The rain didn't reach this high up.
Kai stood on the grav-platform's edge, watching The Grid disappear beneath a dense layer of silver vapor. Above him, the floating spires of the Cloud District rose like glass-and-chrome needles, lit by the glow of corporate logos.
Cloud District >> The uppermost tier of Neo-Tokyo: corporate strongholds suspended above the smog, where the wealthy elite trade memories like currency and live apart from the lower city
Everything here was clean. Too clean. No flicker in the holo-billboards, no graffiti on the transit tubes, no smell of coolant leaking from vents. Even the air carried the faint, sterile tang of chemical filtration — perfect for making you forget there was a world below.
A soft chime sounded in his neural feed. PRIVATE CHANNEL REQUEST – ANONYMOUS.
Kai didn't answer immediately. The last time an anonymous client had reached out, he'd ended the job bleeding in an alley with a broken extractor and an empty wallet.
He accepted anyway.
The feed shifted into a voice-only connection, smooth and modulated.
"Mr. Nakamura. You take commissions."
"Depends on the pay," Kai said, leaning against the rail. "And whether the job keeps me alive."
"You'll receive twice your standard rate," the voice said. "And… let's say there will be no official record of this interaction. No witnesses. No trail."
"A ghost job," Kai said flatly. "Those don't exist."
Ghost Job >> An untraceable contract — no digital record, no witnesses, no payout logs — designed so even the corporation's own systems can't confirm it ever happened
A pause. "They do for people with the right connections."
A location ping appeared on his HUD — a private suite in the Aurelius Spire, one of MemoCorp's luxury towers.
Aurelius Spire >> MemoCorp's primary headquarters in the Cloud District — a floating arcology and data fortress where the corporation stores its most guarded memory archives
Of course, Kai thought. If you're going to get yourself killed, might as well do it in style.
---
He made the trip by Mag-Tram, passing through two biometric checkpoints and a retinal scan that returned "restrictedclearance." The security AI didn't challenge him — meaning someone had already paid for his passage. That in itself made his skin prickle.
Mag-Tram >> A high-speed transit system that uses magnetic levitation to move across Neo-Tokyo's tiers, linking the Grid, Forgotten District, and Cloud District with ruthless efficiency and constant surveillance
The suite door opened before he knocked.
She stood framed by the skyline — a tall figure draped in a floor-length white coat that shimmered faintly in the ambient light. Her hair was the same shade of white, cut sharp at the chin, and her eyes…
Kai froze for a fraction of a second. Her eyes weren't natural. They were memory lenses — polished spheres of reactive crystal, each one swirling with faint images. Faces, landscapes, fragments of moments, all rotating slowly like galaxies.
Memory Lenses >> Specialized AR contact lenses that overlay memory streams, letting the wearer analyze, record, or replay fragments directly within their vision
The upper-tier elite sometimes displayed their wealth by wearing curated loops of their favorite experiences. But these… these weren't curated. They were raw.
"Mr. Nakamura," she said, her voice smooth but distant, as if speaking through water. "Do you know who I am?"
"Not unless you're in the habit of introducing yourself to thieves," Kai said.
Her lips curved faintly. "Consider me an interested party. I need a memory retrieved from a secure mindscape. You will leave nothing else disturbed. There will be no contact with the target outside the mind."
Kai folded his arms. "And the part where my brain doesn't get fried?"
"You'll be provided with protection." She stepped aside to reveal a sleek black case resting on the low table. Inside lay a neural stabilizer — high-end, upper-tier issue. "You'll use this. And when you're done, it will be yours to keep."
Neural Stabilizer >> A medical-tech implant or portable device that regulates unstable neural activity, preventing overload from excessive memory manipulation or Cognitive Energy surges
He didn't touch it yet. "Why the secrecy?"
Her gaze flickered — and for an instant, one of her memory lenses displayed a battlefield. Smoke. Fire. People running. Then it vanished into the swirl again.
"This job does not exist," she said simply. "Because if it did, certain corporations would… interfere. And I prefer my assets unburned."
Kai caught the choice of words — assets, not people. He didn't ask if she saw him as one of those assets.
"Who's the target?"
"A man named Dr. Isao Kurogane. Upper-tier scientist. He keeps his most valuable research locked in an Echo Vault — a mindscape that reacts to intruders by feeding them false memories until they can't tell which is real."
Echo Vault >> A classified memory archive where corporations store "Echoes" — memories so vivid and emotionally charged that they generate lingering psychic imprints, capable of warping reality or granting immense Cognitive Energy to whoever harnesses them
Kai's jaw tightened. Echo Vaults were nightmare territory. Get lost in one, and you might wake up thinking you were a schoolteacher in a fishing village for the rest of your life.
She must have noticed his hesitation. "You'll have my coordinates if you succeed. Payment will be transferred in full, no delays."
Kai stared at her for a long moment. Everything about this screamed setup — but double pay and a neural stabilizer were things he couldn't pass up. Not with his CE reserves dropping faster every job.
"All right," he said finally. "But I pick my own exit route."
"Agreed." She turned back toward the skyline. "Departure in one hour. Bring only what you can carry."
Kai left without looking back. Something told him if he did, one of those swirling lenses would be watching him.
---
One Hour Later –
Private Transit Tube, Cloud District
Private Transit Tube >> An exclusive high-speed transport system in the Cloud District, reserved for corporate executives and elites, using sealed vacuum tunnels to travel between floating platforms without touching the public Mag-Tram lines
Kai rode in silence, the neural stabilizer case in his lap. Outside, the tube's transparent walls showed the Cloud District from a different angle — spires vanishing into the sky above, The Grid invisible below. The sound of the mag-rails was muted, almost too quiet, as if the city itself wanted to hide this path.
He ran the job in his head. Entry point: Dr. Kurogane's residence, most likely shielded by corporate-grade memory firewalls. Once inside, navigate the Echo Vault without tripping the false memory chains.
Memory Firewall >> A defensive construct coded into the brain's neural interface, designed to detect and block unauthorized memory intrusion by overwhelming the intruder with false data and psychic backlash
The problem was, with ghost jobs, exit often wasn't guaranteed.
As the tube slid into the docking bay, he checked his CE gauge: 78%, boosted from a rest cycle. No combat in the last twelve hours. That would help.
The bay door opened onto a marble platform, where two white-uniformed attendants waited without speaking. They led him through a corridor lined with holo-screens — but the screens weren't ads. They were memories.
Each one played a different scene, looping every few seconds. A child's birthday party. A desert caravan at sunset. A man proposing to someone on a rainy street. They weren't linked, weren't curated. Random.
Kai glanced at one as he passed — and felt a flicker in his head. The scene tried to pull him in. He looked away fast, heart rate spiking.
The attendants stopped at a wide door. "Inside," one said, their voice flat.
The room beyond was dim, lit only by the shifting glow of more memory screens. In the center stood a single reclining chair surrounded by a lattice of neural conduits.
Lattice of Neural Conduits >> An internal network of interconnected memory pathways, where Cognitive Energy flows between fragments; skilled hackers can navigate this lattice to extract, alter, or weaponize specific experiences
Kai recognized it instantly. An injectionpod — direct CE link into a target's mindscape. No physical entry needed, but the risks…
Injection Pod >> A sealed medical/technological chamber used to implant or overwrite memories directly into the subject's neural system, bypassing natural resistance and flooding them with pre-programmed Cognitive Energy patterns
From the far side of the room, the Client in White appeared again, her coat catching the scattered light. "Dr. Kurogane is asleep. The link will be clean. You have thirty minutes before his conscious mind begins resisting."
Kai set the stabilizer into the pod's console. "And if I need more than thirty?"
"You won't," she said simply.
The attendants began attaching the neural leads. Kai leaned back into the chair, exhaling slowly.
Neural Leads >> Flexible bio-tech cables that connect a user's nervous system to external devices, allowing direct transfer of memories, Cognitive Energy, or neural data
"Remember," she said, her voice low, "you are not there to change anything. You are there to take one thing, and leave everything else untouched."
The last lead clicked into place. The pod hummed.
The memory screens around the room blurred, their images running together into a single swirl of color.
Then the world dissolved — and Kai opened his eyes somewhere else.