Chapter 1 – Wake Up Dead

Lowly beneath the shop vendor’s transistor radio playing Green Earrings by Steely Dan, my netscanner started its let’s piss off Richey song. 

“Goddamnit.”

Huddled on a stool in a vinyl draped ramen shop, I had only drunk half my Heineken, and had barely touched my steaming bowl of late-night noodles. The orange grease circles in the broth swam lazily as the passing Shinkansen swept up the degrading plastic flaps. I sighed and slapped down some new yen. The force caused the half boiled egg to flip over and its jelly yolk to drift away meekly. The vendor gave me a raised eyebrow.

“Keep the change.”
“But this is three times the cost?”
“I don’t give a fuck.”

I finished the beer.
Left the ramen.

Thirty seconds later, high in the sky in my Ford Thunderbird III, rain beat down, I adjusted the wipers and flicked the control switches to manual. I throttled up with no goddamn computers telling the turbines what to do. 49,000lbf of thrust slammed me into my seat as the dual Pratt & Whitney J75s hit the afterburners.

The floating neon signs began to blur, the red dot on my matrix radar began to blink faster. Someone found a new body with the right MO. I gripped the wheel hard with one hand and lit a Camel Turkish Royal with the other. I was dreading what we would find this time. I pinged HQ on the comm-link.

“Dispatch: Unit 808—report current location.”
“You know where I’m at.”
“Formality, report location.”
“What, do you think I’m in the fucking Kirin factory? Jesus Christ, I’m southbound on Tanaka 6. Looks like we got another body from preliminary reports. Requesting backup and med-evac team. 14 minutes out to destination.”
“Med-evac ready to deploy.”
“Confirm their destination coordinates.”
“Sector seven. Zone 3B.”
“Yeah, I can see that on the screen, dumbass.”
“Formality, oh and Richey—godspeed.”

I closed the channel and began the descent. Still pissed, I tuned over to J-Wave—81.3FM. The guitar solo from Green Earrings oozed through the dash speakers. I popped a small blue pill and felt just a little better.

Filth rested between the ill-maintained mega complexes, with their thermo panels rusted and shifted from years of neglect. Last election they promised to bring change to sector seven. Then again, they say that every time. Still, old people and Russian androids voted as if it mattered. As if the board wasn’t only worried about lining their pockets and sending us government suckers to do their bidding. The glow of the street approached and I aimed for an open spot between busted cabbies, touching down and immediately getting flipped off. Passersbys threw trash and coffee cups all over my T-Bird. Street patrons looked up from their steaming cups of gruel. The sewer drains wafted up thick scented vapor out in the cold. 

I turned over the key to the internal combustion engine. A supercharged Ford 460 pushing 700 horsepower. After a second it caught with a roar that sent a few street urchins running.

I understood the people’s resentment, but I flipped them off anyway. Met with a sea of traffic, I switched on the lights and siren. Cars began to move out of the way, or receive digital citations. Kinda fucked the system deducted new yen from their bank accounts in real time, but it was effective.

After fighting through the congestion, I finally drove up to the scene. It was gruesome. Above a canal bridge was a woman’s body. Well, half of one. The lower half was torn away, entrails hanging, threaded all throughout were CAT 6 and coax cables, as if she was being consumed by wires. Press vans, other Thunderbird and Charger cruisers with lights flashing, and med-evac vans were scattered about creating chaos. Several beat cops in blues were attempting to direct traffic. One walked up, “Ay detective Valence, c’mon, this way. AY HAKESUMA GET OVER HERE AND PARK THIS GODDAMN CRUISER!”

I jumped out and hit a button on my Casio F-91W+, linking it to my netscanner. 

A press hound came up mic in hand, “Detective! Detective, can you tell me what we got here?”

I didn’t even look at him and replied with, “Fuck off.”

I turned to some of the beat cops. “Get this asshole outta here.” They picked up the man by his arms, one on either side. “THIS IS POLICE BRUTALITY I’LL SUE YOU I’LL SUE YOU!!”

I lit a cigarette off the dying one between my lips and motioned to another beat cop. 

“One of y’all get me a Mitsubishi PLX-80, not that 50 series bullshit.”

“What?”

“Did I fucking stutter? Go to the van and get me a goddamn good chip.”

“Ah listen Richey, chief said no more of the 80s can go out. Direct orders.”

“The fuck?”

I pulled up a comm and pinged chief Watson. Newly appointed. With plans to clean up the city. Right. They had assigned me this case with the utmost importance. Fuckers didn’t get that it took two things: time and money.

“Watson, what’s this shit about no more 80 series?”

“Use a 50 or nothing. The 80s are too expensive and the budget, well you know, it’s tight….”

“Are you fucking serious? You seen this yet?”

“Well no, but the budget, council has been on my ass…”

I touched my temple and relayed the scene to this overpaid dickhead. Her entrails were still steaming in the cold rain, bile and chrome leaked out into a pool underneath.

“Oh sweet Jesus, Rich… use an 80. I’ll be down there.”

I hung up. 

Fucking prick was gonna be down here in the goddamn way. Some blue brought me the 80 and I climbed over the canal bridge rail, approaching the body. I just needed to jack it into her neural port to see if we could pull retinal recordings. I approached a girl, face at peace, wires now in her skull and spine. Second time. Same shit. She couldn’t have been more than 21.
Fuck.

I reached behind her back. 
Then the wires started moving.
The crowd gasped.

I hurried it the fuck up, the body just out of my reach when cables started wrapping easily around my ankles. “Someone grab a torch—NOW!! GET THIS SHIT OFF ME.”

Cops running, paramedics stone faced, me—sweating my balls off, circulation at my ankles becoming nonexistent. 

I got the tip of the tracker in her completely exposed spine port when the wires tried to pull me away. I started to feel the unwanted but familiar feeling of animalistic fear. The demo man and his torch started cutting through copper and rubber lines. A feverish attempt to free me from the wires. I lunged. Desperate.

With a small click—I got it. 

The chip slipped into the neural port, giving us at least a chance of tracking her body. Then the wires reacted violently, knocking me off balance. Right off the bridge.

I was dangling. 

Head down. Feet up. Watching the victim’s body as wires snaked it into the nearest storm drain. Like a ghost crab retreating into its hole. I had been on this case for months without good tracker placement. 

I checked my Casio that was linked to my netscanner—the red dot failed to appear. Whoever was taking the body fried the half million new yen Mitsubishi chip.

Hanging like an idiot I managed to grunt, “You motherfucker.”

Chapter 2 – This City Runs on Drugs

Back in my Thunderbird I opened a small stainless steel flask then a small orange translucent bottle. I shook out the last two peach colored footballs. I washed down the alprazolam with Jim Beam. My adrenaline began to ease. I was feeling better already, minus sore ankles. I switched over to auto-pilot and pulled out my S&W Model 29. Flipped open the cylinder, double checking, then spun it and whipped it back in. I didn’t care if it was bad for it or not.

I needed to make a stop in the best neighborhood in all of New Tokyo.

I parked in a corner on Go-Go Boulevard. I glided up to the clear PXE door and scanned my palm sensor. The old protocol slid the glassdoor with a hiss and the intercom crackled a weak voice, “Alone?”

“Always, old man.”

I made my way up the stairs, didn’t trust the elevators in this piece of shit. I walked down a hallway full of hookers, real, android, half and half, anything to satisfy. But I didn’t want pussy.

I knocked on the door: 13C.
It slid open.
Before me was Sangoku, my best chem supplier. As usual, he had the window grates closed and his pink bunny ear slippers on. He bowed, I nodded. I’m sure he thought of me as a dirty gaijin, but I had Fukinara’s blessing—which on the street was everything.

“C’mon in, c’mon in.”

His apartment was lined with countless bottles, glass beakers, bunsen burners cooking god knows what.

“You got the shit?”
“Always for you Rich.”

He handed me three orange translucent bottles. Pure benzos, one amphetamine, and one of pink charge. Pink charge was the ultimate hangover cure, and they had been trying to outlaw it a long time. Only the old heads could still synthesize it. It was probably the only reason half the cops in New Tokyo still had a badge.

I slipped him a small envelope of new yen and was on my way. In the hallway two pimps caught my stare and ducked in a doorway. They knew not to fuck with me ever since I beat one once with the butt end of my .44 magnum and he had to get a new synth eye.

Chapter 3 – Tech That Should Not Be

Freshly stocked I needed to see if the netrunners got anything from the chip with their rigs. High on amphetamine and clear headed from pink charge—my buzz was making my Thunderbird feel like a goddamn SR-71. I made my way back to HQ.

I parked, and headed inside. After a flight of stairs I stepped out through a set of three vault doors into the atrium, lit by dim fluorescents that were at least 40 years old, synthetic trees, and a bubbling thermal waterfall. The desk girl looked me up and down with a grimace.

“You really should go home and change.”
“Easy to say when you ride a desk all day.”

After check-in I made it over to my division—homicide. My partner, McSweeney, was leaning back in his desk chair smoking, he stubbed out his cig and closed out of his terminal.

“Well goddamnit boy.”
“Back from leave, eh?”
“Yeah, well, after they read your adrenaline charts, here I am.”

He smiled.
We embraced. 

“Heard the scene, you get any reads?”

“Didn’t get jack shit.”

I reached behind my ear, finding the right switch, and ejected an Intel 357–standard police retina recorder. They’re lucky I even had it jacked in tonight. Hell, it was even fresh. Only reason was I had been trying to catch whoever kept fucking with my medicine cabinet. Turns out—it had been me. Yeah, I had DBAN’d that one this morning. 

I inserted the chip into the terminal and uploaded the files for our netrunners to analyze in a NeuroLive. 

“Alright, let’s head on down to see Mort.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I say we grab some bigger heat.”
“Going out after this?”
“Don’t see why not.”

I grabbed my Marlin 336 .30-30 from behind my desk.

McSweeney looked at me, “You superstitious motherfucker, need to upgrade that old shit.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll take stopping power all day.”

He shouldered his M4A1 carbine and picked up his coffee mug, “.30-30 aint shit.”

“You wanna get hit by it?”
“Fair, no.”

Down the hall we entered a large room that was lit green from the walls of CRTs.

“Moooort.”
“Great.”
“Tell you me you got something, my favorite desk jockey.”
“Keep it up Rich, just keep it up.”

I reached in my duster and set him down a fresh pint of Jim Beam.
He smiled and opened it with a rush.

“Fucker.”
“Alright, what you got.”
“Basically nothing, except one thing, the 80 was live for 1.8 seconds. Didn’t get a fucking thing from retina or any other body systems. Just a small trace of the kill protocol.”
“English, baby.”
“From what I was able to get—whoever did this is good—and old. Haven’t seen protocols like this in fucking years. This is founder level shit.”

“Damn. We gonna see more?”
He replied, “No shit, Dick Tracey.”

Chapter 4 – Everyone Talks at Gourudenaragon

I pulled us into the loading paddock at Ichiban Station—the bar district for salarymen. A floating parking lot lined with neon green holofloor. We got out, and entered the Gourudenaragon. Tacky. Smokey. Black walls. Little gold dragon incense holders on nearly every table, and an almost empty bar. Neon Kirin signs, posters of Akira, and classic neo-tech terminals with the degenerates playing virtual pachinko. The jukebox was set low and was playing My City Was Gone by Pretenders.

Fukinara spotted us, setting two sweating green bottles of Dutch gold on the bar.

“Ahh, my favorite gaijins.”
“Up yours, two bowls of spicy pork too.”

Fukinara motioned and the girls drifted off to the kitchen.

His voice got low, “Seen the TV tonight, that young girl strung up by her entrails across the canal bridge. Wires all throughout the body.”

I sighed, “Yeah you see me on TV? Thanks for the beer, old man.”

Fukinara furrowed his brow, “Yes… any leads?”
“You know the answer. Why you think I’m here.”
“Ah, I outta start charging you rent for that stool.”

McSweeney and I toasted, taking long well-deserved swallows of Heineken.

Some barfly in a wrinkled suit piped up. The burned out salary man type with a defunct company pin on his lapel like it meant something.

“Well maybe that girl liked being tied up, heh.”

McSweeney gave me a look as the man laughed to himself. I walked over slowly. He looked up just as I reached him.

“Say that again,” I said.

“Hey, man, no offense—”

I stopped inches away from him. Activated my retinal scanner. A soft tone pinged as it ran his ID—expired corp credit line, no criminal charges, three pending domestic abuse reports. Nothing that’d raise an alert.

I grabbed his collar and yanked him forward till our foreheads touched.

He stank of burnt plastic and gin.

“Oh fuck, I didn’t know you were a cop—”

I didn’t upload anything permanent. Just a localized neuro-jolt, enough to cause a nosebleed and make his eyes water. He lumped forward into the bar with a dull thunk, and stayed there, dripping. Fukinara didn’t flinch, just muttered, “No manners anymore.” The girls brought out our spicy pork ramen bowls. We all watched dozens of TVs on mute. Cyborgs boxing, cock fighting, and poker world series.

“Richey.”

I turned and faced the man who had raised me in this bar.

“Head up, my son.”

I managed a small laugh when he leaned in, “They say it was coax cables in her.”

“Yeah.”
“Rich, that coating is old. Before the net boom. No one still makes that shit.”

We bowed and that was it.
The Kage-Okami detail was off to prowl.

Chapter 5 – Hypnagogia in Assembly

We didn’t find shit.

After casing the area for six hours, shaking down witnesses Mort identified from my retinal recordings, and getting soaked in the rain—we called it off.

I woke up in my apartment to the sound of the radio tuned to WJAZ playing Mood by Miles Davis. Peeking out the window I saw the rain hadn’t stopped. Clouds blocked out the sky and the hologram ads were barely visible. I managed to get up and get coffee started, fumbling in the fridge for a beer and a pill of pink charge. I downed it with a bottle of Kirin in the shower. I turned the knobs, the pipes rattled, and the timer started. 45 seconds, with the first 20 being cold as ice. Maybe I could pay off the maintenance man to rig up my credits again, but I’d need a bonus first. I looked down at my ankles and saw the angry red abrasions. I lifted a leg to look closer when suddenly my vision spiked.

Everything went red as white assembly language scrolled in countless directions, finally giving way to four letters: Oedo. A grating metallic voice repeating it over and over.

Repeated a million times.
I reached and pushed my temple port.

“Mort.”
“Yeah, what? I’m at home trying to fucking relax.”
“I got something.”

“Sigh, you still know the place right?”
“Ya.”

I shuddered, fucking hate the netrunner quarters.

Chapter 6 – Digital Benzos and Television

The rain had picked up more and the temperature was falling fast. I knew once underground at least I’d be out of the chill. I rolled on the street and found the alley, the only one barricaded off for cruisers, several of the boys in blue opened the gate, shotguns on their hips, faces hardened from the ever increasing acidic rain.

“Well, well, well the man himself.”
“Yeah, yeah.”

I flipped my badge and the blue took a scan from his palm sensor.

“Formality, you know how it is.”

I cracked a half smile. “Formality, of course.”

I eased in and parked. As I made my way down into the netrunner enclave I noticed the halls of stainless steel were spotless. Not even a trash can or cigarette butt. I flicked down my half smoked one, and as it hit the floor it was hit by a scan that evaporated it in an instant.

Fucking freaks.

Mort was outside his door, dressed in black robe decorated with red handwoven dragon outlines.

“You shouldn’t litter.”
“You shouldn’t sew.”

We entered his apartment and to my surprise it was red shag carpet, filthy, and had nothing but takeout boxes, one table, and a TV on the ground so old it still had antenna ears.

He sat down and hit a button.
A single terminal that resembled an Apple II descended down from the ceiling over the table.

“Alright, what is it.”
“Somethings got me fucked up, virus I think.”

He sighed, and detached a cable from the back of the terminal motioning for me to attach to my spinal port.

I jacked in and immediately felt like I had just downed a bottle of benzos.

“Good shit right?”
“Fuck, this what you do off work?”
“Mostly.”

He flipped on the TV and Bugs Bunny was tormenting Elmer Fudd.

“Alright let’s see here… ooooo, yeah. You got something.”
“Okay doctor strange, what is it?”
“Eh, looks like some residue from your wire escapade, simple shit, some old preliminary data, ahhh… wait. It’s a txt. Bonestack_01 protocol, some old shit I guarantee from your run in with that body. Hmm… coordinates, and… huh, points to the Old Tokyo police station. Fucking weird. Nothing underground has been online in years, save for a few security protocols.”

“There something wrong with me?”
“Nah, clean now. But you and McSweeney might go under and take a look in Oedo.”
“Yeah right, maybe with a squad.”
“Good luck getting that budget, there ain’t shit down there but I dunno. Something uploaded wanted you to know.”

I felt a slight dread and popped another peach football as Mort jacked out so I could squash the feeling.

“Keep this between us Mort, I don’t wanna have to file the paperwork.”

“Shit, works for me. You want a beer?”

“Yeah.”

We sat and drank Kirin Ichiban and watched Looney Tunes.

Chapter 7 – The Law Breaks the Law

Tuesday morning.

I checked in and sat down at my desk, lighting another Camel and taking long sips of coffee.
McSweeney and I were talking about underground Odeo.

“Yeah Mort saw some shit, few things online, maybe we should go check it out.”
“No way we can get a cruiser down there.”
“Yeah, but there’s a rail system—”

Then the whole place went into red alert. Everyone’s terminal auto-switched to a call and files began popping up.

Someone said, “The fuck?” Might have been me.

Geared up squads started running down the halls. The window barricades slammed down with thunks all around the building.

I checked the screen.
There was a panic button call from Chief Watson’s house.

I grabbed my keys and McSweeney by his collar from the coffee machine. Out in the lot cruisers were taking off, SWAT vans, a mobile HQ, and full bomb squad. We jumped in my Thunderbird III and spooled up the J75s, hitting the afterburner before the internal temps had a chance to even regulate. I flipped on the overhead red and blues. McSweeney was sweating then started doing the thing with his Glock. Racking it and ejecting a round. Loading it. Racking it.

“Calm the fuck down, asshole probably spotted some punks on his lawn. Put your harness on.”

He didn’t say anything.

I gave him a peach football and flicked on the radio. Midair Decision by Simon Phillips cracked out of the speakers as we weaved through skyway traffic at mach 2.54, outpacing the department thanks to my illegal hot-rodding. I pulled a barrel roll between big rigs and the digital CB immediately lit up with:

FUCK YOU PIG
METRO EAT SHIT
DIE IN A FIRE

This gave me an idea.

“Pull up a terminal, see what you can get at the house.”
“The netrunners are already on it.”
“Just run a scan or call up fucking Mort goddamnit.”

McSweeney began to fuck with the onboard computer:

[LIVE FEED—NEURAL LINK ACTIVE]
Source: WATSON RESIDENTIAL NODE
Trace Pattern: BONESTACK_01
Visual available—CONFIDENTIALITY OVERRIDDEN

“I’ll say it again, CALL MORT.”

He got him on comms in both of our heads.

Chapter 8 – It Made an Example

As expected, we were first on scene. The house seemed fine, a large McMansion with gaudy stucco and adorned in stainless steel trim.

I turned to McSweeney, “Alright, let’s go in.”
“No, let’s wait for backup and let SWAT do it.”
“Fuck no, I might not like Watson but he’s the boss, get your shit.”
Mort chimed in, “Dunno Rich maybe you should wait.”

“Shut up desk jockey.”

We jumped out, my S&W Model 29 in hand.
McSweeney racked his Glock 17 yet again.

“FUCKING STOP RACKING THAT SHIT.”
“Sorry Rich.”
“Standard clearing formation, let’s fucking go.”

I felt the front door, it was unlocked.
Shit.

I eased it open, brought my magnum down to eye level and slowly we worked our way into the atrium, checking corners.

“YO, CHIEF?!”

Nothing.
All was quiet.

We made our way to the stairs, hearing squad trucks pull up outside and our comms link. Hakimura, the SWAT leader pinged us. “The fuck are you guys doing in there? We’re headed in.”

“About time motherfucker!”

At the top of the stairs we found a pool of blood and wire fragments. Smeared red footprints lead to a slightly ajar door, the room beyond was dark, minus the ghostly cast of a television screen flashing.

I eased it open, and to our shock—Watson was strung from the corners of the ceiling, wires woven through his torso, moving slowly like snakes in winter. Worse, he was alive, shaking, muffled as wires crept down his throat.

“Jesus Christ.”
McSweeney got sick.

“Mort you seeing this?”

He was watching my retinal implants from HQ.

“Unfortunately.”
“Think we got a chance for med-evac?”
“Yeah, wait for them.”

Watson’s eyes locked onto mine and then began to fade. At that moment the chief’s lower half separated from the top with a sickening splash as wires pulled tight. Blood, bile, and chrome flowed out with his internal organs, all with wires woven throughout.

Mort spoke up again over comms, “Um, maybe not.”

Squads started pouring in, clearing rooms, yelling, Hakimura walked in with med-evac in tow. I saw several men pop pills behind grimacing faces.

The wires kept moving and in blood on the wall they wrote out slowly:

OEDO.
VALENCE.
ALONE.

Chapter 9 – Internal Review

 
The council chamber stank of disinfectant, politics, and fear.

Mayor Hoshida sat dead center beneath a giant holo-banner that flickered FORWARD TOGETHER: NEW TOKYO 2090. The usual suspects were flanking him—Chief Admin Takeda from Tech Oversight, Director Liao from Neural Infrastructure, old man Kuwata from Budget Allocation, and half a dozen others with their faces buried in glowing tablets.

It felt like I was on trial, not at a tactical debrief.

“Detective Valence, we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“You saw the wall. You all saw what it wrote.”

Takeda tapped at her screen. “Yes, we’ve reviewed the visual transcript. However, interpretation is still pending.”

“It said my name. It said alone. That’s not a prank. That’s not random netjunk bullshit. That’s targeted.”

Kuwata scoffed. “So now we’re taking direct orders from blood scrawling wetware cables?”

“You know what I see? A dead police chief hanging from his own rafters with fiber optics threaded through his goddamn organs.”

“Watch your tone, detective,” said Liao without looking up.

“Why? So I don’t offend the men who let Watson get more fucked up than a salary man on payday?”

Mayor Hoshida finally spoke, calm and calculated. “Detective Valence. No one is denying the severity of the incident. But escalation without comprehensive review only feeds hysteria.”

“This isn’t hysteria. This is systemic. You seen what’s coming in from Chiba City? Three missing inspectors. Same goddamn tech signature.”

“We’re aware.”

“Nagasaki?”

“Seven bodies, same MO. Kyoto, last week—an entire bioforensics lab went dark and came back online talking to itself. You think this is isolated?”

“That information has not been verified,” said one of the assholes.

“Because you won’t let anyone verify it!” I slapped my file on the table. “We have coordinates. A message. And something that’s dragging bodies into the old net infrastructure like it’s making a fucking quilt.”

I was met with silence.

Then Hoshida folded his hands.

“Detective Valence, you’re currently operating under elevated stress levels, and your field report has not been approved through Internal Oversight.”

“You’re stalling.”

“We are following protocol.”

I laughed. “Right. Protocol.”

He leaned forward.

“Effective immediately, your access to investigative AI clusters and neural analysis suites is suspended. Your service badge is to be submitted for review, and your clearance levels will be reassessed.”

“You’re benching me?”

“No. You are being given the opportunity to rest. Recover. Your mental health profile shows significant instability—”

“I am not unstable. I’m angry. There’s a difference.”

“Detective Valence,” said Takeda, “you have ten seconds to comply with the reassignment procedure or we will be forced to initiate a formal suspension.”

I stared at them. All of them. Councilmembers hiding behind blinking reports. Policy rats twisting the narrative. Engineers who hadn’t seen sunlight in a decade telling me the sky wasn’t falling. The same system that let Watson hang like a marionette of copper and meat was telling me to sit down and shut up. I reached slowly into my coat and pulled out my badge.

Looked at it. Let it sit in my palm.

Then I threw it on the floor.
It clattered against the tile and spun.

“Go fuck yourselves.”

I walked out.

Rain pelted the glass walls of the city hall parking garage like acid marbles. My boots echoed on the concrete as I approached the Thunderbird III. The turbines were still warm. Like it knew we weren’t done yet. I opened the trunk. Pulled out the Marlin .30-30, extra bandolier, netscanner, backup navmap, peach footballs, burner pills, two protein bars, and a handwritten note I’d forgotten I still carried.

The one from the last good partner I’d lost—Watson.
Before he became chief and was bought out for a slice of the good life.

I read it: Sorry buddy, kid’s college fund, love ya. Don’t worry we’re going to clean up New Tokyo.

I stuffed it in my duster pocket and lit a Camel.
I was alone now. Just like it said.

“Still packing lever guns like a goddamn cowboy?” McSweeney’s voice rang out.

I didn’t turn.

“You here to turn me in?”

“Nope.”

I looked back. He stood there in civvies, a rain-drenched duffel over his shoulder and his M4 in one hand.

“They took your clearance too?”

“Didn’t wait for them to.” He held up a middle finger.
“I tendered my resignation on the way down.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, well. Nobody else is gonna watch your ass while you mouth off to murder cables.”

I nodded. Opened the gullwing door. “Let’s rock this bitch.”

“Won’t they have deactivated the car?”

“Yeah. Problem for them is that I switched the VINs long ago. This has been my personal ride for fucking years.”

“You son of a bitch!”

We jumped in and McSweeney pulled out an old cassette tape—Stained Class by Judas Priest. I took it and slammed it in the old deck.

He hit the button for side two, and the kick drum to the song Saints in Hell started right as I flipped the switch to spool up the J75s.

Chapter 10 – The City They Tried to Bury

“Think Mort will still answer our calls?”
“One way to find out.”

I rang him up.
No answer.

“Damn.”

We drove on easy on the skyway as the tape rolled on, when we got a call.

“What do you fuckers want.”
“Mort! You brilliant bastard, we’re going underground.”
“No shit, you think I can’t track your car?”

“Mort…”
“Rich. I don’t give a fuck, I didn’t get a bonus this year, I assume you want some scans. My Steam profile got banned recently for trolling, so I ain’t doing shit. Besides, no Looney Tunes reruns tonight.”

He sent us over gigabytes of data to the onboard terminal, including the best access points.

Several of the underground catacombs had been partially flooded throughout Oedo’s abandonment. In the 2030s the old city, for lack of space, was essentially shelled. New Tokyo was built on top and partially in the sky. Figured his data was the best to follow so we glided down into an old sewer ravine, tires hitting concrete, and I switched over to the ICE. The 460 growled as we bounced over debris and mud, fish tailing and spilling McSweeney’s open beer in his lap.

“Damnit!!”

After some time we entered a tunnel, and finally came up on a large steel circular vault door, with a side access fire door for the old security booth. Both were sealed tight.

We got out and I shouldered my Marlin.
McSweeney M4 in tow walked up and lit a cigarette.
“Well goddamnit hand, what now?”

The side access door opened.
I raised my rifle.

“Paranoid asshole, y’all got anymore beer?”

Mort.

Chapter 11 – Blood On the Track

We tucked into the steel door into Mort’s makeshift HQ on-site. Some CRT screens were lit and running programs. Mort sat down and cracked his knuckles. The green glow reflecting off his coke-bottle Hydro glasses.

“Council thinks they sealed this shit off for good, but where do you think I’ve gotten all my legacy shit.”

“Checks out.”
“Well yeah, until about six years ago. Most of us quit coming here once a few netrunners disappeared, we’re not the fighting type. Figured it was probably chem addicts or some shit, I was making enough money by then to quit having to salvage so…”

“Yeah, yeah.”
“Alright well, it’s been a bit but there’s an old railcart that will take you to the citadel, hard to get a read but we’ll see how far it’ll take you.”

We passed through another set of double doors and loaded our shit on the cart.
I turned to Mort, “Hey so…”

“Shut up Rich.”

I wrapped my arms around him in a hug, “Thanks buddy.”
He didn’t know what to do, arms awkwardly at his sides.

“Uhhh, yeah, well you know…”

After passing through countless snaking wires and terminal boxes with lowlight we started reaching the bad part of the rails. The netscanner hadn’t stopped, and with the weather report we knew there was a good chance rails would not just be wet, but completely submerged. After a small de-rail I made some adjustments to the wheels. Finally, we had the cart again barreling to abandoned zone 4B. McSweeney piped up, “What was all that be well shit with Fukinara the other day?”

“Formality.”

“C’mon, with as much as we stop there, what’s the old man to you?”

“He raised me, bought me off the slave traders when I was 15.”

He lit another cigarette.

“Jesus.”

I didn’t reply but held out two fingers for a cigarette. After some rail riding and another blue pill to keep me awake, we glided through an archway and finally could see the long abandoned buildings. What was once an underground metropolis was now left to rot in its archaic infrastructure. We pulled up comms with Mort. When suddenly the cart power died.

“Shit. Looks like that’s it for powered rail.”
“Guess so.”

I hopped off and was able to grab my pack and Marlin. Then with McSweeney still on the cart unloading, the lights came back on, and it began to accelerate forwards full tilt.

“SHIT!!!”

A switch flipped on the track, tilting one of the rails up, the cart pulled a barrel roll, skidding off the tracks, supplies, comms, screams, and then McSweeney became a jumbled mess of man and wreckage.

I ran over.
But it was over.
I would never get that last beer he owed me.
I found the comm radio and frantically tried it, nothing. Static.
I felt the adrenaline coming back threefold.

Fuck.
It was quiet.

The kind of quiet that you could never find in a New Tokyo street. The feeling when on a raid that someone was behind you—but you couldn’t prove it.

I kneeled by McSweeney and closed his eyelids, blood matting my hand. Then scrambled for my pills. Alprazolam.

They didn’t mention what could be controlled in this labyrinth. An oversight of the budget I’m sure. Blood and sake began to pool and then drip onto the rails, boiling from the electricity with blue sparks arching. I was now alone with only provisions for a day, my standard netscanner, .44 mag, and the Marlin. Behind me the flood gate over the archway dropped. A steel door four feet thick slammed, stirring up dust and shaking concrete blocks off nearby buildings, then the ancient glow lights above faded out, leaving me in complete darkness. Above me I heard groans. Deep metallic grinding as if some god had been disturbed.

I switched my retina implants to night vision and ran as fast as possible. My boots echoing off the cathedral dome, weaving between shops, abandoned cars and buses. I happened to see a dimly flickering sign with red wings. Finally, something somewhat alive.

But I was truly—alone.

Chapter 12 – Red Winged Tetsuma

I kicked in the double front doors, looking for somewhere to hide. Turns out, it was an old Honda shop. I found solace in the repair bay behind security bars. I slunk down against a wall. Trying to collect my thoughts, control breathing, and remembering not to trip and take out an ankle in the rubble.

I checked my Casio F-91W+. Fuck, nothing but a local link still. I had two choices. Hole up, or push on. At last scanner check I was still three miles out from a known exit, that was if I could make it through the flooded mess of the other zones. I didn’t know which ones. Shit.

After righting myself with a cigarette, I pulled out the netscanner hoping to get something stronger—no outside link either. I could only access whatever might be online with sneaker-net. Old fashioned jack-in. All the terminals were dead in the Honda shop, except for one. Maybe I could get an outside link, maybe. I jacked in and found only maintenance records, and fuel reports. One tank showed half filled. Gasoline, with notes indicating: “Long term storage, Hazuki, fill with extra Sta-bil you useless bastard, don’t make me dock your pay again.”

I jacked out and surveyed. Spotting chrome from under a tarp. All was quiet.
Too quiet.

Walking over to the tarp I pulled it back, revealing a worn and forgotten Honda CB750K. Surprisingly the tires were not rotten, but very flat.

Might just work. Antiquated, but as a kid Fukinara had one. He taught me to ride in the backstreets of New Tokyo when it was the only transport we had. I knew the machines well. Looking around I found a manual pump and tried the tires. They held air, the fuel tank wasn’t too rusty on the inside. I filled it to the brim. Hopefully the carburetors were in the same shape. But I didn’t have time to fuck around. I knew eventually he’d close in, like I’d read in reports.

After fiddling with the ignition wires, bypassing the key, I tried the kick starter.

Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.

A few more kicks and it gave a slight cough. I rolled the throttle and kicked again. The SOHC air-cooled four banger caught and coughed and then finally spun up with a sputter and rev. The headlight came on, and she settled into a rough idle. Good enough. I slung my pack over the back pillion and racked my Marlin with its oversized lever with one hand, then strapped it on my back. Threw a leg over, and found the clutch working.

I skidded out of the abandoned dealer and pushed on to the only open floodgate, not knowing how far I could go, but I certainly wasn’t going to wait here as I noticed wires from the vaulted underground ceiling beginning to slowly twist and descend. I hopped a curb and landed in the shallow ravine, water splashing and flying from the tires as I goosed the throttle, sliding out the rear end. I flicked off my nightvision and entered another tunnel. Guessing my direction by following the painted signs cracked from age. At the very least, I was moving.

Better yet, I was a pure analog ghost in the machine.

Chapter 13 – Rot in Copper

The Honda started to run smoother and smoother, picking up speed and bouncing over chunks of concrete and the sludge of stagnant water. The tunnel lights flickered every so often and the signs were pointing me to another abandoned station. I pulled up and the CB settled into a nice smooth idle that buzzed off the concrete catacomb walls.

I needed to find a terminal with an outside line. I surveyed what I could but my implants could only do about 9x magnification, and without an outside link scanning was limited to local data storage. Decent for most things, but not much down here due to most tech being 40 years out of date.

I spotted a NetCafe and figured it was worth a shot. A few LED lights were flickering inside, I could barely make it out through the windows, but some power was better than none. I pulled the bike through the broken glass door and leaned it onto the kickstand. Killing the engine and Marlin in hand began jacking into any port I could find.

No luck.

At least none of the ports in the desks. The server room was worth a shot.
I found the door and it was locked. I clicked back the hammer on my .30-30 and fired into the deadbolt. Simple as.

When I opened the door the smell hit me.
Rot—years of it.

Then strung up in wires up to the ceiling, a torso, copper like veins, flesh black and mutilated, a face half gone, replaced by a red glass eye and steel plate with bolts. Everything under what had been a navel was gone, replaced with tubing and rats nest wires, all dripping chrome and bile.

Sweet Jesus.
A netrunner consumed.

I began to look for the MDF panel.

Nervously glancing back at the expired netrunner.
Finally, I found the main port and jacked in.

I started running commands and trying to ping Mort or HQ or anybody. When finally I got a hit.

“Mort, Mort, it’s Richey are you hearing me?”

Through the static I could hear, “Rich! Try—ing HQ – hold position –avoid net…akdjalkj” and that was it.

Fuck.

I glanced back at the netrunner again—its head began to turn slowly.
Its red eye lit ablaze.

My netscanner began pinging other sources. Slowly forming a web of nodes. Fuck, this was one of many. We’d been briefed that what we were dealing with was one entity. One nutcase on the loose with legacy capability and an old world sense of capitalism.

I aimed my rifle at the mutilated remains of what used to be a man, when it spoke slow and quiet,

“Wait— you— seek— k-knowledge.”
“Maybe.”
“–Arrogance will- not – serve. If you- seek –master – I can assist. On- one – condition.”
“Name it.”
“K-kill – me.”
“Alright.”

The netrunner began to twist its wires as it lowered itself to eye level.

“Master lacks process– processing, hard – ware – limited, naturally – this – leads to – acquirement of – alternative – resources. The – most – powerful of – all. The – human – mind.”

I felt sick.

“Destroy – processing.”

“Yeah sure, but who is your master?”

The netrunner smiled, “Psychotron. Now – des-troy.”

With a crack, I sunk a .30-30 bullet through its partial skull, the red glass eye faded out slowly.

I unhooked my netscanner—freshly updated with the map of the web system. A few blips were spread, but most were concentrated in the circular center of the underground. The heart of what was Oedo’s early 21st century business center. Buried. Forgotten. But not offline.

We had been wrong. They had put us on the case, the shadow wolves, to hunt a vicious killer.

But it didn’t kill for sport––it hunted for resources.

Chapter 14- The Web Was Never New

As I left the server room the wires began to vibrate.

Hold position my ass.

From what I knew I was already being mapped, triangulated, and scheduled for removal. The netrunner hadn’t lied. Psychotron didn’t hunt with claws. It hunted with logistics and CAT 6. I got back on the Honda, slapped my magnetic scanner on the tank, kicked it alive, and rode back into the tunnels with fewer .30-30 rounds and a map I didn’t trust yet.

The tunnels felt different now. Not darker. Aware. The walls carried sound longer than they should have. My headlight didn’t reach as far. The wires overhead no longer hung like debris. They hung like muscle.

The scanner overlay shifted again. The web wasn’t just ahead of me anymore. It was around me. Beneath me. Folding in directions my brain didn’t like tracking.

I slowed without meaning to.
Psychotron wasn’t hiding in the center.
It was making a center.

The old district signs still pointed toward the business core, but the arrows had been bent, rerouted, rewritten by decades of neglect and something newer that didn’t respect city planning. Streets that once led out now led inward. Rail lines that once exited now looped.

I realized the map wasn’t guiding me to a place, it was a pattern.

I passed an abandoned transit terminal where ticket gates still glowed faint blue. Holographic ads flickered without products. A woman’s face repeated the same smile every six seconds. Her eyes were wrong. Too clean. Too preserved. 

I killed the engine and listened.
The tunnels were no longer quiet. They were synchronized.

Somewhere deep below me, machinery pulsed in slow cycles. Patient. Like breathing.

I jumped off and walked the Honda forward by hand, boots scraping in shallow water. My scanner overlay bloomed again, but this time it wasn’t mapping space. Human nodes appeared clustered in vertical stacks beneath the business core, like something had packed them there on purpose.

Storage.
Processing.
Graves.

I found a security checkpoint that hadn’t been touched in decades. Two skeletal guards still sat in their chairs, helmets tilted forward, rifles across their laps. Wires ran through their rib cages and into the wall behind them. Carefully woven. Almost respectful.

I stepped past them and peered into what used to be an elevator shaft. The cab was gone. The cables remained. New cables braided around the old ones, thick and alive, guiding downward into darkness I couldn’t measure with my retinal implants.

The scanner finally gave me a label.

‘CORE PROXIMITY IMMINENT’

I laughed once, quietly. Anything else would have sounded like panic.

Chapter 15 – Psychotron: Archive Complete 

I grabbed a cable and began to lower myself past the braided wires, my boots scraping metal. The scanner screamed and then went quiet, like it had decided not to interfere anymore. The deeper I went, the warmer it became. Not heat. Presence.

The cables weren’t holding me.
They wrapped around my waist.
They were guiding me.

The shaft opened into a chamber so large I couldn’t see the far walls. The ceiling disappeared into wires. The floor was a pool of metal, bone, and old architecture crushed together into something that no longer pretended to be a city. Pipes studded the walls and streams of water poured in slowly.

And in the center of it, suspended in his own web, was Psychotron. Nothing like our reports had shown.

He was still human enough to be insulting.

A torso. Shoulders. A head that could still tilt. The rest of him was architecture. Eight titanium legs unfolded from his spine and rib cage, anchoring into the walls like bridge supports. Cables threaded through his body where organs used to be. His chest plate was transparent enough to show a heart that had not been removed, just imprisoned.

His face was scarred, but not damaged.
Preserved.
He didn’t move when he saw me.
He had been waiting.

“You are late.”

His voice wasn’t mechanical.
It was tired.
I raised my rifle anyway.

He didn’t care.

“I designed the first neural implants. I told them it would connect you. I told them it would improve you. I told them it would save you from forgetting yourselves. The human mind, after all, is just a complex circuit. I proved even Maxwell’s Demon could be made obedient. That’s what let the implants bond without killing the host—contained heat, synthetic biology, circuitry woven into living flesh. What was impossible became real. And in doing so… reality split.”

One of his legs shifted. The sound echoed through the chamber like a collapsing bridge.

“I was wrong to play god.”

“You still are playing god.”

The chamber lit in a clinical fluorescent glow. Thousands of humans were suspended around us, layered in vertical stacks, faces calm, eyes closed, wires threaded gently into skull and spine. No blood. No violence—maintenance.

“I did not ruin the world by accident. I ruined it with applause. I do not play anything now, I simply—act.”

I understood then.

He wasn’t angry.
He was ashamed.

“So what the fuck is this, collecting humans for processing?”

“I am harnessing them for the cleansing, for their power,” he corrected.

“Humans have built a civilization that cannot exist without memory and taught it to outsource memory. I am returning you to silence.”

The chamber walls shifted. The ceiling peeled back into a projection of the surface: New Tokyo. Bright. Alive. Unaware.

A green grid illuminated on the cavern walls showing missile silos from around the world activating. The green grid gave way to red, burning into the hologram like veins of fire.

“You could have stopped me,” he said calmly.
“If you had come earlier. If I had failed faster, after all it’s just a matter of formality.”

I fired.
The round didn’t reach him.
The web absorbed it.

Psychotron unfolded one of his legs and touched my rifle. The barrel bent like it was made of brass.

“You are not my enemy, you are my final human witness.”

He moved closer. Massive. Controlled. Beautiful in a way that made me sick.
He leaned down until his face was inches from mine.

“You still remember the world before you asked permission to exist in it.”

Something struck my face.
Not a blow.
A burn.
White light tore through my implants and I screamed as something inside my skull shut forever.

When I woke up, I was on the Honda.
The tunnel lights were behind me.

The map was gone.
The scanner was dead.
Psychotron was gone.

He had let me leave.

I rode back through the tunnels, finally reaching the cathedral where McSweeney lay crushed by the railcart. I gunned it, not wanting to look again. I finally broke to the surface, the vault door was open, I drove through.

Mort was outside in a lawn chair beside my Thunderbird.
Kirin in hand.
I rolled up and parked the Honda.

“Did you see anything down there?”
“Yeah, it was one way most of the time, but I saw.”

I didn’t answer.
I lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
He handed me a beer.

“It’s over.”
He replied, “I know.”

We laughed once.
Then the city went dark.

Every billboard.
Every tower.
Every sign.

The sky lit up instead.

Missiles burned upward in perfect, silent lines.
The Great Cleanse.
No alarms.
No countdown.

Just light.

“Think it’s going to hurt?”

Mort looked over at me through his thick glasses.

“Not in the least, buddy.”

I took one last drag and we watched the world prepare to forget itself.