Rain fell in sheets. Heavy. Relentless. It pounded against the steel bones of the city, every drop
hissing as it struck pavement. Not rain. Not real rain. It was chemical. Corrosive. Eating away at
concrete and memory alike. The sizzle rose around me like static, nearly drowning out the
sirens in the distance and the low hum of maglevs sliding past. Above me, broken neon
s flickered and looped through the same three lines, buzzing like flies on a
carcass, desperate to be noticed.
I kept my hood up. Not to stay dry. That was pointless. The rain always found its way in. It
soaked the fabric and found the skin, crept in through the gaps. I kept it up to veil my face. To
keep my eyes low. Even then, I could feel it. The pull in the air. Like a wire straining beneath the
surface of everything. The storm always stirred it.
The acid soaked through my boots with every step. Not painful. Not yet. Just a slow, warm burn.
Like being touched by something that used to know me. Or wanted me to remember.
And then I saw it.
One drop of rain
Caught on a jagged sliver of rusted railing.
It didn’t fall.
It hovered. A perfect sphere. Quivering in stillness.
The light bent inside it. Neon twisted into strange, impossible spectrums — reds blooming into
ultraviolet, blues bleeding into putrid green veins. The whole city fractured in that one drop. My
breath caught.
And the world tore open.
No transition. No warning. Just silence.
Then—
Flesh.
The sky was gone, replaced with a single, endless expanse of living tissue, stretched and
breathing. Veins as thick as overpasses pulsed beneath translucent layers of muscle. The
heavens convulsed with slow, wet rhythm,
The ground beneath me wasn’t ground. It flexed when I shifted my weight. It pulsed. It
responded.
Then the red haze bled in.
Thick. Viscous. Alive.
It didn’t move like mist. It coiled, twisted, writhed. It didn’t obscure it revealed. It coated thought.
Pried open memory. Flooded the mind with noise. My skull began to hum. A deep, resonant
buzzing, like bees caught between bone and brain, growing louder and sharper with every
passing second.
I wanted to blink. I wanted to look away.
But the haze didn’t let me.
It pushed into me.
And I saw.
I saw too much.
Not visions. Not symbols. Just endless organic chaos, a realm of tissue and meat and slick
sinew stretched into the mockery of form. Towers made of bone rose and twisted around one
another like broken fingers. Tendrils, dripping with ichor, swaying in a wind that didn’t exist.
From the folds of flesh emerged shapes that did not walk, did not crawl they simply became, as
if memory alone could manifest matter.
Above it all, the sky pulsed. Mindless. Massive. Watching without eyes, without will, without
mercy. It didn’t think. It didn’t need to.
And yet it knew I was there.
The haze pulsed in rhythm with it.
The buzzing deepened. It wasn’t behind my eyes anymore. It was in the marrow. In the spaces
between thoughts. In the places language couldn’t reach. It told me things. Not in words. In
pulses. In echoes. In presence.
There were beings in the haze. Silent, massive, mindless. Just purpose. Just function. They
bowed to nothing. They didn't need to. They were the shape of worship.
And through it all, I felt it.
Power.
Raw. Alien. Ancient.
Not offered. Not given.
Just... there. Saturating the haze. Pouring into my skin. Bleeding into the space between cells.
I didn’t understand it.
But I didn’t fear it either.
Then the drop hit the ground.
A single, wet smack.
And the haze was gone.
The flesh dissolved.
The sky returned.
The city blinked back into place. . Rain hammered my face. Neon flickered overhead, blue and
red and hollow. My breath came in shallow bursts. Blood trickled from my nose.
I didn’t wipe it away.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t break stride.
I kept walking.
Orca wasn’t far.
A place that didn’t exist on maps. No sign above the door. No list of hours. Just black glass, and
carved into it, a jagged white glyph.
You didn’t find Orca by looking.
And tonight, I was already halfway there.
The street narrowed as I approached. Buildings pressed in around me, leaning close like they
wanted to listen. The rain got thicker. The buzzing started again faint now, like something
remembering how to breathe behind my spine.
The climb to Orca started in the shadows between buildings that had long since merged into
each other.
Old skyscrapers fused at the bones. The blast scarred remains of once competing
megastructures now wrapped in scaffolding and patchwork bridges, entire districts stacked
sideways and vertical, built into their own decay. Nothing really stood alone anymore. Gravity
was just a suggestion here. The city moved in every direction at once.
Down on the street, it looked like junk welded to junk. From up here, it was a hive. Alive.
Buzzing.
If you knew where to look, there were elevators. Ancient cargo haulers, gutted and
reprogrammed. Accessed through back alleys, behind false walls, or through vending machines
that hadn’t sold anything in decades. They weren’t on the grid. Nothing was, really. You keyed in
a dead code and waited for the cables to shudder and pull you skyward, past the layers of old
tech and dead history.
No signs. No labels. Just numbers scratched into the metal by hands long gone.
You had to know the pattern.
Most didn’t.
The lift stopped somewhere around the mid-hundreds. Floor numbers stopped making sense a
long time ago. At a certain point, you weren’t even inside a building anymore. You were inside
the spaces between buildings. Layers of platform and pipe, and bolt-welded living quarters that
ran on stolen current and decades of distrust.
There were people up here. Everywhere.
The scaffolding high above the ruins had become a city in its own right, a sprawling bazaar
strung between the bones of collapsed skyscrapers. Steel walkways creaked under foot traffic,
and tarp covered bridges swayed with movement as vendors barked through clouds of steam,
light, and music. Neon signs buzzed overhead like electric halos. Old synth beats dripped from
rooftop speakers, bleeding through the hum of generators and laughter and haggling voices.
AndThe climb to Orca started in the shadows between buildings that had long since merged
into each other.
Old skyscrapers fused at the bones. The blast scarred remains of once competing
megastructures now wrapped in scaffolding and patchwork bridges, entire districts stacked
sideways and vertical, built into their own decay. Nothing really stood alone anymore. Gravity
was just a suggestion here. The city moved in every direction at once.
Down on the street, it looked like junk welded to junk. From up here, it was a hive. Alive.
Buzzing.
If you knew where to look, there were elevators. Ancient cargo haulers, gutted and
reprogrammed. Accessed through back alleys, behind false walls, or through vending machines
that hadn’t sold anything in decades. They weren’t on the grid. Nothing was, really. You keyed in
a dead code and waited for the cables to shudder and pull you skyward, past the layers of old
tech and dead history.
No signs. No labels. Just numbers scratched into the metal by hands long gone.
You had to know the pattern.
Most didn’t.
The lift stopped somewhere around the mid-hundreds. Floor numbers stopped making sense a
long time ago. At a certain point, you weren’t even inside a building anymore. You were inside
the spaces between buildings. Layers of platform and pipe, and bolt-welded living quarters that
ran on stolen current and decades of distrust.
There were people up here. Everywhere.
The scaffolding high above the ruins had become a city in its own right, a sprawling bazaar
strung between the bones of collapsed skyscrapers. Steel walkways creaked under foot traffic,
and tarp covered bridges swayed with movement as vendors barked through clouds of steam,
light, and music. Neon signs buzzed overhead like electric halos. Old synth beats dripped from
rooftop speakers, bleeding through the hum of generators and laughter and haggling voices.
And the people they were impossible to describe as one thing.
Tall. Short. Bone thin. Tank limbed. Scaled, furred, feathered, chromed. Spliced, rebuilt, remade,
reimagined. Some moved with feline grace, padded feet and twitching ears tuned to the
undercurrent of conversation. Others walked on reverse jointed legs that clicked with every step,
their skin rippling with bioluminescent patterns that pulsed like deep-sea signals. Clawed fingers
tapped at touchscreens or raked through glowing hair. Reptilian eyes scanned biometric locks.
Canine muzzles laughed and smoked and bared gold teeth.
Plastic surgery was cheap. DNA editing even cheaper. Most splicing shops didn’t ask questions.
If you had the credits, you could sculpt yourself into anything neon skinned angels with
engineered wings, lithe blackmarket centaurs reinforced for speed, horned humanoids wrapped
in fur or glimmering plates of natural armor. Animal DNA was easy to graft. Easy to pass on.
Modifications bled into the next generation unless you paid extra to scrub it back to baseline.
Most didn’t.
Most didn’t care.
What your kid inherited was just another expression of fashion, of status, of impulse. The
market had replaced nature. Evolution had become a matter of taste.
Traits phased in and out like seasonal trends. Fur during winter, to show off warmth or wealth.
Bioluminescent veins synced to music festivals. Claws when street crime surged. Fangs, tails,
gills, horns. Whole families glowed in matching palettes, their eyes lit with synchronized
chromatics. You could tell who belonged to who just by how they shimmered under the neon.
Kids ran wild through the scaffolded walkways, neon-spotted, fang-toothed, laughing with knives
strapped to their thighs. They chased repurposed drones like toys, sold stolen drives, climbed
rebar and wiring like it was a jungle gym. Everyone was armed, even if only in attitude. You had
to be.
And cybernetics they were there, too. Less a statement, more an accessory. An afterthought.
Some wore gleaming chrome arms inlaid with glowing tattoos and hardened dermal glass.
Others bore rusted sockets and screeching pistons bolted through scarred muscle. Steel grafted
to bone with nails and clamps. Oculars buzzed behind tinted visors, limbs whirred with
cybernetic movement. Some looked like walking art, others like broken machines that hadn’t
died yet. But it all fit. Flesh and chrome. Splice and circuit.
People danced to rhythms only they could hear, their augmented eyes flashing with internal
light. Glow in the dark hair whipped around shoulders that had been engineered for elegance, or
bulk, or sheer animal speed. Tattoos crawled across skin that wasn’t always skin.
Others slumped in folding chairs, deep in VR stasis. jack links jacked directly into their skulls
blinked soft and steady. Their minds were elsewhere in fantasy, in sims, in places cleaner than
this but their vitals were solid. Still breathing. Still living. Still here.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
This wasn’t just survival.
This was life.
Crooked. Glowing. blood stained. Loud. Messy. Beautiful.
People laughed. Fought. Loved. Bartered modded organs beneath tarp-roofs and shared meals
beside open burners. Whole communities stitched together out of wire, old concrete, and
something that still felt like hope.
There was no baseline anymore.
Only choice.
And up here, no one asked what you were born as.
Only what you’d become.
The approach to Orca was clean. Unexpectedly so.
A narrow corridor cut into the wall of a former banking hub. Steel polished smooth by weather
and time. Lights ran low along the floor — strips of cold white glow embedded in concrete,
humming with leftover charge. No decoration. No advertisement.
Then the door.
Unmarked. Heavy.
Sunken into the wall like it had been waiting there before the building was ever built. Just above
it, a single white glyph burned into scorched alloy. Sharp. Angular. Nothing written, just shape.
Just suggestion.
This was Orca.
Not a name people said out loud. Not a place anyone found for the first time.
You didn’t get invited.
You got sent.
The door to Orca hissed open without resistance. It sounded like an exhale low, wet, intimate.
As if the building itself knew me. As if it had been waiting.
Inside, the air was heat and smoke and sweat, thick enough to drink. Light bled from every
surface, pulsing in colors tuned to stimulate the subconscious red, violet, emerald bathing skin
in suggestion. The music wasn’t music, not really. It was heartbeat and bass, layered synth and
subharmonics, tuned to drive rhythm into bone.
Everything moved.
Bodies. Light. Breath.
The smell hit next synthetic pheromones layered over liquor and charred hardware, ozone and
polish, sweat and want. Floral and feral. Desperate and decadent. It flooded the lungs like a
drug.
And the bodies gods, the bodies.
Skin shimmered under blacklight. Flesh, real and sculpted and bioengineered, was laid bare or
framed like art. A hundred different shapes of desire moved between the booths and stages,
brushing past one another, brushing past me. Some had tails that curled behind tight,
translucent leather. Others had fur that caught the light in delicate halos. Bioluminescent tattoos
bloomed across thighs, lower backs, necks — slow, sensual, glowing with every pulse of their
bloodstreams.
Orca wasn’t a bar. It was a hive. A temple to pleasure and profit. A cathedral of altered flesh and
chemical dreams.
And in the middle of it all them.
A baseline woman, her skin glistening with a sheen of filtered perspiration, straddled a man
whose body gleamed with chrome. His subdermal plating caught the lights like stars under skin,
and his tail — serpentine, bladed, moving with mechanical grace wrapped loosely around her
thigh as she rode him to the rhythm of the music. Her moans came in gasps, wet and
breathless, as he thrust into her, their bodies on full display. No shame. No modesty.
And then the third Fluid in motion, glowing tattoos blooming across their body as they slipped
between the man’s legs. Their mouth took him with practiced ease, licking and sucking, a living
current of stimulation between their thighs.
They were beautiful in motion. Grotesque in honesty. Art without pretense.
No one looked away.
Some watched.
Some recorded.
Most didn’t even pause their conversations.
I stood there. Watching.
And I felt it the slow burn behind my ribs, deep and steady. Not lust. Not exactly. More like
hunger. More like gravity. My chest ached, then shifted, softening. My hips tugged outward just
enough to catch the eye. The swell of my breasts pushed lightly against my cloak subtle A
curve, not a statement. Nothing above large or eyecatching. Common for my tribe.
We are Rhea. And we weren’t built to want quickly. That’s not how it works for us. Not by design.
Even here in this city of broken people reassembled by choice and trauma we are outsiders.
Not because we’re alien. But because we were absent. We didn’t starve through the dark
centuries. We didn’t crawl through ash and irradiated waste. We came down later. From orbit
From Rhea, the moon named after our exile.
The original Rhea believed in the removal of gender itself. They saw it as a sickness. A
limitation. They stripped it away until only potential remained and passed that potential on to us I
think they were crazy.
Because of them I exist somewhere in between. My body defaulted to neutrality. Youth.
Ambiguity. Soft jaw, narrow shoulders, flat chest, smooth hips.soft Skin. A voice that people
mistake for shy femininity. A body that moves without decision until something moves it for a
time.
And tonight, something moved me.
I shifted just enough to feel. Just enough to imagine. The curve of my waist bent inward. My
thighs softened. My nipples tingled under the fabric of my skin-tight suit, responsive without
command. And still, it wasn’t lust the way they felt it. Not heat and friction and climax.
It was curiosity.
Someone brushed past me a dancer, bare but for a synth-halo and chrome heels, her chest
rising with fast breath, her arms marked in glowing circuitry. She smiled, but didn’t stop. Her
pupils flicked once over me. Probably reading heat levels, vitals, maybe even compatibility. She
moved on.
She didn’t see me. Not really.
To them, I pass for baseline. Not modified enough
I stayed standing at the edge of the crowd. Breasts tingling, thighs warm, heartbeat skipping in
time with the music. My body was still changing in small, quiet ways enough to notice, not
enough to draw attention.
And in that moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be seen.
The bar stretched out before me like a wound, pulsing with color and heat and want.
Somewhere in this place, I’d find what I came for.
But not yet.
I let the bass guide my steps.
Let my softening body press forward through the sweat and light.
And all around me, people were shedding their pasts and fucking their way into new shapes.
Maybe I would, too.
I was still warm from the rhythm, still lingering in the aftertaste of heat and watching.
And then I saw them.
Half shadowed in a corner booth, nestled in flickering holo ads and narcotic vapor. Surrounded
by meat and chrome muscle, mercs, whores, chromeheads orbiting him like trash caught in
gravity. A woman straddled him, grinding slow. A man pressed his lips to his neck. He smiled
with golden teeth, smug, untouchable.
He didn’t see me.
But I saw him.
And the warmth died.
The haze came like breath drawn backward. Red. Thick. Wet. Not smoke not atmosphere but
pressure. Power. It uncoiled from beneath my skin like something too long caged. The music
twisted in my ears. The lights dimmed. My vision sharpened into something colder.
i pulled my hood up.
The cloak settled around me.
Six vibro daggers twitched at my sides, housed in curved scabbards implanted in my ribs. Each
tethered to a strand of mono filament nanowire, so fine you couldn’t see it until your limbs were
on the floor. They shimmered now, hungry, alive.
I didn’t draw them.
I thought them forward.
And the massacre began.
The first dagger snapped across the room, a blur of movement too fast to see. It buried itself in
a guard’s open mouth and burst out the back of his skull, dragging viscera and chunks of
jawbone behind it as it reeled back into orbit. Blood sprayed like a broken hydrant. The woman
on his lap barely had time to scream before another wire circled her neck and popped her head
clean off.
I leapt.
Spun mid air. Touched off a railing. Landed on a booth’s backrest like it was solid steel. A gun
barked below me I dropped, caught the shooter mid chest with a blade, used him as a human
shield. His body jerked as slugs tore through his back. I threw him into his comrades, landing in
a tangle of arms and gore.
They didn’t get back up.
I vaulted off a table, twisting mid air. Three wires shot out one sliced through a torso
horizontally, spine and gut unraveling mid scream. The second looped a dancer’s leg and ripped
it off, sending her tumbling backward, shrieking, her arterial spray painting the booth she
collapsed into.
The third wire snaked around a man's waist then jerked. His top half flopped forward, still trying
to aim his pistol, his guts uncoiling in midair like bright red ropes.
Someone behind me fired. I phased.
The bullets passed through my back, harmless. A woman cried out behind me, caught in the
crossfire. I reached into her assailant’s chest my hand phasing through ribs then solidified,
fingers crushing his heart like a rotten fruit. He dropped twitching. I threw his body over mine as
a shield and ran straight into a wall phasing through it like smoke.
I came out the other side upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Launched myself feet-first into
another merc’s skull it popped like a melon. I rebounded off the floor with catlike grace, twisted
into a slide under gunfire, rising with a flick of my wrist that curved a wire behind me it detached
a shooter’s hands at the wrists. He stared down at the stumps. Screamed. Screamed until I cut
his throat open in one clean flick.
The haze thickened now.
It curled around my ankles, poured from my mouth, whispered behind my eyes. The club was
drenched in it. Blood steamed on the floor. The air reeked of copper, ozone, and something
worse something burning from the inside out.
More came at me.
Too many.
I phased through the floor down into the sublayer then came exploding up through a table, glass
and fire flying, landing in the center of their cluster. I spun.
Six blades. Six wires.
All moving.
One spiraled around a neck. One punched through a skull. Two laced around legs and pulled,
tearing them apart at the hip. Another plunged into a back and corkscrewed up through the
chest, dragging with it half a lung and a bubbling scream.
I used one merc as a shield, wrapped in wire, dragging him with me as I ran across a wall.
Bullets tore through his back, missed me. I flipped off his corpse and landed crouched beside
the man I’d come for.
His guards were gone.
The floor was littered with limbs and halves and twitching remnants.
He stood. Pale. Covered in blood. Still trying to act like he could talk his way out of this.
“Wait Ar—”
I didn’t.
I jumped, flipped over him, and in mid air, wires snapped out.
One to his wrist.
One to his ankle.
One around his throat.
The last one hovered.
I landed behind him.
He struggled.
I pulled.
His body exploded apart. Flesh peeled from cybernetic frame. Vertebrae tore free like a
necklace breaking. His guts spilled in a steaming flood. His head hung from the wire by the neck
for a second longer, eyes wide, mouth twitching.
Then it dropped.
Silence his eyes still blinking unable to process the fact he was already dead.
I stood in it. My cloak hanging in strips, soaked with blood,Blood dripping from the ceiling like a
rain.
The blades returned on their wires, curling like snakes to holsters. My bare feet stepped through
blood without sound.
The few left alive didn’t breathe.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t dare.
And I walked out the way I came.
