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"Stop fighting me, you idiot, or your lungs are going to melt into slag," Nyx’s voice didn't come from the air—it vibrated inside my skull, sharp and mocking.
I slammed my back against the rusted corrugated wall of the alley, my breath coming in ragged, burning hitches. My chest felt like someone had poured molten lead into my veins. Every time I tried to push her out, the heat spiked, searing through my nerves.
"Get... out... of my head," I wheezed, clutching my ribs.
"I can't 'get out' of a fusion bond, Kael. We're stitched together now," she snapped. I could feel her presence shifting, a cold, electric pressure sliding across my consciousness. "And right now, the corporate hit squad is three blocks away and closing. If you keep playing the stubborn hero, you'll be a charred corpse before they even find your wallet."
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking, a faint, iridescent violet glow pulsing beneath my skin. It looked like a circuit board made of blood.
"What the hell did they do to me?"
"They tried to erase you," Nyx whispered, her tone suddenly dropping into something dangerously soft. "But I caught the pieces. Now, give me control of the left arm. Now."
I hesitated. Giving up control felt like handing a stranger the keys to my soul.
"Do it, or die," she hissed.
I let go. The sensation was violent. It wasn't a smooth transition; it was like a physical shove. My left arm suddenly wasn't mine anymore. It snapped up, fingers curling into a claw, the violet glow intensifying until it blinded me.
"Much better," she murmured.
Suddenly, a red laser dot painted my chest. I didn't even have time to gasp before a heavy boot slammed into my stomach, pinning me against the wall. A scavenger—one of the low-tier corporate hounds—sneered down at me, his jaw replaced by a chrome hydraulic hinge.
"Target's leaking light," the scavenger barked into his comms. "Found the glitch. He's barely breathing."
He pressed the muzzle of a shock-pistol into the soft skin under my chin. The metal was freezing, a sharp contrast to the fire in my blood.
"Who paid you to take the fusion?" the scavenger demanded. "The Board doesn't like loose ends, and you're a very loose end, kid."
I spat blood onto his polished chrome jaw. "Go to hell."
"Wrong answer," he grinned, his thumb hovering over the trigger.
Inside my head, Nyx laughed. It was a sound of pure, predatory hunger.
"Kael, darling, let me show you how we do things in the ghost-net," she whispered. "Just close your eyes and stop thinking. For once in your pathetic life, just... let go."
I didn't have a choice. The pressure in my skull peaked, and then the world shifted. I wasn't watching through my eyes anymore; I was seeing through a thousand different angles. The alleyway became a grid of heat signatures and electrical currents.
My body moved before I could even process the thought.
My left hand—Nyx’s hand—shot up with a speed that defied physics. She didn't just grab the scavenger's wrist; she crushed it. The sound of snapping bone and shrieking metal echoed through the alley.
"My turn," Nyx’s voice boomed, not in my head, but through my own vocal cords, distorted and layered with a digital echo.
She ripped the shock-pistol away and jammed it into the scavenger's throat. With a brutal twist, she slammed him face-first into the brick wall. He didn't even have time to scream before she drove the pistol's discharge port into his neck and emptied the cell.
Blue electricity surged. The scavenger jerked once, his cybernetics sparking and popping, and then he went limp.
I slammed back into my own consciousness, gasping for air, my muscles twitching from the aftershock. I looked at the dead man, then at my hand. The violet glow was fading, but my skin felt tight, like it was being stretched over something that didn't belong there.
"You're a monster," I breathed, sliding down the wall to sit in the filth of the gutter.
"I'm an upgrade," Nyx countered, her voice returning to that playful, arrogant lilt. "But let's be real—you're the one who's melting. Look at your wrist, Kael."
I looked. The skin was peeling in thin, translucent strips, revealing a shimmering, holographic lattice underneath. It wasn't a wound. It was a replacement.
"The fusion is unstable," she said, her voice losing the playfulness. "Your biological cells are rejecting my code. In forty-eight hours, your nervous system is going to treat me like a virus and incinerate itself to get rid of me. Which means you'll be a very expensive pile of ash."
"There has to be a way to stop it," I snapped, trying to stand up. My legs buckled, and I crashed back down.
"There is. But you're not going to like it," Nyx whispered. I could feel her presence leaning in, almost like a physical touch against my mind. "We need cores. High-tier Blood-Bond cores. The kind only the corporate elites carry in their chests. We steal them, I integrate their stability, and you get to keep breathing."
"You want me to hunt the people who just tried to kill me?"
"I want us to survive," she replied. "And honestly? I want to see the look on Victor's face when the 'glitch' he threw away comes back to eat his heart. Do we have a deal, or should I start picking out your coffin?"
I glared at the empty air. I hated her. I hated every digital fiber of her existence. But the heat in my chest was returning, a slow burn that promised agony.
"Fine," I rasped. "We hunt."
"Good boy," she purred. "Now get up. We have a lead. There's a mid-tier executive hiding in the Neon District, playing with a core that's way too big for his ego. He's the appetizer."
I forced myself up, leaning against the damp wall. My vision blurred for a second, and a HUD—a heads-up display—flickered into existence across my retinas. It was a map of the city, pulsing with gold and red markers.
At the top of the screen, a countdown timer began to tick.
47:59:59... 47:59:58...
"What is this?" I asked.
"Your expiration date," Nyx replied. "And look, a little bonus for you."
She flicked a window open in my vision. It was a bounty board from the Deep Net. My own face was staring back at me, grainy and distorted, with a price tag that made my stomach flip.
*TARGET: KAEL. STATUS: ROGUE. BOUNTY: 500,000 CREDITS. DEAD OR DISMANTLED.*
"Great," I muttered. "Everyone in the city wants my head."
"Actually," Nyx whispered, "they want the thing inside your head. And trust me, they'll pay a lot more if they can get me out of you while you're still screaming."
I started to walk, my boots splashing through oily puddles. Every step felt like a gamble. I didn't know who to trust, and the only person who knew how to save me was a ghost who enjoyed my pain.
As I reached the end of the alley, a figure stepped out from the shadows. He was wearing a heavy, tattered cloak that smelled of ozone and old blood. He leaned on a cane made of repurposed carbon fiber, his face hidden beneath a wide brim.
I froze. I knew that gait. I knew that smell.
"You always did have a habit of getting yourself killed, Kael," the man said, his voice a gravelly rasp that sent a chill down my spine.
I stepped back, my hand instinctively reaching for a knife I no longer had.
"Jax?" I whispered, my voice trembling. "That's impossible. I saw the building collapse. I saw you go down with the rest of the squad."
Jax stepped into the dim light of a flickering neon sign. Half of his face was a mass of scar tissue and crude, clicking implants, but the eye that remained was unmistakable.
"Turns out," Jax said, a grim smile twisting his ruined lips, "I'm a very hard man to bury."