The rain fell in sheets across Neo Angeles, acid-tinged droplets that ate away at the crumbling concrete of the Lower Districts while the gleaming spires of Upper Echelon remained untouched, protected by their invisible atmospheric shields. Detective Faye Morgan stood at the edge of a rooftop, forty stories up, watching the city pulse below her like a corrupted heartbeat.

“Engage thermal,” she whispered, the neural command triggering her ocular implants. The world shifted from neon-stained darkness to heat signatures – blues, greens, and the occasional red-orange of a human being scurrying through the rain. Three blocks away, a body lay cooling in an alley. That made four this month.

Her CommLink vibrated against her skull. She accepted the call without speaking.

“Morgan, we’ve got another one.” Captain Zhang’s voice crackled directly into her auditory nerve.

“I know. I’m looking at it now.” Her enhanced vision zoomed in, the body’s heat signature already fading to blue. “Same profile?”

“Looks like it. Mid-level exec at Helix Dynamics. Found with a cranial port fried and the same code carved into the forehead.”

Faye’s internal database immediately pulled up images of the previous victims. Three executives, all from competing tech conglomerates, all with the same strange hexadecimal sequence etched into their flesh: 3D 2E 41 44.

“On my way,” she said, cutting the connection. She stepped off the roof, her gravitational dampeners ensuring a controlled descent to the rain-slicked streets below.

---

The alley smelled of ozone and burnt circuitry. Faye switched to night vision, the scene illuminated in a ghostly green glow. Two uniformed officers held a tarp over the body, attempting to shield it from the acidic downpour. They stepped aside as she approached.

“Detective Morgan,” one nodded, her eyes flicking nervously to the silver implants at Faye’s temples. “Vic’s name is Adrian Chen, mid-level security programmer at Helix.”

Faye crouched beside the body. Male, approximately thirty-five, expensive synthetic suit now soaked with rain and blood. She zoomed in on the crude carving in his forehead: 3D 2E 41 44.

“Pull everything you have on him,” she instructed her cerebral implant. Data streamed across her field of vision – employment records, financial transactions, social connectivity maps. Nothing stood out immediately.

“Same signature as the others,” she muttered, examining the blackened neural port at the base of the victim’s skull. “Massive electrical surge directly into the cerebral cortex. He was jacked in when it happened.”

She placed two fingers against the port and closed her eyes, engaging her haptic sensors. The residual data fragments were scrambled, but she could sense the signature of a high-end virtual reality environment.

“Where did you go, Mr. Chen?” she whispered. “And what did you see that got you killed?”

---

Back at her cramped apartment in Sector 7-G, Faye connected her temple ports to her personal terminal. The wall in front of her disappeared, replaced by a three-dimensional data landscape. The four victims floated before her – their profiles, connections, movements in the days before their deaths.

“Display common factors,” she commanded.

The system highlighted several connections. All four victims worked for competing corporations. All had high-level security clearance. All had visited the same unlicensed VR den in the past week – a place called “The Rabbit Hole” in the Lower Districts.

Her CommLink pinged. An encrypted message from an unlisted sender: YOU’RE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE, DETECTIVE.

Faye frowned. “Trace origin,” she instructed her cerebral implant.

UNABLE TO TRACE. QUANTUM ENCRYPTION DETECTED.

Few civilians had access to that level of technology. She typed back: WHO IS THIS?

The response came immediately: SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT 3D 2E 41 44 MEANS. MEET ME AT THE EDGE, LEVEL 7. MIDNIGHT.

The Edge was a notorious black market hub on the boundary between the Lower Districts and Mid-City. Level 7 referred to its subbasement, where the most illegal tech transactions occurred. Going there alone would be reckless.

Faye checked her service weapon, a Nakamura X7 pulse pistol, and slid it into her shoulder holster.

“Sometimes reckless is the job,” she murmured to herself.

---

The Edge throbbed with the desperate energy of those seeking enhancement beyond their social station. Augmentation dealers hawked refurbished implants, some still stained with the blood of their previous owners. Faye kept her coat collar high, hiding her police-grade implants.

“Filter ambient noise,” she instructed her auditory enhancement. The cacophony of voices dimmed as she focused on specific conversations, scanning for threats.

Level 7 was accessed through a freight elevator guarded by a mountain of a man with obvious military-grade cybernetic arms.

“I’m expected,” Faye said, meeting his gaze without flinching.

“By who?” His voice was modulated, unnaturally deep.

“That’s the interesting question.”

He studied her for a moment, then stepped aside. “They said you’d be armed. Keep it holstered.”

The elevator descended into darkness. Faye switched to thermal vision but saw nothing unusual – just the cooling machinery surrounding the shaft. When the doors opened, she found herself in a sparse concrete room. A single figure sat at a metal table.

“Detective Morgan,” the figure said. Its voice modulator prevented identification. “Thank you for coming.”

“Skip the pleasantries. What do you know about the murders?”

The figure pushed a data chip across the table. “The victims weren’t random. They were all part of Project Lazarus.”

“Never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s classified beyond your clearance level. But those four were using their corporate access to siphon data for a competitor.”

Faye picked up the chip, turning it over in her fingers. “What’s 3D 2E 41 44?”

“It’s hexadecimal. Translates to ‘=.AD’ in ASCII. It’s a signature.”

“Whose?”

“That’s what the chip will tell you. But I’m warning you – once you access this information, they’ll come for you too.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

The figure stood. “The same people who sent you to meet me.”

Faye’s hand moved to her weapon, but too late. She felt the neural spike hit her cerebral implant – an electromagnetic pulse designed to temporarily disable her enhancements. The world went dark as her vision implants failed, the ambient sound rushing back in as her audio filters collapsed.

“Good luck, Detective,” the voice said from somewhere in the darkness. “You’re going to need it.”

---

Faye awoke in her apartment with no memory of how she’d gotten there. Her implants were rebooting, status reports scrolling across her vision. The data chip was clutched in her hand, knuckles white from gripping it so tightly.

Her secure terminal beckoned. Against better judgment, she inserted the chip.

The data unfolded before her – Project Lazarus was a corporate initiative aimed at creating immortality for the ultra-wealthy through consciousness transfer. The four victims had been stealing fragments of the technology to sell to a rival corporation. But someone had discovered their betrayal and executed them – not in the real world, but in VR, sending a kill signal through their neural connections that fried their brains from the inside out.

At the bottom of the file was a name: Eliza Weyland, CEO of Prometheus Industries.

Faye’s blood ran cold. Prometheus was the largest corporation in Neo Angeles, with tentacles in every aspect of city governance – including the police department.

Her CommLink chimed. Captain Zhang.

“Morgan, where are you with the Helix case?”

Faye hesitated. “Still gathering evidence. Nothing conclusive yet.”

A pause. “Come in first thing tomorrow. The Commissioner wants this wrapped up quickly. Helix is threatening to take their security contracts elsewhere.”

“Understood.”

She disconnected and immediately began copying the Lazarus files to a secure offline storage device. If her suspicions were correct, she couldn’t trust anyone within the department.

Her window terminal chimed, indicating an incoming connection request from an unknown source. Against her better judgment, she accepted.

The face that appeared belonged to a woman in her sixties, with sharp features and cold gray eyes. Eliza Weyland herself.

“Detective Morgan,” Weyland said, her voice smooth as polished steel. “I understand you’ve been making inquiries about a sensitive corporate matter.”

“Four people are dead, Ms. Weyland. That’s beyond ‘corporate matter’ territory.”

Weyland’s expression remained impassive. “Those individuals violated their contracts in ways that threatened thousands of lives. The technology they attempted to steal is not yet stable.”

“So you executed them? In VR?”

“I neither confirm nor deny Prometheus’s involvement. But I will say this – immortality comes at a cost, Detective. Some are willing to pay it. Others…” She shrugged elegantly. “Others become obstacles.”

“Is that a threat?”

“An observation. You’ve accessed information above your clearance level. Normally, this would trigger certain protocols.” Weyland leaned forward. “However, we find ourselves in need of someone with your particular skills.”

Faye’s implants registered an incoming data package. Her firewall intercepted it automatically.

“What is this?”

“A job offer. Your cybernetic enhancements are impressive, but outdated. We can offer you upgrades beyond what the department provides. All we ask is your discretion regarding Project Lazarus.”

“And if I refuse?”

Weyland smiled thinly. “The human brain is remarkably fragile, Detective Morgan. Especially when connected to machinery we control.”

The screen went dark. Faye sat motionless, weighing her options. The data package remained in her quarantine folder, unopened.

Her gaze drifted to the window, where the Upper Echelon towers gleamed against the night sky. Up there, the elites played god while below, millions scrambled for scraps. The divide wasn’t just economic – it was evolutionary. Those who could afford enhancement prospered; those who couldn’t were left behind.

The four dead executives had tried to bridge that gap, to steal immortality for a competitor who might have made it more accessible. Now they were dead, their implants fried by a corporation that saw them as nothing more than data thieves.

Faye opened her weapons locker and removed a neural scrambler – an illegal device that would mask her implant signatures from corporate scanners. If she was going to pursue this, she would need to disappear from the grid.

She closed her eyes, accessing her internal communication system, and composed a message to an old contact in the resistance – a group of hackers working to expose corporate corruption.

I have evidence of corporate execution. Four confirmed victims. Need secure upload point.

The response came seconds later: Dangerous waters, Morgan. Prometheus?

Yes. They’re offering immortality to the highest bidder. And killing anyone who gets in their way.

Upload coordinates incoming. After this, you’ll need to go dark.

Faye glanced once more at the quarantined job offer from Weyland. With the right upgrades, she could become nearly unstoppable – enhanced beyond her current capabilities, able to fight the corporations on their own terms.

But at what cost?

Her finger hovered over the delete command. The rain continued to fall outside, washing away evidence in the physical world while in the virtual one, a war was just beginning.

Whatever she decided next would determine not just her future, but potentially the evolution of humanity itself. In a world where the boundaries between human and machine blurred more each day, the most dangerous element remained the same as it had been for millennia:

Power. Who had it, who wanted it, and what they would do to keep it.

The clock on her wall ticked toward midnight. Decision time.

She reached for the neural scrambler and began to disappear.

Feature Photo by Ali Pazani