Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
Ryan's boots hit the cage floor and the crowd noise slammed into him like a pressure wave.
The announcer was still yelling his old callsign. Redline. He hadn't heard that name in three years and it tasted like copper in his mouth.
Across the cage his opponent rolled his shoulders. Big guy. Shaved head, neck tattoos, subdermal plating visible under the fluorescents. No visible ports. That meant baseline human or old-gen augments. Ryan's left hand twitched. The bioelectric hum under his skin was already climbing.
"Don't do anything stupid," Derek's voice crackled in his ear. The cheap comm bead they'd taped to his jaw was half-static. "In and out. You don't gotta win. Just don't get killed."
Ryan didn't answer. The ref was already stepping back.
The bell clanged.
Tattoo guy came in fast. Ryan sidestepped and the first punch whistled past his ear. He could feel the current building in his forearms, that prickly heat that used to be controllable. Used to have a regulator for this. Used to have a job that paid for maintenance.
He threw a jab. Tattoo guy blocked it and grinned.
"They said you were special ops. You hit like a fuckin' accountant."
Ryan didn't waste breath on a comeback. He circled left, keeping his hands low. The hum was getting louder. Not the good kind of loud. The kind that meant his nervous system was about to cook itself.
Tattoo guy lunged. Ryan ducked under a hook and drove his shoulder into the guy's ribs. Felt something crack. The guy wheezed and staggered back.
The crowd got louder.
Ryan's vision was starting to fuzz at the edges. He could taste ozone. His regulator should've kicked in by now. Should've bled off the excess charge into the grounding nodes in his spine.
Except his regulator had been fried scrap for three years.
Tattoo guy wiped his mouth and came at him again. This time Ryan didn't dodge. He stepped in and caught the guy's wrist.
The current arced.
Tattoo guy's eyes went wide. His whole body locked up. Ryan could feel the voltage climbing his arm, racing through his grip, jumping the gap into the other guy's nervous system. It wasn't supposed to discharge like this. It was supposed to be contained. Metered. Safe.
Nothing about Ryan's rig was safe anymore.
"Let go!" Tattoo guy's voice was a strangled rasp.
Ryan tried. His fingers wouldn't open. The current was screaming through both of them now, a closed loop with no shutoff.
Tattoo guy started to smoke.
Not metaphorically. Actual smoke, thin and grey, rising from where Ryan's hand clamped his wrist. The smell hit a second later. Burnt meat and melted plastic.
"Ryan!" Derek's voice in his ear. "Ryan, let him go!"
He couldn't. The current had locked his hand down. Tattoo guy was shaking now, his whole body convulsing, his eyes rolled back.
The crowd noise changed. Excitement turning to something uglier.
Ryan gritted his teeth and forced his other hand up. He grabbed his own wrist and pulled. The feedback loop broke with a sound like a capacitor popping. Tattoo guy dropped.
Ryan stumbled back. His arm was numb from the shoulder down. Tattoo guy wasn't moving.
The ref was yelling something. Medics rushed the cage. Ryan couldn't hear anything over the ringing in his ears.
Someone grabbed his good arm. He spun, fist already coming up.
"Easy." A woman's voice. Cool. Amused. "You just made me a lot of money."
Ryan blinked. His vision cleared enough to make out her face. Mid-thirties, sharp suit, darker skin, hair pulled back tight. She looked like she belonged in a boardroom, not a blood-stained fight cage.
"Natasha Verner." She didn't offer a handshake. Smart. Ryan's hand was still twitching. "You're the promoter."
"Among other things." She glanced at the medics working on Tattoo guy. They'd gotten a breather mask on him but he still wasn't moving. "That was supposed to be a five-round fight. You ended it in two minutes."
"He alive?"
"Does it matter?"
Ryan's jaw tightened. "Yeah. It does."
Natasha studied him for a second, then shrugged. "He'll live. Probably. Neural burn, some tissue damage. Nothing a week in a clinic won't fix." She tilted her head. "You, on the other hand, look like shit."
Ryan's legs were shaking. The adrenaline was wearing off and the pain was filling in behind it. His whole left side felt like he'd stuck it in a live socket.
"I'm fine."
"You're dying." Natasha said it like she was commenting on the weather. "Your regulator's gone. Every time you discharge like that you're cooking your own nervous system. Give it another six months and you'll be drooling in a hospice bed."
Ryan didn't argue. She wasn't wrong.
"I can fix it," Natasha said.
That got his attention. "Bullshit."
"I run a clinic. Black market, but clean work. I've seen cases like yours before." She pulled a card from her jacket and held it out. Ryan didn't take it. "You've got something rare. Military-grade bioelectric output with no functioning limiters. That kind of data is worth money to the right buyers."
"I'm not selling my body for parts."
"I'm not asking you to." Natasha's smile was thin. "I need your discharge readings. Clean data from live combat scenarios. You give me that, I'll install a working regulator. Hell, I'll upgrade your whole rig. You'll be better than you were before the burnout."
Ryan stared at her. Every instinct he'd honed in six years of corporate merc work was screaming that this was a bad deal.
But his hand was still numb. And Tattoo guy's burnt-meat smell was still in his nose.
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. You fight. I monitor. We both get what we need." Natasha pocketed the card he hadn't taken. "Think about it. You know where to find me."
She turned and walked out of the cage.
Ryan stood there until the medics cleared Tattoo guy. Somebody threw a towel at him. He wiped the sweat off his face and headed for the exit.
Derek was waiting in the hall. He looked pale.
"Jesus, Ryan. I thought you were gonna kill him."
"I tried not to."
"Natasha talked to you?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
Ryan pushed past him. His legs were barely holding. "And I'm going home."
He made it three blocks before his vision started tunneling. He leaned against a wall and focused on breathing. In. Out. Don't pass out on the street.
His comm bead buzzed. Text message. He pulled out his phone with his good hand.
Unknown number. *Offer stands. Clinic address attached. Come tomorrow or don't. Your choice.*
Natasha.
Ryan stared at the message for a long time. Then he pulled up the address and started walking.
---
He woke up on a clinic bed with his arm in a stabilizer rig and no memory of how he'd gotten there.
The lights were dim. Medical-grade dim, the kind that didn't trigger migraine protocols. Ryan's mouth tasted like metal. His left arm was still numb but the pain was gone. That was wrong. Burns like that didn't just stop hurting.
He tried to sit up. His body didn't respond right. Delayed. Sluggish.
A monitor beeped next to the bed. Ryan turned his head. Vitals display. Heart rate, neural activity, bioelectric output. All green.
All green was suspicious as hell.
"You're awake." Natasha walked in holding a tablet. She looked like she hadn't slept but her suit was still pressed. "Good. I was starting to think I overdid the sedative."
"What did you do?"
"Installed a cooling protocol." She tapped the tablet. "Temporary fix until I can fab a proper regulator. It'll keep you from frying yourself for the next few weeks."
Ryan's right hand moved. He reached up and felt the back of his neck. There was a fresh port cover over his neural jack. Cold metal. New.
"You said tomorrow."
"You collapsed in my lobby." Natasha's voice was flat. "I don't let merchandise die on my floor. Bad for business."
Merchandise. Right.
Ryan swung his legs off the bed. The room tilted but he stayed upright. "How much do I owe you?"
"Nothing. Yet." Natasha set the tablet down. "Cooling protocol buys you time. Real fix costs real money. Or real data. Your choice."
Ryan stood. His legs held. Barely. "I'll think about it."
"You do that."
He made it to the door before she spoke again.
"One more thing. Don't try to remove the protocol yourself. It's keyed to your neural signature. You pull it out wrong and it'll scramble everything from your spine up."
Ryan didn't turn around. "Got it."
He walked out.
---
He made it home. Three flights of stairs to a studio apartment that smelled like old coffee and fried circuits. He locked the door, peeled off his jacket, and collapsed on the couch.
His arm felt strange. Not numb anymore. Just… distant. Like it belonged to someone else.
His phone buzzed.
Ryan pulled it out. Another text. Unknown number. Different from Natasha's.
He opened it.
*Don't trust Natasha. She sold you once already.*
Ryan stared at the screen.
The message disappeared.
Not deleted. Not archived. Just gone. The text thread vanished like it had never existed.
Ryan checked his message log. Nothing. He checked his neural port diagnostics.
There was a new file in his buffer. Timestamp: fifteen minutes ago. Source: unknown. Filetype: encrypted.
Someone had pushed code into his head while he was out.
Ryan's hand started shaking.
He reached for the port cover on his neck. Natasha's voice echoed in his head. *Don't try to remove the protocol yourself.*
His fingers hovered over the metal.
Outside his window a siren wailed past.
Ryan lowered his hand and stared at the blank phone screen.
Someone was in his head.
And he had no idea who.