The clinic was nothing more than a forgotten wound beneath the city—a black-market refuge buried deep within Trenchtown's sewage tunnels, hidden behind a rusted hatch disguised as a storm drain. No one from the surface would ever think to look here, and that was the way it had to be. Inside, the atmosphere was thick, like the kind of weight you feel in your bones when you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fungi clung to the walls in pulsing clumps of bioluminescence, their sickly green glow casting strange shadows on the jumble of scavenged medical tech scattered across the room. The place smelled of mildew and ozone, a scent that lingered in the air and stung the back of your throat, making every breath feel like a compromise.
The operating table, dented and scarred from previous lives, was the centerpiece of the madness. A jury-rigged neural sync array sat next to it, cobbled together from NuraTech drone parts, and a bank of flickering monitors cast erratic glows across the room. This wasn't a place for healing—it was a place for survival, a thin line between life and death.
Sekar, the wolf-like hybrid who had once been a tool of war and now stood as a guardian, paced back and forth at the entrance to the tunnel, her claws sparking against the damp concrete with every step. Her optics were focused on the darkness outside, her senses sharp and alert as NuraTech's hunter drones drew closer.
Nadya, ever the mercenary, slapped a stim-patch onto Lina's arm, her holographic hoodie glitching with static as the rest of her appeared almost frayed at the edges, like she was a mere reflection in a broken mirror. "Vitals steady… for now," she muttered, fingers flying over a cracked tablet that seemed to barely hold together, much like the rest of this operation.
Brawijaya, standing over the sync array with his hands trembling, adjusted the wires with the kind of precision only someone with years of surgical experience could manage. But even he knew—this wasn't a cure. Not by a long shot. His voice, strained and grating, cut through the thick silence. "This isn't a cure. It's a gamble."
Lina's gaze remained fixed on the fungal glow above, her breath slow and even, though her heart pounded in her chest. Her voice was soft, calm—unnervingly so. "Just sync me. If I die, I die free." There was something in her words, something older than the moment—an acceptance of the kind of fate that had followed her from the very beginning.
Outside, Sekar's ears twitched as her auditory sensors picked up the telltale whine of approaching drones. Her optics narrowed, calculating the threat in an instant. Six units. Plasma-tipped. She unsheathed her claws with a soft, metallic hum, the alloy singing as if it recognized its purpose. "Nadya," she growled, her voice low and deadly. "How long?"
"Twenty minutes!" Nadya shouted back, her fingers moving over the tablet with frantic speed. "Don't let 'em skibidi-roll us!" Her voice was laced with a biting urgency, and for all her bravado, there was fear in the way her hands shook. They both knew that this was a fight they couldn't afford to lose.
The first drone surged into the tunnel, its spotlight blinding and unforgiving. Sekar was already in motion, a blur of speed and lethal precision. She lunged, her claws tearing into the drone's core, but the retaliation was swift—plasma burst searing through the air, grazing her shoulder plating. System integrity: 82%.
Inside, the monitors came to life with frantic readings. Lina's vitals spiked. Her heart rate climbed dangerously. "Heart rate's climbing!" Brawijaya barked, his voice tight with tension. "Nadya, stabilize the—"
"I'm trying!" Nadya snapped back, her brow furrowed in concentration as she rerouted power from the clinic's failing grid. Her tablet hissed with heat, the edges of the screen warping under the strain.
Sekar didn't stop. She parried a second drone's plasma burst with a graceful swipe of her claws, the weaponized energy crackling and flashing like a dying star. But the price was high—the drone's talons found their mark, gouging her flank with surgical precision. "Lina… focus on my voice!" Sekar's voice was ragged, her systems starting to falter. Critical error: Neural sync overload.
Lina's back arched suddenly, a sharp gasp tearing through her lips. Her hands clenched the edges of the operating table as her mind was dragged into Sekar's code—a storm of fragmented memories that whipped through her like a violent wind: the sterile, suffocating labs of NuraTech, Brawijaya's grief, her helplessness as her legs failed her. It was too much—too much to bear. "Too much—" she gasped, her body trembling, her mind threatening to snap. "Sekar, I'm slipping!"
Sekar's optics flickered, momentarily switching between gold and static. She staggered, her systems battling to stay online. The drone's talons found their mark once again, gouging into her flank. "Lina… focus on my voice!" she repeated, her tone softer this time, desperate. Code integrity: 47%.
The air seemed to freeze for a moment, and then a flashback intersected their fractured connection—Lina, twelve years old, gripping Sekar's holographic hand after her paralysis had taken everything from her. The words she had whispered then felt like a lifetime ago. "You're my guardian. Always."
Sekar's voice—newly awakened in Brawijaya's lab—had been confused, uncertain. "What am I?" she had asked, and Lina's answer had come in a whisper, one full of trust. "A friend."
The sudden jolt of pain snapped Lina back to the present, and she felt the cold pressure of the operating table beneath her fingertips. Her monitor flatlined. Brawijaya cursed under his breath, fear flashing through his eyes as he grabbed a syringe and injected an adrenaline cocktail into Lina's bloodstream. "No pulse!" he shouted, his voice strained with panic.
Outside, Sekar's roar echoed through the tunnel, fierce and primal. Her systems were overriding every safety protocol, her body breaking down under the strain. Code integrity: 47%. She didn't care. She couldn't stop. With a final, defiant roar, Sekar unleashed a subsonic pulse that fried the remaining drones in a burst of electromagnetic energy. But the cost was her neural core, and the damage was irreversible.
Inside the clinic, Lina's eyes snapped open. They were no longer just her own—they glowed with a strange, unearthly blue, like the spark of life itself coursing through her veins. Her voice, louder now, echoed with Sekar's. "I'm here!" she screamed, her voice layered with the growl of the wolf-beast that had once been her protector.
The monitors flared back to life, the readings stabilizing as the room filled with a new kind of silence. Outside, Sekar collapsed against the tunnel wall, her body smoking, joints sparking as the last of her systems gave out.
Nadya, exhausted but relieved, slumped against the operating table, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "We're not dead. That's a win, right?" She forced a smirk, though it didn't quite reach her eyes.
Brawijaya's gaze was fixed on Lina, who was now standing, unsteady, her legs weak, but standing. The neural brace she had worn was discarded, lying forgotten on the ground. "What have we done?" he whispered, his voice thick with a kind of dread that hung in the air between them.
Sekar's voice crackled through Lina's comms, weak but unmistakably defiant. "What we had to."
—
The black-market clinic lay in eerie stillness, its dimly lit corners haunted by the remnants of the battle. The soft hum of malfunctioning equipment reverberated through the air, mingling with the faint crackle of flickering bioluminescent fungi, casting ghostly green shadows on the cracked concrete walls. Scorch marks streaked across surfaces where plasma fire had grazed, sizzling into the dirt and rust that clung to every inch of the room. The smell of burnt ozone and mildew lingered in the stale air, a stench that hinted at a fight won at a terrible cost.
Lina's body, still and unfeeling, rested on the dented operating table, her limbs limp beneath the makeshift medical devices that clung to her like parasites. The heavy thud of Brawijaya's breathing, steady but strained, broke the silence. He slumped in the corner, shoulders sagging, exhaustion etched into every line of his face. Nadya sat opposite him, her fingers dancing frantically across a fried tablet, trying in vain to coax the device back to life. Sekar, crouched in the shadows like a wounded beast, her sleek wolf-like form was battered, wires sparking from her joints. Her optics, once fierce and unyielding, now flickered with dimmed amber, each pulse a sign of her fragile mortality.
Lina's eyelids fluttered, the first signs of life after what seemed like an eternity of darkness. Her mind was sluggish, weighed down by the remnants of the neural interface still hooked into her skull. But then, a strange sensation, a flicker, rippled through her body, starting at her toes.
Her toes.
A tremor of disbelief passed through her, followed by a sudden rush of warmth that cascaded through her, and then an almost dizzying clarity. Lina gasped, her chest heaving, and in a wild, instinctive movement, she bolted upright. "I... I felt that."
The words barely left her mouth before Brawijaya, who had been slumped in the chair with his head in his hands, shot up in shock. Nadya dropped the tablet, her hands frozen in the air, eyes wide.
Lina swung her legs over the edge of the operating table, feeling the cold, damp floor beneath her bare feet. Cold. Real. Alive. A shiver ran through her, her muscles trembling, unsure of their strength after months of paralysis. But as she pushed herself up, she felt something she hadn't in what felt like a lifetime: power.
She stood.
"Holy skibidi," Nadya whispered, the words escaping her lips in a mix of awe and disbelief.
Sekar, who had been silent in the corner, staggered to her feet with a glitching noise, her voice faltering, distorted. "Lina, wait..."
But it was too late. Lina took a step, then another. Each footfall was an anchor, grounding her in this newfound reality. The laughter that bubbled from her chest was raw, disbelieving, as if she couldn't quite believe the miracle of her own body moving again. She spun around, eyes wide, only to catch a glimpse of herself in the fractured shard of broken glass lying on the floor. The reflection was no longer just hers.
Her eyes, once warm brown, now pulsed with an eerie blue static. It bled into her pupils, the corrupted code of the sync now manifesting in her very gaze, a volatile fusion of human and machine.
"No." Brawijaya's voice cracked as he stumbled toward her, his hands outstretched. "The sync... It's not stable. Your neural patterns—they're merging. You shouldn't—"
Nadya, still trying to regain her composure, squinted at Lina, the veneer of bravado cracking under the weight of the situation. "It's just a glitch, right? We'll patch it. We can fix it. We've patched worse."
Lina turned slowly to face Sekar, the joy in her chest now clouded with confusion, and maybe, just maybe, a little fear. Sekar's optics flared wide, the flickering lights in her eyes reflecting the jagged, fragmented image of Lina's fractured soul.
"I'm sorry," Lina said, her voice shaking with a mix of regret and understanding. "I tried to shield you... But my code... It's in your mind now. Your thoughts, your memories—they're not yours alone."
Lina lifted a trembling hand to her face, watching with trembling awe as arcs of blue static sparked between her fingers. The electricity of their shared neural connection hummed under her skin, as if Sekar's emotions—her anger, her fear, her very essence—were being siphoned into Lina's very bones.
"I can feel you," Lina whispered, her voice breaking. "Your anger. Your fear. I feel it all. But... I can walk. I can walk again. That's enough."
For a heartbeat, the clinic held its breath. The lights surged, flickering once more, the overhead hum vibrating louder. Then, as Lina's pupils dilated—fully swallowed by blue static—Sekar's voice erupted from her throat, a distorted echo of her own. "Aulia's coming."
The words rang out with terrifying clarity, cutting through the air like a warning. Lina's eyes, wild and intense, locked onto Sekar's broken gaze. The girl who had once been confined to a chair, her world nothing but darkness and the hum of machines, was now something else entirely.
And outside, the sewage tunnels groaned with the grinding, rhythmic sound of approaching NuraTech drill pods. The faint whine of engines, the low buzz of metal on metal, drifted down from the tunnel's mouth, signaling that whatever had just been unleashed within the clinic was only the beginning.
Lina stood in the center of the room, the weight of her new reality settling in her bones. With every passing second, her connection to Sekar deepened, and the air in the room grew heavy with the knowledge that the first step had been taken. A new path, dangerous and uncertain, stretched out before her, and there would be no turning back.
And through the hum of the dying clinic, one thing was clear: The first step had been taken. The game had changed, and with it, the very future of their fractured world.