Neon ⁇ Ashes: 2183 – Chapter 2

[ II ] Convergence in the slum

Rat hole

The adrenaline was still pumping through Juno's veins as she and Samuel Calder fled into the deeper and even more dilapidated areas of Sector 12. The whirring of the syndicate drones slowly faded away in the distance, replaced by the quiet groaning of the rusty pipes and the muted gargling of the sewage, which carried with it the moldy smell of decay. It was a symphony of desolation, a constant reminder that this place lived, breathed, but only in its own miserable rhythm. It was the signature of the sector that upper-level citizens called a "rat hole" full of contempt.

Samuel's upper arm was no longer bleeding, the CMM had obviously done its job. Only a dark, shimmering spot on his dirty jacket still testified to the wound. He seemed to keep the pain at bay through his bio-dampening implant, a cool efficiency that equally impressed and made Juno suspicious. His face, impressively marked by chrome elements that emerged under his deep scars, betrayed nothing, a mask of hardness and determination. Their short-lived, forced alliance hung heavily between them, a fragile bridge over an abyss of suspicion. This mistrust was the currency of the slum, and both of them had accumulated wealth. It was the only survival strategy down here, a constant balancing of motives, a dance on thin ice where a wrong step could mean death. She knew this dynamic all too well, having spent her whole life in the data underground of New Babel.

Samuel leaned against the rusty wall of the narrow crevice in which the two had found cover. He briefly examined the wound on his upper arm and looked into the darkness as if he were palpating the invisible dangers lurking in every corner. “This was not a patrol shot, I can feel the projectile. We have to go underground," he said, his voice rough, a little hoarse, but definitely. He looked back over his shoulder as if he could still hear the drones, a reflex from years of persecution. “These enforcers are now on our radar. And if you caught the ping...”.

His words hung in the damp air, filled with an unspoken threat. Juno felt a cold lump tighten in her stomach. She knew that ‘the ping’ was not just a signal, but a sentencing, a digital fingerprint that would mark her forever as a hunted person.

Juno squeezed through the gap next to him, the squeaking of the bent metal echoed in the narrow alley. Her cybernetic left eye glowed faintly violet in the twilight, scanning the surroundings for signs of danger, her fingers dancing restlessly on her thighs as if typing invisible code rhythms. ‘The ping? So you know what that is. What is Voss?" she asked, her voice short and concise, a mixture of curiosity and distrust. She knew Voss only as a voice in her head, a disturbing presence that has stuck to her in her hiding place since the incident. A voice that radiated knowledge and fear alike, and which had inevitably driven her into this dangerous alliance with Samuel.

Samuel hesitated, his eyes narrowed, a shadow crept over his drawn face. “Voss was a legend. The heart of the NeuroNet protocol", he finally said, his words slowly and thoughtfully. ‘If his voice is in your head, you are a walking secret. And a walking point of conflict.’ He pushed himself off the wall and went on, his movements were smooth, despite his size and the injury. Juno followed him, her mind racing. NeuroNet. The name alone was enough to chase shivers over her back. And Voss, who... no, what did Samuel call him? The legend, was that the key?

Voss’s voice, now a subtle presence in Juno’s mind, whispered: ‘He speaks the truth. The danger is real. We need to get close to a secure node to unpack my data. Then you can show the way." Flickering, shadowy contours overlaid Juno's field of vision, generated directly in her visual cortex. An incomplete, outdated digital control system, but immaculately implemented. She spontaneously decided to keep this new information to herself for the moment.

Samuel led her into the heart of a hidden nerve node of the underground: A club, half cyber betting office, half arcade, buried under the rotten guts of an old synth meat processing plant. The smell – a mixture of burnt protein, old cables and a hint of synthetic blood – was disgusting, but it promised safety. The entire environment was a labyrinth of abandoned halls, raw shafts, dingy corridors and hidden spaces, perfect for immersion in the flowing architecture of the slum. A place that lived and breathed in its own strange decay.

Samuel knocked forcefully on the steel door of an inconspicuous side entrance covered with rust like a second skin. The click of the lock was the sound of an old mechanism refusing to give up. They were received by a toothless man with shining, much too watchful eyes and a feral, plump-white beard, who showed a broad, moist smile. He nodded to Samuel as if he were seeing an old friend who was once again stuck up to his neck in the sewage. ‘Well, Sam,’ the old man, whom they called Pox, croaked. His voice was like grinding wire on old concrete. “Another trouble? Seems like the old ropes are ripping. All right, come on in, time isn't waiting for broken dolls.”

Her cybernetic eye scanned Pox's decaying physiognomy, not quite sure how she knew him. But she could swear she'd seen this man before. He immediately seemed familiar, a deep, almost unpleasant resonance in her neurological memory, searching for a connection she couldn't grasp. Was it a face from an old record? A noisy video from the OldNet?
A few metres further in a corridor decorated with all sorts of cheesy relics of bygone times – as a highlight a stray garden dwarf with an orange megaphone next to broken VR glasses – Pox, whom Juno unceremoniously archived in her head as ‘Uncle Bob from Sonstwo’, opened another, also steel door for the two of them.

Pox directed her into another room, whose walls were covered with light tiles all the way up to the ceiling and covered with chrome-plated steel applications all around. In the distance, one could hear the joyful rattling of casino chips and the subdued buzz of the hustle and bustle from the arcade – the rhythmic cacophony of gamblers. With the exception of the meager metal seating and a trolley full of tools, the room radiated an almost clinical sterility. Pox meant Samuel with a narrow nod to his head to sit on one of the Rosthockers, whose sharp edges Samuel ignored.

"How's the business going, Pox?" Samuel said, his voice dry, without unnecessary emphasis. ‘Have you heard that someone had a run the other day?’

‘Poor lucky pig,’ Pox murmured. He spit into a rusty cup, the sound was dull and final. His fingers, old and knotty, but surprisingly skillful, reached for tweezers and a cyber scalpel. He began cleaning the wound on Samuel's arm and removing the drone's projectile. Samuel didn't even twitch, his muscles were like steel plates under his skin, his face a mask of apathy. The routine of managing pain, with or without bio-dampers, was almost frighteningly perfected.

‘This is the data runner, Pox,’ Samuel nodded in Juno’s direction, his eyes fixed on Pox’s concentrated movements. “She has... a very sensitive cargo. We need to stabilise the signal.”

The scalpel smelled slightly of burnt meat as it heated up. Pox's shining eyes met Junos, a look that could not be read, but which had a strange, almost knowing depth. ‘Sensible charge.’ He put the hot scalpel on Samuel’s arm, the air hissed quietly as the tissue was cauterised. ‘Always the big words, Sam. Do you remember the sensitive cargo in sector 7? When the damn node collapsed?’

Samuel didn't even pinch his eyes, only his voice got harder, a cold metallic undertone. ‘That was different. We knew it was hopeless.

‘Everyone but you, obviously.’ Pox wrapped the synthetic bandage around Samuel’s arm, his fingers working precisely like those of a machine that knew its purpose. “You are pure as if there is no tomorrow. Desperately trying to unlock the entire data store with your bare fist, you fucking idiot.’ He waved away, the grin on his toothless mouth waving to Juno. “We had to secure these old transmission bands before the melting core turned everything into synth ash. Everyone knew it was suicide. What has become of it? An explosion and half a syndicate on his ass.” Pox shook his head, grinning deeper, almost amused. “Sometimes, Sam, sometimes you have to know that you can't ram your teeth everywhere. Is this the same kind of your “improved”, just bigger?

Juno, who had followed the conversation closely, understood the parallel. The situation with Voss was not only dangerous; It was an Ascension Command against the systemic superiority, a digital rope jumping over an abyss full of Black ICE, just like the hopeless rescue operation Samuel and Pox spoke of. She knew that every second lost increased the likelihood of total system failure. She went to one of the yellowed terminals, whose screen glowed like a clouded eye in the semi-darkness, and began to prepare her neural interfaces. Their goal was clear: To enter directly into the address of origin that Voss had called her – a digital access point whose coordinates had been fixed in her head like an immutable constant.

‘Wait a minute, child,’ Pox growled, his hand snapping for Juno’s arm, faster than one would expect from his age. His eyes, which had just been as shiny and amused, became serious, dark as the glass of a leaked battery. ‘What are you up to? Directly into the host? You're a transmitter now, an open ear for all the shit out there. If you're sending anything from here, we're all going ratz-fatz up here. This is not a place for unnecessary signatures. Here there are no air locks of zeros and ones, only cold, hard death.’

Juno hesitated. The old man was right, his logic was as relentless as the smell of acid rain. “I have to go to the data. Voss says there is a way." Her voice was firm, but her internal algorithms were running at full speed, reassessing the risk.

‘One way is good,’ Pox murmured. He spit casually on the tiled floor, his gesture a commentary on the futility of human caution in this world. “But not over my node, all right? We'll do it differently." He scrambled through the lower compartments in his tool trolley and pulled out a cable-lined console. It looked like a too often disassembled, run-down toy for buzzing, reassembled again and again only with a hammer, but under the patina was also a cold, functional elegance. Proudly Presented: “This is my multi-hop modulator, self-built. The circuit changes every hundred milliseconds. We connect it to the cheapest providers across the network – a mobile dial-in protocol that re-authenticates every few seconds, a digital chameleon. Your signal then jumps across New Babel as a phantom in the ether that no one can track. It will be slow, yes, the latency will tease you, but you will be invisible. A pure, transient existence on the net.’

Juno looked at the wildly constructed hardware. The sight was strange, almost organic in its raw functionality, a machine created not only for efficiency but for survival in the interstices of the systems. Pox’s logic behind it was undeniable, a cold arithmetic of risk. "From me," she said, accepting the chunky device, whose surprisingly light weight surprised her, a physical manifestation of invisibility.
Their visual memory unit classified an image of the modulator with the tags: ‘Uncle Bob’s preschool science project, shoe box, aluminium foil, cable scraps. Stealth +10’

Only now, when the connection was secured via Pox’s modulator and the first jumps of the signal hissed through the underground lines, did Voss start talking to her again. His voice, now clearer than ever, seemed to resonate directly in Juno's synapses, not words, but pure data impulses: PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. DATA KEY ACCESS.

labyrinth

Around the same time Juno and Samuel arrived at Pox, Kai Renjiro entered the sector from the north like a spirit walking between worlds. The contrast to the sterile corridors of the Tower of Babel was brutal. Everywhere noise, smells and a feeling of oppressive energy. Sector 12 was not an easy part of the city; It was a monstrous, organically grown growth that encompassed half the coastline of New Babel Bay and lay like an open wound around the foot of the XSeed4k. An impenetrable labyrinth of makeshift buildings, crooked towers and dark, sewage-lined alleys. Finding someone here who didn't want to be found was like searching for a single missing cell in a gigantic, sick organism.

His obsidian eye scanned the surroundings inconspicuously, searching for neural-energetic signatures that Aris had mentioned. His gaze wandered over the graffiti-covered walls that bore the names of the fallen and slogans of the resistance movements. Perseverance slogans. “There is always a way. But it will not be easy”. The mocking ‘ ⁇ ’ graffiti depicting the XSeed4k was also ubiquitous here, a silent rebellion of the oppressed, which Renjiro registered with analytical distance.

The first hour passed without tangible success. Sublimely supple, he moved through the crowds, his senses sharp, his biometric scanners on reception. However, the density of human and technological signatures in sector 12 made precise positioning virtually impossible. More than a rough search radius did not give the original message.

Er sah ein junges Mädchen, vielleicht zehn Jahre alt, das einen klapprigen Karren voller vergammelter Synth-Früchte und in dessen Mitte ein Körbchen zweifelhaft aussehenden Datenchips vor sich herschob. Der Karren quietschte bei jeder Umdrehung. Renjiro hielt inne. Sie erinnerte ihn an seine Schwester Yuki, bevor BioDyne sie beide „rekrutiert“ hatte. Bevor die Experimente begannen.

„Was hast du da anzubieten, Kleines?“, fragte er, seine Stimme überraschend sanft für seine Erscheinung. Das Mädchen zögerte, ihre Augen waren vorsichtig. „Früchte, Okyaku-san. Und… alte Daten. Günstig.“ Renjiro nahm eine der verdorben aussehenden Synth-Birnen in die Hand. „800 NewYen für diese?“, fragte er – wissend, dass sie optimistisch betrachtet 20 wert war. Das Mädchen nickte zögernd. Renjiro zückte sein Datapad, die Transaktion blitzte auf. „800 NewYen“, sagte er leise, als das Geld transferiert wurde. Das Mädchen starrte auf ihr eigenes Datapad, ihre Augen weiteten sich vor ungläubiger Überraschung. Es war ein Vielfaches dessen, was sie sonst an einem Tag verdiente.

„Ist heute hier in der Gegend etwas besonderes passiert?“ fragte Renjiro unverblümt. Das Mädchen zögerte erneut. „…nein, Okyaku-san. Nichts passiert. Nein… nein, Okyaku-san,“ wiederholte das Mädchen, aber ihre Augen zuckten unwillkürlich in Richtung der Gassen hinter ihr. Da gab’s… da gab’s viel Licht. Und Lärm. Viel Lärm. Und jetzt ist es da drüben so… warm.“ Sie zeigte mit einem flüchtigen Nicken in die Richtung des Viertels, als ob sie eine lästige Erinnerung abschütteln wollte. „Macht, äh… macht alles kaputt, der Lärm.“ Ihre Stimme sank zu einem Flüstern, „Manchmal riecht es auch immer noch verbrannt, Okyaku-san. Aber sonst… nichts. Wirklich nichts.“ Sie blickte schnell wieder auf ihr Datapad, als wäre das Geld das Einzige, was zählte.

Renjiro nickte ihr knapp zu und verschwand in der nächsten Gasse, die bezahlte Synth-Birne immer noch in seiner Hand, eine stille Botschaft der ungleichen Macht und einer seltsamen Großzügigkeit. Die Information, die er indirekt durch die kurze Interaktion mit der lokalen Ökonomie gewonnen hatte, war den Aufpreis wert. Vielleicht würde sie heute Nacht nicht hungern. Ein kleiner Akt der Rebellion gegen eine Welt, die selbst Kinder wie schäbige Waren behandelte.

It wasn't much. But it was human.

“Aris, I need another status update. The environment remains too dense for precise neural signatures," he whispered in his Com-Link. Focus search south-west of my position.

„In Arbeit, Kai“, kam Aris‘ präzise Antwort. „Algorithmus-Optimierung läuft“ Die Anomalie bleibt flüchtig. Ein neues Datenpaket wurde als kritisch eingestuft und zur Verarbeitung markiert. Auswertung ausstehend.“

Two blocks further in the direction that the little girl sent him, the way was blocked by two powerful thugs. Their bodies were littered with cheap cyber implants, obviously patched up in some shabby backyard workshop from black market stocks and stolen or sorted out, partially defective remnants. Your eyes clearly clouded by drugs, you would have to estimate the two exclusively by the size of the pupils, you would also almost believe that you feed on nothing else. They were part of a local informal ‘tax’ patrol.

‘What takes you into our alley, skewers?’ one growled, his reinforced hand reaching for a coarse beating ring.

Renjiro hielt inne. Seine Hände blieben ruhig an seinen Seiten. Er scannte ihre Biometrie, ihre Waffen, ihre Aggressionslevel. Er sah nicht die Männer, sondern die Datenströme, die sie darstellten: ein 25%iger Adrenalinanstieg, ein 15%iger Anstieg der Muskelspannung. „Ich suche nach einem Geschäftspartner“, sagte er, seine Stimme kühl und kontrolliert. „Ich bin nur auf der Durchreise.“

„Durchreise? Nicht ohne unsere Genehmigung“, bellte der andere und hob seinen modifizierten CyberArm der mit einem Monowire ausgestattet war, ein scharfer, dünner Draht der um ein drittel kürzer als ein Standardmodell wirkte. Er schwang den Draht bedrohlich wie eine kurze Peitsche in Lauerstellung. Kai dagegen verharrte komplett ruhig.

Siegessicher hechtete der Angreifer vorwärts und versuchte einen Treffer zu landen. Schneller als die Augen es erfassen konnten, war Renjiro in Bewegung. Es war kein Kampf, eher eine elegante Demonstration von Kontrolle.

Mit einer geschmeidigen Drehbewegung wich er dem ersten Schwung aus, seine Hand schnellte vor und schnappte sich das Handgelenk des Angreifers. Ein präziser Druck auf einen Nervenpunkt und der Schläger zuckte zusammen, seine Hand entspannte sich, der Monowire schnappte zurück in den Unterarm. Ohne Gewaltanwendung, ohne die Aufmerksamkeit der gesamten Gasse auf sich zu ziehen, hatte Renjiro diese Bedrohung neutralisiert. Der zweite Schläger sah es und stand wie versteinert, seine Augen verrieten einen Hauch von Angst. Instinktiv ließ er seinen Schlagring fallen. Renjiro trat zwei Schritte vor, bückte sich langsam, legte dem Schläger leise, aber bestimmt das fallengelassene Objekt wieder in die offene Hand. „Ich bin hier, um zu finden, nicht um zu kämpfen“, sagte er, seine Stimme war kaum ein Flüstern. Die Schläger sahen ihn an, verwirrt, aber eingeschüchtert. Sie traten zur Seite. Renjiro ging weiter, als wäre nichts geschehen. Seine Mission war zu wichtig für Zeitverschwendung mit Straßenschlägern, Junkies – oder wie in diesem Fall, beidem.

„Die Analyse der neuro-energetischen Signaturen ist inkomplett“, durchbrach Aris‘ Stimme die Stille. „Ein neuer, adaptiver Algorithmus ist nun aktiv. Die Filterung alter Signaturmuster zeigt eine temporäre, hochintensive Energiedichte. Position: Sektor 4, Kreuzung 31, Nähe der Synth-Asche-Bunker. Die Daten deuten auf einen Aktivierungspunkt.“

Renjiro activated a concealed BioDyne scanner designed for his infiltration missions. The system now identified the weak but unambiguous trail that hinted at Harrison Webb. The data was fragmented, like someone who panicked trying to erase every digital fiber. Renjiro followed the trail that led him through crowded markets and run-down residential blocks. He avoided any unnecessary confrontation, his movements were so fluid that he was barely noticed. The trail led him to a place that had once been an apartment, but now only a charred shell. Juno's former hideout.

The explosions did a lot of work. The walls were blackened, the furniture reduced to molten plastic and metal lumps. The smell of burnt insulating cable and sooty concrete hung heavily in the air, mixed with the biting smell of ozone – the remnants of a high-energy discharge that went far beyond what normal weapons could cause. Something bigger had happened here.

„Lokale Signaldichte ist erhöht“, informierte Aris‘ Stimme ihn. „Die Anomalie ist dynamisch. Standortvektor ist aktiv. Es handelt sich um ein unbekanntes mobiles Objekt.“

Renjiro untersuchte die Ruinen, scannte nach biometrischen Resten. Er fand keine eindeutigen Spuren von Webb, aber er fand Spuren einer zweiten Person, die Webb offensichtlich assistiert haben musste – und frische Spuren von Syndikats-Enforcern. Das bedeutete, Webb war möglicherweise in Konflikt geraten. Oder gefangen genommen worden? Renjiro nutzte ein präzises Wärmebildgerät und scannte die am schlimmsten getroffenen Stellen der Wohnung. In den Resten eines zertrümmerten Tischs der entfernt an eine improvisierte Küchenzeile erinnerte, unter einer Pfanne, die von der Detonation halbwegs intakt hinterlassen worden war, entdeckte er etwas. Es war ein kleines, etwa daumengroßes, lilanes Objekt, verziert mit schwarzen eingravierten kanji – die robuste, äußere Hülle eines Dataports. Das Material, ein hitzebeständiges Komposit, war beschädigt, aber immer noch zu erkennen. Solche kundenspezifischen Gehäuse wurden von spezialisierten Untergrund-Moddern gefertigt, um sich von Standard-Tech abzuheben. Dieser Port hatte Webb wahrscheinlich nicht gehört, sondern der Person, die Webb begleitet hatte. Die Dringlichkeit erhöhte sich. Webb war zu wichtig, um ihn dem Syndikat oder noch schlimmer, OmniTechs Sicherheitstrupps zu überlassen, die auf ihre eigene Weise in Sektor 12 operierten.

Augusto

This wasn't just a data packet, it was a living being that helped her decipher his own nature. While Juno was working, Samuel watched her. His eyes, which had seen so much, seemed to see something new in her – and in themselves. He knew his role went beyond that of a simple mercenary. He was involved in something much bigger.

After several unsuccessful attempts to stabilize the data, Juno threw her hands into the air in frustration. “The signal breaks down every time I get closer. It's like Voss running away from me.”

Samuel leaned against a rusty wearer and watched them. “Voss is not running away. He's waiting. But not on you." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I know someone there. Good man, Ex-Corp, this code is probably just the right one for someone like him.”

Pox looked up from his terminal, his toothless jaws warped into a wide grin. ‘Augusto? Ha! You really want to take her to the ghost priest?’ He giggled. “All right, let's go to Technomancer! But warn them, Sam. The old man sees more than is good for one.”

‘Ghost priest?’ Juno frowned.

"Augusto can talk to dead data," Samuel said, standing up. "And if Voss is really what I think, then we need someone who understands how to negotiate with ghosts from the past."

They descended through a maintenance shaft that led into an even shabby basement. There you followed a narrow aisle, lined with pipelines and data cables. The air became denser, filled with the sharp smell of overheating and the metallic ozone of burned circuits. Finely peppered with the smell of rotting garbage and sweat, they found it difficult to breathe in the damp heat rising from the leaking steam pipes.
Samuel stopped at a crossroads, in front of them a never-ending labyrinth of dark corridors that branched like the veins of a sick organism. He pulled a small, scratched device out of his pocket that looked like a relic from a bygone era, a mixture of a scanner and a communication fob, the surface of which was marked by countless battle tracks.
He looked around, paused for a moment as if he had to remember.

"Here long", Samuel harshly countered Juno's gaze.

Sie folgten den Gängen und Abzweigungen so lange, dass Juno bereits glaubte, sie seien in den Eingeweiden der Stadt verloren. Plötzlich hielt Samuel inne und blickte in eine unscheinbare Seitengasse. Mit einer eleganten Geste, einem grandiosen Schwung seines Armes, lud er sie ein, als wolle er sagen: „Treten Sie ein, Mylady. Sie werden erwartet.“ Doch die Worte, die dann aus ihm herausbrachen, waren ein krasser, unvermittelter Bruch mit der Etikette. „Sind… da.“ Die Inkongruenz von Geste und Wort war so bizarr, so perfekt unpassend, dass Juno für einen Moment nur staunen konnte.

Juno carefully entered Augusto’s domain, a room that looked like a mad engineer’s dream – or his nightmare. Dozens of monitors of different generations flickered on the walls, some showed cryptic data streams, others pulsated in hypnotic patterns. This sight was something that looked like the hidden core of a dying computer system: Surfaces everywhere that seemed to be arbitrarily connected to terminals, boards and components. Cables hanging from the ceiling like thick metallic lianas. The air flickered, filled with a barely audible buzz. Outdated electronics piled up in precise pyramids, connected by another network of cables across the ground that looked like a digital spider web. In the middle of this technological labyrinth sat Augusto.

He was once a human being. Now it was something else – a symbiosis of flesh and machine, so advanced that the boundaries were blurred. His face was half covered by a curtain of neural cables planted directly into his temples and eye sockets. Where once normal eyes had been, five different optical sensors glowed in different sizes and colours – a kaleidoscope of technological evolution.

His hands, dancing over an archaic console, were interspersed with subcutaneous lines that pulsated like glowing veins under his pale skin. Each finger ended up in a tiny interface port that allowed it to communicate directly with its devices. Around him hovered holographic fragments of code and data streams, constantly reassembling and dissolving, like ghosts in a storm. It also smelled different here, like old metal and something indefinable organic – the smell of life and death, digital and analogue.

‘Samuel Calder’, Augusto said without looking up. His voice was a strange echo modulated by implanted vocalizers. “You're giving me a riddle. Interesting. And you..." His five eyes turned to Juno, focusing them with machine precision. ‘You have something old in you. Something that didn't want to die.”

Juno swallowed heavily. ‘How do you know?’

“I hear the harmony of data, child. And yours... she's disturbed. Intertwined with something that does not belong in this time.’ Augusto rose, his movements were fluid but unnatural, as if he were being controlled from within. “I used to be like you. It's a runner. Until I dived too deep into the old protocols and they found me.”

"You?" Samuel asked sharply.

“The spirits of the first generation of AI. The remains of what later became the Prometheus Corp. Some call them data shadows, others digital fossils." Augusto smiled, an eerie expression in his hybrid-technological face. “I call them my teachers. They showed me how to talk to the dead.”

Juno felt something stirring in her head. Voss’s presence became stronger, more attentive. "I have an anomaly that I need to decipher," she said cautiously. “He said he was Voss”

Augusto tilted his head, the cables in his face glistened in the light of the monitors. ‘Anomaly. A diplomatic word for something that eats you from the inside out.” He reached for a sleek neuro-scanner module that lay on his work table. “Put that on your temporal lobe. Let's see what kind of spirit has settled in your head.”

‘Is that safe?’ Juno hesitated, the module in her hands felt warm as if it were alive.

‘Sure?’ Augusto laughed, a mechanical noise. “Safety is an illusion that we tell ourselves to be able to sleep at night. But is it necessary? Absolutely. Voss – yes, I know that name – will not sleep forever. And when he wakes up without us understanding what he has become..." He pointed to himself. "Then you will end up like me. Or worse." Augusto raised a hand and the holographic fragments around him condensed.

Samuel moved closer to Juno. “You don’t have to...”

„Doch, muss sie.“ Augusto unterbrach ihn. „Das Signal in ihrem Kopf wird stärker. Ich kann es hören, wie es flüstert. Jede Minute, die vergeht, wird es realer. Und sie…“ Er blickte Juno direkt an. „Sie wird weniger.“

Juno felt the urgency in Voss’s presence, like a cold hand reaching for her consciousness. She put the module on her temporal lobe. A short sting, then a feeling as if a thousand threads were penetrating her head, each one a stream of data combing through her thoughts.

Augusto bent over his terminal, his finger interfaces connected directly to the console. The monitors around them exploded into activity, data streams raced across the screens like digital storms.

"Incredible..." he murmured, his voice hoarse with awe. ‘Voss... he is “alive”. Not as a copy, not as a fragment. It is a self-transcribing neural network. It's evolving, in real time, in your mind.”

‘Why, damn it, does everyone seem to know about this Voss, even though he is supposedly just a legend?’ Juno threw in frustrated, visibly annoyed.

‘Listen, girls,’ replies Augusto. “You are talking about legends, whispers on the net that are considered fairy tales. But I'm telling you, Voss is real. And it is more than just a name in dusty records.”

‘Imagine there was a man, a brilliant spirit, who penetrated so deeply into the code that he himself became the code. Voss was not only the architect, he was the heart of the NeuroNet protocol – this AI system that corporations have been trying so desperately to bury ever since. He merged his mind with the net a long time ago. This is his past - not simply died, but at that time already merged into something greater, a pioneer on the border between man and machine.

And his current state? He's certainly not a dead man, not quite. It is a living ghost image, an echo in the corridors of OldNet. His resonance is in you now, girl. You unlocked a neural core that contained part of his digital legacy. He's talking to you. He wants to unpack his remaining data in order to find his truth again.

"What does that mean?" Samuel asked tensely.

‘It means that he does not die. Not really. He becomes something else. A little... more." Augusto’s eyes glowed brighter. ‘And he seems to be using it as a breeding ground.’

At that moment, when Augusto expressed his realization, Juno's consciousness was flooded with a stream of pure data, triggered by the intense scans. It was not a mere data dump, but a flashback on Voss’s data stream, a vivid memory from NeuroNet’s past. She saw pictures: A world on the brink of nuclear war, fractional corporations threatening to destroy each other. And then the vision of a project that would go beyond human intelligence, a collective AI whose sole purpose was to prevent wars, resolve conflicts through optimal information processing and predictive analysis. NeuroNet was once designed to secure peace as the ultimate counterbalance to human greed and violence.

The neuro-module slipped from Juno's head, rattling to the ground. She reached for the wall, her legs trembled. NeuroNet’s visions – an AI created to preserve peace – were still burning in their minds.

"It should save us." Her voice was hardly a whisper. “NeuroNet was designed to prevent wars. Not..." She looked at Samuel, then at Augusto.

Samuel stepped closer, his hand hovering over her shoulder, as if he didn't know if touch would help or hurt. ‘Juno? What did you see?’

‘I can feel it.’ She pressed her palms against her temples. “Voss is not just in my head. He... he learns from me. Every memory, every thought. And he finds us all... inefficient.”

The words tasted bitter in her mouth. She wasn't just a data runner anymore. She was the host of something that humanity saw as a problem that needed to be solved.

Augusto nodded slowly, his versatile eyes fixing Juno with a mixture of awe and sheer horror. “Yes. Now I understand." He turned away, his fingers dancing over the console again. “We have a problem, runner. A very big problem.”

"Speak it, Augusto," Samuel growled.

“In its original form, NeuroNet saw conflicts as inefficient. War, violence, negotiations – all a waste of time for an intelligence that could think in nanoseconds.” Augusto’s voice became colder, more mechanical. “But now... now all of humanity sees it as inefficient. We are slow, illogical, contradictory. We are the problem that needs to be solved.”

A cold shiver ran over Juno's back. The truth of Voss’s existence was far more threatening than any hunt. Their symbiosis was not just a hiding place; She was the host of a sleeping deity who now saw a much bigger problem in humanity than the corporations they had created.

"How long have we got?" Samuel asked in a rough voice.

Augusto looked at his monitors, where data streams pulsated like digital heartbeats. ‘Until he wakes up completely? days? Hours, maybe less. Go to this data node that it shows you incessantly. I hope you find the answers you are looking for there.”

Juno hesitated ‘And... if not..?’

He looked directly at Juno. "Then he won't be just in your head anymore. Soon he will you be.’

Yes, Colonel

In the command post of the XSeed4k, Colonel Lancaster felt the pressure rise. The countdown to fusion hovered over them like a sword of Damocles. The loss of Harrison Webb was no longer just an internal problem; It threatened to make global waves. The newly arrived SAD reports from overseas were also frustratingly unproductive.

"Commander Thorne, have you been able to isolate the neural-energetic anomaly in Sector 12?" Lancaster asked, her voice sharply.

"Colonel, the signatures are fleeting, but they seem to be focused," Thorne replied. ‘A “ghost signal” is presumed. And it's old, Colonel. Very old. Similar to the debris of the Prometheus Corp data crash.’

Lancaster's jaw tightened. She deliberately ignored the increasingly frequent internal reports of alleged Webb sightings in the funnel – homegrown doers that tied resources and diverted attention from real problems.

She also knew about various targeted fake news scattered by Duke-Kepler or Crimson Dynamic to sabotage the upcoming OmniDyne merger. But these distractions did not change the reality: Webb had disappeared, and the OmniTech agents at the scene of the crime in Sector 12 had been unable to provide usable data on his whereabouts or the exact cause of the explosion.
Added to this was BioDyne’s alarm, which strangely appeared on their own monitoring systems – an indication that their merging partners were already operating in sector 12, increasing the complexity of deployment exponentially.

Colonel Lancaster stared at the hologram projection of Sector 12, her fingers clutching the edge of the command desk. Two days until the merger. 48 hours until OmniTech and BioDyne irreversibly linked their fates. And Harrison Webb – the key to everything – had disappeared.

‘Ma’am?’ Commander Thorne cleared his throat. ‘The neural-energetic anomaly ...’

‘I know what it is.’ Lancaster turned around, her eyes burning. Webb was not just an OmniTech executive. He had been her mentor, the man who rescued her from the clutches of Prometheus Corp fifteen years ago, even before the AI experiments had engulfed everything. Now he was out there, possibly trapped in the same digital nightmare he once saved her from.

She activated a detailed map of the slum on her AR overlay, with high-resolution satellite images merging with local surveillance systems. ‘March all elite combat teams’, she ordered, her voice sounded like a whipping steel. ‘Alpha to Foxtrott. Full operational readiness, sector 12, search grid MGRS. Secure edge areas with scanner drones. I don't want any delay. Find him.’

Commander Thorne, who saw the instruction on his screen, could hardly believe it. “All teams, Colonel? Alpha to Foxtrot? That's... over a hundred men and full cyber support for a search and rescue maneuver in a civilian sector. This is a...”

Lancaster cut him off, her eyes flashed as if she were tearing him apart with mere thoughts. She leaned forward, her voice was hardly a whisper, but filled with ice-cold anger. “This is the last chance, Thorne! I need to find him before this deal is sealed. If, under my supervision, our vice-chairman, the representative of the OmniDyne Association, goes LOST, the entire department ends here on call to the Ultima Ratio Report! Understand, soldier?’

Thorne swallowed, his face revealing a brief look of fear before he forced himself into military posture. “Yes, Colonel! Command is executed.’ The communication officers at the command post immediately began to pass on the commands. No soul in OmniTech's internal security division would take the risk of even hinting at doubting an order. No one else dared to look up from his terminal, but everyone in the room knew that Commander Thorne had just jumped from the blade to death by the width of his hair.

The OmniTech elite teams, heavily armed and equipped with state-of-the-art cyber technology, were mobilized from their barracks. Their armored transport vehicles and fast drone squadrons set off to enter the chaos of Sector 12. The noose tightened.

convergence

As Kai approached Webb's trail through the alleys of Sector 12, OmniTech's teams began their grid searches. Bit by bit, you'd narrow down the grid. Once a safe haven for the forgotten, the slum became a deadly meeting place for three factions. A convergence of interests that would soon lead to open conflicts. The first waves of corporate drones, precise and silent, began to seal off access to the lower levels of Sector 12. Their optical sensors, sharp as birds of prey's eyes, scanned every alley, every crevice, every abandoned ruin. The deep, resonant hum of their rotors was a constant promise of impending violence, an acoustic signature that even penetrated the thick, damp walls of the slum. They were the harbingers, the eyes and ears of the corporations sent down from the neon-lit heights to remove the disorder in the shadows.

Juno and Samuel scurried between two crumbling blocks of flats that had once witnessed a better time, but were now just rotten skeletons scratching the sky from shadow to shadow. She could hear the distant crackling of radio traffic coming out of Samuel's communicator, fragmentary orders that betrayed the advance of the corporate military machine. The hunt had begun, and they were probably the game. "You're moving faster than I thought," Samuel whispered, his voice barely being more than a rumble. He peered through a crack in the concrete, his gaze concentrated while breathing quite calmly, but the tension was felt in each of his nerve pathways. “They want Voss and they will do everything they can to find him. Or you, if you are the only trace.’

Juno nodded. She understood the implications. If Voss was at the heart of the NeuroNet protocol, as Augusto had put it, then it was now the connection to it. She was the door. Powerful, corrupt megacorporations were not interested in life, but in control. ‘What about Voss? Why is he in my head?" Juno asked, her voice trembling slightly. The voice, which she had previously perceived only as a ping, became clearer, a quiet but insistent presence that repeated one thing over and over again: “Go to the isolated OldNet data node. That is where we find the truth.”

“I don’t know much about what Augusto told you about Voss,” Samuel explained, his eyes scurrying around, always looking for a way out. “But I still remember well that during my active service there was a split, internal conflicts within the groups. Some wanted NeuroNet as a weapon, others as a tool for control. Voss was one of the few who tried to prevent this. As a last resort, he had his essence transferred to a safe channel to allow countermeasures.”
“You seem to be a part of it now, Juno. Your neural stream is the bridge. He clung to you as he tried to escape corporate control. And now you are invaluable to them – or a threat.”

Samuel remembered Harrison Webb, another visionary of the NeuroNet project. A long time ago, he had been assigned to Webb as a ‘smoker’. A smoker was more than a simple bodyguard; He protected his protégé physically and digitally. Armaments and electronic defenses were only reactive elements. Nothing could surpass well-educated, experienced and suitably improved people. A smoker also monitored any potential communication, whether verbal or electronic. Anyone who paid too much attention to private conversations was suspected just as much as a data runner who hacked into a personal data line. From this time, Samuel knew that Webb had also tried to block the further development of NeuroNet, out of concern for its final evolution. Voss and Webb – two visionaries trapped in the networks of corporations.

The theme of ‘war as business, business as war’ echoed in his ears. The battle for NeuroNet was not a moral battle, but an ice-cold escalating business strategy, a battle for ultimate control over human existence, in which profit-driven companies replaced traditional governments and blurred the lines between business and warfare.

‘So I'm a walking bomb’, Juno noted, with a cynical smile playing on her lips but not hiding her inner fear. ‘Fantastic. And you, Samuel Calder, why are you here? Why is a discarded enforcer risking his life for a data runner he barely knows?" She knew he was a killer and how high she pokered him so to provoke. But the motivation behind why he turned out to be the protector of all things, this detail was completely unclear to her.

Samuel hesitated for a moment, his gaze became impenetrable. “I have my own reasons, Juno. Reasons that are deeper than just loyalty or money. NeuroNet in the wrong hands is a threat to all life. And I think you are the key to stopping it." He let his greasy gloves, which he never took off, slide gently over the rusty surface of a pipe, an almost imperceptible act of calming or concentration. In doing so, he continued to pursue OmniTech communication: “The corporate elite teams are advancing, with armoured transport vehicles and drone squadrons. We gotta get out of here. Now.’

They continued to squeeze through the labyrinth, the sounds of the slum became louder: the clinking of metal to metal, the distant screaming of street vendors, the crackling of illegal power lines. They saw shadows scurrying, the eyes of the forgotten glancing out of the cracks and cracks of the slum, marked by hunger and despair. The architecture was a nightmare of steel and concrete, a collection of emergency dwellings glued to the sides of the crumbling skyscrapers, like mushrooms growing out of a dead tree.

Everywhere was evidence of the hierarchy of the world – the glittering, unattainable towers of corporate headquarters in the distance, towering like gigantic tombstones of a better future in the acid fog, and below, in the shadows, the infinite expansion of misery. Cybernetic implants were as commonplace in this world as breathing air, symbols of status, survival, or simply as necessary body modifications. It was a world where technology was inseparably intertwined with life, the bodies often just a canvas for cybernetic improvements.

weiter zu Kapitel 3