Neon Rebellion

“You sure about this?” The voice broke through the ambient hum of rain and neon. It came through her ear implant, tinged with static. Mal, her partner, was plugged in from a safe house six clicks away.

“No,” she replied with a dry smile, adjusting the snug white wig that had begun sticking to her damp brow. “But certainty is boring.”

“Cute. Just don’t die. I’d hate to split your cut of the creds.”

Astra gave a breathless laugh, though her emerald eyes remained locked on the guards patrolling the tower entrance below. Heavy boots stomped methodically on the slick pavement, reflecting her shimmering silhouette in their mirrored helmets. Anyone who wasn’t corp-affiliated didn’t last a minute within their territory. She tapped the pulse modulator strapped to her chest and took a deep breath. The system pinged success: the localized jammers were prepped. With this tech, guards’ comms and sensors would blank out—but only for seven precious seconds. Enough time, if she didn’t hesitate.

Rising silently from her crouch, Astra began her descent down the fire escape, the black material of her bodysuit gleaming faintly under the half-lit neon signage of a noodle bar. The rain muffled her movements as she landed on the ground, a shadow amongst fluorescent chaos. Across from her, the tower loomed, an ivory fortress. For Astra, this was more than a heist; it was justice.

She had been one of the countless who had their minds stripped years ago by KuroGen Systems. The company injected neural shackles into low-income workers under the guise of “enhanced productivity upgrades.” They took not just labor but autonomy. Astra escaped—barely. Tonight, she was slipping back in not to steal but to return memory cores to those enslaved before the corporation purged them entirely.

“What’s it look like in there?” Mal asked from her comm link.

“Like a temple to greed,” she muttered, watching the symphony of lights flickering from the building’s layers. “Be ready.”

“Always am.”

Astra flicked her wrist, activating the integrated projectors mounted in her bodysuit. A distortion field shimmered momentarily before enveloping her, packaging her visual signature into something faintly translucent, like a dying ghost wreathed in static. Keeping her breathing shallow, she weaved through the laser tripwires now rendered visible in her augmented display. Three guards marched just ahead. Every movement had weight, precision. One breath too long, one slight misstep, and it would be all over.

The first seven seconds came quickly. The pulse modulator sent a silent shock through the air as Astra darted past the disrupted guards and through the access hatch, concealed beneath the sprawling tower’s foyer fountain. The hiss and grind of the circular entry latch lifted her into the building’s innards—an underworld labyrinth of power conduits and network cables.

Inside, KuroGen’s stark-white corridors stretched endlessly, each identical to the last. Her white wig—a trick Mal had suggested—blended her with the transparent holograms of maintenance workers occasionally called up by the system for routine inspections. Most people overlooked reflections in white spaces, after all.

But Astra knew this was a one-way gamble. Her quiet rebellion against the weight of an empire rested on pure precision. Neither hero nor survivor, she was simply someone who had had enough. Such rebellion left little room for error.

The final retrieval room was colder than she anticipated, humming faintly with the neural cores encased in cylindrical cryo-vaults. Stretching fingertip sensors from her bodysuit, she tapped into the primary interface. As each cylinder activated, the faces of captive workers danced and flickered across the emitters like fragile, trapped wraiths. Each was a complete neural backup, an entire life frozen against its will. A thousand lives. A thousand nameless victims.

Mal’s voice broke through her fugue-like thinking. “Clock’s ticking, Astra. Get them or don’t, but the basement guards are waking up.”

“Tell them quiet time isn’t over yet.”

“Not sure they’d listen. Pretty sure I won’t bear your eulogy either, so, maybe hurry?”

With clenched teeth, she retrieved the memory cylinders, packing them into her bodysuit’s recessed cargo slots. Exhaustion washed over her—a premonition. But turning back had never been her style.

She heard the first blare of alarms when she detonated her distraction grid three floors down. By the time she reached the outer courtyard under the fiery rain, guards were swarming like insects, pistols drawn, streaking red lines through the misty chaos. One shot struck her side, searing through the bodysuit’s reinforced synth-carbon plates. She barely flinched, adrenaline dragging her onward toward escape.

“Mal, if you’re listening, maybe now would be optimal for backup!” Her voice rose as a guard’s pulse rifle blasted past her head.

“Look up,” came his smug reply.

A streamlined anti-grav bike emerged from the rain, its glowing chassis cutting a golden arc through the darkness. Mal handled the controls casually, a blunt cigar dangling from his teeth. Astra barely managed to leap onto the back just as another volley of red-lit shots streaked past.

As they sped away, the city opened wide like a chasm beneath them, its lights stretching infinitely toward the horizon. Astra’s tattooed arm gripped Mal’s shoulder, her breathing ragged but resolved. Tonight, she wasn’t a hero. Nor a thief. She was something in between—a pale ghost who dared to carve the first crack in the empire’s armor.