"They did not adapt to survive. They survived by dissolving the meaning of adaptation." - The Evolution Of Homo Somnus.
Kali waited three full days after Markus, Priene, and Naomi had returned to Fort Harlow before finally stepping out of the apartment. The local authorities had cleared him to move around a day earlier, but he wasn't about to be careless. If anyone had eyes on him, he wanted them to lose interest first. What he was about to do was better left off the official record.
He dressed plainly: a black hoodie, dark cargo pants, and a simple nose mask that covered the lower half of his face. No identifying marks, no flash, just another shadow in the city. He took the stairs down all thirty-two floors of the high-rise—no elevators, no cameras—feet thudding softly on cold concrete. It took him about six minutes to reach the ground floor.
It was night, but the streets of Medri were alive. The neon veins of the corporate heart pulsed with blinding color, brilliant blues, venomous greens, the burning reds of corporate logos casting long reflections in puddles of oil-slick water. People moved like rivers down the sidewalks, workers, tourists, smugglers, and the unseen predators that haunted cities like this one.
Above the noise of conversation and traffic, the distant hum of Jacob's Ladder could be heard. Kali kept his head low, slipping between the crowds, always moving, always listening.
His objective was not within Medri, but across the boundary in its grim twin, Kirel.
He took the underways, an ancient network of maintenance tunnels and abandoned transit routes that stitched the two cities together beneath their glittering façades. Most citizens avoided them; they were too old, too broken, too forgotten. Perfect for someone like him who needed to move unseen.
At a derelict access point tucked behind a strip of automated diners, he found the entrance he was looking for: a battered metal hatch set into a concrete alcove, half-covered by a rusted "NO TRESPASSING" sign. Without hesitation, Kali dropped into the dark.
The air changed immediately, thick with the scent of mold, oil, and rot. His boots echoed in the narrow corridors, the only light coming from his small wrist-lamp, which cast long, twitching shadows across graffiti-smeared walls. Messages in dead languages, symbols half-eaten by rust and time.
He navigated by instruction he had received from a passing trader at the fort. Right turn. Left at the collapsed support beam. Crawl under the broken utility line. The entire journey took nearly forty minutes, but he emerged in the lowest sectors of Kirel, where the weight of Medri's corporate towers was nothing but a distant memory.
Here, the air was denser, almost viscous with grime and hopelessness. Makeshift market stalls lined the cracked streets, hawking black-market tech, dubious food, and vices so obscure they didn't even have names. The neon was dimmer here, flickering, many of the signs completely dead.
The people looked different too—thinner, meaner, clothed in rags stitched from salvage and corporate waste. Eyes followed him, but no one moved to stop him. Strangers passed through Kirel all the time, most looking for something, most willing to kill for it. Kali pulled his hood lower, tightened the strap of his mask, the blade tucked into his pants assuring.
During the long, grueling weeks of his training, Kali had made several secret trips back to the ruins beyond Fort Harlow, each time risking being seen or followed. There, buried beneath collapsed stone and twisted steel, waited Rizen, the outlaw Machina who had taken a gamble in mentoring him.
On one of those visits, Rizen had explained it plainly, in the clipped, metallic voice that always seemed to buzz against the edges of Kali's thoughts. "I require a bypass cyberware, something capable of disrupting the core prison nodes."
Finding the tech was another matter. Kali had scoured every whisper and rumor that passed through Fort Harlow and Medri's underbelly, piecing together fragments of information until, finally, he caught wind of a possible seller: an unlicensed broker who dealt in shoddiest pieces of machinery.
The broker operated deep within Kirel, hidden among its sludge and shadows, trading in things the corporations declared illegal, immoral, or too dangerous to be allowed in the light.
And tonight, Kali was here to meet them.
He moved through the crumbling alleys of Kirel, heart pounding against his ribs with each step. He had no backup, no guarantees, and no real idea what kind of person—or thing—he was walking into.
Kali's boots sloshed through puddles of neon-stained water as he pushed deeper into Kirel's guts, the distant pulse of music and the muttering of broken machinery filling the night air. The coordinates the broker had sent led him to a forgotten plaza, little more than a crater ringed by collapsed buildings and rusted-out transport shells.
A single kiosk still stood, if one could call it standing. Its canopy sagged, its frame cobbled together from repurposed scaffolding and old vending machines. Strings of mismatched lights blinked erratically around it, casting a sickly purple glow.
As Kali approached, a figure popped up from behind the kiosk, startling him. "Welcome, welcome!" the man cried, arms thrown wide like a ringmaster unveiling his star attraction. "What wares bring you to my humble abode? Psych drugs? Automatons?" He leaned closer, voice dropping to a mock conspiratorial whisper. "The friendly ones."
Kali narrowed his eyes, studying the man. He was small, wiry, practically vibrating with an odd, manic energy. A tattered cloak hung off his shoulders, every inch of it stitched with blinking gadgets and useless trinkets. A cracked pair of goggles sat crooked over his face, making his wild grin even more unsettling.
"Are you the broker?" Kali asked, his hand resting subtly near his belt, where a short blade was hidden.
"Who's asking?" the broker shot back, tilting his head like a curious bird.
Without a word, Kali pulled a small drive from his pocket, the cool metal glinting under the stuttering light. "Someone who's willing to pay."
The broker's grin widened to something almost too big for his face. "That's the right kind of language, friend!" he chirped, clapping his hands twice in excitement. "Come on, then. Come, come!"
He spun around and practically skipped toward the backend of the street, weaving through heaps of scavenged tech and scrap. Kali followed cautiously, stepping over twisted coils of cable and half-gutted drones. The whole place smelled faintly of burned plastic and old oil. Soon, they reached what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse.
"What are you looking for?"
"A friend told me you had come into possession of bypass cyberware," Kali explained.
The broker ducked under a low hanging tarp, revealing a small, cluttered workbench bathed in the flickering light of an ancient lantern. He rummaged through a pile of scrap, muttering to himself about "bygone wonders" and "poor life choices," until finally producing a slim black case.
"Here she is!" he announced grandly, placing it before Kali with a theatrical bow. "One bypass cyberware, probably."
Kali opened the case carefully. Inside, cushioned by a velvet lining that seemed absurdly out of place, was a sleek, almost organic-looking cybernetic device, its polished surface inlaid with fine silver veins of circuitry.
"Payment first, naturally," the broker said, wiggling his fingers expectantly.
Kali didn't argue. He slotted the drive into the terminal built into the workbench, and after a The broker's cracked goggles flickered to life, confirming the transfer. He leaned back with a satisfied hum, giving Kali a mock salute.
"A pleasure doing shady business with you," he said. Then his grin shifted, grew sharper, hungrier. "Though for you, it won't be so pleasurable."
Almost on cue, two bulky figures stepped out from the deeper shadows of the warehouse, the faint creak of metal and hydraulics betraying their movement. Their bodies were a patchwork of flesh and machinery, arms reinforced with piston-like servos, faces partially obscured by crude cybernetic plates. The dim light caught the dull gleam of a bone saw affixed to one of their wrists, still crusted with old blood.
Kali sighed, running a hand through his hair, utterly unimpressed. "I was hoping you'd do this," he said, almost lazily, shifting his weight onto his back foot. "Saves me the trouble of explaining the fake credits."
The broker's grin faltered for the first time, suspicion flickering across his face. "Fake—?"
Kali moved.
In a blur, he twisted to the side, yanking a concealed blade free from under his jacket. The first cyber-brute lunged forward with a heavy punch, the whir of servos screaming through the warehouse. Kali ducked under the blow, slid in close, and drove the blade upward between the plates of the brute's augmented ribs. A sharp hiss of escaping air and oil splattered from the wound. The brute staggered back, limbs spasming.
The second came at him with a growl, swinging a cybernetic arm like a club. Kali vaulted over a stack of crates, keeping distance, his mind already racing. He wasn't built to take these guys head-on, he needed to be quicker, smarter.
The broker shrieked and dove behind his kiosk, shouting something about "ruined merchandise."
Kali dodged another swing, this one splintering a crate into shrapnel. He kicked a loose pipe off the ground and hurled it at the brute's exposed neck joint. The metal lodged in with a satisfying thunk, and the brute stumbled, just long enough for Kali to close the distance. One clean slash severed critical wiring, and the second thug crumpled like a marionette with cut strings.
The warehouse fell still, save for the soft clatter of mechanical limbs twitching on the floor.
Kali straightened, breathing steady, and turned back toward the short man.
The broker's head popped up from behind it, his goggles askew. "You can have it! I'll throw in one of those automatons if you wish," he squeaked.
Kali shook his head slowly, then vanished into the labyrinth of alleys beyond, the precious cyberware tucked safely against his side.