NANITE

"The diversion was successful," Ray stated, his voice even, though a hint of confusion entered his tone as he processed her aggressive posture. "Didn't Leon update you?"

"Update me?" she shot back, stopping just short of him, her voice tight with a fury that felt different from her usual professional anger. "I get a ping, then twelve minutes of silence. I don't give a damn about the diversion, Ray. You could have been scrap metal."

Ray tilted his head slightly. Her response was illogical.

"The tactical outcome was positive." Ray said.

Her vocal stress and elevated heart rate, however, indicated… concern. The data didn't align. She is reacting emotionally, he thought, the conclusion feeling like a foreign variable in a perfect equation.

"And stop speaking like a robot," she shot at him, her voice laced with frustration.

The words seemed to bypass his tactical processors and hit something more fundamental. Ray blinked, the faint blue glow in his optics wavering. He hadn't realized. In the heat of the mission, he had shifted to a more efficient, machine-like persona. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that felt almost foreign.

"Right," he said, the word sounding more natural, less clipped. "Sorry."

Leon looked up, his face pale and beaded with sweat, but his eyes held a new, harder fire. "The mission isn't over," he said, his voice strained. "It's just begun." He gestured with his chin at the data shard in the palm of his good arm.

"While you were leading them on a merry chase, I was working on Kaelen's data shard. Most of it was standard corporate blackmail—files on executives, illegal data sales. But there was a hidden partition that was triple-encrypted. I managed to crack the first layer."

Kaelen, who had been staring at the floor, looked up in genuine shock. "You… you found that? I thought it was wiped."

"It almost was," Leon said, his gaze intense. "What's on it, Kaelen? What was so important they sent a snap like that to make sure you were silenced?"

The data analyst swallowed hard, his eyes darting between the three of them as if seeing them for the first time. The terror was still there, but now it was mixed with a dawning horror, a sense of complicity he could no longer run from.

"It wasn't about the blackmail," he whispered, his voice cracking. "That was just smoke and noise. The real project… it's called Nexus."

He took a shaky breath and the story spilled out of him, a torrent of corporate sin that burned his weak soul. Nexus, he explained, was a powerful, bespoke neuro-chemical agent designed to be sold in single-use vials alongside HVM's next-generation MemStream headsets. It was being marketed to investors as an "immersion booster," a way for users to "truly feel" the virtual world.

"But that's not what it does," Kaelen choked out, tears welling in his eyes. "In reality, Nexus creates an immediate and severe biological dependency. It hijacks the brain's pleasure and memory centers, hardwiring the sensation of euphoria directly to HVM's product. The addiction is psychological and physiological. It's a chain they can never break."

Monica swore under her breath, her fury momentarily replaced by disgust.

"There's only one person who can stop them," Kaelen continued, his voice gaining a desperate urgency. He looked at Leon. "The lead scientist, the one who created it… Dr. Elara Vance. She saw what it was doing to the test subjects and she panicked. She tried to wipe her research, sabotage what she could, and then she vanished a few months ago. HVM thinks she's dead, but I know she's not."

Leon's jaw was tight, his knuckles white where he gripped his wounded arm. Ray watched him, the memory of another man's desperation echoing in his own mind.

"The data on this shard," Kaelen said, pointing to it, "It's the key. It's the raw molecular data for Nexus. Dr. Vance is the only person on the planet who can use that data to engineer a counter-agent." He finally looked directly at Leon, his expression one of grim certainty. "She fled to the one place where even HVM wouldn't look for her. The one place she knew she could disappear forever."

"Hell Garden," Leon finished, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "The Green Scar."

A heavy silence descended upon the maintenance bay, thick with the weight of their new reality. Leon winced, hissing as a fresh wave of pain shot up his arm. The mission had shifted from a data extraction to venturing into a living nightmare.

A soft chime echoed in the quiet. A notification appeared in both Ray's and Monica's interfaces simultaneously. 21,000 credits received from Leon. V. The rest of the payment.

"Our deal is over," Leon said, his voice strained as he began to clumsily shrug his coat back on over his injured arm. "You got him out of the hot zone fulfilling the contract." He looked at Monica, his eyes sharp despite the pain. "I'm not asking you to come with me. Hell…" He fumbled in his coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled cigar and lighting it with a shaky hand. He took a deep, desperate puff, the smoke mingling with the damp air. "Not even I want to go to that place. But if I have to, I will."

He glanced at Ray for a moment.

"Fine. Go kill yourself," Monica said, her voice devoid of emotion. She turned and walked to the Kurai, the car driving itself into the alley, her boots echoing on the concrete. She popped open the rear door.

Leon took another drag from his cigar. "Sorry about not revealing everything from the start. And lying." He admitted, not looking at them. "HVM has no security AI that was tracking us. That was just a lie to push you a little further than the money did." He glanced at Kaelen, his expression a mixture of pity and contempt. "He's a data analyst with no backbone. He was ready to sell HVM's secrets for a payday, but I think he finally realized that the data he was feeding them would eventually be used to put a leash on him for good. Even the lowest rat will bite when it's cornered."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Kaelen offered a weak, ashamed nod and scurried into the back of the Kurai, making himself as small as possible.

"I've asked Monica to escort him to a secure location in the Undercroft," Leon explained, turning back to Ray. "From there, someone will pick him up and make him disappear." He took another puff of the cigar and walked closer, extending his good hand. "No hard feelings?"

Ray looked at the offered hand, then at Leon's tired, determined eyes. He shook it. The grip was firm, despite the injury. "No," Ray said. The single word was all that was needed.

Leon let go and, without another word, turned and walked away, a solitary figure disappearing into the gloom. Ray watched him for a few seconds, then turned and slid into the passenger seat of the Kurai. Monica didn't look at him as she sealed the doors. The car's engine hummed, and they pulled out of the bay, leaving Leon behind.

Just as the Kurai's tail lights vanished, Leon paused and ducked into a small, dark alley choked with pipes and refuse. He leaned against the grimy wall, took out his comms unit, and made an encrypted call. After a single ring, the contact answered. The ID simply read: PROPHET.

"I got the shard," Leon reported, his voice low.

A synthesized, genderless voice replied from the device, devoid of any inflection. "The asset's intel was accurate, then."

"It was," Leon confirmed. "But the mission has changed. We need Dr. Vance. She's in Hell Garden."

"A complication," the voice stated, a ghost of static in its tone.

"How am I supposed to get in there?" Leon demanded, his own voice cracking with frustration. "The place is a deathtrap."

"Patience, Leon," the voice soothed, if such a sterile sound could be called soothing. "The board is being set. A team is being prepared. You will have your access."

The connection went dead.

Leon sagged against the wall, the adrenaline finally leaving him, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. He took out another cigar and lit it, his hands trembling slightly. He glanced up at the massive, oppressive metal ceiling of The Line's Undercroft, high above.

"What have you got yourself into, Leon?" he murmured to the smoke and the shadows.

After dropping Kaelen at his destination, Monica and Ray left West Line behind. The city's fractured skyline faded into the rearview. As the last of the towers disappeared, Ray found his mind circling a different name—Andrew.

He gazed out the passenger window as the highway carried them into the endless red sand plains. The sun, hanging low, painted the world in molten orange and bruised purple. To his left, the ocean stretched out, a flat, silver promise beneath the darkening sky. The horizon felt limitless, but Ray's thoughts tightened, looping around old grudges and necessary violence.

He could have tracked Andrew down and killed him, severing a dangerous loose end. But not yet. After Ethan's documents he'd sent, Kaizen was surely breathing down Andrew's neck—killing him now would only draw more eyes and more unnecessary trouble. Some things were better left waiting.

The hum of the road soothed Ray's nerves, but only just. His mind flickered over every risk and gain—the gold from Rex's arm, the new apartment, the credits from Leon, every move made for survival. He'd killed for that money, not for greed, but because it was him or them. Yet he couldn't shake the old ache: was any of it worth it? Did survival mean becoming numb, or was it just a matter of time before the cost caught up?

His thoughts drifted to his mother's treatment—700,000 credits needed. It still seemed impossible, but for the first time. The hope felt real, not cruel.

He glanced at Monica, her face burnished by the last gold flare of sunlight, one hand resting loose on the wheel. Her confidence radiated from every line of her posture—a survivor, but not untouched by cost.

"How much do you want for the KAMIGAMI?" Ray asked, his voice low, breaking the quiet.

Monica tapped the wheel, considering. "Limited edition. Brand new. Top-tier bike. I say eighty thousand credits. That's a discount, by the way."

Ray checked his balance—sixty grand from Rex's gold, minus eleven for the apartment, forty-seven from Leon, plus the jewelry and Ethan's watch. Maybe 140,000 credits. More money than he'd ever held, but every credit marked by blood or desperation. Still, the number was a buffer against the impossible. His grip on hope tightened, but so did his doubt.

"When do you want your bike back?" he asked quietly.

Monica's lips curled in a subtle, knowing smirk. "You don't like her? I thought you'd have better taste."

Ray kept his eyes on the unending lines of the highway. "She's the best I've ever ridden. Fast, responsive… perfect. But I need the money. It's… personal." His words came out flat, but she heard the weight beneath them.

She drummed her fingers on the wheel, her gaze flickering between him and the road. "What's the money for, Ray? A new set of mods?"

"Something like that," he deflected.

She let the silence hang for a moment, then sighed. "Tell you what. Give me forty thousand now. Pay the rest when you can. Consider it a lease."

Ray glanced at her, surprised by the easy trust in her offer. It was an illogical business decision. "Why risk it? What if I take the bike and disappear? You barely know me."

Monica's laugh was low and genuine, though it still held a hard, metallic edge. "That's what I like about you, Ray. You are always so careful, always running the numbers. You want a logical reason for everything." She met his gaze, a glint of mischief and something unexpectedly vulnerable in her golden eyes. "That's why I trust you. Because you're predictable. And if I'm wrong…" Her grin sharpened into something predatory. "Believe me, I'll get what I'm owed."

Ray managed a crooked smile in return. He sent the credits. A small chime confirmed the transfer.

"Pleasure doing business," Monica said, her voice lighter now, the tension melting from her shoulders.

Ray leaned back, letting his eyes close as the car slid through the deepening twilight. He felt the day's burdens settle—not gone, but easier to bear.

"Are you meditating?" Monica asked, catching the shift in his posture.

"Yeah," he replied softly. "Someone showed me recently how to do it. It helps."

She hummed, her tone thoughtful, almost affectionate. "So you didn't get any sleep on the way here, then."

Ray shook his head faintly but said nothing. Since he didn't need sleep anymore, maybe this was his new way to rest, to find a moment of silence in the relentless churn of his own mind.

The sunset's dying light painted his features in violet and fire. For a breath, he let himself just feel—the money, the debts, the trust, the strange comfort of the dark. The car rolled on.

Two lives side by side, that had collided with each other by chance.

The drive back from West Line was a blur of highway lights. They arrived in Virelia at 1 a.m., the city's familiar neon glow a stark contrast to the sharp, wounded light of the coast. Monica dropped him at the edge of Slickrow; the low, predatory hum of the Kurai's engine fighting against the noise of the sector.

"Alright," she said, her voice a low murmur. She glanced at him, her sharp golden eyes lingering for a moment. "That was… more complicated than advertised. Try not to get yourself killed on the way home."

"You too, Monica," Ray replied.

Without another word, she pulled away, the sleek black car melting into the city's chaotic traffic, disappearing as if it had never been there. Ray stood on the curb for a moment, the grime and noise of Slickrow washing over him. Then he walked into a dark alley. There with a subtle, internal command, he let the change happen.

His posture shifted, his frame seeming to shrink and stoop. His face narrowed, his skin taking on a sickly, pale gray hue. His hair became a wild, unkempt mess. He was no longer Ray; he was a ghost, wearing the face of one of Red's goons he had killed and absorbed barely a week ago—a nobody, a face no one would remember or look at twice.