A fine mist fell over NeoLuna that evening, washing the neon signs with pearlescent sheens of pink and green. Steam hissed from maintenance grates, curling along corroded walls, as the city's pulse quickened under electric skies. In the labyrinth of back alleys and overhead skyways, traffic drones hummed overhead like distant cicadas. Below, slick sidewalk panels reflected the glow of holo-ads pitching everything from bio-sculpt tattoos to memory-trance vacations.
Twenty years had passed since Arcus Station's final collapse. The breach scarred the sky no longer, but its memory lay buried in black-market tech and whispered prophecies. For most citizens, it was history. For others, it lived in their veins.
Aris Kael liked to think he carried neither mages' blood nor the techno-science of LunaCore in his DNA—but reality told a different story. From the moment he woke each dawn in the rusted bunk above The Fray Cantina, his life had been one gamble after another. Courier jobs for illegal mana dealers. Data drops involving everything from biotech contraband to outlawed programming loops. He skirted the borders of law—and sanity—in search of a better tomorrow he'd never allowed himself to dream of.
Tonight's run had been simple enough: retrieve a pouch of Sonara spores from a bio-hive on the city's underbelly and deliver them to a client in Level Nine's Neon Market. Spore trafficking wasn't glamorous, but it paid double after dark. The Fray's backdoor swung shut on him with a whispered clank, and Aris melted into the alley.
He wore a lightweight jacket lined with reactive nano-fibers that shifted hue to match its environment. Food crumbs in his hair, worn boots, a knapsack slung over one shoulder. Unremarkable enough—until that faint, rhythmic pulsing began.
It started low, a distant thrum under his skin. He flexed his right hand—nothing. Yet the palm tingled, as though a trapped moth was brushing its wings against his palm. Aris shook his hand, wincing as a spark of blue light flickered along his palm lines.
He froze beneath a flickering holo-sign. Eyes darted around. In the glimmering facades of storefronts, dozens of street denizens milled about: netrunners in augmented-reality visors, scrappers gathering scrap metal, corporate wage-slaves in ivory suits twitching at their comm-chimes. No one seemed to notice the subtle glow.
Aris took a deep breath. Must be a trick of the light. Probably a faulty fiber in his jacket interacting with the mag-pulse from that new holo-ad across the street. Nothing to worry about. Yet the pulsing returned, insistent. A single rune, glowing faintly beneath his skin, as if waiting for recognition.
He ducked into the Neon Market's bustling crowd. Aromas of synth-spice noodles and vaporized tobacco battled with the sour stink of raw mana extract. Stallkeepers hawked wares: crystal vials of distilled rain, illegal mana-engrams, black-market arc-wands. Neon coils cast rainbow halos above every rack.
Aris kept his head down. He wove through tourists gawking at the spectacle, pickpockets brushing his shoulder. He imagined the Sonara spores nestled safely in his bag—a pale, bioluminescent fungus that glowed green under UV lights. Valuable, but not so valuable that anyone would go out of their way to kill him for it.
Except: Wardens. LunaCore's corporate enforcers roamed the Market like predatory hawks. Their armor was streamlined, dark as obsidian, with visors that flickered data-trails of every citizen's past and present. They moved in squads of three or four, scanning for genetic outliers, mana criminals, and unlicensed mages.
Aris felt the hairs on his neck rise. He glanced upward to see two Wardens sweeping along the balcony above. Their boots clanged against the metal grating. One pointed toward him. A mechanical hum told Aris they'd pinged his profile—no registered ID, no licensed augments, no known employer. He was a ghost. A desired ghost.
Without thinking, he ducked behind a spice vendor's stall, toppling a row of synth-fungus jars. They shattered against the floor with soft pops. The vendor screamed, hurling curses in broken ID code. Aris slipped through a narrow corridor between stalls, knuckles slick with mushroom goo.
Adrenaline surged. He needed an exit. The Market's outer wall led to the Skyway Bridge—but that would place him out in the open, beneath cameras and overhead drones. The inner catacombs of the Market—service tunnels lined with maintenance pipes—offered a better chance.
He sprinted, clutching his bag. Neon lights overhead warped and melted as he passed. Holo-projections of stage dancers and AI spokes-animals flickered and distorted. The world felt unreal, as if he were inside a prismatic prism that could shatter under stress.
Behind him, the Wardens' metallic voices barked through bullhorns: "Stop! Unregistered citizen! Submit for a biometric scan!"
Aris rounded the corner into a dead end—a closed emergency access hatch. With a curse, he yanked on the handle. It refused. His heart pounded so loudly he feared the Wardens would hear. He pressed his ear to the door—footsteps above. They were close.
He slammed his shoulder against the hatch. It budged a fraction. Another blow and the lock clicked free. He tumbled through just as heavy boots pounded against the bulkhead.
Inside was a narrow shaft, lit by a single flickering red light. Pipes snaked along the ceiling, and dripped occasional steam. The air smelled of ozone and rust. Aris wiped his palm against his jacket—he could still feel that weird spark. The faint glow beneath his skin was stronger now, pulsing in time with his pulse.
He locked the hatch behind him and pressed a sequence on the panel. The door hissed shut. Out of breath, he leaned against cold metal and slid down to a crouch. Through his jacket, the spores clinked softly. He tapped at his palm again—blue light lanced through circuit-like lines that traced a sigil he didn't recognize.
A knot of unease grew in his gut. He'd always believed his life was a matter of choices—take the job or don't, trust your contacts or cut them loose. But if something in him was changing—if he were no longer that scrappy courier, but something else—then every choice might turn back on him.
He shook his head. No time for this. He needed to deliver the spores, get paid, and move on. NeoLuna didn't tolerate hesitation.
He stood, pressed the override to relight the shaft, and started down a spiraling staircase of grated steel. With each step, distant echoes of industrial pumps and clanking gears reached his ears. Somewhere below stirred the heart of the Neon Market's hidden workings: vent fans, recycling processors, waste compacters.
Aris paused at the landing, glancing up. The hatch he'd just escaped from. If the Wardens recognized his biometrics at the door controls, they'd likely tear away the outer panel and blast through. He rubbed his hand, ignoring the tiny heat that bloomed under his palm sigil. His head throbbed.
A low rumble shook the staircase. Pipes rattled. The red bulb overhead flickered and went out, plunging him into semi-darkness. He pressed his jacket's release to life, a warm glow radiating from its lining. As the fabric illuminated, the sigil on his palm pulsed to life—each beat timed to the faint hum of his reactive jacket.
Confusion fought with fear. Had someone tampered with his aug implants? Was this some sort of sabotage? He'd known the job was high-risk, but he'd counted on simply being faster than the Wardens, not becoming a walking anomaly.
He shook off the thought. At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped into a yawning maintenance gallery. Hundreds of pipes converged on a central manifold, where glimpses of greenish mana residue seeped from micro-fissures. The walls were slick with condensation and vapor.
Aris pulled the hood of his jacket up, even though the ambient temperature hovered near freezing. He hefted his knapsack higher on his shoulder and moved between the pipes, following a network of service conduits toward the Market's core control room, where he'd find a service elevator that would bring him back up near Level Nine's main concourse. From there, it was a quick dash to his client's drop point.
He covered ten meters in three strides—then froze. A shape blocked his path: tall, lithe, swathed in a dark trenchcoat that soaked up the jacket's glow. A hood concealed most of the figure's face; beneath it, a single luminescent eye-patch glowed with iridescent code. Battery cells glinted on their belt.
Aris's pulse skyrocketed. Was this a Market security off-duty? A netrunner cornering him for data? He considered ducking back the way he came—but the staircase led directly back to the Wardens. No choice: he straightened, held his bag tighter, and approached.
The figure folded back the hood, revealing a young man with a shock of ebony hair and a pale streak that glowed faintly. His jaw was sharp, lips pressed in a half-smile. Aug plates traced his cheekbone; a neural-interface port peeked at his temple.
"You're Aris Kael," the stranger said, voice smooth like mercury. "Courier?"
Aris stiffened. Not here to identify himself. "Who wants to know?"
The stranger stepped forward, hand raised in mock-surrender. "Relax. I'm not with the Wardens." He pressed two fingers to his eye-patch, and streams of luminescent data scrolled across its surface. "I can see your threat profile: no recorded offenses… except a recent high-risk spore transfer. And something else." He tapped Aris's palm. "That."
Aris looked down, startled. The pulsing sigil shone through his jacket's sleeve. How had this stranger tracked him so precisely? "Stay back," he warned. "Or I'll run."
The stranger laughed softly. "You already did. Twice. Through the Market and down into here. I admire your skill." He offered a hand. "Name's Dax—Dax Morales. But most call me Cipher."
Aris shook his head. "I don't need a guide."
Cipher's one eyebrow arched. "No? Your Warden friends upstairs clearly disagree. But if you're serious about getting off-world—" He flicked his wrist. A holo-map projected between them, flickering with red zones and green lines. "—You'll need a friend in the tunnels. Access codes. Bypass keys. You don't have them, but I do."
Aris's instincts screamed betrayal. Skillfully, he scanned the stranger: no Warden sigil, no corporate markings, no Consulate emblems. Just an aug-smuggler's bag and a self-assured grin. "Why?"
"Because," Cipher said, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I know about that." He tapped Aris's palm again. The sigil pulsed with recognition, then projected a faint lunar symbol into midair. "Whatever you are, you're not like the others. And that makes you interesting."
Aris swallowed. He tightened his grip on the spore bag. If these spores fell into the wrong hands, people would die. Corporate scientists would crush them to extract something even more dangerous. And he—he needed the money, but he didn't need betrayal.
Yet Cipher didn't step closer. He simply observed, as though reading Aris's every micro-expression. "Give me ten minutes. I'll get you codes to the shaft elevator, plus one of my comm-beacons so we can talk if the Wardens get curious." He waved a small device. "Encrypted, untraceable."
Aris glanced back the way he had come. No light from the hatch, no sounds of pursuit—yet he could still hear distant alarms echoing from above. His path out was sealed for now. Cipher's way was open. And that sigil… something in him whispered that he didn't have a choice.
He exhaled. "Fine. Ten minutes."
Cipher smiled, a slow, knowing curve. "Meet me by the manifold pipe three levels down." He tapped a slot on his belt. "I'll disable the nearest pressure valve to cover our tracks. Then, we talk business."
Aris hesitated, then nodded. He stepped aside, letting Cipher pass. The ethereal glow of the sigil in Aris's palm seemed to pulse in relief. Or was it anticipation?
As Cipher drifted through a narrow side tunnel, Aris pressed his back against the manifold wall. He pressed his hand to his palm, feeling the warmth of the rune beneath his skin—vibrant, insistent, full of promise and dread. He closed his eyes for a moment, picturing his cramped room above The Fray Cantina, the broken mirror in which he'd first seen himself as an arrested child, and all the lies he'd told to survive.
Whatever this sigil meant, it had chosen him for a reason. He didn't yet know if that reason would make him a hero or a weapon. But for the first time in his life, he felt something stronger than fear: curiosity.
He exhaled again and followed Cipher's fading footsteps deeper into the Neon Market's hidden veins. Shadows danced on corrugated walls. Steam spurted from cracked pipes. Somewhere in the heart of all this, Aris Kael was about to learn how far the city's brightest lights could throw the darkest shadows—and whether his own strange glow made him the hunted… or the hunter.