Neon skies

In the year 2179, the city of Vireon never slept. Its towers scraped at the clouds, armored in chrome and blinking with data-streams that cascaded like waterfalls. The sky above, once blue, now pulsed in artificial hues—electric pinks, sickly greens, cobalt blues—reflected from the ever-present neon that bathed the streets below. Drones zipped through midair highways. Holographic ads called out in a hundred languages, and the air buzzed with static.

Vireon was alive, but not all of it was awake.

Deep beneath the upper city's glittering surface was the Undercore—a shadowed tangle of forgotten tunnels, obsolete tech, and people trying to stay invisible. The Undercore had its own rules. No surveillance. No questions. And definitely no government interference. That made it the perfect place for Kael to do his work.

Kael wasn’t a smuggler, exactly. He was a courier. A specialist. His cargo wasn’t physical—it was memories.

Through the neural ports embedded behind his ears, Kael could upload, store, and transport encrypted fragments of someone else’s life: a perfect beach sunset, the sound of a lost lover’s laugh, the classified truth of a political betrayal. These weren’t just data files—they were experiences. Raw, visceral, and deeply illegal.

He was leaning against the rusted railing of a half-collapsed skybridge when the job came in. A soft ping echoed in his left ear. A HUD flickered to life across his vision.

Client: ID# 82N-RK2

Package: Level 7 – Quantum Encryption

Warning: Possible interference

Destination: 39th and Decentral, Upper Sector

Kael sighed. Level 7s were always the worst. That kind of encryption meant the memory wasn’t just valuable—it was dangerous. And dangerous memories had a tendency to draw unwanted attention.

He made his way to the drop point, a small terminal nestled in the belly of an old maintenance tunnel. The memory crystal was waiting in a containment pod, pulsing gently with violet light. As soon as he slotted it into his neural port, it hit him.

For a moment, he wasn't Kael anymore.

He was someone else, standing on a pale red beach beneath twin suns. The sky shimmered. Warm fingers laced with his own. A voice whispered, "We don’t have much time." There was urgency, pain, and love—real love. Then the memory sealed, encrypted, and tucked itself away inside him.

Kael staggered back into reality, heart pounding.

He mounted his hoverbike, the engine humming to life with a low, satisfying whirr. The bike lifted off the ground, gliding into the flow of midair traffic. All around him, sleek corporate vehicles flashed past, their windows opaque, their drivers anonymous.

He didn’t notice the interceptor until it was almost too late.

It dropped from above, black as midnight, wings spread like a predator. A synth stepped out—augmented, humanoid, metal plating gleaming. Its voice was low and distorted.

“You’ve got something I want.”

Kael didn’t hesitate. “Yeah? Get in line.”

He hit the throttle and surged forward, weaving through the city’s neon veins. The synth pursued, firing plasma rounds that sizzled past Kael’s ears. He ducked under a skytram, clipped a billboard, and dove into an abandoned skyway. His bike sparked as it scraped concrete, but he didn’t stop.

The safehouse was waiting. Hidden behind a junkyard’s fake firewall, buried in the undercity.

When he arrived, he was bleeding, coughing, and soaked in adrenaline—but the memory crystal was intact.

Inside, a woman stood at a terminal, her eyes glowing faintly blue—an archivist. They were memory specialists, rebels, truth-seekers. She took the crystal and slotted it into a reader.

For a long moment, silence.

Then her breath caught.

“This memory… it’s proof. That the war wasn’t an alien threat. That they fabricated the whole thing. They bombed Sector 12 themselves.”

Kael leaned against the wall, exhausted. “Then let the truth burn brighter than their lies.”

Outside, Vireon shimmered in its endless, artificial daylight. Unknowing. Unbothered.

But deep in its underbelly, a spark had been lit.

And some sparks were impossible to contain.