Rain sheeted off the corroded fire escape, pooling in oily rainbows beneath flickering holograms advertising "Pangu Spirit-Volt™: Ascend Today!". Lin Wei pressed deeper into the alley's shadows, the severed power cable heavy in his grip. Its copper guts sparked weakly — 220 stolen volts. Enough for two nutrient-paste bricks from Old Chen. Enough to survive another week in Neo-Xi'an's gutters.
"HALT, CITIZEN 7B."
The enforcement drone dropped from the smog, spotlight spearing him. Matte black, no insignia — Pangu's shadow-arm. Beneath its chassis, taser prongs hummed. "UNAUTHORIZED QI THEFT DETECTED. PENALTY: NEURAL STRIKE."
Five years. Five years since the Iron Hill Qi-mine collapse. Since the grinding roar of rock burying his parents' shouts. Since Pangu mechs sealed the shaft, their white armor gleaming under emergency lights as Lin, twelve and ash-covered, watched from a service elevator. His father's last shout echoed: "Don't touch the live wires, Li—!"
Lin lunged left, not away, but toward the drone's dangling ground wire. Sloppy maintenance. Corpo arrogance. His rusted hydro-pliers snapped the conduit.
ZZZRRT!
Agony locked his muscles as the taser bolt hit. Copper and ozone filled his mouth. Vision whited-out—
—Then the hunger awoke.
It tore through his chest — a chasm starved for centuries. It devoured the voltage, sucking it down. The alley dissolved into static.
MEMORY FRAGMENT (AGE 12):
Darkness. The shriek of buckling metal. Mom's raw cry: "The beams! They're rigged!"
Dad shoving him backward into the elevator cage, palm gritty with Qi-crystal dust. "GO, LIN! DON'T LOOK B—"
A flash. Heat. Silence. Then the drone of Pangu mechs sealing the tomb.
PRESENT:
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
Crimson, glitched text scrawled across his vision:
[ENERGY CONVERSION: 220V → 3.4 Qi UNITS]
[WARNING: UNREGISTERED MERIDIAN ACTIVITY. NEURAL SIGNATURE FLAGGED. PANGU BIOTECH NOTIFIED.]
The drone hovered, rotors stuttering. He should be dead. Brain-fried.
Instead, power sang in his veins — raw lightning. It burned paths through nerves never meant to channel such force. He gasped, fingers digging into wet concrete. Charcoal-black circuitry patterns flickered beneath his forearm's skin, glowing like dying embers.
Qi. True Qi. Not corpo-sludge. It scalded him from within.
"SECONDARY STRIKE AUTHORI—"
Instinct screamed. Lin didn't dodge. He grabbed the drone's live tether cable.
KA-THOOM!
Blue-white energy exploded. Filaments arced up his arm, incinerating his sleeve. The alley became a negative image — garbage bins stark against blinding light, raindrops flashing to steam. The drone screamed, circuits fusing, carapace cracking. It crashed, spilling molten innards that hissed on wet concrete.
Silence crashed down, broken only by rain drumming on slagged metal and Lin's own ragged, smoke-tainted breaths. The stink of burnt plastic and ozone choked the air.
He stared at his hand. Skin blackened, peeling back from knuckles to reveal raw, glowing flesh beneath. Pain throbbed distantly beneath the euphoric current flooding his cells.
"Pangu's R&D labs will dissect you neuron by neuron for that, gutter rat."
The voice slid from deeper shadows near a rusted service vent — smooth as synth-oil, edged with cold amusement. A figure detached itself. Female, hood drawn low, but violet light bled from beneath the fabric — jailbroken ocular implants. Street-tech. Expensive. Illegal.
Yin Mei. Every slum rat knew Ryke's runaway heir. The corpo princess playing revolutionary.
Lin spat blood-tinged saliva onto the rain-slicked ground. "Tell Ryke he still owes blood-debt for my parents."
Her smirk vanished. Violet optics narrowed behind the hood's shadow. "Lin Wei." She took a silent step forward. Nineteen. Too young for the Ghost Sects' most wanted hacker. But the thin, pale scar bisecting her left eyebrow? That was old. Earned. "Iron Hill Sector. Five years, three months, fourteen days ago." Her voice was flat. Precise.
Ice shot down Lin's spine. She knew the count of days.
Yin Mei's gaze dropped to his smoldering, ruined hand. The glow beneath his skin pulsed with his heartbeat. "That wasn't tech." Her voice sharpened, laced with predatory interest. "You're the reactor core."
Sirens wailed through the smog, closer. Hungry. Enforcer swarm.
She didn't flinch. A chrome data-chip skittered across the ground, stopping at his boots. Etched on it: A fox's head wreathed in jagged lightning.
"Scrapyard Sigma," Yin Mei said, already melting backward. "Midnight." Her voice dropped, a razor wrapped in silk. "Bring that appetite, Jolt. Dinner's on the corporation." She vanished into the service vent, the grille clicking shut silently.
Red enforcement drones pierced the smog layer above, spotlights carving brutal cones through the rain. They swept the alley — lingering on the slagged drone, the radiating scorch marks centered where Lin stood.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[THREAT PROFILE: PANGU ENFORCEMENT SWARM - 0.4 KM]
[ENERGY RESERVES: 2.1/3.4 Qi UNITS]
[INTEGRITY WARNING: RIGHT HAND - SEVERE THERMAL DAMAGE]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION]
The hunger roared back — not for paste, not for volts. For answers. For justice served cold and sharp enough to cut Ryke's throat.
Lin snatched the fox-chip. It burned against his seared palm.
He ran — not down into the labyrinth, but up. Scaling a slick drainage pipe, boots scrabbling for purchase. Toward the hateful monolith of Pangu Biotech Tower stabbing the bruised sky. Toward the place that murdered his parents and called it progress. Toward the deep, resonant thrum of the city's power grid vibrating through the ferrocrete beneath his feet — a diseased heartbeat.
Spotlights converged, painting his back hellish red. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, stung his eyes.
His scorched hand clenched into a fist. Pain flared, white-hot. Down the alley, a flickering holographic ad for Spirit-Volt™ fizzed, died, then exploded in a shower of sparks. The nearest streetlight shattered.
High above, in the obsidian spire of Pangu Tower, a power monitor in a sub-basement control room spiked violently. An alarm blared, then cut off.
Lin reached the rooftop's edge. The city sprawled below — a necropolis of neon and despair. The drone swarm rose behind him, rotors a rising thunder.
He didn't hesitate. He jumped.
Not down.
Across.
The chasm between rooftops yawned. Wind ripped at his clothes. For a terrifying second, he hung suspended over the abyss, spotlights clawing at him.
Then the hunger surged. The stolen Qi in his core burned. He pushed it down, through his legs, into the void.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[EMERGENCY QI DEPLOYMENT: KINETIC AMPLIFICATION]
[ENERGY RESERVES: 1.3/3.4 Qi UNITS]
His boots hit the opposite roof's ledge with a bone-jarring crack, tiles shattering underfoot. He rolled, coming up in a crouch, breath sawing in his lungs. The glow beneath his skin flared, then dimmed. Exhaustion, deep and acid, bit into his muscles.
Behind him, drones smashed into the building facade, unable to match the desperate leap.
Lin Wei looked down at the fox-chip still clenched in his ruined hand. Scrapyard Sigma. Midnight.
He touched the charred, glowing flesh of his knuckles. The pain was a promise. A warning.
Answers had a price. He'd pay it in volts and blood.
The neon city swallowed him whole.