in his throat, a purely reflexive, human response. The urge to message her back, to reach out, surged through him—familiar, unwanted, like a deeply ingrained muscle memory he couldn't quite control. How many lonely, desperate nights had they talked for hours, when the crushing weight of the world, of their bleak, hopeless lives, had pressed too hard? When her voice, her words, had been the only lifeline in a sea of darkness? He'd pushed her away. For her own good, he'd told himself. And yet—

PING. A message appeared beneath her avatar, the text glowing softly in his vision.

ALYNA: I feel so incredibly bored. Nothing but endless cars and gray, monotonous asphalt out here. Even the music on the public channels gets repetitive after the first few hundred kilometers.

Ray sat up slightly on the cot, his gaze fixed on the message. Seconds passed. Maybe minutes. He felt… conflicted. Torn. A part of him, the pragmatic, wounded part, wanted to let it go. Not respond. Not feed the flame that her unexpected visit had so painfully, so beautifully, reignited. But then he sighed. A soft, tired, achingly human sound.

RAY: You always did hate long, boring rides.

ALYNA: Only when I'm not the one driving. And especially when you're not there to complain incessantly about my allegedly 'torturous' playlist.

A ghost of a smile touched Ray's lips.

RAY: You're still torturing innocent bystanders with those old-school synthwave ballads?

ALYNA: They're timeless classics, Ray. You're just musically uncultured.

RAY: Some things, I guess, don't ever change.

The typing indicator on her end blinked, then stopped. Then blinked again, hesitant.

ALYNA: I didn't message you to fight, Ray. Or to rehash old arguments.

RAY: I know.

ALYNA: I just… I just wanted to hear from you. Even if it's stupid. Even if it doesn't change anything.

Ray's throat tightened, a familiar ache.

RAY: It's not stupid, Alyna. It's really not.

In another side of the city.

Johnny stepped out of the low-slung, brutalist concrete building, the flickering, garish signage above the door sputtering out half its neon promise into the relentless downpour. Rain fell in thick, greasy sheets, drumming a somber tattoo against the shoulders of his heavy black coat, sliding over the etched, runic grooves of his cybernetic arm like black oil across smoked glass. The air, thick with the smell of wet ozone and stale despair, clung to him. Across the curb, Dalen was already in the van, its engine rumbling low, a patient, metallic beast in the urban jungle.

Johnny climbed into the passenger side, his worn boots soaked, steam rising faintly from his jacket in the van's marginally warmer interior. Water dripped from his collar as he slammed the door shut, the sound momentarily lost in the deluge.

"Smells fishy, boss," Dalen muttered, his gaze flicking to the side mirror, scanning the rain-lashed street as the van crept forward, tires hissing on the slick pavement. "Real fishy."

"We need to prep," Johnny said, his voice low and tense, a coiled spring. "Heat's coming. I can feel it."

They'd just left the supposed headquarters of the small-time gang that had hired them to deliver a package—a package they'd failed to retrieve. Johnny had gone in alone to negotiate, to salvage what he could of the disastrous situation, to smooth over ruffled, dangerous feathers. But the moment he'd stepped inside the sterile, anonymous office, his gut had twisted into a cold, hard knot. The place was spotless. Too clean. Clinically, unnervingly clean. The recycled air within had been too neutral, lacking the usual gang den aroma of unwashed bodies, cheap stims, and fear.

"Looks like corpo black-ops work, not some street crew's den. Too clean by half," Dalen added, his own eyes constantly scanning the rain-slicked street, every shadow a potential threat. "No dust, no gear, not even a damn stray wire hanging out of place. That's not how gangs live, boss. That's how spooks operate."

Johnny didn't answer, his gaze fixed on the relentless rain hammering the van's roof like a thousand angry war drums. The wipers squealed a frantic, losing battle across the windshield. He reconnected his neural interface to the main grid with a thought, a familiar, almost imperceptible mental command. A flicker of cool, sterile data overlays cascaded across his vision, information only he could see.

Then—a ping. An urgent, flagged message. From Ray.

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

The message was time-stamped hours ago. Johnny exhaled, slow and controlled, a plume of mist in the van's cool air. He should've warned Ray more explicitly. Those back-alley, ghost-registration shops were notorious—often installing trackers to bait unsuspecting runners, to sell them out to corporate security, rival gangs, or the highest bidder. Ray probably hadn't told them he was connected to Johnny. Maybe, in his own mind, he wasn't anymore. Not a courier. A merc now.