The coordinates led Kenji deeper into the bowels of Neo-Yokohama, to a place where the city's glossy, corporate skin had completely sloughed away. This was the Rust Belt, a graveyard of forgotten industry. The air here was a thick, chemical miasma that burned the lungs, and the constant, groaning pressure of the metropolis above was replaced by an eerie, dripping silence, broken only by the skittering of augmented vermin.
His head was a pounding drum, each heartbeat sending a fresh wave of pain and exhaustion through him. The afterimage of the cerulean blade was seared onto his retinas, a ghost limb he could almost feel. He kept flexing his empty hand, half-expecting the energy to spark back to life. Nothing. He was hollowed out, running on fumes and fear.
The message's final point was a derelict wastewater processing plant, a cathedral of corroded pipes and stagnant pools glowing with faint bioluminescence. It was the perfect trap. Every shadow seemed to hold a Kusanagi death squad.
"If you want to live past tonight…" the message had said.
Swallowing the metallic taste of dread, Kenji slipped through a fissure in a chain-link fence and into the cavernous main chamber. The only light came from a single, flickering terminal screen, casting long, dancing shadows. A figure was silhouetted against it, slender and utterly still.
"Stop there," a voice echoed through the chamber. It was young, female, and filtered through a light vocal modulator that stripped it of any identifiable emotion. "Place any weapons on the ground. Not that you seem to need any."
Kenji's eyes adjusted. The figure was a girl, probably no older than him. She wore a patched-up enviro-suit two sizes too big, its hood pulled up. One of her eyes was a standard, glowing cybernetic optic, scanning him with a faint whir. The other was startlingly human, sharp and assessing. Wires ran from a port on her neck to the terminal she was working on.
"Akari?" Kenji's voice was a ragged croak.
"Maybe." The human eye narrowed. "You're not what I expected. Your bio-signature is… messy. Fluctuating. Like a scrambled signal. And you're clean. No corp tags, no gang markers, no significant cyberware. How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"The light show. The energy signature that just spiked so high it blew out sensors across three sectors and sent Kusanagi's automated security net into a frenzy. They're calling it a 'localized energy anomaly.' I call it a very bad day for you."
So she had seen it. Not just the aftermath, but the event itself. Panic surged in him. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Save it," she snapped, her fingers flying across a holographic keyboard that materialized in front of her. "I'm not Corp. If I were, you'd already be a pink mist. I'm a… concerned third party. Your little outburst is the most interesting thing to happen in this sector in a decade. And it's screwed up six of my ongoing operations."
A holographic screen flickered to life between them, displaying a dizzying array of data. Security footage from a dozen angles showed the alleyway. It was blurry, distorted by the EM pulse, but the final moments were clear: the guard raising the missile pod, Kenji's desperate lunge, the blinding blue spear of energy, the explosion.
Watching it from the outside was surreal. It looked like something out of a high-budget sim. It didn't look like him.
"What are you?" Akari asked, and this time, the clinical curiosity in her voice was tinged with something else. Awe? Fear?
"I'm nobody," Kenji said, the truth of it crushing. "I was just doing a job. It went wrong. They were waiting for me."
"The chip," Akari said, more to herself than him. She zoomed in on the security feed, enhancing the moment Kenji palmed the data-chip. "Of course. They weren't after you. They were baiting a trap for the Yakuza. You were just the unlucky mook who tripped the wire. But then you…" She gestured at the frozen image of the explosion.
Kenji's mind reeled. A trap. He was collateral damage. His life had been upended because he'd walked into the wrong place at the wrong time.
"The chip," Akari demanded. "Do you still have it?"
Numbly, Kenji pulled it from his pocket. It was simple, unmarked.
"Toss it here."
He did. She caught it and slotted it into a reader on her wrist. Her cybernetic eye flickered with rapid data streams. After a moment, she let out a low whistle. "Oh, you are in deep. This isn't Yakuza turf data. This is a personnel manifest. For a Kusanagi black-site transport. Routes, schedules, security codes. This is why they scrambled a wet-work team. You didn't just trip their wire, you stole their playbook."
She pulled the chip out and crushed it under her heel. "Now it's gone. But the problem remains. They saw what you did. They won't stop until they have you, or what's left of you, in a lab."
The finality in her voice was terrifying. There was no going back. No fading into the shadows again. He was marked.
"Why did you help me?" Kenji asked.
"I told you. You screwed up my operations. But…" she paused, her human eye studying him again. "A variable this big changes everything. Kusanagi's security net is in chaos. They're pulling assets from all over the city to find you. That creates… opportunities. For me. You're a problem, but you might also be a tool."
"A tool?"
"A distraction. A very loud, very flashy distraction." A grim smile touched her lips. "You need to stay alive. I need a chaotic variable. Our interests align. For now."
Before Kenji could respond, Akari's head snapped up. Her cybernetic eye whirred, focusing on the ceiling. "We've got company. Not Corp. Their net is still down. Scavengers. They must have followed the energy signature too. Dumber than Corp, but just as deadly."
The sound of heavy boots on metal grates echoed through the chamber. Rough voices called out to each other. A lot of them.
"What do we do?" Kenji whispered, adrenaline cutting through his exhaustion.
"We?" Akari snorted, disconnecting her wires from the terminal. "This is your mess. I'm a ghost. I don't exist." She began to melt back into the shadows. "Show me what you can do, Psy-Blade. If you want my help, prove you're worth the trouble."
And just like that, she was gone, vanishing into a maintenance shaft he hadn't even noticed.
Kenji was alone. Again.
The first Scavenger dropped down from a gantry above, a hulking brute with a crude hydraulic claw for an arm and a shotgun welded together from scrap. He grinned, revealing filed-down metal teeth. "Well, look what we found here. The source of all the noise. Kusanagi will pay a fortune for you, alive or in pieces."
More figures emerged from the darkness, a gang of maybe ten, all armed with homemade brutality. They fanned out, cutting off his escape routes. Their eyes were fixed on him, a payday on two legs.
Kenji backed against a cold, damp wall. The static hum in his head was returning, a faint buzz beneath the pounding of his heart. He was tired, cornered, and angry. Angry at the Corps, angry at the Yakuza, angry at Akari for leaving him, and furious at this… this *thing* inside him that had ruined his life.
The lead Scavenger raised his shotgun. "Nothing to say? Maybe I'll just take a leg first. Slow you down."
The fear was still there, cold and sharp. But now it was being forged in the furnace of his anger. He thought of the alley. The feeling of the blade forming. Not from fear. From *will*.
He focused on the anger, on the desperate need to survive. He clenched his fist and *pushed*.
It wasn't the controlled spear of light from before. It was a raw, uncontrolled eruption. A wave of cerulean energy, more like a shockwave than a blade, burst from him. It didn't cut; it *slammed* into the advancing Scavengers.
The force was immense. It threw them off their feet, sending them crashing into pipes and walls. Tools and weapons clattered to the ground. The lights throughout the facility flickered and died, plunging the chamber into near-total darkness, save for the fading afterglow of the psychic burst and the dim red emergency strips on the walls.
Silence.
Kenji stood panting, his entire arm numb. He hadn't formed a blade. He had unleashed a bomb.
In the eerie red gloom, he saw the Scavengers stirring, groaning. They weren't dead, but they were dazed and injured. He had a window.
He didn't wait. He turned and ran, stumbling through the darkness, following the path Akari had taken. As he fled, a single, blinking message appeared on the terminal screen she had been using, visible only for a second before it too died.
Acknowledged. Asset shows significant potential. Proceeding to Phase 2. Initiate 'Clean Slate' protocol.
High above, in the sealed office of a Kusanagi Corp executive tower, a man in an impeccably tailored suit watched the same chaotic security feed. He didn't flinch at the explosion. He simply steepled his fingers.
"The anomaly?" he asked, his voice calm.
"Unaccounted for, Director Tanaka," a subordinate replied from a comms unit. "The Scavenger party was neutralized. Our net is still compromised. We've lost him."
Director Tanaka allowed himself a small, cold smile. "No. We haven't lost him. We've identified him. A spark in the darkness." He turned to look out over the glittering, rain-swept cityscape. "Find the data-thief, Akari. She will lead us to him. And prepare the Psy-Hounds. It's time to leash this new weapon."