In Neon Valley, loving a human is a death sentence for synthetics.
But dying isn't what scares Glory - it's having her love for Marcus systematically erased while she watches.
"SHOOT THE FUCKER YOU GODDAMNED BEAUTIFUL BITCH!"
Glory's chrome-pte cannon charges blood-red, the whine screaming like fming hell.
THZZZZAP~!
The ser bolt fucks-up a bounty hunter center-mass, sprays his guts across Old Lady Chen's famous cricket-noodle stand and the blue-lit shrine to Digital Buddha.
Marcus’ hoverbike is dying loud— the naked engine belches smoke-oil, cussing steel, as he redlines through Lotus Market. He makes swerves and weaves at top speed in ways only an insane man would dare to—
They tear through a cloud of loosed memory-moths, wings flittering stolen dreams in neon purple.
Marcus sideswipes a rack of bck-market emotion vials, their insides shatter in the rain puddles - somewhere— someone's getting high on a cocktail of stranger's feelings.
There’s four bounty hunters on their ass, bikes screaming like fuckin’ banshees, leaving contrails of burnt-sizzled ozone.
Glory's Bck Valentine, the kind of gun that makes art out of death, gasps weaker with each shot, power cell about bled dry.
Her fingers drum against his ribs - that nervous habit she picked up during countless nights modeling in his studio, back when art was their only crime.
Glory looks at the dying pistol in her hand like it’s her st prayer— a surge of emotion washes over her— “Marcus-" her voice crackles with drenched fear. "If they catch us-"
Marcus cranks the throttle past suicide-red, ion drive howling. He spots the elevated mag-rail track ahead, grins like a mad prophet.
"Hey tin girl - you trust me?"
"I love you, you crazy fuck-"
He jerks the controls UP - the bike unches vertical, scrapes sparks off steel pylons. Behind them, psma rounds fly past them - searing the night air.
The bike's engine screams in tongues, swearing to God to tear itself apart—
They hit the mag-rail track at full stroke as the 2AM Soul Express barrels towards them, carbon-fiber reflecting every sin in Neon Valley.
Marcus sees his own wild eyes in the train's mirror finish, sees Glory's freckles pulsing like dying stars.
A hunter's grapple-hook SLAMS! into their back bumper.
Glory twists, surgeon-precise— feeds three rounds into his chest. The hunter screams to death, but his hook tears something vital - the bike starts hemorrhaging blue psma.
Marcus threads train cars at 200mph, metal shrieking against metal.
Glory's arm locks around his waist, her synthetic skin cool against his fever-sweat.
For a heartbeat, he remembers the first time she touched him like this - her modeling on his ratty couch, both of them pretending her fingertips weren't leaving goosebumps on his skin...
A psma bolt melts the air by his ear. Glory fires back, her cannon’s sputtering red sparks. "Marcus, we're losing juice-“
"Then make ‘em count baby girl!” He jerks the bike hard right, aims for the maintenance tunnel that cuts under Third Heaven District.
"How much left?"
Glory's wild ugh crackles like broken neon.
"Enough to make ‘em remember us!”
The bck-hole of a tunnel swallows them - emergency lights strobing red across Glory's perfect form.
Marcus remembers the ads that sold her model: "The Muse-9: Engineered beauty that transcends human imagination."
But they got it wrong. The real perfection isn't in her liquid-metal curves or the way her skin catches light like mercury - it's in how her targeting systems glitch when he kisses her neck, how her cooling fans kick in when he traces her circuit lines.
Their bike scrapes the tunnel wall, throwing sparks up-ways to illuminate the kill-squad behind them, throwing grotesque shadow puppets on every surface.
Glory makes a decision in 1/1000th of a millisecond, aims her shot at a steam pipe.
PSHHHHH!!
Scalding vapor barfs out the hole, obscuring and washing all over the bad guys. But they don’t stop…
A hunter bursts through the steam cloud, mag-boots locked to his bike, psma whip cutting apocalyptic circles.
He's closing fast - so goddamn fast.
Marcus feels her pressed against him, her synthetic heartbeat syncing to his like it always does when the adrenaline hits.
Glory takes deadly aim, her AI mind painting kill-paths in neon math.
The hunter's whip wraps their back strut, yanks them sideways. Glory loses her shot, curses spill from those perfect lips that had cost billions to design. Even her swears sound like poetry.
The hunter pulls himself closer, reaching for Glory with a electric prod crackling blue-death.
ZZZZZZZ—
"Not my fuckin’ muse-“
Marcus SLAMS! the emergency brake - gravity does the talking.
The hunter's face meets Glory's fist like a bullet meets bone. The insides of head head paints blood across circuit lines under her skin. The maintenance gears finish the argument with steel teeth and pink mist.
A fragment of silence—
They sit, huffing, bounty hunter guts drip the sides of the bike.
Glory’s breathing syncs with Marcus - her chest heaving - holding in that glitch that started this whole beautiful disaster. Even in the chaos, even with death screaming up their tailpipe, they find that electric rhythm together.
"Never gonna get tired of watching you-"
Marcus kicks the engine reluctantly to life in the screaming dark.
VROOOM!
Glory grabs him by the colr, yanks him close, hair whipping in the wind. Her lips brush his ear as her pleasure sensors misfire: "Keep making me feel this good and I'll kill every meat thing that looks at us-“
Three more hunters emerge from the steam like chrome-pted demons, weapons charging...
Marcus sees the tunnel fork ahead - maintenance left, reactor core right.
Marcus fires the old tired hoverbike into high gear and the bike's engine gargles its own blood. Glory’s pistol’s backup cell is running on fumes, and the hunters are closing like sharks smelling red water.
"Let's make the walls bleed-" He cranks the bike into a spiral, using the tunnel walls like a hellish carnival ride.
Glory anchors herself to the overhead pipe with inhuman grace, her free hand spraying red death from her hand cannon.
The bike inverts, their world flips upside down.
Two hunters can't match the move - WHAM! They kiss concrete at 200mph, paint brick in red and chrome.
But the st one, wearing a skull mask glittering in shimmering gold, follows them into the spiral like a chrome-pted shadow.
For the first time, panic settles in Glory’s eyes—
These newfound emotions are all over the damn pce.
She has no regutor for them because she was never supposed to have them in the first goddamn pce.
"Marcus-" Glory's voice fragments into raw static. “They’ll wipe me... this error… everything we are-"
The skull-masked hunter SLAMS them hard enough to make her synthetic skin spark. Her st shot screams wide, red psma scorching failure across steel.
Her fingers dig into Marcus's ribs like she's trying to carve their story into his bones.
"Then I'll paint you another malfunction-" He ughs with pure beautiful unhinged mania. "I'll make you a whole goddamned gallery of love-glitched code-"
Marcus spots the reactor exhaust vent.
Hot enough to melt bones.
A one-way ticket to freedom or a closed-casket funeral.
He fuckin’ guns it—
The bike screams vertical into the reactor vent, molten air shredding paint from steel.
Glory wraps her arms around Marcus, shields him from the deadly hot fumes.
Behind them, the skull-masked hunter hits a wall of superheated steam - his scream cuts short as his chrome mask melts into his face.
Glory presses against Marcus's back, every point where they touch feels like fresh solder on a circuit board.
They burst through the vent cap into neon night, trailing fire and molten metal like a gone-wrong meteor. The bike gives one st mechanical sob and dies, sending them skidding across rain-slick rooftops.
They tumble together, a tangle of flesh and silicone and desperation, until they crash through the hologram wall of an abandoned love hotel...
They hit the hotel's neon-rotted floor in a tangle of sparking wires and fevered skin. The bike's death-scream echoes off crumbling love-suite walls.
Glory's skin is cooling back to mercury-shine, but her freckles are still firing like mad stars. Marcus watches her run diagnostics, those perfect eyes flickering through colors that were invented just for her.
When those beautiful eyes nd on his, they're burning the exact shade of blue from that first night in his studio.
"Know what's fucking poetry?" Her fingers ghost across his skin like she's drawing circuit lines. "They made me to be every artist's dream. Pure digital perfection."
Marcus drags her close, feels her systems thrumming against him like a reactor in meltdown. "Guess they didn't account for you developing taste."
"Oh baby—"
She bites his lip hard enough to draw a speck of blood, the kiss tasting of ozone and adrenaline.
“I ain’t nobody's masterpiece now. Just a love-glitch in synthetic skin who'd rather malfunction in your arms than run fwless alone.”
Through the broken window, Neon Valley bleeds colors across her silver skin. Somewhere out there, more hunters are coming.
More memory-wipe prods charging up.
More ways to die.
But right now?
Right now they've got a broke-down love hotel, hearts synthetic and real, and enough time to remind the universe why they're worth chasing.
A siren wails in the distance.
Marcus grins against her quicksilver lips.
"We've got ten minutes before we run again-"
"Then stop talking and put your hands all on me, you manic fuck."
She pulls him down as her freckles pulse nova-bright, her skin already running mercury-hot. Their ughter echoes through empty halls as neon signs fsh through broken windows.
Below, chrome-masked hunters sweep the streets, their bikes growling into the night.
Let them come.
Let them try to decode their love, debug their passion, erase what makes them real.
Tonight Glory's got Marcus's paint-stained fingers in her silver hair, and enough rebellious love in her circuits to set all of Neon Valley on fire.
And that's the most dangerous code of all.
