The first MemoCorp agent came through the doorway like a shadow given armor.
Their blank visor reflected the dim clinic lights, hiding their eyes, their thoughts. The disruptor rifle in their hands purred softly — a high-frequency whine that prickled at the edges of Kai's skull.
He didn't wait. He shoved the MemoryOverload spike into his neural jack.
The spike detonated inside the clinic like an invisible thunderclap. Light bent around the walls, flickering between the dull, dusty room and half-formed flashes of someone else's trauma — a sinking car, a mother's scream, the choking taste of smoke. The agents staggered, their rifles lowering instinctively as their own minds fought to separate illusion from reality.
Kai was already moving.
He slid across the counter, kicked a chair into the lead agent's chest, and yanked the disruptor from their grip. Before the others could recover, he was at the back door. The lockdown shimmer fought him for half a second before shattering under the spike's residual burn.
He hit the alley, boots splashing through a thin river of rainwater and oil.
Behind him, the agents were shaking it off. He had maybe seven seconds before they came through — and once they had a neural fix on him, they wouldn't lose it again.
The alley opened into a street lit by the sick glow of The Grid. Here, billboards were mounted at street level so you couldn't ignore them — adverts for Memory Parlors, NeuralCafes, and ExtractionSpecials pulsed in every color the human eye could process and a few it technically couldn't.
Kai cut through a crowd clustered around a sidewalk vendor. The man behind the cart wasn't selling food — he was selling MemoryCards, small glass chips embedded in coin-sized titanium discs. Labels glowed faintly on each one:
First Kiss – ¥900
Skydiving – ¥1,300
Guilt-Free Sleep – ¥4,500
The vendor eyed Kai's pace but didn't comment. Running was normal in The Grid. So was dying.
Kai's HUD pinged:
SIGNAL LOCK INCOMING – 38 METERS.
He ducked into a narrow service tunnel and took the stairs three at a time until he reached a basement two levels down. The air was warmer here, heavy with the scent of ozone and overheated servers.
Rows of booths lined the walls, each one occupied. People sat slumped in worn chairs, neural cables linking their jacks to the wall units. Their eyes twitched behind closed lids as borrowed memories played in their heads.
Kai stepped past them to the counter at the far end. The man behind it looked up — thin, bald, eyes like old metal. He was more machine than not, his jaw clicking faintly as it moved.
"Kai Nakamura," the man said, his voice processed through a cheap modulator. "I thought you were dead."
"Not today," Kai replied. He reached into his coat and pulled out the containment sleeve. The shard inside pulsed red against the semi-transparent material.
The man's eyes narrowed. "That's not a corporate standard shard."
"It's what you hired me for."
"I didn't hire you for anything this… noisy."
"Then you shouldn't have sent me to steal from someone who booby-traps their own trauma."
The man stared for a long moment, then slid a scanner across the counter. "Let's see it."
Kai dropped the shard onto the glass plate. The scanner hummed. Data flickered briefly in Kai's HUD:
Cognitive Energy Density – 987% of baseline
Emotional Frequency – Unknown
Integrity – Stable
The man leaned back, unimpressed. "Lot of power in there, but no one's going to buy something they can't decode. What do you want for it?"
"Six months' CE credits," Kai said.
The man laughed, a static-crackling sound. "Two weeks."
"Four months," Kai countered.
"Two weeks and a Memory Card."
Kai exhaled slowly. "Fine. But the card better be clean."
The man reached under the counter and brought up a small steel box. Inside was a single Memory Card, etched with a serial number that had been deliberately blurred out. "From before the audits," he said. "No corporate fingerprints."
Kai took it without checking — if the man was lying, he'd find out the first time he slotted it.
The man slid a thin CE credit strip across the counter. It was cool to the touch, faintly warm in the center — the feel of stored emotion ready to be metabolized. He slid it into the slot at the base of his neural jack, and the faint ache behind his eyes eased immediately.
"Pleasure doing business," the man said, already looking past him. "Now get out before you bring trouble down here."
---
Back on the street, Kai kept moving. The Grid was alive tonight — noise, neon, and the constant thrum of ten thousand private deals. Memory addicts huddled in alleyways, jacking cheap, looped joyrides into their skulls. Corporate drones strode past without looking, their minds walled off behind shimmering CE shields.
Kai paused under a flickering streetlight and pulled the Memory Card from his coat. For a moment, he considered slotting it then and there. But the red shard's mystery in his mind stopped him.
That memory he'd seen in the vault — the boy in the school uniform — wasn't just a fragment. It was a piece of him.
And he had no idea how it had ended up in another man's mind.
---
He made it two more blocks before his HUD flashed again.
HOSTILE PING – UNKNOWN SOURCE.
This time, the signal wasn't coming from behind him. It was above.
Kai's head tilted back just in time to see a figure step off the edge of a three-story rooftop. They dropped without hesitation, landing in a crouch barely three meters away.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, with a neural jack that glowed faint blue against dark skin. His left arm was cybernetic from shoulder to wrist, the plating scratched but functional.
"Kai Nakamura," the man said. His voice was deep, unhurried, but there was something dangerous underneath it. "You've got something that doesn't belong to you."
Kai's hand twitched toward the disruptor rifle strapped to his back. "And you are?"
"Marcus Rivera," the man said. "People call me Echo."
Kai's HUD tagged him instantly:
MEMORY GUARD – HIGH RESISTANCE CLASS
Perfect.
Kai smirked faintly. "You're here for the shard?"
"I'm here to make sure it doesn't get into the wrong hands."
"Then you should've been faster."
Echo's eyes narrowed. "I am faster."
He moved — one second standing still, the next closing the distance like gravity had just decided to help him. His cybernetic arm came up in a wide arc.
Kai ducked, the swing passing just above his head with enough force to rattle the streetlamp beside them. He brought the disruptor rifle up, fired a short burst — but the rounds flattened against a faint ripple in the air around Echo's head.
Memory Guard shielding.
Kai shifted tactics instantly, slinging the rifle behind him and flicking the extraction cable to life. He feinted left, then drove the cable toward Echo's temple — not enough to yank a memory, just enough to scramble short-term recall and buy him space.
The cable hit the ripple and hissed, throwing sparks. Echo grinned. "You're not the first thief to try that."
Kai pulled back. "I'm the first one to succeed."
They circled each other, rain beginning to fall harder, turning the neon streets into slick rivers of color. Kai's CE gauge sat at 29%. If he dragged this out, he'd burn out before Echo even broke a sweat.
He needed an edge — and he knew exactly where to get it.
He fished the Memory Card from his pocket, slotted it into the base of his jack, and triggered the link.
The rush hit instantly. Warm sunlight, the sound of ocean waves, the smell of salt and citrus — a perfect summer day he'd never actually lived. His CE surged to 54%, and with it, his reflexes sharpened.
Echo's smile faltered. "Boost card? Risky."
Kai lunged. "Only if I lose."
---