The city of shadows and county

They say the city breathes, a singular organism wrapped in stainless steel and neon. At night, when synthetic splendor turns rain into bright obsidian, that pulse is thrown into the streets like a heartbeat in anxiety. I learned to read the signs; You need when you live under the shade of arch markets. They are just a few blocks down from where I make my home within the rotting superstructure that once housed the flowering heart of cyberdyne production. I live in an alcove set between the chopped glass and the bureaucratic waste. Dig them; My sprint fingers on the keyboard as my other senses remain fiercely attached to the cadence of my paranoia drums.

Nothing feels safer than the bold brilliance of the low-degree holo-discs, shedding their scary light on the urine-stained concrete walls. Everything feels bad. It always screams like a damaged animal when you lie there looking at the excellent horizon, painted with the smoke of corporate greed. I couldn’t tell you when it started. Perhaps it was the day I stuck in Neon Cassock’s eve of a psychic desert inhabited by self-proclaimed occultists and digital headscarves. Shaman, a bleached creature with translucent skin, gilded tattoos crawling along the sides of her neck like ants of fire, marked me as “researcher”. It is a determination that screams danger, unless the threads carefully intertwined of fate – or complete despair – you have trusted your soul in the hands of someone whispering dead languages ​​mixed with code.

I was immersed in the head of the head. I haven’t had much choice – the determination directs the needle down to this jungle of urban decay. I asked for something more of my daily existence than synthetic flat tones, drone and a faded apartment washed in purple shades. I began to explore digital theurgy; Overloading nerve trails while cheering in a tongue could hardly understand it. The more I got into it, the weaker my control over reality became as perpetrators spread through the battery fabric. The bits and bytes turned into graceful ghosts who danced at the ends of my acquaintance, whispering promises of power and secrets left.

Two days ago, I felt it: the weight of my eyes to me, begging to be accepted, following as a hawk on the prey. I brought it out, attributing the pain of paranoia to the tired circles of my mind – artificial hallucinations driven by many data stream and very little sleep. But I went into the artisan alley, the strange implies art within the chaos. I tightened my narrowest bag, becoming unclear through the shock, steel and style fighting for the dominance. The shadows moved and I was distorted back, my eyes shaking for a familiar face. The shooting of a coat, the model of light that should not catch me in the crowd; She spiralized me, wrapped me in a hug that was intended to fall.

While hunting for caffeine in the gloomy comfort of Servos Café, I found myself sinking in a stand. I tried to mix, but I could feel them – an unsaturated snoring of something bad that tapping beyond my periphery. Is this why I noticed Rosetta, a magic weaver and digital witch, sitting with schemes and blood that wrap her hands like a snake? Her aura pulsated with energy, and I was desperately hoping that if I could be fixed on her, the predator falling in the corners of my mind would be trivial. But she just gave me a creepy knot, preoccupied with any chaotic formula that she scratched across the surface of a holography tablet.

Past hours; Time became irrelevant, as is always the case in places where it is intertwined and arcan. Suddenly, Rosetta prompted, sending a non -charming look on her shoulder. I followed her gaze, and the world turned into dust. A long figure, gray-gray skin glued to a stylish stand, very clean clothes in the middle of makeup. There, in the brightness of the polished alloy, I saw something open – reddish eyes, reflecting aspects of my uncertainties.

“Followed”, whispers, barely obedient on the static noise of speakers who announced local artists who performed amniotic dreams in digital stages. The panic was thrown in the middle of my temples as a jackhammer, encouraging me to leave. Rosetta firmly, her browsing by knitting together in understanding. He was one of them – the unions, the dealers of the code -wrapped in a profit. They could smell a researcher faster than a junkie could find his arrangement.

The moment withdrew, each of the second passing stretching an hour. We slipped our backs, joining our essences at night, echoing by crawling as we melted in the crowds of neon fog. But I never lost that feeling, as if he tracked back like a shadow born of a nightmare. Trinity’s ritual, Rosetta suggested with its usual safe bravery. Calling something bigger, communicating with the code and pulse of the city; Invisible weaving network through our intricate life.

“Are you crazy?” U tall. “There is no time for rites embedded in the blood!” But the fear that flowed in the back of my neck stifled my emotions; I could not shake awareness of this follower, always surprising the senses, always waiting for an opening that would pull me into his syllable.

She was right for one thing; I had buried myself deep within the spheres that the healthiest minds would not dare to go through – any incantation reduced in pure calculation, but now my mind tried with the calculations of escape, getting into the ether of the city’s breathing.

That night, in the midst of the burning digital fraud of the synthboys that transmit neon desires, we brought out the topics of magic weaving from the club’s beats and Crimson shines in invisible veil. The slips around us were taken on stage, color morphing, mixing in kaleidoscopic visions torn by nightmares; There were voices, noisy and calling me to join them. I collided, I was caught between ecstasy and fear, feeling follow -up in myself.

However, that figure browsed through the chaos without effort, unworthy, eyes firmly hanging on the fragile stitches of my determination. I could feel it deep inside, as if he was torn through the sinuses of everything I was done.

“Fight him!” Rosetta shouted while the twisted room in the shapes I had only witnessed in the darkest corners of my mind.

The thunderous echoes woke up overnight, the energy coils that join the shadows to arouse something new. But the fear defeated in my throat as the void was poured; The weight of the tracking turned into the weight of the combat forces that threatened to discover me.

I pushed the barrier, reaching deep inside with a primary instinct. Shadows grew against their manufacturer; The city around us responded, returning to the essence of silicon and fused magic together. I could either be hunting or calling the hunter for me.

At that moment of electrified electrified, I saw Rosetta craft a coil from the light and code tenders, joining both spheres. She was beautiful, terrible in her elegance as she poured into me. The shocked laughter collided with our connection, interconnected like the roots that spread through the concrete.

From the full will, I rotated my counter-hex, focusing the raw energy through the broken remains of my mind, through the gap he had created. I felt trembling between the spaces, slipping from the predator’s syllable just as he pulled forward.

It was like shredding in another thread, the ripping of Sein’s veil that wrapped the city in the rainbow. I could see it now in scintillating clarity – hunger, anger adjacent to his forehead, contour, a malformed reflection of my struck self.

In a large increase, the hardened purpose. My energy was inflated, a devastating force pushed him into his heart, and I brought out the intertwined darkness into this miserable symphony. As the void exploded against its form, I left everything.

And then he shone, faded into the atoms of the dying light, swallowed by night … but the tranquility that came was empty, leaving me with the grace – a sadness I could hardly understand.

As I retired back into reality, City sounds again, and Rosetta crashed, an ember as trembling in need to dance. The echo of ancient wisdom turned to offer me comfort – but I remained with a knowledgeable fear. Was I really free, or just blocked in a cycle where each thread I cut a new show, a new fragment of something hidden between the corners of the street that lights up in color?

True wisdom whispered that in this country of lost souls and faded ambitions, we would never escape our demons; On the contrary, we would counterfeit them again with any distorted ritual we executed.

Author: Opney. Illustrator: Stab. Publisher: Cyber.