Jade Zero stood at the threshold of Faros Kensuke’s deserted apartment, neon lights from the neighboring billboards dancing across the battered door. Her short, jet-black hair clung to her forehead, beaded with a faint sheen of perspiration. Beneath the electric hum of Neo-Eden—and the subtle, perpetual vibrations nobody truly questioned—Jade could sense the tension coiled in the air. What lay inside, she knew, could upend everything she thought she understood about this city and her own past.
She eased the door open, her enhanced left hand whirring softly as she pressed fingertips to the panel. Its ancient lock gave way in a resigned hiss, as though an unspoken command had finally been uttered. Jade slipped into the darkness.
A single overhead fixture blinked erratically, casting fleeting glimpses of the cramped apartment. Discarded electronics lay strewn across the floor, half-dismantled circuit boards perched on the arm of a threadbare couch. The only sign of life: a tiny spider-like drone in the corner, its red sensor glinting before scuttling into a hole in the wall.
Jade’s heart clenched as she recalled the message from Lieutenant Cassin that had led her here. Faros Kensuke—murdered, his corpse scrawled with strange markings. A bloodstained data shard had been tucked beneath his collar, and Jade had been named as the only person in Neo-Eden who might decipher the cryptic symbols. She’d scoffed at first, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more that old curiosity tugged at her.
Stepping carefully over a pile of half-fused mechanical arms, she surveyed the place. Faros had always thrived on secrets. He’d once boasted of an underground group so devoted to technology that they practically worshipped it. Mechimanicaus, he had called them—or something like that. Now, with him gone, Jade wondered if that same sect had a hand in his death—or if Faros had simply bargained with devils too often and lost.
A ping on her comm implant jerked her out of her thoughts. She flicked her gaze to the translucent display that bloomed before her vision. It was from the anonymous messenger, B, again:
B: You’re standing on the edge of something far bigger than a single murder. I can’t say more now. Proceed carefully, Jade Zero. The Mechimanicaus see more than you think.
Her heartbeat quickened. Someone was watching. She inhaled slowly, burying her nerves beneath layers of practiced calm. A part of her—the part that had once scaled corporate towers with catlike grace—thrilled at the challenge.
Jade rummaged through Faros’s clutter, scanning for anything that looked like writing, a clue, a diagram. Then she saw it—a small metal pendant etched with gears and a stylized eye. It felt warm to the touch, as though alive. Carefully pocketing it, she decided she’d learned all she could here. It was time to speak with Lieutenant Cassin again.
Deep in the Sanctum of Iron:
Meanwhile, in a hidden district where neon tangles with archaic steel, a man known only as David stepped through the reinforced doors of a secluded compound. Glowing sigils etched into the walls flared and dimmed in recognition of his presence. He exhaled slowly, adrenaline still coursing through his veins from the act he’d just committed.
He approached a weathered telephone in the corner—a relic from a bygone era, polished to a mirror shine. Lifting the receiver, David keyed in an access code. Static hissed, then a muffled voice answered.
“Report, Brother, was it accomplished?” the voice asked.
David shut his eyes and pictured the scene: the hush of a lonely alley, the startled gasp of the old tech-priest. The blade had been swift, the symbols left in blood. This marked his fourth kill in the name of the Machinaeus—an extreme offshoot of the original engineers’ lineage. Over generations, the Machinaeus had cloaked their tasks in rituals and myth, ultimately revered by the ignorant populace as mystical keepers of an arcane discipline.
“The fourth is done,” David said, his voice low. “A high-ranking Keeper of Secrets. He died claiming the station’s ‘relic’ is hidden in the outer frameworks near Neo-Eden’s Underlair. But the rumors…they’re all contradictory.”
A pause. Then came soft laughter. “They’re supposed to be contradictory. Disinformation keeps the relic safe—from us, from the government, and from any misguided fool who’d see the station’s true nature revealed. Our ancestors built this place, and only we of the Machinaeus can steward its secret powers.”
David clenched his free hand. “When do we seize it?”
“Now, Brother. The time has come,” his superior replied, voice cool and measured. “Go to the Chromatek Boneyard—the old district beyond the city’s central cortex. That’s where the relic truly lies. We have placed false leads everywhere else. Retrieve it. Complete our mission.”
A kernel of excitement, tinged with dread, curled in David’s stomach. “And if the relic can reset the entire AI controlling Neo-Eden?” He remembered the old texts, the rumors of a cataclysmic reveal. That everything they took for granted—sky, city, ground—might be a façade.
“Then we will become gods over this domain,” the superior said, an undercurrent of reverence in every syllable. “Imagine a Neo-Eden rid of illusions, free to worship the Machinaeus, who alone hold the power to tear down its false sky.”
David’s lips twitched in what might have been satisfaction—or regret. He remembered each tech-priest’s face in those final moments, shock and betrayal etched in their eyes. They had guarded knowledge for centuries, perhaps longer. Knowledge that David and his sect would twist to their own ends. But he steeled himself. Even Evil Has Standards, he thought grimly, but the Machinaeus believed the ends justified all means. They always had.
“Well done, Brother,” the superior murmured. Then, as if reading David’s hesitation, he added, “Remember, every sacrifice paves the way for a greater truth. You’ve come too far to turn back now.”
With a soft click, the line went dead. David placed the phone gently into its cradle, the metal cold against his cybernetic fingers. A low growl rumbled in his throat—determination, fury, and something else entirely.
Within moments, he was gone from the hall, slipping through steel corridors lit by flickering green luminescence. Overhead, servo-skulls and spider-like drones clung to rafters, their glowing optics trailing after him. A secret war brewed in Neo-Eden’s shadows—a war for knowledge, for power, for the soul of the station itself.
Back on the Streets Above:
Jade pressed her coat against the drizzle that perpetually haunted Neo-Eden’s labyrinthine streets. In the near distance, the wide vid-screens flickered with contradictory headlines: “BREAKTHROUGH IN FOOD SYNTHESIS!” read one, while the next screamed, “FATAL SHORTAGE—ALL HOPE LOST.” Standard fare from the AI-managed media, a swirl of half-truths and illusions meant to keep citizens off balance.
She gripped Faros’s pendant tighter, glancing at the swirling designs under a passing streetlight. Something about it sent a chill down her spine, the etched gears shimmering like an Arc Symbol repeating through history. She caught her reflection in a glistening puddle, her mechanical arms faintly aglow, and forced a bitter laugh.
Not so different, she mused. Like the Machinaeus—she was a product of technology too, torn between wanting to harness it and fearing what it made her capable of.
A stray thought made her bite her lip: the memory of the bloodstained data shard, the cryptic marks on Faros’s body. Dark secrets connected to these “keepers” who could tinker with the city’s infrastructure as if it were a child’s puzzle. Was Faros killed by one of them? Or was he on the brink of exposing something they desperately wanted kept silent?
Neon lights buzzed overhead, and Jade steadied herself. It was time to see Lieutenant Cassin and share what she’d found. If there was a conspiracy to unravel, she wouldn’t do it alone—even if that meant trusting the Protectorate more than she cared to.
But unknown to her, in the labyrinth below, David was already on the move, guided by twisted faith and half-whispered lies toward the Chromatek Boneyard. Both he and Jade—the cat burglar desperate for answers and the cultist assassin forging ahead on a treacherous path—were about to collide with a secret powerful enough to bring down the illusions of an entire world.
And as the hidden station continued its slow orbit—unseen by those living within—its ancient AI flickered, awaiting the one who might finally reset it.
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