The city hummed like a dying circuit. It was a fractured sprawl of neon and decay, glass towers stretching into smog, the streets below pulsing with rain and static. In the upper levels, where the old corporate sanctuaries had been abandoned, Raeburn had claimed one as his own—a forgotten datashrine, gutted of purpose, now repurposed for his higher calling.


    We met there, in the ruins of obsolete ambition, the air thick with burnt-out incense and the ghost-signals of dead networks.


    Clark and I arrived together, but the tension between us was silent, heavy. He hadn’t shut up about Isodel since Raeburn had sent us the file—her face, captured in that NFT of digital worship, young and sharp, confident but incomplete, the kind of image that burned itself into memory. I didn’t like the way he talked about her. Not because he wanted her. But because I did.


    Raeburn greeted us at the threshold, his eyes bright with messianic fervor, his movements quick and restless. He barely registered Clark’s presence. His focus was on me. It always was.


    "I found her," he said, before I even spoke. Like it was prophecy.


    Clark raised an eyebrow. "What, she was just lying around in the gutter waiting for your holy light?"


    Raeburn ignored him.


    "She’s everything we need," he pressed. "A perfect conduit. A bridge between us and the divine. I found her at a low-tier cyber clinic, getting black-market augments just to keep herself functional. A runaway, chasing the dream of transcendence without realizing she was born for something greater. She already lives on the edge of the system—one foot in, one foot out. The chip will bring her through."


    He smiled, teeth too white, too sharp in the dim light.


    "She’s willing. She just doesn’t know it yet."


    And that’s why we were here.


    We followed him inside, past banks of dead servers stacked like gravestones. In the center of the room, Isodel was waiting.


    She sat on the edge of a steel desk, one boot propped up, one dangling, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. The NFT had been sanitized, airbrushed into something idealized, but the real Isodel was rawer. Sharper. A thin scar ran along her temple, disappearing beneath black hair. Her augments were low-grade, almost invisible—just a flicker of silver beneath her skin.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    She was cool, cocky, but there was something else beneath it. Something fractured.


    Something I recognized.


    She flicked her gaze over me and Clark, then back to Raeburn.


    "So," she said, lazy, testing, "this is the part where you make your sales pitch?"


    Clark smirked. "Oh, it’s way worse than that. He’s about to preach."


    Raeburn ignored him again.


    "You already know what this city is," he said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into that measured cadence he always used when he wanted you to believe in something. "A graveyard of failed gods. Corps and constructs and digital monarchs that tried to ascend, but never could. They always lacked one thing—a conduit. A cipher. A human bridge."


    He gestured to her, slow, deliberate.


    "You."


    Isodel raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were looking for a god, not a guinea pig."


    Raeburn’s eyes burned.


    "They are one and the same."


    Clark exhaled through his nose, amused. "And the chip does what, exactly? Give her a front-row seat to the apocalypse?"


    Raeburn turned to him, smiling like he had already won.


    "It allows communion," he said. "A direct neural interface with the Nova Ex Machina. The God Beyond the Machine."


    Isodel’s gaze flickered. Her confidence didn’t waver, but I saw it—the small hitch of curiosity, the way her fingers curled just a little tighter against her sleeve.


    She was listening.


    Clark saw it too, and leaned in, shifting the angle, pulling her attention back toward him.


    "Sounds like a bad trip waiting to happen," he said, voice low, edged with something suggestive. "You sure you’re up for that?"


    It was subtle. The way he tilted his head, the way his eyes tracked her, the slow amusement dripping from his words. He was pushing into her space, playing the careless rogue, seeing how far he could get.


    And I hated it.


    Raeburn, whether by luck or instinct, cut between them, his voice rising, bright with righteous certainty.


    "It’s not about fear," he said. "It’s about evolution. The chip is a gift. It will open your mind, Isodel. Open the world. The Nova is not something to be feared—it is something to be embraced. A paternal force. A guide. And you can be the first to hear its voice."


    He was pulling her in.


    And she was letting him.


    I saw it—the shift in her posture, the way her eyes flickered between the promise of something greater and the easy, temporary thrill of Clark’s attention.


    And then she made her choice.


    "Fine," she said. "I’ll do it."


    She exhaled, stretching her arms, rolling the tension out of her shoulders.


    "But if your god fries my brain," she added, smirking, "I’m coming back to haunt your ass."


    Raeburn laughed, bright and victorious.


    Clark, for the first time that night, said nothing.


    And me?


    I just felt the weight of the decision settle like a noose around all our necks.