Neon Dragons - A Cyberpunk Isekai LitRPG Story

The room hung in a tight, ugly pause after the armored man's words—just the sound of Gabriel and me still straining against the agents holding us down, our grunts of effort going nowhere.

Three seconds, maybe, before he finally turned back toward us.

"Well," he said, voice dripping mock sympathy, "looks like she doesn't really give a shit either way. What a mother, huh? I pity the both of you, truly…"

He jabbed a finger toward the extra agent standing next to me. "Anyway. This one's getting the mental treatment; we'll split it up between the two. See which part Viper actually cares about—if she cares at all. Inject her with a millilitre of her mom's favorite—NeuroCorpse. Should get the girl screaming a bit. Might even leave something permanent behind. Who knows."

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit at that.

'Maybe I can't actually tank the torture after all…!'

That was two and a half times the dosage Valeria had slipped into Gabriel's and my food during her so-called "educational punishment."

And that had been beyond hell.

The mere thought of taking that much NC now made my muscles lock up in raw terror despite my Ego trying to force me to keep struggling.

But the armored man wasn't done.

He flicked his attention toward the extra agent behind Gabriel. "We'll just cut this one up. Maybe the Viper will feel something when there's visual, permanent damage done to her heir. He's the first-born son, after all—maybe that'll finally stir something in that fucking freak."

He raised his voice, not even bothering to turn toward Valeria this time. "You hear that, Viper? I'm going to cut up your first-born. Take his limbs, make him bleed out right here. Your girl's getting her brain scrambled with NeuroCorpse, just like you love to do with our guys. Maybe she'll even end up like me—permanent, irreversible nerve damage across an entire side of her body. Wouldn't that be poetic? You'd get to look at her every single day and be reminded of me—for the rest of your lives."

Valeria's head lifted just enough for her voice to cut through the room like a blade. "Touch my children, Nyxstalker, and I guarantee you will regret it. I'll make sure you live long enough to feel every moment of it. Don't believe that you have seen what I am capable of, just because you've been my guest once before!"

The armored man—Nyxstalker, apparently—stopped dead for half a beat, then his mouth pulled into an ugly, wide grin; at least the portion of his face that worked.

"Finally hit a nerve, have I?" he said, almost laughing. "Good. That just makes me more certain we're going the right way here."

Gabriel and I didn't say anything—terror had us both by the throat.

My eyes locked onto the agent beside me as they pulled out a syringe, the barrel filled with a faintly luminescent, grayish liquid that caught the light in a way that made my stomach twist.

I tried to pull back from it, dragging my cheek, jaw, even my shoulder across the rough carpet, trying to edge away, but the knee digging into my spine kept me nailed in place.

I couldn't move more than a few useless centimeters before the weight on me pressed harder.

My active-Ego kept me lucid enough to try to come up with a plan, but that was about all it managed to do at this point.

'Okay… think. Narrow Twist? No—knee's still pinning my lower back. Use [Venombite]? Wouldn't even make a dent on him... Grab the syringe? Arms pinned, no chance. Bite? Too far, and I'd just get my jaw shattered for the trouble... Scream for help? That'll just make them happy! Fuck! THINK SERA!'

Every route I ran through my head collapsed into the same dead end: There was no way out.

The agent with the syringe crouched down beside me, his gloved hand gripping the back of my head to keep me still. I thrashed anyway, teeth bared, but it didn't matter—he drove the needle into the side of my neck with a brutal, unhesitating shove.

The jab alone made me grunt, the sharp sting running deep as my muscles instinctively seized around it.

Somewhere to my left, Gabriel's voice cracked into the air—high, panicked, and raw.

"No—stop! Please, stop!" I had no idea what they were doing to him, couldn't see through the press of bodies and armor, but the sound carved straight into my chest.

"Gabriel!" I screamed his name, my voice breaking halfway through it.

I bucked under the weight pinning me, snapping at anything that came within reach—armor, gloves, whatever I could get my teeth on—but it was useless. My body wasn't going anywhere, and the knee in my spine pressed harder every time I moved.

'I have to help him—I have to—'

My mind spun through useless ideas, tripping over itself, trying to find a crack in the situation that wasn't there.

Then the NeuroCorpse hit.

The familiar fire roared to life under my skin, moving fast.

My eyes went wide, the recognition hitting me at the exact same time as the agony.

Every nerve lit up at once, a white-hot burn that surged down my arms and legs, into my fingertips, into my teeth.

It was just like last time—and it was only getting started.

I lasted exactly four seconds before the pain tore its way out of my throat.

The scream ripped through me raw, ragged, and far too loud to hold back.

"You will pay for this, Nyxstalker!" Valeria's voice lashed across the room, sharp enough to cut through even my own cries—and Gabriel's.

I could hear her struggling against the corpo agents restraining her, the violent clatter of boots and armor near the kitchen as she thrashed hard enough to make the floor vibrate.

Nyxstalker just laughed, low and cruel, as if the sound of us breaking was something he'd been waiting for. "Hah… so there are things you actually truly care about, huh, Viper? Who would've—"

He stopped mid-sentence, cutting himself off as abruptly as someone yanking a plug.

His boots froze in place mid-step.

And at that exact same moment, Valeria's thrashing went dead still as well.

The fire tearing through my nerves didn't stop—it never did—but my active Ego kept it just barely contained enough for me to notice something was off. The agony was still there, chewing at every part of me, but a strange shift in the air cut through it.

Valeria and Nyxstalker had gone utterly still. Not tense. Not bracing. Just… still.

It was wrong enough to catch even through the haze, and apparently I wasn't the only one who noticed. A few of the corpo agents hesitated mid-movement, glancing between each other, before—one by one—they also froze in place.

The unnatural silence was utterly suffocating.

And then I finally heard it.

A deep, rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk, each step heavier than the last, like something several tons in weight was slowly, inevitably, making its way down the floor's main hallway toward us. The kind of sound that didn't belong in any residential building—hell, not even in a warzone.

The gauntleted hand on my back shifted.

Fingers wrapped over my mouth, sealing it shut. Instinct kicked in and I bucked against it, thinking this was just the next stage of whatever they had planned—but then the voice came.

"Shhhhh! Be quiet and stay still, please!" The agent whispered, low and utterly terrified, right in my ear.

That's when I realized—he wasn't trying to hurt me.

His grip was firm but not crushing, his palm pressing just enough to keep me quiet.

This wasn't part of the torture at all.

I forced myself to stop fighting, against all my instincts and impulses, my breathing loud in my own head as the rhythmic pulsing of pain continued to wreak through my body.

To my left, Gabriel's groans dulled as well, his earlier screams cutting off into muffled, ragged breaths. It sounded like they'd clamped a hand over his mouth too—and whatever they'd been doing to him had stopped cold—or at least been paused.

The seconds dragged like hours, each thunk of those massive steps rattling closer, pressing the air out of the room. My muscles locked, every nerve still burning under the NeuroCorpse but forced still by sheer survival instinct.

Then, finally, something emerged through the jagged breach in the hallway wall.

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The impact of its footstep carried through the carpet, into my ribs, deep enough I felt it in my teeth.

A yellow light spilled across the room, harsh and clinical, and a voice rolled out—low, grinding, and unmistakably mechanical.

"Scanning…"

The word seemed to stretch on forever, each drawn-out second drilling into me. The pain clawed for my voice again, a scream swelling up my throat. I bit it back, but even the small buck of my shoulders was enough to make the yellow light suddenly flare orange.

The gauntlet over my mouth clamped down—hard. Pain spiked through my jaw as the grip tightened to the edge of breaking bone.

"MOVEMENT WILL BE CONSIDERED A HOSTILE ACTION UNTIL PREMMED HAS COMPLETED ASSESSMENT AND RETRIEVAL," the booming voice declared, the sheer force of it vibrating in my chest.

It clicked in my head then—this was one of PremMed's 'Borgs.

I instinctively stopped breathing at the warning, even as my lung was already burning from the NeuroCorpse, my Ego straining hard to make everything work, somehow.

The orange glow slowly faded back to yellow, then to a soft green.

"Scan completed. No hostile entities found. Assessment and Retrieval can begin."

The words were barely done echoing when lighter footsteps tapped their way down the hallway—fast but unhurried, deliberate.

They entered through the same breach the 'Borg had filled seconds ago.

I could hardly see anymore, my eyes flooded and stinging, but a faint outline resolved through the blur—a person, small enough that they looked almost childlike beside the towering 'Borg.

White coat, the kind that screamed medical.

They hummed and hawed to themselves as their gaze swept across the room, calm and methodical, as if none of us were half a breath from collapsing.

"Well, well, well… What a cute little apartment we have here. How quaint," the man's voice drifted in, casual and almost sing-song. The sheer disconnect between his relaxed tone and the room's razor-wire tension scrambled my brain for a second.

"Let's see, then… One code Black-Red…" He tutted to himself, stepping toward Oliver's body. "Not good. Not good at all."

The faint click-clack of his fingers tapping away at some handheld device followed, then a few crisp electronic chirps.

"Hmm, yes, I see…"

No one else moved.

No one breathed louder than a whisper of air.

Every corpo agent in the room, every one of us pinned down, froze like statues while the doctor went about his business.

"That is not good at all… thirty-four percent chance for complete recovery…? Oh no…" His voice was still smooth, but there was an undercurrent of disapproval now. He finally looked up at the corpo agent standing beside Oliver—the same one who'd pulled the trigger.

"This is your doing," the doctor said flatly, not asking, just stating. "You are marked by the PremMed system as the perpetrator of this injury. Are you aware of what a thirty-four percent chance for complete recovery means, my dear sir?"

No answer. Not even a twitch.

"I thought not. Let me spell it out for you—it's unacceptable. PremMed prides itself on a spotless record. Thirty-four percent isn't just poor—it's utterly atrocious. So…" he straightened slightly, "…we will have to work very hard to salvage this situation for our client."

More taps on the device.

A quiet hum rose somewhere to my left, followed by a faint gust of air brushing across my cheek. My angle, the tears blurring my vision—none of it let me see what he was doing, but then a faint shape drifted into view.

A floating stretcher-barge, its edges rimmed in that harsh Black-Red holographic tape.

It clicked in my head all at once.

'He's taking Oliver. Thirty-four percent chance… he might make it. Of course he will—it's PremMed. They always guarantee survival unless you die outright. The damage afterward, though…'

"Dear sir," the doctor went on, "it is my honor to speak the verdict for this infraction: A thirty-four percent chance for complete recovery, caused by your actions, is a direct violation of PremMed's Terms and Service Agreements. While you yourself have not agreed to these terms, this individual has—" he gestured toward Oliver's still form, "—which places you in breach of PremMed's rights. With the authority vested in me as a PremMed Medical Specialist, I hereby proclaim the verdict for your crimes: Death."

I couldn't see the agent's face, but the pause, the subtle shift in the room, told me he'd been blindsided by the calm, clinical sentencing.

"Wha—"

BOOM.

The 'Borg didn't even give him the chance to finish.

One moment it stood in the center of the room, the next it was gone in a blur of metal and sheer mass, slamming into the target with bone-shattering force. The impact detonated armour and flesh alike, the wet spray that followed painting the entire side of the apartment in a red mist.

"Ugh… always so messy with this," the doctor muttered, not missing a beat as he turned toward the hallway breach.

Halfway out, he stopped like he'd remembered a grocery list item. "Oh, right—thank you all for your cooperation. I wish you a wonderful rest of your day. If any of you are interested in enjoying the benefits of PremMed insurance, please contact our headquarters for potential package options… I believe that's all... Yes, that's it. Have a great day."

And just like that, he strolled out, the stretcher-barge gliding beside him.

The 'Borg—now smeared in blood—followed with slow, thunderous steps, leaving the apartment in an oppressive, shocked silence.

Meanwhile, my head was weirdly clear, even if my body screamed otherwise. My Ego was definitely working at the very edge of what it could provide, forcing focus through the static haze.

Maybe it was the momentary pause in the chaos, maybe it was knowing Oliver was still breathing—even if he might wake up with half his body in pieces—or maybe it was just the bizarre sense that something about all this didn't add up.

Whatever it was, it gave me enough mental room to actually think coherent thoughts for the first time in around a minute.

'Why is this NeuroCorpse so weak…?' The thought stood out like a red flag in my head, completely at odds with the fire racing through my nerves.

But it wasn't wrong.

'It's two and a half times the dose from last time. I should be drooling on the floor right now. Even with my Ego being higher now, there's no way I should still be this… functional.'

I forced myself to drag up the memory of the last time I'd been hit with it, even though every part of me wanted to shove that memory back into whatever dark corner it came from.

I remembered the fog rolling in so thick I could barely breathe, the way thought itself had slipped out of reach.

Compared to that, this felt… severely dulled.

'Last time, I couldn't even string thoughts together by this point. So how the hell am I still lucid now…?'

The room stayed dead quiet for a few heartbeats, everyone still locked in that PremMed-induced stillness.

Then Nyxstalker's voice finally cut through, smooth and unbothered like nothing had happened. "Well… now that that's out of the way, let's continue with what we were doing, shall we? Unless you want to finally speak-the-fuck-up, Viper? Tell me what I want to know and we can stop this farce. These kids have nothing to do with any of it; why are you making me do this, you psychotic blank?"

Something was off—different from last time—but I couldn't pin down what or why.

'Sure, I've got more Body now and my Ego's way higher than before… but it still shouldn't be this much of a difference…' The thought ran in loops, half-frantic, while I tried to piece it together as fast as possible.

I ran through everything I'd gained since then—Perks, Skill levels, Attribute upgrades—anything that might mess with NeuroCorpse.

Then an idea hit me.

'The food…! It boosted blood filtration, right? Maybe that's—' I cut the thought short almost immediately.

No, that didn't add up.

NeuroCorpse was built to drop augmented people, and they'd definitely have filtration implants or bionics.

It wouldn't make sense for that to be enough.

I forced myself to stop spiraling.

Cracking the mystery now wasn't going to save me, even if knowing might help me ditch the NeuroCorpse.

The important thing was, I already had a way out.

'Doesn't matter why. I'm stronger, my Ego's better. I can ride this out and make it work this time.'

This was going to be hell.

I let myself drop, using [Elemental Balance] to lock every muscle in my body into a state of complete limpness.

"Huh?" The corpo agent on my back sounded thrown. "Boss, I think she's out…? Want me to—?"

"Out?" Nyxstalker's voice carried real confusion—then a low chuckle. "Oh, no. Don't worry. She'll be back. NeuroCorpse doesn't let you pass out, no matter the pain. Just keep her pinned—she'll thrash like crazy when the next wave wakes her up again."

He turned to the agents by Gabriel. "Little quiet in here for my taste. Cut off his other arm."

'Other arm?!' Every instinct screamed to lunge at them, but [Elemental Balance] and my Ego boxed my rage in before it could blow. 'Gabriel… hold on.'

I forced my focus inward.

'One minute,' I told my Ego. 'Block the pain from touching my thoughts for one minute, no matter what you have to give up.'

My muscles tried to seize and jerk with the command, as the active-Ego that had been keeping them under control from the spasms was redirected to the new goal, but [Elemental Balance] froze me in place.

It was like my whole body cramped at once, every nerve firing in perfect, unbearable unison.

I couldn't even breathe.

Didn't matter. No time to waste.

I let my thoughts sink into stillness, pushing everything else out—Gabriel's screams, Valeria's venomous shouting, Nyxstalker's taunts and laughing—until there was only the quiet I forced myself to feel.

'The pain's weaker. I'm stronger. Relax where there's no room to relax. Calm down, Sera.'

It was the only move left to me. My last shot.

Last time, it had failed.

This time, it wouldn't.

It couldn't.

Time stretched and snapped in the same instant before the chime I'd been clawing toward finally rang inside my head.

'It cleansed the Jam?!' For a heartbeat I thought I'd read it wrong, but no—it made sense.

In game terms, a network jam was technically a debuff. And with the Netrunner unable to apply a new splattering of it via the active-Jam, I was home-free.

My Ego slammed into a crash right after, the corpo agent's weight drilling sharp pain into my spine.

Didn't matter.

I knew exactly what had to come next.

I cracked my eyes just enough to trigger my cerebral interface, darting straight to the message function. It was still there, littered with dozens of error flags.

[HELP US! CORPO AGENTS!]

I mentally slammed the button to send it to Mr. Stirling.

A heartbeat, yet a seemingly endless moment later, the system chimed once: