PRISM
Shadows of Neo-Shinjuku
The city didn't breathe; it hummed. It was a mechanical vibration that resonated in the fillings of Rin’s teeth and the marrow of her bones. Standing on the corner of 4th and Main, she watched the rain fall in neon streaks—yellow, magenta, and a sickly electric green. The water on the pavement looked like spilled oil, reflecting a sky that hadn't been truly dark in fifty years.
Rin adjusted her hood. Her hair, a messy bob of deep blues and violets, started to shimmer with an unnatural light. It was the bioluminescent bleed. The data drive she wore as a pendant—a jagged shard of obsidian glass—was leaking thermal energy. She was "overheating." In the world of high-stakes data couriers, overheating meant you were either about to become a genius or a vegetable.
"The Archive doesn't want witnesses, Rin. It wants results. Move now, or you're just another ghost in the machine."
The voice in her ear belonged to Kai. He was three districts away, buried in a "coffin-tel" surrounded by cooling fans and illegal servers. He was her eyes. And right now, his eyes were seeing red markers on his map closing in on her position.
The Grey Men
She spotted the first one near the noodle stall. He was dressed in a slate-grey coat that seemed to absorb the neon light rather than reflect it. That was the mark of Vanguard Security—stealth-weave fabric. Expensive. Professional. Lethal.
Rin turned sharply, ducking into a narrow alleyway choked with trash-droids and steam vents. Her boots splashed through a puddle, sending ripples of violet light across the walls. She wasn't just running anymore; she was vibrating. The Prism Protocol inside the shard was syncing with her neural lace. The world began to slow down. She could see the individual droplets of rain hanging in the air like diamonds.
“Kai, I’m seeing the lattice,” she whispered into her collar. “The drive is opening. It’s... it’s beautiful.”
“Don’t look at the data, Rin! That’s how they get you!” Kai’s voice was panicked. “If you let the Protocol rewrite your visual cortex, you’ll never see the real world again. Push through!”
Zero-Sum Game
She reached the end of the alley. A dead end. A massive steel shutter blocked her path, adorned with graffiti that seemed to writhe in her distorted vision. She turned around. The three Grey Men were there, standing in perfect formation. Their eyes glowed with a harsh, clinical white light—augmented optics scanning her for the drive.
“Rin Sato,” the lead man said. His voice was synthesized, devoid of any human tremor. “Return the property of the Ministry. Your bio-signs indicate 98% saturation. If you do not surrender the shard, your brain will liquefy in three minutes.”
Rin felt a drop of blood trickle from her nose. It was hot. The shimmering in her hair reached a blinding crescendo, turning the alleyway into a kaleidoscope of impossible colors. She reached up and touched the obsidian shard. It wasn't cold anymore. It was burning.
“You want the protocol?” Rin asked, her voice echoing with a strange, multi-layered resonance. She pulled the hood back, her eyes now glowing with the same shimmering prismatic hue as her hair. “Then let’s see if you can handle the bandwidth.”
She didn't run. She didn't fight. She simply opened her mind, and the city went dark.