The door slid shut with a soft click, the panel outside glowing red.

  As they walked down the grimy hallway, Arthur felt something new. A low, steady thrum vibrated in his teeth and made the air taste metallic. His tongue tingled. He looked up, his gaze drawn to the ceiling where thick, armored bundles of cables snaked along the corridor's length.

  His silver eyes focused, and the grimy rubber casing seemed to become translucent. He could see inside—not just wire, but a sluggish, pulsing river of faint blue light.

  "Art?"

  He flinched. The vision vanished. The cables were just cables again.

  Kira was watching him, her gaze following his up to the ceiling before returning to his face. "Something wrong? You looked like you were in a trance."

  Arthur pulled his hood lower. "No. Nothing. Just... headache."

  The migraine was still there, a dull drilling behind his eyes, but the word felt inadequate now. Something else was happening. Something the pain.

  They stepped into the elevator, a cramped, graffiti-covered metal box. The doors scraped shut. In the silence broken only by the buzz of a failing light, Kira glanced at him.

  "Is there a problem?" Arthur asked.

  "No... it's just that you're always the one to press the buttons."

  Arthur looked at the touchscreen displaying dozens of levels. He raised a hand, his fingers hovering over the glass, but he didn't know what to press. He saw the number of the floor they were on, but where should they go?

  Kira scoffed. "Right. 'New mods'." She brushed his hand aside and jabbed the button for level '0'. The elevator began its descent with a heavy, groaning lurch.

  Arthur kept his hands buried deep in his hoodie pockets, his gaze fixed on the floor. Kira stood beside him, arms crossed, staring dead ahead.

  The doors groaned open, revealing a wide, cavernous landing—the ground floor of the hab-block. A small, self-contained market sputtering with grim life despite the hour. To the left, men with glowing optical mods sat around a flickering holo-table, their laughter harsh and metallic. To the right, a vendor with a reinforced, four-armed chassis grilled squares of synthetic meat on a sizzling hot plate.

  Kira led the way out onto the street.

  The city hit Arthur like a physical blow.

  The dull thrum he'd felt in the hallway exploded into a deafening sensory roar. The world fractured. The city's skin peeled away, and his silver eyes showed him .

  Too much.

  He saw the sluggish blue light in the building walls, the brilliant, fiery cores of the streetlights, the complex silver-white energy within every robot and machine. The people were worse—their flesh was dark and hollow, but their cybernetics . Every implant was a shining circuit of power. A man with chrome arms was a constellation. A woman with synthetic eyes had twin stars burning in her skull.

  Kira beside him was a hollow silhouette defined by the electric glow of her eyes and something burning like a hidden fire behind her ear.

  The concrete beneath his feet dissolved. He could see the rivers of power flowing beneath it, the city's true veins, screaming at him in a language he didn't know but somehow understood.

  And beneath it all, rising from some deep, primal place: .

  Not for food. For . The energy. The light. The power singing in everything around him, a billion watts of pure, accessible force. His body wanted it with a desperate, clawing need that bordered on agony.

  The migraine expanded, spreading tendrils of white-hot pressure through his skull as if making room for this new sense, this impossible awareness.

  He stumbled, a gasp tearing from his throat, and threw a hand out against a wall to keep from falling.

  "Art!" Kira grabbed his arm, her grip iron-strong. "Hey! What's wrong with you? Your mods glitching?"

  He couldn't answer. Could only stare as the world tried to drown him in light.

  Kira didn't hesitate. She cursed and half-dragged, half-shoved him into the first side alley she could find.

  It was a narrow canyon between two hab-blocks, barely wide enough for a person to stand with arms outstretched. The only light was a dim, flickering service lamp overhead and the distant bleeding neon from the main street. The alley stank of refuse and stale synth-booze.

  She slammed him against the brick wall, her face inches from his. "Art, what the fuck is going on? Are you on something? Is this withdrawal? Don't lie to me."

  Arthur's head lolled against the wall, the world still a blinding, screaming chaos of light he couldn't process. He managed a weak shake of his head.

  "I... don't know," he gasped.

  Kira let out a sharp breath. "Useless," she muttered, but her grip softened. Her expression became neutral as her eyes seemed to glow brighter. "I just called my car. It'll be here in two. Gotta get you to the workshop."

  Her words barely registered.

  His gaze, desperate and unfocused, darted around the alley. Then he saw it. A thick, armored bundle of power cables, just like in the hallway but bigger, running up the brick wall beside him. And inside... a roaring, brilliant river of blue light.

  He pushed himself off the wall, his movements clumsy, driven by instinct.

  "Hey, stay put!" Kira ordered.

  He ignored her.

  Two stumbling steps to the cable bundle. His hand slapped flat against the grimy casing.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  Kira watched, her mouth falling open.

  The moment his palm made contact, the flickering service light overhead dimmed, and a low, resonant hum filled the alley. She saw it clearly in the dark—threads of brilliant, multi-colored light, like a captive aurora, seemed to pull free from the cable. They flowed into his fingertips, snaking up his arm under his hoodie.

  She could see the veins on the back of his hand and crawling up his neck begin to glow with a dazzling, chromatic light, shifting from emerald to magenta to cyan. The light illuminated the inside of his hood, throwing his face into sharp relief.

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  His expression was peaceful. Transfixed. .

  The hum stopped. The service light returned to its normal, flickering state.

  Arthur slumped against the wall, his breathing deep and even. The blinding chaos of the city's energy had receded, replaced by a lingering, deeply pleasurable thrum beneath his skin.

  And the headache—that constant, drilling pressure behind his eyes—had . Not gone. But quiet now, a distant throb instead of a shrieking nail driven through his skull.

  The relief intoxicated him almost as much as the feeding itself.

  A dazed calm settled over him, illuminated by the faint, fading chromatic glow pulsing in his veins.

  Kira just stared, her usual street-smart composure shattered. Her mouth hung slightly open, her bright eyes flickering rapidly as she struggled to categorize the impossible. The scorched rubber casing of the power conduit, the smell of burnt plastic hanging heavy in the air, the light she had seen flowing into him—it defied every law of physics and cybernetics she knew.

  The relative silence of the narrow alley stretched for a long, heavy moment, broken only by the distant city hum and Arthur's slow, contented breaths.

  Then Kira recovered.

  Her shock solidified into sharp, focused urgency. She grabbed Arthur's shoulders and shook him hard.

  "Art! Snap out of it! What the hell was that?"

  Arthur flinched violently, the physical jolt shattering the golden calm like brittle glass. A ragged gasp tore from his throat. The blissful warmth under his skin curdled, turning cold and greasy, even as a traitorous echo of that perfect satisfaction pulsed deep in his nerves.

  He snatched his hand back from the wall as if burned, staring at it——as if it belonged to someone else. He clenched it into a white-knuckled fist against the remembered pleasure and the rising tide of self-disgust.

  He looked at Kira, his silver eyes wide with dawning panic, but his throat was dry, useless. He couldn't form words.

  Her eyes flashed once—a quick notification overlaying her vision. "Car's here," she snapped, her tone clipped. "End of the alley. Move!" She glanced back once at the sparking, damaged cable bundle, her eyes narrowing. Evidence. Trouble. They needed to disappear.

  She grabbed Arthur's arm again, yanking him toward the alley entrance. He stumbled after her, his legs shaky, his mind still reeling.

  "Was that some new prototype mod?" Kira muttered rapid-fire questions as she half-dragged him. "Military grade? Black market? Where did you even get the creds for that? Art, talk to me!"

  He tried to respond, to form an apology, an explanation—but only fragmented sounds escaped his lips. How could he explain what he couldn't understand himself?

  They reached the end of the alley where Kira's car waited silently at the curb. A large sedan, painted a deep obsidian black that absorbed the ambient neon light. Subtle modifications hinted at the beast beneath: lowered suspension, custom rims, deeply tinted windows. A faint underglow pulsed rhythmically from beneath the chassis, matching the hue of Kira's eyes.

  Kira practically shoved Arthur into the passenger seat. The worn synth-leather was cool against his skin. She slid into the driver's side, the doors hissing shut, sealing them in the relative quiet of the cabin.

  Kira keyed in the destination, the vehicle pulling smoothly away from the curb. Then, in the tense silence of the moving car, she turned on him. "Okay. No more bullshit. We're clear for now. Tell me what happened. And don't insult my intelligence by saying it was a 'mod glitch'."

  Arthur looked at her. He saw the intricate, beautiful energy patterns pulsing within her mods. He saw the worry etched beneath her anger, the genuine fear in the lines around her synthetic eyes.

  He wanted to tell her, needed to tell someone. But the truth felt like a shard of glass in his throat.

  "The... the cables..." he began, his voice raspy. "I was so... hungry. It was screaming loud inside my head. And I could... I could see it, Kira. The light. In everything."

  He trailed off, shaking his head. How could he describe something he could barely process himself?

  He took a deep, shuddering breath, the fragile composure he'd been clinging to finally shattering.

  "Kira..." His voice dropped, strained with an emotion he couldn't name. "I don't know what happened. I don't know ."

  He met her gaze directly, his silver eyes filled with raw, unadulterated fear.

  "I woke up on the couch a few hours ago," he choked out, the words tumbling over each other. "I don't remember... ." His voice cracked. "All I know... is my name is Arthur."

  Kira stared at him.

  Her hard expression faltered, disbelief warring with a dawning, horrified understanding. This wasn't a con. This wasn't drugs or debt. This was something else entirely.

  Amnesia. Total.

  It was the one, insane possibility she hadn't considered.

  The color drained from her face as she processed the implications. The sudden appearance of high-end, seemingly organic mods. The impossible, physics-defying energy drain she'd witnessed. The complete memory wipe.

  It didn't add up to street trouble. It added up to something clandestine, corporate, and lethally dangerous.

  She'd heard stories—everyone did—where people woke up with holes in their memories, or with new, rewritten memories that didn't feel right. Brains manipulated, personalities overwritten by corps like Kaizen. But she'd never heard of a case where the victim was also... with impossible new tech.

  Her gaze flicked up to his hair, to the white strand just above his right eye that seemed to pulse with a faint, internal light even in the dim cabin.

  This wasn't just memory manipulation. This was something else entirely.

  "Amnesia?" she repeated, her voice thin. She let out a shaky, humorless laugh. "You... you don't remember?" Her calm facade fractured. "Art, are you serious? After... after everything?"

  Arthur shook his head helplessly. "Before you knocked, a box arrived. A laptop. It had things... things that belonged to..." He paused. "...." The word came out harsh. "I looked at photos. Documents. This... Arthur... in the pictures... I don't know him. I looked at pictures of my parents... and felt nothing. Just... static."

  Kira flinched as if he'd struck her. The anger drained from her face, replaced by deep, aching sadness.

  "Dammit, Arthur," she whispered. She slammed her fist against the dashboard. "You don't remember Rhys? Cipher? Nyx?"

  The names hung heavy in the air.

  "After what happened? The setup? The job? You don't remember them?"

  She stared out the side window at the blur of passing lights, her reflection a mask of tightly controlled grief.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was low, flat. "Doesn't matter now. What matters is someone messed you up. Bad." She glanced at him, her eyes narrowed, analytical, the grief locked away. "Workshop first. We figure out what they did to you." Her voice dropped. "Then we figure out who. And they're going to pay. For everything."

  The obsidian sedan descended into the underground parking lot and came to a silent halt. The space was dark, lights illuminated sporadically—some flickering, others working fine, some completely dead.

  They were at Block 243.

  Kira killed the engine. "Come on," she said, her voice flat but not unkind. She opened his door and gently pulled him out.

  He followed numbly.

  Names without faces, attached to a trauma he couldn't feel but could see reflected raw in Kira's tightly controlled posture.

  They navigated the dim parking lot toward the elevator. The doors hissed shut behind them. Kira pressed the panel for LVL 14, and the elevator began its silent ascent.

  Arthur kept his gaze fixed ahead. He tried to focus, testing the strange sense he'd felt earlier. And then he could see it again—the faint, pulsing blue light within the thick cables running along the elevator shaft walls, the thinner, brighter wires connected to the control panel.

  , he thought.

  He closed his eyes. It didn't help; he could see through his eyelids, perceiving the energy flows just as clearly.

  Arthur consciously relaxed his focus, letting his mind drift. The energy signatures faded like smoke, and his vision returned to normal.

  The doors slid open.

  A hallway appeared, surprisingly clean compared to his own hab-block. Smooth, grey plasteel walls, polished concrete floor reflecting cool, blue strip lighting.

  They stopped before a smooth, grey metallic door. Kira waved her hand over the control panel, her glowing tattoos flaring briefly. With a soft chime and a pneumatic sigh, the door slid into the wall.

  Arthur stepped inside and stopped.

  The apartment had the heavy, enclosed feel of a place evolved out of necessity rather than design—a sanctuary built from steel, wires, and improvisation. The walls were a dense lattice of exposed conduits and black piping. The main living space was dominated by an enormous sectional sofa sprawled around a cluster of low, rugged tables littered with half-open toolkits, tangled cables, and data pads.

  One entire wall was dominated by a panoramic window. Beyond it, the sprawling city stretched into infinity—a chaos of flickering neon signs, aerial traffic lanes, and high-rise silhouettes.

  "Home sweet home," Kira muttered, tossing her leather jacket onto a pile of discarded drone parts. "Make yourself marginally less pathetic. Sit."

  Arthur didn't move.

  His gaze was fixed on an open doorway to the right. Through it, he saw a second room bathed in bright, clinical white light. The walls were lined with clean, organized drawers and racks holding sophisticated diagnostic equipment.

  And in the center, dominating the space like an altar to technology, sat a single, imposing chair.

  The chair stood like a throne built at the intersection of surgical precision and industrial elegance. Gleaming chrome frame. Plush black synthetic leather. The wide armrests were embedded with modular neural ports and diagnostic interfaces, glowing with a soft amber light. Along the segmented spine lay an array of delicate surgical injectors and articulated tool arms.

  "Recognize it?" Kira asked softly.

  Arthur shook his head. The chair felt... important. Familiar on some deep, cellular level he couldn't access. But there was no memory attached.