The world was a screaming blur of crimson and amber. The air tasted of charred synthetic rubber and the acrid, metallic stench of burning human flesh. Screams of terror, the grinding roar of the city, and the rhythmic screech of tires reached Liam's ears as if filtered through miles of stagnant water. It wasn't just noise; it was a symphony of chaos.
Liam's small frame throbbed with a white-hot agony. Each breath felt like swallowing a thousand shards of broken glass. Crawling out from the wreckage of the back seat felt like traversing an infinite wasteland. Behind him, amidst the twisted, groaning metal, his mother's voice rose in a final, wheezing rasp: "Protect your sister... Luna..."
Those words were her last. Beside her, his father's lifeless body remained pinned, the light of life already extinguished from his staring eyes. The crash had happened in seconds, yet for Liam, time had fractured into a slow-motion nightmare. Dragging himself through a slurry of blood and glass, he collapsed onto the asphalt. His eyes searched frantically.
Luna.
She had been thrown through the shattered window, coming to rest against a concrete divider. Her small, motionless body lay bathed in the flickering glow of neon signs, their vibrant colors reflecting in a growing pool of crimson.
In that heartbeat, Liam's world ended.
The crackle of flames was suddenly drowned out by heavy, rhythmic metallic thuds. Liam looked up. A colossal shadow loomed over him, blotting out the neon horizon. It wasn't just a man; it was a horrific fusion of iron and sinew—a massive cyborg. Its black armor shimmered in the firelight, and steam hissed from pneumatic valves, a terrifying display of raw power.
The machine-man didn't even glance at Liam. To it, he was merely an insect, a piece of debris. The cyborg's right arm—a multi-barreled rotary cannon—began to spin with a predatory whine.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! The deafening roar tore through the night. The wreckage, the bodies, the memories—everything was pulverized into a cloud of ash and nothingness. Coldly, the cyborg turned, its heavy footsteps shaking the earth like a hammer on an anvil as it moved toward Liam.
Liam closed his eyes. He waited for the end...
"Liam! Wake up, Liam! Supervisor Bill is coming. If you don't get up now, you won't earn a single damn cent today!"
Liam jolted awake. His friend Adam stood over him, his cheap cyber-eye flickering in the dim, grey light. There was no fire here—only the rotting, rusted walls of a waste recycling plant. The smell of old grease, metallic dust, and misery was far more familiar to Liam than the scent of that long-ago inferno.
They worked on the fringes of the city, in a vast graveyard of rusted metal and discarded cyber-modules. Here, a human life was worth less than a depleted battery.
"The dream again?" Adam asked, his voice dropping to a low whisper. He didn't need an answer; he could read it in the hollow pallor of Liam's face.
Liam remained silent. He swallowed the bitter lump in his throat and wiped away the stray tears with the back of his hand. He had neither the will nor the energy to speak. With a heavy sigh, he turned back to his daily torment: the grind.
Five years had passed since the crash. In the neon-soaked gutters of Neola, five years was a lifetime. But for Liam, every second of 그 night remained razor-sharp. The searing heat of the flames, his mother's dying plea, and the cold, unfeeling gaze of that armored monster were seared into his brain. Every time he closed his eyes, the roar of that gatling gun echoed in his skull.
Liam and Adam's friendship had been forged in these ruins. When a gang of street thugs had cornered Liam to strip him of his last few coins, Adam had stepped in. Even with a shattered nose, Adam hadn't backed down. Since then, they had been inseparable—two broken souls leaning on each other in a world of shadows.
Hours crawled by in the suffocating, dust-choked corridors of the factory. The clang of metal on metal and the low hum of heavy presses hammered at Liam's exhausted mind. Finally, the piercing shriek of the shift-end whistle blew. The workers gathered at the pay station like ghosts fading into the dark.
When it was Liam's turn, the automated teller groaned and spat out seven Gartu—the devalued currency of a dying world. Before Liam could even touch them, the bloated, greasy fingers of Supervisor Bill snatched two bills away.
"That's for the fine," Bill sneered, lazily chewing a wad of synthetic gum. "Not only are you slow, but you're sleeping on the clock. This isn't a hotel, pup."
Adam's eyes flashed with rage, his fists curling tight. He stepped forward to protest, but Liam gripped his wrist, stopping him. A strange, almost haunting smile touched Liam's lips.
"Thank you, Mr. Bill," Liam said softly, tucking the remaining five Gartu into his pocket.
He limped out of the factory, every step a sharp reminder of his reality. His leg had been crushed in the accident, the bones knitting back together in a twisted, jagged mess. Modern medicine or cybernetic prosthetics were fantasies beyond his reach. He had no money. He never would.
After his parents died, Liam had sold everything. The family savings, their old home, his mother's jewelry—all of it sacrificed for a single goal: Luna. She had survived the night of the crash by a miracle, but her injuries were catastrophic. Liam had given every cent to back-alley surgeons to give his sister two mechanical legs and a synthetic liver.
He didn't walk for himself anymore; he walked so that Luna could.
At a small stall on the way home, he bought a few scraps of food and a hairclip with a faded but beautiful fabric flower. Thinking of the smile it would bring to Luna's face, a flicker of light returned to his tired eyes. He hurried toward their home, trying to numb the pain in his leg.
But as he approached the crumbling tenement block, a cold dread began to coil in his gut. The flickering neon signs above felt like a warning. When he reached their door, he saw the lock had been wrenched open. The door stood ajar.
His breath hitched. He stepped inside. The apartment was a wreckage—everything overturned, shattered, destroyed.
"Luna?" Liam's voice trembled. Silence.
He searched the rooms in a panic. Broken porcelain on the floor, an overturned chair, the smell of scorched food from a pot on the stove. Then, his eyes fell to the floor—heavy, crushing footprints of something massive were pressed into the dust and a smear of blood. Luna was gone.
Terror turned his blood to ice.
Desperate, Liam called the police. But in Neola, the law was a luxury. When two officers finally arrived hours later, they barely glanced at the scene. There was no sympathy in their eyes, only boredom. This city was the pinnacle of social stratification—if you didn't have enough Gartu, your life was just a statistic.
"Report filed, kid. We'll call if something turns up," one officer said, stifling a yawn.
Liam watched them leave, his fists trembling. In Neola, the rich could murder the poor in broad daylight, and the "Peacekeepers" would simply look the other way. He felt utterly, dangerously alone.
He walked into Luna's room. It had been his sanctuary, now it was a ruin. He stood there, staring into the void of his own life, before he began to frantically clean, tears streaming down his face. Every piece of clothing, every discarded toy, was a ghost of her laughter. He hated his weakness. He hated his poverty. He hated himself for failing her.
Suddenly, he stepped on something and lost his balance, tumbling to the floor. He looked down. It was her favorite glass snow globe—the one their father had given her, featuring a small black cube with a tiny girl sitting atop it. She had cherished it above all else.
In that moment, Liam's grief turned into a blinding, white-hot explosion of rage. Why did his parents have to die? Why was Luna taken? Why was the world so goddamn cruel?
He grabbed the globe and hurled it against the wall with every ounce of his strength.
"To hell with all of it!" he screamed.
The glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards. From the wreckage, the small black cube slid across the floor, coming to rest at Liam's feet. Annoyed, he picked it up to throw it too. But as his fingers touched the cold, black metal, a hollow, mechanical voice resonated from within:
"DNA IDENTIFIED. INITIATING PROTOCOL."
Before Liam could react, a microscopic needle shot from the cube, piercing his thumb.
"Argh!" He jerked his hand back, tossing the cube away.
But it was too late. Within seconds, something began to surge through his veins. He felt as if his insides were catching fire. His temperature skyrocketed, his eyes turned bloodshot, and his veins bulged like throbbing cables. An agony unlike anything he had ever known ripped through him—his bones felt like they were being crushed and re-forged, every cell in his body being rewritten.
The world spun. Darkness closed in. Unable to endure the violent transformation, Liam collapsed onto the floor, losing consciousness. The room bathed in the crimson pulse of the neon lights outside, while on the floor, the black cube hummed with a faint, ominous glow.