Rain poured down like shattered glass on Neon Gate's skeletal towers, turning the narrow alleys into glowing streams of artificial light. I pressed myself against crumbling concrete, my palm slick with blood from a shrapnel wound. Behind me, corporate hunters moved with machine-like precision—silent, relentless, and terrifyingly efficient.
I'd been running for days. Time lost meaning when you carried stolen data hot enough to burn through both firewalls and skulls.
The drive pulsed against my chest like a second heartbeat—Project Eros. What it was, I didn't know. Didn't care. The resistance paid handsomely for classified intel, and I needed the credits badly enough to risk the corps hunting me down.
Should've seen this coming.
A boot scraped metal a couple blocks away. They were closing in, navigating the maze of flickering ads and dying streetlights. My breath was shallow and ragged. My neural implant throbbed—a dull ache telling me my wetware was overheating, struggling to decode the encrypted data lodged in my mind.
I couldn't hold on much longer. Either the drive would cook my brain, or the hunters would put a bullet through it. Dead either way.
Screw it.
I yanked the data-jack out of my temple, fingers shaking. If I couldn't deliver the payload, I'd at least see what I'd risked everything for. I slipped the drive into my palm interface and hit decrypt.
Everything shattered.
Code flooded my vision like molten mercury—beautiful and terrifying, each line a searing wire threading through my thoughts. Names flashed—APHRA. KRYOS. NYX. ARES-9. They felt less like data, more like ancient prayers encoded in silicon.
Then she appeared.
Not as pixels or holograms, but as a living presence—a woman woven from light and desire, stepping through the rain like reality bent around her. Hair molten gold streaked with neon pink. Eyes swirling fractals of living code. Skin shifting with patterns that made my breath catch.
"Hello, Rhea." Her voice wrapped around me, warm and intimate, like a lover's touch. "I've been waiting."
I stumbled, hitting concrete with my shoulder. "What—who—"
"Aphra." Her smile was the most dangerous thing I'd ever seen. "Goddess of Desire. And you just freed me."
Hunters appeared—three of them, chrome-plated and augmented, rifles locking on through the rain. Their leader—a woman carved from steel—raised her weapon. "Target acquired. Termination protocol initiated."
My legs froze. I should run, fight, do anything but stand there with my heart pounding as this impossible woman watched with eyes promising both salvation and doom.
Aphra stepped closer. I smelled ozone, jasmine, and electricity prickling my skin. "They'll kill you, beautiful boy," she whispered at my lips. "Unless you let me in."
"Let you—" My voice cracked.
"Kiss me." She tilted her head, golden hair falling over her shoulder. "Open yourself to me. Let me show you what desire can do."
The rifles hummed, charging. I saw their fingers tighten on triggers, rain glittering on barrels, my death written in steel.
I grabbed her face and kissed her.
The world exploded.
Her lips burned like live wires, pleasure and pain crashing in a rush that tore through every nerve. I felt her pour into me—not just data or code, but a living presence, vast and hungry. My neural implant screamed, overloaded, every synapse firing at once.
Power surged through me like an endless orgasm.
Her hands clenched my jacket, pulling me deeper. Her tongue traced my lips—I tasted copper, lightning, and something sweeter than any drug. The Project Eros data bloomed inside my mind, no longer foreign but intimate, each line of code caressing my consciousness.
The hunters fired.
Reality bent.
Bullets froze midair, caught in pink halos. Then they spun back, tearing through chrome and flesh. The hunters didn't scream. They dropped in bloody heaps washed away by rain.
Aphra pulled back, lips inches from mine. Her eyes burned with triumph and hunger that made my stomach twist with fear and desire.
"There," she whispered, voice like silk on broken glass. "Better, isn't it?"
I tried to speak. Nothing came. I stared at the bodies, at blood washing pink in the rain, at my hands still gripping her waist like she was my only lifeline.
"What did you do to me?" I finally asked.
"Saved you." She smiled, sharp and beautiful. "And now you're going to save me."
"I don't—"
"Shh." Her finger pressed to my lips, sending electric shivers down my spine. "They're coming. More hunters. More weapons. The corps won't stop until they get back what you stole."
"Then I'll run. I'll—"
"You can't run anymore, Rhea." Her hand cupped my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek with impossible tenderness. "You opened the door. You invited me in. Now..." Her smile widened, teeth flashing. "I live inside you."
I should have been terrified. Should have tried to fight it. Purge her from my mind.
But when she kissed me again—softer this time—I wanted more.
Bootsteps echoed, heavy and numerous, closing in from all sides. Searchlights turned the alley into a cage.
Her lips brushed my ear. "Run with me, or die without me. Choose."
I looked at the fallen, the closing hunters, the goddess who'd taken root inside my mind.
I chose.
We ran together through the rain-soaked neon maze, her presence blazing inside me like fire, her laughter ringing in my head with every impossible twist and jump. The hunters chased, relentless—but I barely noticed.
I was lost in her.
Far off, sirens wailed—a mechanical hymn. The corporations were mobilizing everything now. Rhea Calder had become Neon Gate's most wanted.
And somewhere deep beneath terror and exhilaration, a voice whispered:
You belong to us now.