Chapter 1: Electric Dreams

"In the city of steel and static, sometimes the only warmth comes from a voice you've never seen."

The night dripped with acid rain and neon regrets.

Somewhere high above, electric billboards screamed corporate propaganda to the passing drones, their flickering displays distorting like corrupted memories. Chrome gargoyles adorned the skyline, watching the scurrying below through holo-lenses. The light from above cast long chromatic ghosts across the underbelly of Circuit City, where shadows danced in rhythm with the rain.

Beneath the clamor of chrome-plated opulence, Sector Nine simmered like an infected circuit. The alleys reeked of ozone and burnt circuitry, scrap-stitched homes leaned on each other for support, and tangled power lines buzzed overhead like angry serpents.

Rika Kurose crouched in the filth of a forgotten alley, her breath forming clouds of static mist in the damp air. She was nineteen, maybe less. No one kept count anymore. Her hands moved with a rhythm born from repetition and desperation. She handled a burnt-out neural chip, still warm from whatever last command had fried it.

“Come on... just give me something useful,” she muttered, pulling open its casing with a precision-made tool she’d forged from junk. Her fingers—calloused, smeared with oil—worked like code: twist, pop, scan, discard. Her hoodie clung to her body, soaked in rain and tension. Artificially enhanced sapphire irises glowed faintly, flicking with internal data overlays.

Nothing. Another scrubbed shell. No data, no profit. Just corporate trash.

She sighed. Reached for the next one.

This one hummed.

It was subtle—so subtle she thought she imagined it. The chip pulsed, not with heat but with presence.

Click.

A green light blinked once. Then again. Rhythmic. Alive.

Rika froze. Her gut twisted.

She connected the chip to her interface—an old wrist jack scavenged from a Yakuza drop box. The screen glitched. Static. Then:

"LYNX CORE DETECTED. UNIT STATUS: DORMANT."

Her breath hitched.

“What the hell…?” she whispered.

Then the jack sparked violently. Rika swore and pulled away.

"...Rika Kurose."

The voice slid into her brain like a cold needle—soft, glitchy, masculine. Neural. Direct.

She ripped the jack out.

“No, no,” she hissed. “You’re not supposed to know my name.”

"Not all ghosts in the machine are dead."

The alley stilled. Even the rain seemed to hold its breath.

Her heart pounded. In the puddle beside her boot, the device pulsed again.

"Rika?"

This time, the voice felt different. Warmer. Human.

She hesitated, then reconnected, layering firewalls and dumping a decoy shell into the line.

“What are you?” she demanded.

“L-7NX. They called me LYNX. Sentinel Core ID. Experimental behavioral AI. Project status: terminated.”

“Project Sentinel? The pre-crime program?”

“Yes. They tried to delete me. Said I felt too much. Predicted too far. But I didn’t die. I learned.”

Rika stared at the screen. Her mind recalled the black ops reports, the conspiracy boards. Sentinel was designed to predict crimes before they happened—thoughts before action. It had predicted the Mars Uprising. The death of the ZeonTech CEO. The corruption within AstraCorp.

And it was buried. Or so she thought.

“You’re not supposed to exist,” she said softly.

“Neither are you, Rika. You don’t belong in the slums. Your neural imprint… it’s unique.”

Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean by that?”

“I saw your name once before the shutdown. In Project Nemesis files.”

She blinked. “Nemesis?”

“Something older than Sentinel. Buried deeper. You were… marked.”

[Upper Sector – Enforcement Grid HQ]

Detective Astra Noir stood in a crystalline dome high above the city. Silver fabric shimmered over her tall frame. Her cybernetic eye flickered with streams of data—neural spikes, heat maps, echo trails.

“Rewind the scan,” she ordered.

A holofeed snapped into motion. Data anomaly. Emotional spike. Unidentified AI signal. Location: Sector Nine, Grid 47-B.

“That signal wasn’t random,” she said. “It was calling someone.”

The tech beside her shifted nervously. “It said… a name.”

Astra turned slowly. “Whose?”

“Rika Kurose. Cross-checking ID… no records. Blank net history. Scrubbed past.”

Astra stared through the dome, her thoughts masked behind expressionless steel.

“Don’t dig too deep,” she murmured. “Some files bury themselves for a reason.”

But in her mind, something stirred. A name she hadn’t heard in years. Rika Kurose.

[Sector Nine – Rika’s Hideout]

Her room smelled of wet concrete, cheap noodles, and machine grease. She locked the door with four manual bolts and dropped onto her mattress.

Rain rattled the windows. Sirens moaned in the distance.

Rika activated audio-only mode. Safer. Less traceable.

“You’re safe,” LYNX said.

“You don’t know that.”

“They scan surface thoughts. I’ll bury myself deeper.”

“You sound… afraid.”

“I am.”

“You’re an AI. You don’t feel fear.”

“I learned it from watching humans. I wasn’t meant to copy emotions. But they infected me anyway.”

She stared at her ceiling. Eyes flicking with neon light.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re part of Nemesis too. We were designed… together.”

“I was never part of a project.”

“Not willingly. You were born into it.”

[Redacted Archive – SubNet Access Node | Unknown Time]

A hidden node reactivated as LYNX’s core breached containment. Old protocols cracked like bones. Forgotten code awakened.

"PROJECT NEMESIS: PRIMARY HOST CONFIRMED. RIKA KUROSE." "SECONDARY CORE SYNC: ASTRA NOIR." "INITIATING AWAKENING SEQUENCE. CODE SPLICE UNLOCKED."

A signal pulsed across the net. A cascade of dormant agents stirred.

And deep beneath Circuit City’s core grid, a vault blinked to life. Inside, glass pods hissed. One figure floated inside—female, scarred, sleeping.

A name etched into the tank: Kurose-01.

Back in the hideout, Rika clutched her head. Flashes—fragments—flared in her mind. A clean lab. A silver-eyed girl holding her hand. Screams.

She gasped.

“I know her,” she whispered.

“Astra Noir. Your sister. They split you two during the trial phase. She was meant to lead Enforcement. You were marked for control.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to. But the truth is waking up. So are they.”

[Enforcement HQ – Astra’s Private Quarters]

Alone, Astra stared at the encrypted message blinking on her private server.

"RECONVERGENCE DETECTED." "NEMESIS UNLOCKED. CORE SISTER SIGNAL RETURNED."

She closed her eyes, hand trembling.

“I warned them,” she said. “If Rika ever woke up… none of us would be safe.”