“You’ve put us in a rather tight spot, Cora.”
The voice crackled through her in-ear comm. It belonged to Reza, her handler, currently sipping a drink from some nameless bar halfway across the megalopolis.
“Tight spots are your thing, Reza,” she whispered, her voice as calm as a lake’s frozen surface. “I told you this intel was dirty. Three suits—armed to their augmented teeth—are proving that.”
Reza snorted. “Ever think they just want an autograph from the infamous Luminous Shadow?”
“Everybody wants something, but nobody gets it for free.” Cora cut the comm as she pulled a slim blade from her belt—shimmering, like liquid mercury—and adjusted her footing. The enforcers had spotted her, their helmet lights bathing her in sterile white. A voice over their external speakers barked, “SURRENDER OR BE NEUTRALIZED.” She smiled faintly, a fire flickering behind her eyes.
The Dance of Blades
The first enforcer lunged forward, slower than she expected. Time seemed to slow as Cora sidestepped into his path, blade slicing neatly through the exposed actuator of his exosuit. Sparks erupted as his hydraulics failed and he collapsed with a groan of metal grinding against the pavement.
The next two came as a pair, flanking her in tight formation. She somersaulted backwards, landing with feline precision. Her holo-glasses projected their trajectories, revealing their combat algorithms. With a flick of her wrist, a concealed plasma whip snapped out of her forearm implant, searing a brilliant arc of light into the night. The whip lashed through their armatures, leaving jagged trails of molten damage in its wake.
A collective groan echoed through the street as the enforcers’ energy cores overloaded. They crumpled like broken puppets to the ground. Neo-Seoul was loud again, as if the brief battle had been nothing more than a ghostly pause in its eternal noise.
Twilight Betrayals
Cora retrieved the small orb—a smooth sphere glowing faintly blue—from the depths of her coat pocket and inspected it for damage. There it was: the spiraling lattice of code coiled inside like a dragon holding eternal secrets. She sighed, relief washing over her, before her attention snapped back to the alley’s entrance.
A slow clap echoed from the shadows. Reza stepped into view, his expression one of practised indifference. She’d trusted Reza for years; the man had orchestrated half her heists and been her voice of reason during moments of frantic chaos. But now, he held the unmistakable air of a man standing on the knife-edge of betrayal.
“You don’t look happy to see me,” he said, hands raised mockingly as if in surrender. His cybernetic eye glinted crimson—always a sign he was up to something. “Did I send you the wrong address? Or maybe this was the right address for me and the wrong one for you.”
Cora’s grip on the memory sphere tightened. “Reza, don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
He chuckled dryly. “Cora, you must know that nobody stays untouchable forever. Hand it over. Kyrel’s promised me a new identity, off-world. You should understand—I’m tired of fighting. We’re all pawns in this game, anyway.”
The air between them thickened with silent tension. Cora’s hazel eyes locked onto him, unblinking. “Pawns don’t become kings, Reza. They just get wiped off the board.”
Before he could respond, she dropped the sphere and shattered it with one decisive blow of her heel. The code dissolved into micro-light particles, dissipating into the night air in an irreversible cascade of luminous beauty.
Reza’s bellow of disbelief filled the street as Cora vanished into the neon warren of Neo-Seoul, a shadow becoming one with the artificial stars. Chess, after all, wasn’t about preserving pawns. It was about knowing when to burn the whole game down and start anew.
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