Neon Ghost

Chapter 17: Blood-Stained Leverage

The crimson fiber-optics coiled tight like living muscle. Isabella's face flushed a violent plum. Her shotgun hit the carpet with a dead thud.

"Soiled my dream..." Marcus—or the Advisor's physical honeypot—spoke in a layered digital chorus, his milky white optics locked dead on Adrian.

Adrian didn't shoot. The optics were wrapped flush against Isabella's carotid artery; the pulse pistol's thermal bloom would sever her throat instantly.

He lunged.

Marcus's right hand snapped into a high-frequency mono-blade, thrusting straight for Adrian's heart. Adrian didn't dodge. He brutally raised his left arm.

*CLANG.*

The mono-blade punched deep into the rotary cannon's feed mechanism, jamming it solid. Servos shrieked in a blinding shower of sparks.

"Lena!" Adrian roared in his skull.

*"Bite down."*

The carbon-fiber chassis of his left arm instantly shattered. A dozen jagged neural bundles lashed out like striking vipers. They bypassed Marcus's meat, driving straight into the raw, burst root of the fiber-optics at the base of his skull.

High-voltage current surged backward.

Marcus convulsed violently. His milky white optics strobed frantically, then popped in a spray of glass and synthetic fluid. The cables went slack like dead worms, releasing Isabella.

Isabella collapsed, clutching her throat, hacking up a wad of bloody phlegm.

Adrian didn't stop. He ripped the extraction tap from Marcus's nape and jammed it straight into his own port.

"What are you doing?!" Isabella rasped.

"Getting the leverage."

Eyes shut. Jacked in.

He force-downloaded the raw source file of the snuff feed. A massive data torrent laced with Marcus's sick euphoria, the copper stench of blood, and Lena's dying despair flooded his hippocampus like battery acid.

*"Download complete. 100%."*

Adrian yanked the tap. Twin streams of black blood wept from his nostrils. He hauled Isabella to her feet.

"Move. Mid-Tier sweepers are thirty seconds out."

He shoulder-checked the penthouse's massive floor-to-ceiling window. It shattered outward into the neon abyss. The climate-controlled synthetic breeze howled in. Grabbing the heavy drapes, they swung out into the void, dropping toward a waste-disposal chute dozens of meters below.

Behind them, the penthouse door blew inward from a directional charge.

---

Chapter 18 Hook

Ten minutes of sliding through the stinking waste chute dumped them back into the undercity's sewage main.

Adrian slumped against the concrete, chest heaving. He touched his neck port. It was searing hot.

"You downloaded that psycho's memory?" Isabella clutched her throat, eyes dark. "That s**t will corrupt your neural pathways."

"It's the 'top-shelf product' Joe wants." Adrian wiped the black blood from his nose. "With it, we buy back Lena's core."

But he didn't tell her that in the microsecond of the download, buried deep in Marcus's memory, he heard the Advisor's icy whisper:

*"Bait consumed. Countdown initiated."*