The night swallows me whole as I tear through Neo-Shanghai’s canyon of holographic billboards, my Kestrel MK-7 hovering car banking hard around the corner of the 234th level. The rain pelts the transparent canopy in sheets, distorting the neon landscape into a smear of colors that matches the chaos in my head. Sixty stories below, the street-level dwellers are nothing but specks, living out their humid, desperate lives in the shadows of megacorporate towers.
I shouldn’t have left Iris there. That mistake burns in my gut like the cheap synthalcohol I downed before this joyride.
The Kestrel’s fusion drive whines as I push it harder, threading between autonomous cargo ships with only centimeters to spare. The onboard AI chirps warnings I’ve manually overridden. Tonight, I want to feel something real—even if it’s fear.
Three days ago, I was just another mid-level security programmer for Nakamura Cybernetics. Three days ago, Iris still looked at me with those augmented emerald eyes that could pierce the armor I’ve built around myself over decades in this cesspool of a city.
“You’re bleeding,” says the car’s AI in its maddeningly calm voice. I glance down at my left hand. The synth-leather steering wheel is smeared with crimson. The skin around my wrist port has torn again—rejection symptoms from the bootlegged Korean interface I scored last week. Just another bad decision in a lifetime full of them.
“Administer localized coagulant,” I mutter, and feel the sting as micro-needles deploy from the steering column, injecting medical nanites into my bloodstream.
The rain intensifies as I cut across the restricted airspace above the Chiba-Sony arcology. Proximity alarms scream as security drones rise to intercept, but the Kestrel was military before I “liberated” it from a Yakuza chop shop. I dive into a maintenance shaft between buildings, the car’s adaptive chassis contracting by thirty percent, scraping along concrete walls with a sound like dying animals.
The memory of Iris’s face when I told her about the heist—disbelief melting into raw terror—haunts me as I emerge on the other side of the arcology. I’d promised her we’d be set for life. One big score and we’d buy passage off-world to the Ganymede colonies. No more scraping by, no more selling pieces of ourselves to make rent.
“You don’t cross Nakamura,” she’d said. “Nobody walks away from that.”
She was right, of course. The data I’d stolen was more valuable than I’d realized. Not just corporate secrets—something darker. Something military. Something worth killing for.
The Kestrel’s dashboard lights flicker as I pass through an electromagnetic disturbance field—another security measure I’m blasting through. I’m flying blind for three seconds before the systems reboot, and in that moment of darkness, I see Iris’s face again. The way she’d backed away from me when I showed her the dataspike. How she’d reached for the door.
I hadn’t meant to shove her. Just wanted to explain before she bolted.
The fall was only four meters into a waste reclamation pool. Survivable. Had to be survivable.
I didn’t stay to find out.
The Kestrel’s comms system crackles to life, overriding my blocks. “Attention unauthorized vehicle. You are in violation of Neo-Shanghai Air Traffic Ordinance 5-591. Power down and prepare to be boarded.”
Corporate security. Not the police—there’s no such thing anymore, not really. Just private enforcers with badges printed by the highest bidder.
I bank hard right, diving into the maze of maintenance corridors that honeycomb the underbelly of the financial district. The Kestrel responds like it’s part of my nervous system, its neural interface jack plugged directly into my cerebral port. The machine feels my intentions before I consciously form them, a communion of flesh and technology that’s the only real relationship I haven’t managed to destroy.
Another security drone appears ahead—sleek, matte black, bristling with non-lethal immobilizers that would fry my car’s systems and leave me drooling in the pilot’s seat. I cut power for two seconds, dropping like a stone before reengaging the fusion drive at the last moment. The drone overshoots, and I hear a satisfying crunch as it collides with a ventilation hub.
“Damage report,” I bark at the AI.
“Forward stabilizers at sixty-eight percent. Atmospheric seal compromised on rear quarter panel. Fuel reserves at forty-two percent.”
Not good. The nearest safe house is still twenty kilometers across the industrial zone. With corporate security alerted, they’ll be watching the usual smuggler routes. I need to disappear, and fast.
I dive below the hundred-level mark—a desperation move. Nobody flies this low voluntarily. Down here, the city is a decaying ruin of the original Shanghai, flooded by rising seas and abandoned to those who couldn’t afford to climb. The buildings are skeletal, half-submerged in black water that’s equal parts chemical runoff and seawater. Makeshift bridges connect crumbling structures, and the few lights visible are the orange glow of barrel fires where the forgotten warm their genetically modified bodies.
The Kestrel’s sensors struggle to map the chaotic landscape. These streets were never designed for flying vehicles—they’re narrow, twisted passages between buildings that lean against each other like dying drunks.
I remember bringing Iris down here once, to score some memory enhancers from a back-alley ripper-doc. She’d been silent the entire time, those green eyes taking in the misery with a gaze I mistook for judgment. Now I realize it was recognition. She’d climbed out of these depths, reinvented herself. And I’d just shoved her back in.
A warning klaxon shrieks as something massive rises from the flood waters ahead—a salvage mech, thirty meters tall, its hydraulic arms swinging a piece of ancient infrastructure. I wrench the controls, and the Kestrel shudders as we narrowly avoid being swatted from the sky. One of the exterior cameras goes dark as debris peppers the hull.
“I need an exit route,” I tell the AI, no longer bothering to hide the panic in my voice.
“Calculating. Warning: pursuit vehicles detected. Three corporate interceptors on projected trajectory.”
I glance at the rear display. The interceptors are delta-wing configurations, built for speed rather than maneuverability. Down here in the canyons of Old Shanghai, that’s a disadvantage—if I can stay alive long enough to exploit it.
I kill the running lights and drop to just five meters above the oily water, pushing through a narrow gap between collapsed apartment blocks. The Kestrel’s wings scrape against concrete, sending up a shower of sparks that betrays my position. The first interceptor follows too quickly, misjudges the gap, and cartwheels into the water with a satisfying explosion that briefly illuminates the ruins like a miniature sun.
Two more to go.
My heart hammers against my ribcage as I weave through the labyrinth. The dataspike in my jacket pocket feels impossibly heavy—sixteen grams of specialized crystal storage containing enough corporate secrets to buy a small country. Or end a life. Probably mine.
I shouldn’t have taken the job. Shouldn’t have believed the anonymous Johnson who contacted me through the darknet. Shouldn’t have been so desperate to impress Iris with one grand gesture that would validate the five years she’d wasted with a mid-level security hack who’d peaked professionally at age thirty.
The second interceptor is gaining. Its pilot is better, more cautious after seeing his colleague’s demise. A warning shot sizzles past my canopy—some kind of plasma weapon that would cook me inside this metal coffin if it connected.
I need an edge. Something unexpected.
The Kestrel’s AI highlights a structure ahead—the ancient Oriental Pearl Tower, its spherical sections half-collapsed but still recognizable. Once a tourist attraction, now a vertical shantytown housing thousands of the city’s most desperate residents.
“No,” I say, already knowing what the AI is suggesting. “There are people in there.”
“Pursuit vehicles are closing. Probability of capture: eighty-seven percent and rising.”
I close my eyes for a fraction of a second. “Plot me a course through the central column. Minimal structural damage profile.”
The AI complies, and a glowing path appears on my heads-up display. I open the throttle fully, feeling the g-forces push me back into my seat as the Kestrel accelerates toward the crumbling landmark.
At the last second, I engage the emergency compression system. The Kestrel’s adaptive frame contracts further, metal and composite materials groaning as the car becomes little more than a missile with me strapped to the front. We shoot through a maintenance shaft barely wider than the vehicle itself.
Inside the tower, a kaleidoscope of makeshift dwellings flashes past—glimpses of lives stacked atop one another in this vertical slum. Wide eyes reflect my running lights as residents dive for cover. I hear impacts against the hull as the Kestrel clips improvised walls and support beams. I’m destroying homes, I know. Adding to the misery of those who have nothing.
Another mistake to add to my ledger.
I emerge from the other side of the tower just as the structure begins to shudder. Not a collapse—thank whatever gods still bother with this place—but enough damage to send debris raining down on the flood waters below. The interceptors, unable to compress their frames as the Kestrel can, are forced to circle around the massive structure, buying me precious seconds.
“Rerouting to safe house gamma,” the AI announces. “Estimated arrival: twelve minutes at current speed.”
Too long. They’ll have reinforcements swarming by then. I need somewhere to go to ground now.
“Find me a dead zone,” I order. “Somewhere to disappear.”
The map on my display shifts, highlighting a sector three kilometers east—the ruins of the old financial district, now a wasteland of electromagnetic interference and radiation from a reactor meltdown twenty years ago. No corporate security goes there voluntarily. Nothing electronic functions properly for long.
Including, potentially, my Kestrel.
It’s a desperate move, but I’m beyond better options. I bank toward the dead zone, pushing the car to its structural limits. Behind me, the interceptors reappear, closing the gap with alarming speed.
As I cross into the dead zone perimeter, the effects are immediate. The Kestrel’s systems flicker, displays becoming snowy with interference. The neural link between the car and my implant stutters, creating a nauseating disconnection that makes me gag. Warning messages cascade across the heads-up display before it fails entirely.
I’m flying blind, on manual controls, in a forest of derelict skyscrapers.
The interceptors fall back at the boundary, unwilling to risk their more delicate systems in this electronic graveyard. Small victory.
With my neural link compromised, the Kestrel feels suddenly alien under my hands—just metal and circuitry, not the extension of my will it had been moments before. I slow to a dangerous hover, trying to navigate by what little I can see through the canopy.
The dead zone has a beauty to it—a forest of steel and glass corpses, their surfaces untouched by the usual advertisements and light pollution. Actual vines and mutated plants have reclaimed many structures, creating a vertical jungle of twisted greenery that glows faintly with bioluminescence—a side effect of the radiation.
I set the Kestrel down on what was once a helicopter landing pad, now a garden of strange, phosphorescent fungi. As the engines cycle down, the silence is absolute. No city noise penetrates this deep into the zone. Nothing but the ping of cooling metal and my own ragged breathing.
For the first time since I left Iris, I allow myself to really feel what I’ve done. The weight of it crushes my chest until I’m bent over the steering column, dry heaving with the force of my regret.
I think about going back, finding her, begging forgiveness. But what would that accomplish, besides satisfying my own need for absolution? She deserved better than what I gave her. Deserves better than what I am.
The dataspike feels cold through my pocket. Whatever secrets it contains, they’re not worth what they’ve cost me. Not worth what they’ve cost Iris.
I step out of the Kestrel, my boots crunching on the fungal carpet. The air has a metallic taste, tinged with ozone. Unhealthy, but I won’t be staying long enough for it to matter. Just long enough to make a decision.
The edge of the landing pad offers a view of the dead zone spreading out below—a twisted monument to corporate greed and technological hubris. Somewhere beyond it, the living city continues its frenetic existence, unaware or uncaring of this rotting heart at its center.
I take out the dataspike, turning it over in my fingers. Such a small thing to contain so much danger. I could still complete the job, make the delivery, collect the payment. Start over somewhere new. The original plan, minus Iris.
Or I could destroy it. Walk away from all of it.
The choice seems obvious when framed that way, but nothing is ever simple in Neo-Shanghai. If I don’t deliver, the Johnson will send others after me. If I do deliver, Nakamura will never stop hunting me. If I destroy it, both sides will assume I’ve double-crossed them.
There’s a third option, though. One that requires the Kestrel.
I return to the car, which has partially rebooted its essential systems in standby mode. The AI remains offline, but the manual controls respond when I power up. There’s just enough juice in the fusion cell to get me where I need to go.
As I lift off from the landing pad, I take one last look at the dead zone—a fitting metaphor for what my life has become. But perhaps not what it has to remain.
I set course for the nearest Nakamura Cybernetics public office. Not their headquarters—I’m not suicidal—but a customer service center on the mid-levels where civilians bring their malfunctioning implants and cybernetics for repair.
The plan forms as I fly. Return the dataspike anonymously. Then find Iris—if she survived—and beg forgiveness, expecting nothing. After that… well, there’s always work for someone with my skills in the outer colonies. Hard work, dangerous work, but honest. A chance to rebuild something resembling a life.
As the Kestrel emerges from the dead zone, its systems gradually returning to life, I feel a weight lift slightly from my shoulders. The mistake can’t be unmade. The harm can’t be undone. But perhaps the future isn’t written yet.
The flying car responds to my touch like an old friend welcoming me back, its hum a promise of possibilities still open, of distances still crossable, of a horizon that extends beyond my failures.
I set the throttle and point us toward whatever comes next.