The room hummed with the quiet, constant buzz of shifting holograms and ambient machine chatter. Amaris Una stood before a floor-to-ceiling monitor, her platinum blonde bob luminous under the sterile neon strips embedded in the ceiling. Her white top glowed faintly under the lights, a minimalist armor in a landscape of excess and chaos. Her tattoos—a series of interconnected geometric designs—looked like circuitry bleeding across her skin, some lines glowing faintly cyan as though wired into her very being.
The backdrop was cold, modern, and impeccably clean. Smooth metallic walls, faint hints of textured concrete panels, and a blank, muted color palette gave the room a clinical aesthetic. Outside the translucent window screens, New Tevris hummed: spires of iron and glass rose into an eternal dusk, their lights flickering like distant stars in the artificial smog-heavy sky.
“Unit A-17-Beta online,” chimed a voice behind Amaris, and she turned, sharp and fluid, towards the source like a dancer between beats. A synthesized humanoid in a silvery chassis rolled into view. Its limbs moved with precision, and its face—a smooth, featureless dome—glowed with a pulsating pattern of lights. The Chrysalis Unit had woken, and with it, the operation she’d been dreading but knew she couldn’t evade.
The Mission
“Amaris Una,” the machine intoned, voice soft but layered with an echo that suggested many voices converging into one. “You have been authorized for Directive Theta-IV. Retrieval and Termination.”
Amaris’s jaw clenched involuntarily. “Details,” she said, her voice steady but laced with simmering defiance.
The Chrysalis Unit paused, its lights shifting into concentric circles. “Subject: Dax Ryn. Location: Sector Nine, Lower Concourse, City of New Tevris. Classification: Rogue Techsmith. Priority: Apex Level.”
She turned away from the machine, her hands curling into fists at her sides. Dax. The name tasted bitter in her mouth, a reminder of old alliances soured beyond repair. Once, long ago, he’d been her partner. Not just in the chaotic world of cybernetic integrations but in the fragile, fleeting world of the human heart.
Now, for reasons the Overseers refused to divulge, he was her prey.
The Chase
Hours later, Amaris stood amidst the neon overload of Sector Nine. The Lower Concourse was a labyrinthine sprawl of bazaars and tech dens, each stall or shop bursting with bioluminescent advertisements that clashed chaotically against the sky’s digital banners. The air smelled like burnt silicone and ozone, mingling with the distant tang of recycled ammonia. Her boots clicked against the grated catwalk as she moved swiftly, scanning crowds with predatory intent.
A figure darted into her vision: tall, cloaked, with the faint glimmer of smooth steel peeking from beneath the fabric. Even if she hadn’t recognized his gait, the cybernetic enhancement on his left arm—a prototype they’d once developed together—would’ve given him away.
“Dax,” she called, her voice cutting through the din like a razor. Noise swallowed everything else, but he turned, just enough for her to see the sharp green glow of his eyes. He didn’t stop. He ran, weaving through the crowd with a speed only partially human.
She followed, her breath steady as her enhanced legs carried her in pursuit. She vaulted over a swinging sign, ducked beneath a malfunctioning drone spiraling out of control, and surged forward. At the edge of an industrial dump-site, she cornered him, both now standing amidst piles of discarded machine parts and the occasional flicker of forgotten memories encoded in dying chips.
“You’re not getting away,” she said, pointing her pulse weapon directly at his chest.
The Confrontation
For a moment, neither moved. The only sound between them was the whirr of sparking circuits and a distant siren echoing through the tunnels of the Lower Concourse.
“So, it’s come to this,” Dax said finally, his voice carrying a weighted sorrow Amaris couldn’t ignore. Although the face before her was familiar, it was aged somehow, not through wear but through a cynical detachment she’d never known from him before.
“You broke protocol,” Amaris replied coldly, though the tremor in her hand betrayed her unspoken turmoil. “You went rogue. You breached the Council’s vaults. They think you’re a threat to the balance.”
“A threat to the lie,” Dax countered. “And you don’t even know it, do you? The Chrysalis Program wasn’t meant to stabilize humanity. It was always about control. Your tattoos—your enhancements—they aren’t tools for you to use. They’re tools for them to use you.”
Her weapon shook, her mind a battlefront of warring memories, loyalty, and the undeniable pull of the truth he claimed. The cyan glow of her tattoo lines intensified, as if the circuitry sensed her hesitation, threatening to seize the choice from her entirely.
The Choice
Words failed her, but emotion didn’t. Amaris lowered her weapon slightly but kept it at the ready. “Why would I believe you? You left without explaining. You shattered everything we built.”
“Because I wasn’t ready to watch them take you too,” Dax said. His eyes bored into hers. “You think you’re free, Amaris, but you’ve never been. Not since you signed up. That mission brief in your head right now? Who put it there? Did you choose this? Did they let you?”
The silence stretched between them like a thin wire, taut and ready to snap.
Amaris looked down at her forearm, where the glowing lines of her tattoos pulsed with a rhythm that didn’t belong to her. A realization, slow but undeniable, began to seep into her expression. In that moment, something broke. She flicked her wrist, deactivating the weapon entirely.
If Dax was lying, she could still end him. But if he wasn’t…
“Run,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.
He hesitated. “What about you?”
She smiled faintly, though it was bitter, a thing birthed in pain. “I have a new Directive.”
Before he could say another word, she turned and disappeared into the shifting haze of Sector Nine.
The source…check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: The Future Is Now: How to Achieve the Chic, Cyberpunk-Minimalist Look
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