NANITE

Johnny rubbed at the unfeeling knuckles of his prosthetic hand.

When that kid puts his mind to something, nothing can stop him. A familiar, weary thought. But what if that path, this path, ends the same damn way James's did? The thought was a cold shard of ice in his gut.

He stared out the rain-smeared window, chewing the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.

A goddamn time bomb, he thought.The certainty, a cold weight in his stomach. And when it finally goes off, the blast radius won't care who dropped the package, or who was just trying to clean up the mess.

His interface blinked, a system reminder: May 28, 2083.

James's birthday. Fifty years, if he'd lived to see it. Fifty goddamn years.

"Pull over by that corner Non-Stop," Johnny said suddenly, his voice rough.

Dalen nodded, his expression unreadable, and eased the van next to a flickering, rain-worn convenience mart. Rust streaked its faded awning like old blood in the gutter. A battered, automated delivery drone buzzed erratically overhead, its single, searching light cutting a swath through the relentless drizzle. Johnny stepped out into the cold, unforgiving rain.

Inside, the shop stank of stale instant noodles, ozone from a malfunctioning air purifier, and the pervasive, sweetish odor of failed sanitation. The ancient fluorescents buzzed and flickered overhead, casting a sickly, greenish tint over tight, cramped aisles stuffed with brightly packaged snacks, expired dietary supplements, and cheap liquor pouches in violent, lurid neon colors. A bored-looking teenage clerk, his face pale and pimply, sat hunched behind a thick, scarred bulletproof panel, his eyes locked hypnotically to the flickering screen of his cheap, handheld smart phone. When he finally looked up and saw Johnny, saw the sheer, intimidating bulk of him, the cold chrome of his eye, he froze. His gaze flitted nervously to the black cybernetic arm—and stayed there, wide and fearful.

Johnny said nothing. As he turned down an aisle, he caught a fleeting, distorted flicker of himself in a cracked, grime-covered wall mirror—and for a disorienting, heart-stopping split second, he saw James's face staring back at him. Younger. Whole. Alive. He blinked. It was gone. Just his own tired, scarred reflection remained.

He moved with heavy, deliberate steps, his wet boots squeaking on the cracked, sticky linoleum. He grabbed a 12-pack of cheap synth-beer—no discernible label, just a generic QR tag slapped crookedly over faded, unreadable print. At the counter, he sent 80 credits to the store's account with a silent flick of his interface. No words exchanged. Just the soft, impersonal beep of digital confirmation. He left the shop and climbed back into the waiting van, setting the beer in the back without a sound. Dalen glanced over but didn't speak. He didn't need to. He knew.

Johnny leaned back heavily in his seat, the worn synth-leather creaking beneath him. "To the VSD Memorial," he said quietly, his voice barely audible above the drumming rain. Dalen gave a slow, understanding nod. The van eased forward, its tires hissing over the wet pavement, a mournful sound. They drove into the deepening night, toward memory, toward ghosts, and toward promises that neither of them, Johnny knew with a sudden, chilling certainty, could ever truly keep anymore. And in the dark, rhythmic hum of the van, Johnny felt it—a cold premonition, a sense of impending doom.

The VSD Memorial lay on the far eastern edge of the sprawling city, past the glittering, opulent towers of Verdant Echo and its sprawling, climate-controlled bioponic domes. Johnny stared out the window as the van hummed along the elevated expressway, his gaze tracing the distant, ethereal outline of massive greenhouse spires and lush, synthetic forests clinging precariously to towering steel cliffs. Automated security drones hovered like silent, watchful sentries above the sprawling oxygen farms and exclusive corporate arcologies—ready to drop with lethal, surgical precision should anyone uninvited dare to trespass. It was an illusion of serenity, of peace, of a world untainted by Virelia's usual grime and decay, an illusion carefully, expensively curated. And only the rich, the powerful and the privileged, were ever allowed to breathe that clean and filtered air.

The van slowed as they approached their destination. Towering, obsidian-black columns, stark and monolithic, reached skyward like the charred, skeletal bones of forgotten giants, each one inscribed with an endless, cascading list of names—some still sharp and legible, others worn smooth and indistinct by decades of acid rain and biting wind. The air here tasted cleaner, yes, but it was heavy with the metallic tang of wet stone and unspoken sorrow. There were no gates here, no visible guards, no ostentatious displays of security. But everyone in Virelia knew: vandalize this sacred place, desecrate these memories, and you'd answer to the veterans, to the survivors of a corporate war. And the veterans, Johnny knew from bitter experience, didn't play nice.

Johnny stepped out of the van, the cold rain slipping from the wide brim of his coat, instantly soaking his hair. He carried the 12-pack of synth-beer under his good arm, the other—metal and matte black and filled with ghosts—clicking softly, rhythmically, with every heavy movement. Dalen followed silently behind him, quiet, respectful, a steadfast shadow in the gloom.

They walked to the leftmost column, the one nearest the cliff edge overlooking the distant, glittering sprawl of the city. Johnny didn't hesitate. His gaze, human and cybernetic alike, snapped to one particular name as if drawn by an invisible, unbreakable tether.

JAMES CALLEN. SGT. VSD. KIA 2065.

His breath caught in his throat. The downpour seemed to ease for a moment, the drumming on his coat softening to a mournful whisper. He reached out, his organic fingertips hovering just inches from the cold, wet, etched stone, the chill of it seeping into his bones. James. His best friend. His brother-in-arms. The one who could always make him laugh, even in the middle of a goddamn hellzone, who could throw a punch like a charging rhino and deliver a cutting joke in the same damn breath. Johnny closed his eyes, the rain cool on his face. He remembered.

James's infectious, booming laugh echoing through a bombed-out canyon outpost, the memory thick with the phantom scent of James's cheap synth-tobacco and spent energy weapon discharge. James kneeling beside him in the mud and blood, his hands trembling but steady, jamming a wad of synth-skin into a gaping shrapnel gash in Johnny's leg, whispering some dumb, inappropriate joke about nurses with shaky hands and questionable bedside manners, the absurdity of it a lifeline in the pain. James, off-duty, gloriously, beautifully alive, spinning Lina in the middle of their tiny, cramped apartment to the crackly sound of some forgotten pre-Collapse love song on a battered music player, his bare feet clumsy but happy on the worn floor, the brutal, endless war distant and soft and blessedly forgotten, if only for a precious, fleeting moment.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Johnny's cybernetic fingers curled unconsciously into a tight, crushing fist. And then came the bad memories, the ones that always lurked just beneath the surface, waiting to drag him down. The Fifth Corporate War. It hadn't started with a grand anthem or a formal declaration. It had begun with silence—a catastrophic power grid crash across Virelia's western arcologies in the summer of 2064. Sabotaged surveillance AIs had fed poisoned, corrupted data to the global markets. Within days, chaos. Within weeks, open, brutal violence. Neo-Kyoto and Virelia—two titans of industry, of ideology, of insatiable, ruthless ambition—had finally collided. And beneath them, as always, soldiers, pawns, men like him and James, had bled and died for profit, for corporate pride and for lines on a map that meant nothing.

Johnny's jaw tensed, a muscle pulsing in his cheek. The mission. That last, cursed mission. They were scouting an old, pre-Collapse arcology husk deep in the contested Neo-Seoul sector—a crumbling, skeletal spire of shattered glass and rusting steel. They never saw the trap. Never even suspected. One second: easy banter about the execrable taste of their standard-issue ration paste. The next—Flames. A universe of searing, unimaginable pain. Implants shorted, fried by a massive EMP blast. Neural links snapped, severing them from their squad, from support, from reality. Screams. So many screams.

He'd dragged James behind the flimsy cover of a fallen concrete slab, adrenaline and terror blurring time into a meaningless smear. But the second blast had caught them both. Ripped through their squad, through their lives. When Johnny had come to, choking on dust and his own blood, he was screaming, a raw, animal sound of pure agony. His right arm—gone, a mangled, smoking ruin. His left eye—a searing void, replaced by a universe of static and blood. James… James was already cinders, ash, a memory. And the promise he'd made to Lina—to bring him home, to keep him safe—shattered, like so much else that day. He'd returned to Virelia alone, half-metal, half-man, mute with a guilt so profound it had almost consumed him. He'd tried to meet her eyes, to offer some comfort, some explanation. He couldn't. He never tried again.

Why him and not me? That question, that survivor's curse, had never left him. Not in the deepest, darkest hours of sleep. Not in the rare moments of quiet stillness. Not when Lina's voice, years later, still trembled with grief she wouldn't, or couldn't, aim directly at him.

Johnny reached into his coat pocket, his cybernetic fingers surprisingly deft, and pulled out a dented, tarnished silver lighter. James's lighter. He still carried it, after all these years. He took out a cheap, synth-tobacco cigar, one of the ones James had favored, and lit it, cupping his hands against the wind and rain. He took a deep, long puff, the harsh smoke a familiar burn in his lungs. This was the only day of the year he allowed himself to smoke.

"Fifty today, brother," he said softly, his voice a low rumble against the sigh of the wind. "I still hear you. Still see that stupid grin of yours. Still chasing your goddamn ghost." The wind shifted, a gust of unseasonably warm air against the cold rain. Behind him, Dalen stood, head bowed, a silent, respectful sentinel. The ghosts didn't speak. They didn't have to. Johnny turned back toward the waiting van, towards the distant, indifferent shimmer of Virelia's skyline, as the last embers of the cigar faded away into the gray, weeping sky.

Hours had bled into the deep, suffocating black of the pre-dawn, yet the conversation with Alyna flowed on, a fragile, tentative current of connection across the vast, impersonal digital void. Their earlier rawness, the sharp edges of past hurts, had softened into a familiar, almost comfortable rhythm, echoes of a shared history, of unspoken, unforgotten understandings.

ALYNA: You know, for someone who absolutely hated my taste in music, you certainly put up with a lot of my allegedly 'terrible' playlists.

RAY: Someone had to. It was a civic duty. Besides, occasionally, very occasionally, you'd stumble upon a track that wasn't complete and utter auditory torture. Like finding a perfectly preserved diamond in a ten-kilometer-high landfill.

ALYNA: High praise indeed. Especially from you.

ALYNA: This highway, Ray… it's an absolute abyss of crushing conformity. Every single vehicle is the exact same depressing shade of municipal gray. Every rest stop is a sterile, soulless monument to synthetic blandness and corporate efficiency. It's like they're actively, aggressively trying to erase any last trace of individuality, of human expression, out here.

Ray could almost hear the familiar, wistful sigh in her typed words. Classic Alyna, finding the profound melancholy, the existential angst, in even the most mundane of observations.

RAY: Sounds… profoundly bleak. Are you holding up okay out there?

ALYNA: As okay as one can reasonably be when one is suspended in a vibrating metal tube, hurtling at breakneck speed through a landscape apparently designed by a committee of aggressively unimaginative, aesthetically challenged bureaucrats. There's a certain… desolate beauty to it, I suppose. In a tragic, end-of-the-world kind of way. A vast, echoing emptiness that rather accurately mirrors the current state of my soul… if one were feeling particularly poetic and dangerously sleep-deprived, that is.

Before Ray could formulate a response to that characteristically dramatic, yet strangely endearing, pronouncement, her next message came through, stark, stripped bare of any previous romanticism or poetic flourish.

ALYNA: Ray.

ALYNA: HUGE NOISE! UP AHEAD!

The shift in tone was immediate, visceral, a cold spike of adrenaline lancing through Ray's nanite-altered system.

RAY: Alyna? What is it? What's happening?

ALYNA: EXPLOSION! A flash – so bright! Lit everything up! We're stopping – everyone's stopping!

ALYNA: People getting out – stupid!

ALYNA: Shouting now. Metal tearing.

Ray sat bolt upright on his narrow cot, his own lingering weariness vanishing in an instant, replaced by a familiar, cold, sinking dread.

RAY: Alyna, stay in the car! Lock the doors! Don't look! Can you see emergency responders? Drones?

ALYNA: Nothing! Just… awful silence after the blast… now… GUNFIRE! Heavy gunfire!

ALYNA: The sound! It's tearing the night apart! Not just pops – it's like the air is ripping! Who is shooting?! WHY?!

Her messages were a staccato burst of raw fear, the fragmented questions of a mind struggling to comprehend an eruption of senseless violence.

RAY: How far ahead? Can you turn around? Any exits?

His mind raced, trying to visualize the highway schematics, to calculate options she might not see in her panic.

ALYNA: Trapped! Red lights everywhere! Can't move! Feel so… EXPOSED.

ALYNA: They're attacking a truck – big, armored. There's another fire! What is HAPPENING?!

ALYNA: CLOSER! The shots are closer! I can feel them in my chest – like little shocks of death!

Ray's hands clenched into fists, his knuckles white. He felt a surge of helpless, impotent anger, a familiar echo of his inability to protect his mother, now amplified by Alyna's immediate peril.

RAY: Alyna, keep down! Don't be a target! Your car – it's nondescript, right? Blends in?

ALYNA: Father's groundcar. Gray and anonymous. A COFFIN! It feels like a coffin now!

ALYNA: THE GUNFIRE! IT'S SHAKING THE WHOLE CAR! I can't BREATHE! I can't hear anything else!

ALYNA: Wish you were here. Not… not to save me. That's stupid. Just… not to be so ALONE in this. This… this noise. This dark.

Her last message was a raw cry, fear stripping away all artifice, leaving only the core longing for connection in the face of overwhelming terror. Ray stared at it. He was already calculating distances, response times, the sheer, soul-crushing impossibility of reaching her in time.

But the typing indicator on her end of the comm channel, which had been a frantic, flickering pulse of light on his HUD, suddenly, terrifyingly, vanished.

Silence. A digital silence more horrifying, more pregnant with dread, than any of the terrible sounds she had just described.