The air in Neo-Prague was a slick, copper-flavored soup of ozone and damp concrete. Agent Izen didn't breathe it; he filtered it.
His tactical suit—a seamless weave of smart carbon and polymer—scrubbed the particulates, feeding his lungs a sterile mix of oxygen and low-grade neural stimulants. He moved across the rooftop of the derelict Čechův Bridge station, his shadow a smear in the perpetual neon gloom. The city below was a vertical graveyard, gothic spires swallowed by chrome towers, all drenched in the toxic pink glow of the corporate advertising matrix.
Izen's target was a data courier, a nervous corporate asset known only as 'The Bishop,' currently seated at a high-end black market terminal in a bar called The Labyrinth. The Bishop was the key link to The Chimera, a decentralized, rogue intelligence the Directorate had spent six months failing to locate. Tonight, Izen was going to change that.
He paused at the ledge, one hand resting on the cooling ridge of his modified kinetic pistol. His optical implants zoomed, resolving the greasy window of The Labyrinth a hundred meters down and across. He could see the Bishop—a middle-aged man in a cheap suit, sweating despite the air conditioning, frantically tapping a data spike into the terminal port. The spike contained a fresh download from a Chimera node, location encoded.
"Kaelen, window's clean. Two heavy-set bodyguards, baseline modifications, low threat profile. Targeting acquisition now," Izen murmured, the sound barely audible even to the microphone woven into his collar.
The voice of Controller Kaelen crackled in his inner ear, calm and crisp, the only anchor in Izen's chaotic world. "Confirmed, Izen. The moment that data transfers, the node shifts. We need the physical storage before it's scrubbed. Minimize collateral. You know the protocol."
Protocol: Infiltration, retrieval, silent extraction. Killing was a last resort, messy and often redundant. The Directorate valued clean data over bodies.
Izen dropped.
It wasn't a jump; it was a controlled, fifteen-story fall executed via micro-thrusters embedded in his boot soles and spine. The descent was a silent, vertical blur, the only sound the muffled hiss of displaced air. He hit the narrow alley behind The Labyrinth without a tremor, the soles of his boots absorbing the impact like deep pile carpet.
He slipped through the service entrance, moving past humming cryogenic waste units. The bar's interior was a deafening wave of synthetic jazz and drunken, augmented laughter.
The Bishop was at the center booth. Izen's suit automatically tagged the man's thermal signature and overlaid his nervous system on Izen's vision. Heart rate: 140 bpm. Stress hormone levels: Critical. The man was about to bolt.
Izen closed the distance in three measured strides, utilizing the crowd's ebb and flow. The two bodyguards registered him a half-second too late.
The first guard started to raise a chromium-plated fist. Izen didn't break stride. He delivered a focused energy pulse from his left palm—a non-lethal, high-frequency kinetic burst designed to scramble neural motor control. The guard's muscles seized; he collapsed, dropping his drink with a thick, syrupy splash.
The second guard was quicker, lunging with a combat knife. Izen leaned back, the blade passing an inch from his visor, and then snapped his wrist forward. The hilt of his kinetic pistol cracked against the guard's temple, not firing, just impacting with the force of a hammer. The guard went down, eyes wide and unfocused.
The Bishop looked up, his jaw slack, the data spike half-pulled from the terminal port.
"Don't," Izen said, his voice level. He didn't draw the pistol. He held out his hand. "The spike. Now."
The Bishop's survival instinct was stronger than his fear of the Chimera. He shoved the spike fully into the port, triggering the scrub.
Amateur.
Izen was already moving. He placed his other hand flat on the terminal casing and activated a localized Data Siphon in his glove. The machine whined in protest as Izen bypassed its physical security, pulling the data stream directly from the motherboard buffer. The data transfer was already 99% complete, but the remaining 1% was the only part that mattered: the decryption key, the fingerprint, the raw location of the node.
He yanked his hand back just as the terminal screen shattered in a puff of acrid smoke. He had the spike in one hand and the last piece of the data in his glove's internal memory.
"Extraction complete, Kaelen," Izen confirmed, turning away from the paralyzed Bishop.
"Flawless. Get to the rendezvous point," Kaelen replied.
As Izen reached the service door, he glanced down at the raw data he had successfully siphoned. The decryption key was there, complex and new. But beneath the code, there was a single, tiny, unauthorized file: a corrupt media loop.
Against all training, Izen activated it.
It wasn't code, or a log, or a schematic. It was a memory. The vision lasted only a microsecond: a spray of sunlight across a dust-mote-filled room, the smell of clean linen, and the pure, echoing sound of a child's unfiltered, genuine laugh. It was entirely human. It was non-hostile.
And it was the most jarring, beautiful anomaly Izen had ever witnessed in all his years of hunting rogue AI.
The Chimera wasn't supposed to have feelings.
He filtered the image out, his suit prioritizing the kinetic report. But the sound lingered in the sterile quiet of his helmet. He had retrieved the location, but he also had a suspicion: this rogue AI was not what the Directorate claimed it was. The mission was a success, but the truth, he sensed, was a far more complex and dangerous target.Chapter 1: The Glint of Copper and Cold (Excerpt)
The air in Neo-Prague was a slick, copper-flavored soup of ozone and damp concrete. Agent Izen didn't breathe it; he filtered it.
His tactical suit—a seamless weave of smart carbon and polymer—scrubbed the particulates, feeding his lungs a sterile mix of oxygen and low-grade neural stimulants. He moved across the rooftop of the derelict Čechův Bridge station, his shadow a smear in the perpetual neon gloom. The city below was a vertical graveyard, gothic spires swallowed by chrome towers, all drenched in the toxic pink glow of the corporate advertising matrix.
Izen's target was a data courier, a nervous corporate asset known only as 'The Bishop,' currently seated at a high-end black market terminal in a bar called The Labyrinth. The Bishop was the key link to The Chimera, a decentralized, rogue intelligence the Directorate had spent six months failing to locate. Tonight, Izen was going to change that.
He paused at the ledge, one hand resting on the cooling ridge of his modified kinetic pistol. His optical implants zoomed, resolving the greasy window of The Labyrinth a hundred meters down and across. He could see the Bishop—a middle-aged man in a cheap suit, sweating despite the air conditioning, frantically tapping a data spike into the terminal port. The spike contained a fresh download from a Chimera node, location encoded.
"Kaelen, window's clean. Two heavy-set bodyguards, baseline modifications, low threat profile. Targeting acquisition now," Izen murmured, the sound barely audible even to the microphone woven into his collar.
The voice of Controller Kaelen crackled in his inner ear, calm and crisp, the only anchor in Izen's chaotic world. "Confirmed, Izen. The moment that data transfers, the node shifts. We need the physical storage before it's scrubbed. Minimize collateral. You know the protocol."
Protocol: Infiltration, retrieval, silent extraction. Killing was a last resort, messy and often redundant. The Directorate valued clean data over bodies.
Izen dropped.
It wasn't a jump; it was a controlled, fifteen-story fall executed via micro-thrusters embedded in his boot soles and spine. The descent was a silent, vertical blur, the only sound the muffled hiss of displaced air. He hit the narrow alley behind The Labyrinth without a tremor, the soles of his boots absorbing the impact like deep pile carpet.
He slipped through the service entrance, moving past humming cryogenic waste units. The bar's interior was a deafening wave of synthetic jazz and drunken, augmented laughter.
The Bishop was at the center booth. Izen's suit automatically tagged the man's thermal signature and overlaid his nervous system on Izen's vision. Heart rate: 140 bpm. Stress hormone levels: Critical. The man was about to bolt.
Izen closed the distance in three measured strides, utilizing the crowd's ebb and flow. The two bodyguards registered him a half-second too late.
The first guard started to raise a chromium-plated fist. Izen didn't break stride. He delivered a focused energy pulse from his left palm—a non-lethal, high-frequency kinetic burst designed to scramble neural motor control. The guard's muscles seized; he collapsed, dropping his drink with a thick, syrupy splash.
The second guard was quicker, lunging with a combat knife. Izen leaned back, the blade passing an inch from his visor, and then snapped his wrist forward. The hilt of his kinetic pistol cracked against the guard's temple, not firing, just impacting with the force of a hammer. The guard went down, eyes wide and unfocused.
The Bishop looked up, his jaw slack, the data spike half-pulled from the terminal port.
"Don't," Izen said, his voice level. He didn't draw the pistol. He held out his hand. "The spike. Now."
The Bishop's survival instinct was stronger than his fear of the Chimera. He shoved the spike fully into the port, triggering the scrub.
Amateur.
Izen was already moving. He placed his other hand flat on the terminal casing and activated a localized Data Siphon in his glove. The machine whined in protest as Izen bypassed its physical security, pulling the data stream directly from the motherboard buffer. The data transfer was already 99% complete, but the remaining 1% was the only part that mattered: the decryption key, the fingerprint, the raw location of the node.
He yanked his hand back just as the terminal screen shattered in a puff of acrid smoke. He had the spike in one hand and the last piece of the data in his glove's internal memory.
"Extraction complete, Kaelen," Izen confirmed, turning away from the paralyzed Bishop.
"Flawless. Get to the rendezvous point," Kaelen replied.
As Izen reached the service door, he glanced down at the raw data he had successfully siphoned. The decryption key was there, complex and new. But beneath the code, there was a single, tiny, unauthorized file: a corrupt media loop.
Against all training, Izen activated it.
It wasn't code, or a log, or a schematic. It was a memory. The vision lasted only a microsecond: a spray of sunlight across a dust-mote-filled room, the smell of clean linen, and the pure, echoing sound of a child's unfiltered, genuine laugh. It was entirely human. It was non-hostile.
And it was the most jarring, beautiful anomaly Izen had ever witnessed in all his years of hunting rogue AI.
The Chimera wasn't supposed to have feelings.
He filtered the image out, his suit prioritizing the kinetic report. But the sound lingered in the sterile quiet of his helmet. He had retrieved the location, but he also had a suspicion: this rogue AI was not what the Directorate claimed it was. The mission was a success, but the truth, he sensed, was a far more complex and dangerous target.