NANITE

Ray felt her intent—tender, hungry, achingly genuine—humming in the small, charged space between them. His throat tightened. A sudden, unexpected wave of pure, cold panic pulsed through his body. The gentle, rhythmic motion of Alyna's hand tracing idle patterns along his arm sent both a deep, profound comfort and a sharp, spiraling dread through him.

Just act normal, he told himself, a frantic, silent command.

Just be the man she remembers. But his thoughts, his very being, crackled like broken, overloaded circuits.

Alyna's fingers wandered up to his jaw, her thumb gently tracing the line of his cheek, her warm breath a ghost against his skin. He tried to meet her eyes, to lose himself in their familiar, sapphire depths, but he couldn't hold her gaze for more than a fleeting, agonizing heartbeat. Get up. Come on. Get up.

She tilted her face toward his, her lips, soft and questioning, nearly brushing his own, her breath sweet and uncertain. "Ray…?"

He hesitated, a universe of conflict warring within him, every muscle, every nanite, screaming to both close the infinitesimal gap between them and to escape. While the nanites beneath his skin hummed uselessly, terrifyingly, disconnected from what was needed right now. He forced a tired, brittle smile, pulling away just enough to break the fragile, intimate moment.

"Alyna, I—" He rubbed his eyes, a theatrical, clumsy pantomime of exhaustion. "I'm wiped out. Today's been… it's been too much. I just… I just need to rest. Is that okay?"

The silence that followed was thick, heavy—almost brittle enough to shatter. Alyna's hand hovered in the air for a moment longer, a silent, unanswered question, then slipped away, her fingers curling into her lap. She nodded, her voice tight with a disappointment she tried, and failed to hide. "Yeah. Of course. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

Ray's chest twisted with a fresh, sharp pang of guilt and shame. He squeezed her hand gently, searching desperately for the right words, for some way to make it better, to explain the unexplainable. "Don't be. Please. I'm just… I'm dead on my feet." His voice came out rough, too low, the unintended double meaning of his words a bitter, and ironic twist of the knife in his own gut.

She nodded again, her movement small and careful, as if she were afraid to break something fragile between them. Without another word, Alyna curled up on the narrow cot, her back to Ray's chest, a silent retreat into his warmth.
Ray's hand lingered on her shoulder. He wanted to offer comfort, but inside he felt only a cold, echoing hollowness.

"Maybe we should move somewhere else," she whispered, voice trembling. "This place isn't safe. My parents… might send someone to retrieve me."

Ray squeezed her shoulder gently. "Don't worry. If they do, I'll protect you." His voice was steady, but his mind sharpened to a predatory edge.

We need to stay—for my plan to work.

They'd check here first, of course. But they didn't know what he was now.

Silence. Alyna's breath slowed, almost drowsy, but then she spoke again. "There was a reason we were moving to West Line. My dad… something happened at his job two weeks ago. Something big. He wouldn't tell me, but he's been on edge. Like someone's watching him. But I guess that's to be expected with Kaizen."

The word slammed through Ray. Kaizen. He thought of Rex's heist, dread tightening in his chest.

The room shrank around them. The laptop's fan was the only sound, a thin, mechanical whine in the hush. Outside, the city's endless chaos was just a distant rumble, muffled by layers of concrete and plasteel. For a moment, the world was nothing but this cot, this dim-lit room, and the storm quietly gathering beyond the walls. Ray squeezed her shoulder once, not sure if the comfort was for her, or for himself.

Ray stared up at the cracked, stained ceiling, lost in the dim, shifting light, listening to the soft, even rhythm of Alyna's breathing as it slowed, deepened. The initial, sharp panic ebbed, replaced by a profound, aching sadness. He could still appreciate her beauty, still feel a deep, protective affection for her, but the rest… the physical, human connection she sought, that he also craved… It was like a signal cut, a circuit left open, the connection never quite reaching its destination. A new, terrible thought, a grim necessity, surfaced in his mind, another item to add to a growing, disturbing list: Find a mod. A penile mod. Something to fake it.

He let out a quiet, shuddering sigh, the sound swallowed by the darkness. As Alyna finally drifted off to sleep, into a world of dreams he could no longer access, Ray turned his own restless, sleepless mind to Arty's data shard, letting the cool, clean, logical flow of new data fill the long, lonely hours of the night.

As Ray dug through the tangled, chaotic terabytes of data from Arty's shard, a gnawing frustration prickled at the edges of his mind. There was so much here—so much potential, so many secrets, so many advanced, esoteric techniques. Knowledge that it would take him months, perhaps even years of dedicated study to make it truly useful.

A reckless thought flickered: What if I just consumed the shard? Would I actually understand?

He checked his ports—two other shards slotted in his port, one holding spare change, the other still loaded with credits from the Hoarder.

He transferred every last credit into the Hoarder's shard, wiping it clean, then copied a chunk of Arty's data onto the now-empty one. His nanites flowed eagerly, consuming the data shard in a rush of code and microfilament. A jolt ran through his nervous system.

For an instant, the knowledge blazed into his mind—a thousand illuminated threads, whole systems and subroutines, concepts and cryptic diagrams flashing across his awareness.

But as the surge faded, Ray realized the truth: the information was there, but it wasn't his. It sat in his mind like search results in an unfamiliar language. He could find anything instantly—but real understanding and mastery was out of reach. He could see the pattern, but not the meaning.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The map, but not the terrain.

I can find it all, Ray thought, frustrated, but I can't use it. Not yet.

If I just had the right mind to pull it all together… to see the patterns and to understand the connections…

The idea, insidious and tempting, slithered into his thoughts, half-whispered by his own desperate hunger and his deep-seated fear of failure. The landfill was an option—absorbing more machines, wringing every last scrap of dormant tech from their rusted, ruined circuit boards. But deep down, he knew, with a chilling certainty, that it wouldn't be enough. To truly understand and to innovate, he'd need more than just inert circuitry. He'd need a mind. A human mind.

Someone who lives and breathes this stuff. Someone whose entire life, whose very identity, is built around tech. Someone… disposable. The thought, cold and predatory, sent a shiver of self-loathing up his spine. For a heartbeat, shame, sharp and bright, churned in his gut. He wanted to turn away from the monstrous thought, to reject it, but it kept circling back, like a wound that wouldn't close.

He glanced at Alyna's sleeping, peaceful shape. For a fleeting, agonizing second, he was just Ray again—the old Ray, the scared courier who rushed through dark, dangerous streets, always looking over his shoulder, always expecting the end. He was not a killer. He had never been hungry for power. And he had certainly never, ever considered killing someone, anyone, purely for his own benefit.

Then the need, the gnawing hunger for knowledge, for control, took over, sharp and electric—a restless, undeniable ache in his chest, his mind already leaping forward, imagining the exhilarating rush of new memories, the effortless flood of new skills, the intoxicating taste of power. The power that he could use to earn more money. To heal his mother, to give Alyna a real home, a real life and a place where she could finally, truly feel safe. Not in this rathole of an apartment. Somewhere safe. Somewhere clean. Somewhere like the glittering, impossible towers of Midspire Hub, or the privileged, secure sectors of Echelon Heights.

He slid from the cot as quietly as a ghost. The battered laptop felt warm beneath his hands, its overworked fan stuttering and hissing with every slow, reluctant boot-up command. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitating.

Just look, a cold voice in his head whispered. Just see what's out there. It's not for you. It's for them.

He opened the encrypted, dark-web browser, plunging into the shadowy digital marketplace where lives were measured in credits and no one ever asked any inconvenient questions. The interface was brutally, unapologetically simple—search bars, filters, prices. Ray scrolled through page after page of anonymous, desperate faces. Eyes darting around the grainy photos, the clinical descriptions, the cold, hard numbers.

All these faces. All these names. Human beings, their lives, their skills, their very existence, reduced to pixels and bounties. His stomach twisted. And yet, beneath the rising wave of disgust, something sharper, hungrier, whispered to him: the imagined rush of a new skill, the intoxicating thrill of unlocking someone else's life for his own use. Every time he absorbed a mind, the moral barrier, the line he swore he would never cross, fell a little further—the guilt drowned, suppressed, by the sheer, undeniable satisfaction of feeling more complete, more capable, more powerful. The memory of each previous absorption—of Red, of Rex, of Eel—flickered through him with a greedy, almost feverish pulse of anticipation.

What would it be like to know it all instantly? To never feel weak, or lost, or helpless again?

He told himself, a flimsy, desperate justification, that he was searching for the lowest of the low—a parasite, a predator, someone whose absence from the world would leave no mark, no grieving loved ones. Someone whose accumulated harm far outweighed their intrinsic worth.

That's when he found him:

BOUNTY PROFILE: "WIREMAN"

NAME: Caspar "Wireman" Grentz

AGE: 44 NATIONALITY: Stateless (formerly Virelia Sector Citizen) OCCUPATION: Tech scavenger, disgraced former black-market mods installer.

LAST KNOWN LOCATION: Virelia, Southwest, Lower Bastion Territories.

DESCRIPTION: Gaunt, stoop-shouldered, with a patchy, filth-matted beard. One eye replaced with a mismatched, flickering red cyber-optic. Arms sleeved in a chaotic jumble of old, exposed data ports and crude, amateurish wiring tattoos. Poor personal hygiene. Reportedly talks to himself, his voice a low, raspy whisper from years of stim abuse and chronic neglect.

CRIMINAL RECORD: Multiple counts of petty theft, illegal dumping of toxic materials, selling defective/stolen mods as new. Confirmed instances of code theft, performing illegal, un-anaesthetized back-alley implant surgeries—at least one confirmed fatality on his record. Multiple outstanding debts to every major and minor fixer in a ten-block radius.

SOCIAL TIES: None. No known current associates or affiliations.

BOUNTY: 1,200 NEX – LIVE CAPTURE 800 NEX – CONFIRMED TERMINATION (Low risk. No official corporate or syndicate claims on remains)

NOTES: "Nobody will even notice if Wireman vanishes. Not even the damn cockroaches." —Anonymous forum comment

Ray's eyes lingered on the grainy, low-resolution photo—Wireman, slouched and sunken-eyed, a ghost already, framed by mountains of junk and the bleak, indifferent light of the lower city. He scrolled through the long, sordid list of crimes again, grasping for a reason to silence the last, flickering vestiges of his old conscience.

No one will mourn him. The city eats the weak anyway. This is… this is just speeding up the process.

But a part of him, the part that still remembered being just Ray, recoiled in horror at how easy it had become, how logical it all seemed. Was this how monsters started—by making a list of carefully selected, self-serving reasons? He remembered the old Ray, the one who would have closed the browser in disgust and thrown the laptop against the wall. But now, the old Ray felt like a dream someone else had lived, a faint, distant echo. And not even a full week had passed since his transformation. Now, the guilt, though still present, stung less, while the hunger, the need, howled louder. The possibility of instantly understanding, of never having to struggle, of having the power to protect, burned in him like both a sickness and a promise.

He copied the last known coordinates to his interface.

The soft click of the laptop closing was sharp, jarring, in the silent, sleeping room—like a gunshot in a church.

He looked down at Alyna, her breathing deep and even, safe, for now, in the small, fragile island of warmth they'd carved out for themselves. If she knew, he thought, a fresh wave of self-loathing washing over him. If she knew the truth, if I told her about the nanites, about what I'm planning to do… would she understand? Would she forgive me? Or would she look at me like I was a monster?

Ray clenched his jaw, swallowing the guilt, letting the cold, hard logic of survival, of necessity, settle back in. With every skill, every memory he took, the more power he would have to protect what mattered most. And maybe, just maybe, if he was very, very lucky, he might finally begin to understand what he was truly becoming.

Morning came fast—like a bullet to the head. Gray light seeped through the battered blinds, painting stark stripes across the kitchen table. The room smelled faintly of takeout noodles and strong, bitter synth-coffee.

Lina's mug was heavy and warm in her hands. Alyna's half-eaten breakfast sat cooling and untouched as she worried the edge of a flimsy paper napkin into tight, anxious folds.

They were clustered around the battered laptop, its flickering screen displaying a digital tour of a new apartment: clean, bright, a fragile promise of a new beginning. No black mold clawing at the corners. No ceiling sagging with the weight of years of neglect. The windows were intact, the bathroom and both bedrooms immaculate—an image so clean it felt almost unreal compared to the grim reality of their current home.