The memory extraction was sloppy, but the synthetic dopamine glands were already missing before the frost hit.
I reached for the bio-leech. Its ribbed back was slick with Mark's sweat. The creature pulsed, bloated with the memory of a Tuesday afternoon Mark could not afford to keep. I pressed my thumb against the nerve-cluster at the base of its spine. The leech unlatched. A loud wet pop echoed in the small clinic.
Mark gasped. His eyes rolled back. His jaw locked.
I dropped the leech into the stasis jar. The saline hissed. The creature settled at the bottom, glowing a faint, sickly bioluminescent green. That green meant the extraction was successful. Mark was officially missing three hours of a very expensive mistake.
"Breathe," I said.
Mark did not breathe. His chest spasmed. The leather of the surgical chair squeaked under his tailored suit.
"I said breathe, Mark. Your brain is trying to bridge a synapse gap. Help it out."
He sucked in a lungful of the freezing October draft leaking through my window panes. The smog-choked sky outside was the color of a bruised knee. Fall had hit District 4 like a baseball bat. The neon sign above my door flickered, casting a red slash across Mark's pale face.
"Is it gone?" Mark asked. His voice was raw.
"It is in the jar," I said. I wiped my hands on a sterile towel. "You do not remember the girl. You do not remember the hotel. You do not remember what you promised her."
"I feel empty."
"That is the point of the procedure. Emptiness is what you paid for."
"It aches."
"Take a synthetic ibuprofen and don't think about the gap. If you poke the hole, the brain tries to fill it. Just go home."
Mark stood up. He swayed. His designer shoes clicked against my cheap linoleum. He tossed a cred-stick onto the stainless steel tray. It clattered next to a pile of used synth-syringes. I did not look at him as he stumbled out the door. The heavy metal slammed shut behind him. The clinic was quiet again. Just the hum of the stasis jar and the rattling window.
My right arm twitched. The servos in the cybernetic elbow whined. The cold always messed with the wiring. I massaged the carbon-fiber joint, staring at the green glow of the bio-leech. I needed to log the extraction, wipe the security feed, and close up shop.
The door kicked open.
The blast of freezing air hit my face before I saw him. Meat-Hook Hank.
He did not look like a Hank. He looked like a walking meat-grinder wrapped in a cheap leather trench coat. He stepped into the clinic. His boots left heavy, wet mud tracks on the tiles I had just bleached.
"You are tracking mud on my floor," I said.
"Cry about it," Hank said.
He kicked the stainless steel tray. The cred-stick and the syringes flew across the room. They scattered into the dark corners of the clinic. I did not blink. I kept my hand resting near the surgical laser on the counter.
"Silas wants his property," Hank said.
"I run a clinic. Not a lost and found."
"You run a glorified pawn shop for rich people's bad decisions. And right now, Silas is missing a shipment."
"I do not fence for the syndicate anymore. You know that."
"I know you owe Silas a lot of favors."
"I paid those off."
"Interest rates fluctuate," Hank said. He leaned over the counter. His cybernetic eye whirred, focusing on my face. The red lens dilated. "A crate of synthetic dopamine glands got hit last night. Transport was moving through the lower levels. Driver is dead. Glands are gone."
"Dopamine glands?" I asked. I crossed my arms. The synthetic muscles in my prosthetic tensed. "Who steals pure dopamine? That is suicide. You splice that raw, your heart explodes in ten seconds."
"Silas does not care about the biology. He cares about the inventory. The street value is enough to buy this whole block and burn it down for fun."
"Sounds like a you problem."
"It is a you problem now. Silas knows you know the underground splice-shops better than anyone. You are going to find who hit the transport."
"No."
Hank reached across the counter. His massive hand wrapped around the stasis jar. The bio-leech thrashed inside, agitated by the sudden movement.
"This is a nice little setup you have here," Hank said. "Extracting illegal memories for corporate suits. Highly unregulated. Highly illegal. Would be a shame if the Enforcers got an anonymous tip with a data-dump of your client list."
"You are bluffing."
"Try me."
I stared at him. The neon red light from the street washed over his scarred face. He was not bluffing. Silas owned half the Enforcers in the district. They would shut me down, confiscate my gear, and throw me in the deep-freeze cells before midnight.
"Fine," I said. I forced the word out of my throat. "Where was the transport hit?"
"Derelict greenhouse. Sector 7."
"Give me twenty-four hours."
"You have twelve," Hank said. He let go of the jar. It slammed back down onto the counter. The saline splashed against the glass. "Do not make Silas wait. He is in a bad mood this time of year."
Hank turned and walked out. The door stayed open for three seconds, letting the freezing October wind tear through the room, before the hydraulic hinge slowly pushed it shut.
I looked at my cybernetic arm. The fingers were trembling. It was not the cold. It was the phantom ache. The ghosts in the wiring. I grabbed my coat. I had twelve hours to find a ghost.
Sector 7 was a graveyard of good intentions. Fifty years ago, the city planners tried to build an urban utopia. Glass domes, climate-controlled parks, engineered sunlight. Then the funding dried up, the smog ate the glass, and the bio-flora mutated. Now it was just shattered panels and dead, frozen vines creeping over rusted steel girders.
The greenhouse was massive. The glass ceiling was entirely gone, open to the bruised sky. Dead leaves carpeted the floor, brittle and brown. They crunched under my boots with every step. The temperature here was ten degrees colder than my clinic. My breath plumed in the air, thick white clouds that dissolved into the static of the ruin.
I found the transport vehicle near the center of the dome.
It was a heavy armored crawler, the kind the syndicate used for moving high-value bio-tech. The front plating was melted slag. Someone had used a thermal charge to blow the engine block. The driver was still inside. Or what was left of him. I did not look closely. I did not need to.
I walked to the back of the crawler. The cargo doors were ripped off their hinges. The locking mechanism was not picked or bypassed. It was torn. Physically ripped apart by raw, brute force.
I knelt by the broken metal. I ran my organic hand over the twisted alloy. The edges were sharp. I pulled a micro-scanner from my coat pocket and swept it over the lock.
The scanner beeped. A blue light flashed across the screen.
Organic residue.
I leaned closer. Caught on a jagged piece of the steel hinge was a thick, translucent smear of bio-gel. It was already crystallizing in the cold air.
My cybernetic arm flared in pain. A sharp, electric shock shot from my carbon-fiber wrist all the way up to my organic shoulder. I grimaced, clutching my arm. The phantom ache. It only ever happened when I was near unstable neuro-chemistry.
I pulled a sterile swab from my kit and scraped the bio-gel into a vial. I slotted the vial into the scanner.
The screen processed the chemical makeup.
Endorphin-laced cellular binding. High-grade synthetic adrenaline. A very specific, very illegal neuro-inhibitor used to keep grafted organs from rejecting the host body.
I stared at the screen. The numbers scrolled past. I knew this formula. I knew the exact ratio of the inhibitor. There was only one person in District 4 who spliced bio-gel with that exact chemical signature.
Renee.
My stomach dropped.
Renee was my ex-partner. Not just business. Everything. We used to run the best chop-shop in the sector. We spliced memories, we grafted synthetic nerves, we built miracles out of stolen parts. Until the night my brother Leo died on her operating table. I walked out the next morning and never went back.
I pocketed the scanner. The wind howled through the broken glass above me. The dead leaves spun in a sudden vortex. If Renee was involved in hitting a syndicate transport, she was already a dead woman walking. Silas did not forgive.
I left the greenhouse. I walked fast. My boots shattered the frozen puddles on the cracked pavement.
Renee's new shop was underground, hidden in the labyrinth of the old subway tunnels. The tunnels were damp. Condensation dripped from the ceiling, splashing onto my coat. The only light came from flickering emergency bulbs encased in wire mesh.
I reached the heavy steel door at the end of the line. It had no handle. Just a biometric scanner.
I pressed my organic thumb against the glass.
The machine buzzed red. Access denied.
I sighed. I pulled my sidearm from my holster and slammed the heavy metal grip against the scanner panel. The glass shattered. Wires sparked. The magnetic lock disengaged with a heavy clank. I pushed the door open.
The chop-shop was a chaotic mess of cables, surgical tables, and humming server racks. Neon tube lights hummed overhead, casting a harsh, blue glare over everything.
Renee was standing over a stainless steel basin, washing her hands. She did not jump when the door crashed open. She just turned off the water and reached for a towel.
"You broke my scanner," Renee said. Her voice was flat. Unsurprised.
"You changed the locks," I said.
"I changed my life, Steven. You should try it."
She turned to face me. She looked the same. Sharp angles, tired eyes, her hair chopped short and dyed a faded, toxic yellow. She wore a heavy mechanic's apron over a stained tank top. Her arms were covered in grease and bio-fluid.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"We need to talk about a syndicate transport."
Renee threw the towel onto a nearby table. "I do not know what you are talking about."
I pulled the scanner from my pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it. She looked at the screen.
"Sector 7 greenhouse," I said. "A crate of dopamine glands was taken. Your bio-gel signature is all over the ripped cargo doors. You want to tell me why you are hitting Silas's supply lines?"
Renee's face tightened. She tossed the scanner back to me. "I did not hit the transport."
"The gel says otherwise."
"I sell that gel to half the runners in the district. Anyone could have used it."
"Do not lie to me, Renee. Hank was in my clinic an hour ago. He gave me twelve hours to find the glands. If I give him your name, you are dead."
"Then do not give him my name."
"Give me the glands."
"I do not have them!" Renee shouted. Her voice echoed off the concrete walls. She took a step toward me. Her eyes were wide, furious. "You think I am stupid enough to steal pure dopamine from Silas? What would I even do with it?"
"Splice it. Sell it to the junkies in the lower levels. They pay a fortune to feel anything right now."
"You think I am just a street-level dealer now? Is that what you think of me?"
"I do not know what to think of you anymore," I said. My voice was quieter now. The silence in the room was heavy. Just the hum of the neon lights.
"You never did," Renee said. She turned away from me. She walked over to a workbench covered in tangled wires and broken circuit boards. She gripped the edge of the table. Her knuckles were white. "You walked out, Steven. You left me here to clean up the mess."
"Do not do this. Do not bring him up."
"Why? Because it hurts?" Renee spun back around. Her eyes were burning. "Because the great rip-doc cannot handle a little phantom pain?"
"I am trying to save your life right now!"
"I do not need you to save me! I needed you five years ago!"
The words hung in the air. The blue light flickered. My cybernetic arm seized. The fingers curled into a fist entirely on their own. I had to grab my wrist with my other hand to force the joints open.
The neon light above us buzzed like an angry wasp. I kept my grip on my mechanical wrist. The servos whined, fighting my organic strength.
"We are not talking about Leo," I said. My jaw was locked.
"We never talk about Leo," Renee said. She crossed her arms. "That is the problem. You extracted him, didn't you?"
I froze.
"What did you say?" I asked.
"You heard me. I know how you operate, Steven. I know what you do when the dark gets too loud. You used a bio-leech on yourself. You wiped the memory of that night."
"Shut up."
"You wiped his face. You wiped the sound of the monitors flatlining. You wiped the fact that it was your fault the splice failed!"
"I said shut up!" I stepped forward. I did not realize how fast I moved until I was inches from her face. My breathing was ragged.
Renee did not flinch. She stared right back into my eyes.
"Hit me," she whispered. "Do it. Feel something. Anything."
I dropped my hands. I stepped back. The cold in the room suddenly felt hollow. My chest was tight.
"I did not wipe him entirely," I muttered. I looked at the floor. The concrete was stained with old oil. "Just the end. Just the last ten minutes. I could not sleep. The visual loop... it was destroying my nervous system."
Renee let out a harsh, dry laugh. "So you just deleted him. How efficient."
"I am not here for a therapy session. I am here for the dopamine."
Renee rubbed her temples. The fight seemed to drain out of her all at once. She leaned against the workbench.
"The glands are not for highs, Steven," she said quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"Silas is not selling them to junkies. He is using them on himself."
I frowned. "Silas? Why would the boss of the syndicate need synthetic dopamine?"
"Because his daughter died," Renee said. "Five years ago. During the autumn riots. She got caught in the crossfire down in Sector 4."
I processed the information. The timeline. "He has been suppressing his grief with pure dopamine for five years?"
"Yes. He floods his system. It burns out the sorrow receptors. He physically cannot feel sad. He just feels... aggressive. Empty. But the tolerance builds. He needs more and more to keep the ghost away. That is why the shipments have been getting larger."
"Okay. But that still does not explain who hit the transport."
Renee looked at me. Her expression was completely unreadable.
"I did not hit the transport, Steven. But I know who did. I built him."
The room went completely silent.
"You built a person?" I asked.
"A hollow. A bio-construct. Muscle tissue, synthetic bone, a neural lattice. I built him as a bodyguard for a client. But the neural net... it mutated. It started developing its own cognitive loops."
"It became self-aware?"
"Worse. It became emotionally aware. But it has no history. No memories. It is a blank slate with the capacity to feel deeply, but nothing to feel deeply about. It experiences a constant, agonizing existential void."
"So it stole the dopamine to feel good?"
"No," Renee said. "It stole the dopamine to reverse-engineer it. It does not want to feel good. It knows it is a machine. It knows it is a mistake. It wants to feel sorrow. It wants to feel human regret. It thinks if it processes the dopamine through its synthetic filters, it can synthesize the chemical equivalent of grief."
I stared at her. The absurdity of it was staggering.
"A machine trying to give itself clinical depression," I said.
"It is trying to validate its own tragic existence," Renee corrected. "It took the glands to an abandoned location to begin the chemical splice. It left here two days ago. That is why my bio-gel was on the transport. The construct leaks it from its joints. It is falling apart."
"Where is it?"
"The old railyard. East edge of the district. It is hiding in the rusted out mag-trains."
I turned toward the door.
"Steven," Renee called out.
I stopped.
"The construct... it has defense mechanisms. Spore nodes along its collarbone. If it feels threatened, it releases a hallucinogen. It attacks the brain's visual and auditory cortex. It forces the target to experience their most suppressed trauma. It is how the hollow paralyzes threats."
I looked back at her.
"If it hits you," Renee said, "it is going to force you to see Leo. The real memory. The one you deleted. It will bridge the gap by force."
I looked down at my cybernetic arm. The fingers were perfectly still now.
"I will keep my distance," I said.
I walked out of the chop-shop, leaving the shattered door hanging on its hinges.
The railyard was a graveyard of steel leviathans. Massive, rusted magnet-trains sat on cracked concrete rails. The sky was entirely dark now. The city's amber glow barely pierced the thick smog. The wind was relentless, tearing through the metal corridors and kicking up tornadoes of dead leaves.
I walked slowly. My boots crunched over the brittle foliage. I held my sidearm in my organic hand. My cybernetic hand gripped a stun-baton. The cold bit at my face.
I found the hollow in the third train car.
The metal doors were pried open. I stepped inside. The interior was gutted, stripped of seats and paneling. In the center of the car, sitting on a pile of rusted debris, was the construct.
It looked like a flayed anatomical model. Synthetic muscle fibers wove over carbon-composite bones. It wore a tattered trench coat. Its face was a blank, smooth surface of pale silicone, devoid of features except for two deep, dark optical sensors.
Surrounding the hollow were dozens of cracked vials. The synthetic dopamine. The bio-gel was leaking from the hollow's elbows, pooling on the metal floor.
"Do not move," I said. I raised the sidearm.
The hollow slowly turned its featureless face toward me.
"I am experiencing failure," the hollow said. Its voice was mechanical, synthesized through a speaker in its throat. It sounded like grinding gears.
"Step away from the glands."
"The chemical synthesis is insufficient. I cannot generate the sorrow. I only feel cold."
"I do not care about your feelings. You are coming with me."
The hollow stood up. It was massive. Easily seven feet tall. The bio-gel dripped from its frame, hissing as it hit the rusted floor.
"You are carrying a deep void," the hollow said. It tilted its head. "I can see the micro-tremors in your synthetic limb. You are suppressing data."
"Shut up."
"Let me see it. Let me feel your void."
The hollow lunged.
It moved with terrifying speed. I fired the sidearm. The bullet sparked off its carbon-fiber chest. The hollow slammed into me. We crashed through the rusted wall of the train car, tumbling out into the open railyard.
Dead leaves exploded into the air around us. I hit the concrete hard. The breath vanished from my lungs. The hollow pinned me down. Its heavy, synthetic hands wrapped around my throat.
I swung the stun-baton. The electric arc cracked against the side of its head. The hollow twitched, but its grip did not loosen.
"Show me," the hollow commanded.
Its collarbone split open. Three small nodes emerged.
Before I could turn my head, the nodes burst. A fine, pale yellow dust coated the air directly over my face. It landed on my skin. It burned like dry ice.
I blinked.
The railyard vanished.
The cold wind was gone.
I was standing in the chop-shop. Five years ago. The harsh white surgical lights blinded me.
"Hold him down!" Renee screamed. Her hands were covered in blood.
I looked down. Leo was on the table. He was thrashing. His chest was ripped open. The synthetic graft I had just installed was glowing a violent, toxic red. His body was rejecting it.
"Steven! Do something!" Renee yelled.
I could not move. My hands were shaking. I looked at the scalpel in my hand. It was vibrating.
Leo looked at me. His eyes were wide with absolute terror.
"Steven," Leo choked out. Blood bubbled on his lips. "It burns. Please. It burns."
"I can fix it," I heard myself say. But my voice was distant. Detached. "I just need to recalibrate the neural link."
"You cut the wrong artery!" Renee screamed. "You rushed the splice!"
Leo arched his back. A horrific, wet snapping sound echoed in the room. His spine seized. The monitor flatlined. The continuous, piercing tone drilled into my skull.
Leo's eyes locked onto mine. The light faded from them. He went still.
The silence that followed was heavier than a collapsed building.
"No," I whispered. I dropped the scalpel. It clattered on the tiles.
The vision shattered.
I was back in the railyard. The cold wind ripped across my face. I was screaming. My throat was raw. Tears were streaming down my face, freezing on my cheeks.
The hollow was staring down at me. Its grip on my throat had loosened.
"Yes," the hollow whispered. "That is the sorrow. It is beautiful."
It was distracted. Intoxicated by the raw emotion it was analyzing from my biometric response.
I forced every ounce of power into my cybernetic arm. The servos screamed. I drove my mechanical fist directly upward, smashing into the hollow's smooth silicone face.
The silicone tore. The carbon-fiber plating beneath it cracked.
The hollow reeled back, stumbling.
I rolled onto my feet. I did not hesitate. I swung the stun-baton with both hands, driving the electrified tip directly into the exposed crack in its faceplate.
The blue electricity surged. The hollow convulsed violently. Its synthetic vocal cords emitted a high-pitched, digital shriek. It collapsed onto the dead leaves, its limbs twitching rapidly before going entirely still.
I stood over it. My chest heaved. I was shaking uncontrollably. The memory of Leo's eyes was burned into my retinas. The gap in my brain had been violently filled. The pain was absolute. It felt like a physical weight crushing my ribs.
I walked back into the train car.
I found an intact crate of the synthetic dopamine glands. I stared at the glowing blue vials. Pure, uncut emotional suppression. Just one drop on the tongue, and the memory would stop hurting. It would just become a fact. A cold, distant fact.
I picked up a vial. My thumb brushed the glass.
"Do not do it, Steven."
I turned. Renee was standing in the doorway of the train car. She had a heavy plasma rifle slung over her shoulder. She was breathing hard. She had followed me.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Renee asked. Her voice was softer than I had heard it in years.
"I saw him," I said. My voice broke. "I saw what I did."
"It was an accident. We were young. We made a mistake."
"I killed my brother, Renee."
"And then you erased him. And you erased me. You erased everything so you would not have to feel it."
I looked at the vial in my hand. The blue light reflected in my cybernetic arm.
"Silas is going to send Hank with a strike team if I do not deliver this crate," I said.
"Then we run," Renee said. She stepped closer. "We take the hit. We leave the district. But you put that vial down. Do not numb out again. Please. Stay here with me. Stay in the pain."
I looked at the rusted metal floor. I looked at the dead leaves blowing past the door. I felt the cold biting at my organic skin. The phantom ache in my metal arm throbbed, a relentless, steady rhythm.
I closed my fist around the glass vial.
“I closed my fist around the glass vial.”
