The rain hissed against the cracked pavement, flowed down the gutters, and gathered in the same puddles that had been there for years. The city looked washed out — as if someone had taken all the color and left it to drown.
Aiden sat on the edge of a broken bench, half under a flickering streetlight, watching the light blink on and off. He was holding a protein drink, the kind labeled "balanced formula for modern diets." It was gray, bland, and technically could be counted as food. He took a sip, grimaced, and muttered:
"Tastes like shit."
The city didn't care — not about the drink, and certainly not about him. It just kept breathing — towers humming in the distance, maglevs sliding like ghosts across wet tracks, and the air filled with drones displaying ads no one listened to.
A woman's hologram appeared on a nearby wall, smiling a little too wide.
ECLIPSE DIVE — Start Fresh.
Her eyes tracked him as he raised the bottle in a mock toast.
"Cheers, sweetheart."
People said Eclipse Dive was the next revolution — a neural world where your power and status came from your emotions. Real feelings, not artificial mood patches or serotonin loops.
It sounded stupid. Then again, everything did when you didn't feel anything.
The doctors had told him it was called emotional disassociation. Some neural glitch, they said. A side effect of the trauma treatment that was supposed to make things better. They'd burned out the fear, the grief, the pain. Also, apparently, everything else that made him human.
Now there was just silence.
Sometimes he thought he'd gotten used to it. Other times, he wondered if that was just an excuse he told himself to make him feel better.
He looked up at the rain, blinking through the neon haze. Across the street, an old billboard was flickering — showing some happy couple laughing at nothing over dinner. The slogan changed every few seconds. "Taste Emotion," "Own Your Resonance," "Eclipse Dive — Where You Matter."
He snorted. "Yeah, sure."
The world was obsessed with feeling happy, accomplished. They wanted to matter. Aiden just wanted to feel anything. He sighed and checked his wristband:
[Eclipse Dive Neural Interface — Order Confirmed — Delivery: 9AM Tomorrow]
It was a terrible idea. But so was staying alive when you couldn't even feel anything.
His apartment was what you'd expect from someone who gave up — one room, one chair, one mirror, and one bed. A single plant on the window sill, dead for months, but still there. No one bothered to get rid of it.
He dropped his jacket on the floor and sat on the bed, staring at the dead plant. Its leaves were curled in on themselves, brittle as ash, Somehow it still clung to the window sill. A joke no one was laughing at.
He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the stubble scraping his palm. The mirror across the room caught his reflection: lean, pale, and a little too hollow in the cheeks. His hair had grown out unevenly, dark and messy. Eyes, the color of washed-out slate stared back at him. They looked like they belonged to somebody else.
Aiden used to be stronger. Not bulky — but wiry, fast. Now he just looked like a kid who hadn't eaten any food in months. He tugged at his shirt collar. The collarbone stuck out like a blade. It wasn't ugly, but it certainly didn't look healthy.
He turned away from the mirror.
***
When the knock came the next morning, he was already awake. He hadn't slept much. Even with the combined ambience of heavy rain and thick neon haze, he still could barely sleep.
He opened the door to find a delivery drone hovering at eye level, humming quietly. A sleek black case rested in its clawed grip.
[Eclipse Dive Neural Interface — Model X3]
"Right on time," he muttered.
The drone scanned his wristband, chirped once, and dropped the case into his hands before gliding off into the mist.
It was heavier than he expected. The surface was smooth and cold, embossed with the company's logo — a stylized eclipse. He pressed the latch, and the case opened with a hiss of sterile air.
Inside was the neural link crown. Not a headset. Not a helmet. A crown. Thin arcs of silver laced with black crystal, faint blue light pulsing like a heartbeat. It looked expensive. Almost disgustingly so.
On the inside of the lid, a line of text glowed softly:
Once installed, this interface cannot be transferred or removed. Permanent neural bonding required.
Aiden whistled under his breath.
"Till death do us apart."
He set the case on the table and stared at it for a while. Permanent. That word made this situation a lot more serious, even for someone who didn't feel much. Once he bonded with this thing, no one else could use it. It wasn't temporary. It wasn't a toy.
The company's ads had called it "exclusive immersion." The forums called it "a neural tattoo." He ran a thumb over the etched eclipse symbol, then reached for the crown. It was lighter than it looked. The metal was weirdly warm, as though it had been waiting for him.
He turned it in his hands.
"This is it… No going back," he said quietly.
The instructions were simple. He sat on the bed, pressed the crown against the ports behind his ears, and waited. It clicked into place with a soft, almost organic sound. A small jolt raced down his spine. Not pain — more like a shiver born out of anticipation.
A panel of text appeared across his vision:
[Neural Interface Detected.]
[Bonding Sequence Initiated.]
[Warning: Permanent Installation. Removal Not Possible.]
[Confirm? Y/N?]
"Yes"
Light bled into the edges of the room, subtle at first, then bright enough to paint the dead plant in pale blue. He felt a flutter in his chest, barely. The crown tightened, then melted into his skin. The light faded.
[Bond Complete]
[Welcome, Aiden Vale.]
He exhaled slowly, a small, uncertain breath. His vision steadied.
Then the world broke.
The air shimmered like heat haze, bending light around him until the edges of his apartment began to melt away. The walls dripped into bright colors. The ceiling peeled back like silk. Everything — his bed, his hands, the dead plant by the window — dissolved into cascading shards of light that floated upward, weightless.
Aiden blinked, and the room was gone.
He was now standing in an ocean of glass. Not water — glass — stretching infinitely in every direction, reflecting a sky that didn't exist. Above him hung a sun, black and blinding, surrounded by slow rings of orange flame. Below, those same rings rippled across the glass like echoing shockwaves, lighting up faint patterns that looked like circuitry, or maybe constellations — he couldn't decide which.
He turned. The horizon folded in on itself. Distant towers made of silver strings rose and fell like waves. In the distance, threads of light twisted together, forming enormous, luminous veins that pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
A voice came from nowhere — and everywhere. Calm, measured, and too human to be AI.
[Connection Established.]
[Welcome To The Nexus.]
The sound wasn't heard so much as felt. Each word vibrated through him, settling in the bones behind his ears.
[Your gateway to the emotional plane. Your reflection of truth.]
The sky shifted, and for a moment, he could see faint silhouettes moving behind the light — shapes that were almost human, almost alive, but they flickered and vanished before he could focus.
Aiden stared upward, lips parted. His breath fogged in the air even though it wasn't cold.
"This… is this really a simulation?" he whispered.
The Nexus responded.
[Calibration in progress.]
[Analyzing emotional resonance…]
[Baseline detected — Flatline.]
The glass beneath his feet rippled outward, as though recoiling from him. He hurriedly took a few steps back.
[Error.]
[Emotional Resonance not detected.]
[Classification: Null.]
[Warning — Anomaly Registered.]
The light dimmed. The black sun pulsed once — a slow, heavy beat. Like a gigantic heart was throbbing behind the sun. The entire world trembled.
Aiden's reflection looked back at him from the glass — eyes pale and distant, face illuminated by lines of golden code crawling beneath his skin.
"... For fuck's sake," he muttered.
The world flickered and the glass cracked beneath his feet. Then everything shattered into a rain of light.
Outside, in the real world, the rain finally stopped.