Neon Ghost

Chapter 12: Core Protocol

"Disgusted?"

Adrian stared dead at the holo-skull. The port at his nape still throbbed, but the sheer, physiological nausea bleeding from Lena was turning his own stomach inside out.

"How does an AI feel sick?" Isabella paused her suturing, looking up. "Code doesn't have a gag reflex, Adrian."

"Unless she's not just pure code anymore." Adrian fished out the brass Zippo. *Click.* The weak flame painted his face chalk-white. "Zero said that archaic core holds her 'intuition'. Intuition... is the meat's instinctive reaction to danger."

He snapped the lighter shut.

"She retained human physiological memory. And that Memory Market..." Adrian ground his teeth. "They're running some operation down there that her meat remembers as 'repulsive'."

Isabella snipped the suture thread, tossing the bio-waste into a tray. "Whatever's down there, you're in no shape to go. Fourteen percent of your motor nerves are already crystallized by her code. You let her take the wheel three more times, your brainstem turns into a silicon motherboard."

"I don't have a choice." Adrian stood, shrugging into a clean jacket. "The core is in the Market. Victoria is hunting me. The Advisor's hounds are one snap away from my throat. I need to beat Omega to it."

"And then what?" Isabella blocked the door, eyes stubborn. "Get the core, jack it into Sector 4's mainframe, detonate a logic bomb? Then turn to ash with Lena?"

Adrian went dead silent. He looked at her. A woman scraping by in the undercity muck, yet still insisting on using clean gauze.

"Isabella." His voice softened a fraction. "If I don't, the moment the Hive Network goes live, every undercity rat—including the poor bastards in your clinic selling their first-kiss memories for painkillers—gets turned into mindless bio-batteries."

Isabella's lips twitched. She slumped, stepping aside.

"Blind Joe is a psycho," she muttered. "He only takes two things: creds, or 'top-shelf product'. You're broke, and you got no product."

"I do." Adrian tapped his temple. "Right in here. I've got the raw sensory feed of Victoria Chase betraying the Echo squad. To the Market, that's a 'top-shelf' goldmine."

Isabella hissed through her teeth. "You're out of your mind. If you rip that memory out to sell to Joe, you lose it. You'll forget how Lena died."

"As long as I get the core back, I don't give a fuck."

Adrian walked to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused.

"Prep a Market ghost-rig for me. And," he turned, his lone left eye gleaming with feral ruthlessness, "ping Blind Joe. Tell him I got 'Omega exec-grade fresh meat' to fence."

---

Chapter 13 Hook

Three hours later. Sub-level 5. The Memory Market perimeter.

The air was a toxic soup of neuro-gas and cheap synth-perfume. Adrian, drowned in an oversized rad-cloak, trailed Isabella.

"Listen," she hissed. "In there, don't look anyone in the eye. Don't touch any glowing chips."

They shoved open a heavy lead door.

Not a black-market bazaar. A massive, circular Roman Colosseum.

Thousands of ragged undercity rats packed the stands, thick black cables jacked straight into their skulls. Dead center, a colossal holo-projection played a first-person memory feed: a woman being brutally dismembered.

Sickening, ecstatic cheers erupted from the stands.

Up in the highest VIP box, a fat man with chrome plating on half his face and dark shades looked down.

"Blind Joe," Isabella whispered.

Right then, Lena unleashed a blood-curdling shriek in Adrian's skull.

*"Run! Adrian! Run! That's not a memory! That's a live feed!"*

The holo-projection in the arena glitched. The dismembered woman snapped her head up. Through the virtual feed, her eyes locked dead onto Adrian.

It was Lena's face.

***