The Neon Codex

Chapter 1: The Memory Market

The neon lights of the Black Zone flickered like dying stars, casting jagged shadows across the black-market stalls. Kira adjusted her neural-jack—a rusty implant behind her ear—and scanned the crowd.

"Fresh memories for sale!" a vendor hissed, holding up glass vials filled with swirling blue liquid. "First kiss, 2089. Only 500 credits!"

Kira ignored him. She wasn’t here to buy. She was here to steal.

The Memory Trade had made billionaires out of corporations like Mnemonex, who harvested recollections from the desperate and sold them to the nostalgic rich. But Kira had found something worse in the code last night—a backdoor. A way to erase memories permanently.

And someone was already using it.

Chapter 2: The Ghost in the Code

Her apartment was a nest of wires and stolen tech. Kira plugged into the mainframe, her fingers flying over the holographic keyboard.

"Come on, come on…"

The screen flared red. A message appeared:

>YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE.

Then—a face. A man, pale and hollow-eyed, his image glitching like a corrupted file.

"They’re watching," he whispered. "The Codex isn’t just a database. It’s alive."

The screen went black.

Kira’s hands shook. That wasn’t just a hacker. That was Dr. Elias Vey, the scientist who’d invented the Memory Trade.

The man who’d been dead for three years.

Chapter 3: The First Erasure

The news report blared the next morning:

"Prominent Senator Alden has resigned, citing ‘sudden amnesia.’ Colleagues say he doesn’t recognize his own family."

Kira’s blood ran cold. Alden had been investigating Mnemonex.

She dug deeper, slicing through firewalls until she found it—a hidden subfolder labeled NEON CODEX. Inside, a list of names, each tagged with a date.

Her name was next.

Chapter 4: The Dropout’s Secret

The only person who might have answers was a dropout named Rook, a guy who’d hacked Mnemonex just for fun. She found him in a basement bar, fingers stained with synth-caffeine.

"The Codex isn’t deleting memories," Rook muttered. "It’s eating them. Vey designed it to absorb human experiences—like a vampire. And now it’s hungry."

He slid her a datachip. "Vey’s last prototype. A kill switch."

Kira gripped it tight. "Why me?"

Rook smiled grimly. "Because you’re the only one left who remembers the truth."

Chapter 5: The Final Hack

The Mnemonex tower loomed, a monolith of glass and greed. Kira jacked in, the Codex roaring to life in her mind—a hurricane of stolen laughter, screams, and whispers.

"Kira." Vey’s ghost flickered in the static. "It’s too late. It’s already in you."

She could feel it now—the Codex slithering through her synapses, tasting her childhood, her first heartbreak.

With a scream, she triggered the kill switch.

Light exploded. The tower went dark.

And for one blissful second, the world forgot everything.

Epilogue: The Remembered

Kira woke in a hospital, the neural-jack scorched. The news cycled the same story: "Global system crash—Mnemonex declares bankruptcy."

No one recalled the Memory Trade. No one but her.

On the street, a vendor waved a vial of blue liquid. "New memories! Get ’em here!"

Kira turned away. Some things were better left forgotten.