Memory is currency in Nocturne… and tonight, they're robbing the bank.
The Lights Go Out, the Fight Begins
The silence that follows Lucien's shot is brief — the last echo still ringing off the data-slicked walls when chaos erupts.
The underground chamber, once clinical and cold, now pulses with blue and red strobes. Spilled vats of liquefied memory fluid leak across the metallic floor, casting eerie bioluminescent glows over the combatants. It smells like ozone and sterilized death. The perfect backdrop for a slaughter.
Lucien moves like a ghost of the old world — grin manic, pistols smoking. He doesn't aim so much as dance, each movement turning blood and brass into choreography. A round takes out a guard's optic lens, another rips through the speaker implanted in a jaw. The guards scream, short and sharp, before collapsing in heaps of twitching cybernetics and shattered implants.
Behind him, Rosa roars — a sound half-feral, half-glorious. She charges into the fray like a human wrecking ball, her shock knuckles lighting up with every bone-shattering blow. One unfortunate enforcer attempts to block her strike. His mistake. The hit sends him flying across the room, crashing into a rack of mind-slicing equipment. Sparks fly. So do teeth.
Asher doesn't run. He walks. Calm. Measured. His long coat brushes the edge of the glowing fluid as he weaves between enemies. Noir, synced to his neural feed, guides him with soft, emotionless pings.
"Two left, flank. Thermal spike on your six. Strike now."
Without a word, Asher slides behind an armored brute — all steel limbs and corporate arrogance — and slips an EMP dagger into the power port on the spine.
The brute convulses, smoke bursting from seams in his suit.
Asher (low growl):"Corporate trash. Always overbuilt, never smart."
Another one down.
The data floor turns slick with memory-vat fluid and blood. There's no difference anymore.
The chamber's intercom crackles to life, the voice of some corporate command still trying to salvage control.
Voice (strained, artificial):"Kill them! All of them! Triple pay bonus if they go down in the next ten seconds! Neural upgrade packages are active—!"
Lucien (mock gasp):"Ooooh, free brain chips? Hold me back."
He vaults over an overturned operating table, lands in a knee slide, and unloads a full clip into two guards trying to flank Rosa. One bullet clips a cranial implant. The guard spasms, seizing mid-step, then drops face-first into the glowing blue sludge.
Another guard makes the mistake of rushing Rosa from behind. Without turning, she grabs a bottle from the bar cart — some kind of irradiated liquor, glowing like radioactive absinthe — and smashes it across his head.
The guard screams as flames bloom up the side of his helmet.
Rosa (grinning wild):"Flaming shots, baby."
Asher, still cold and quiet, moves like a chess piece — precise, lethal. A twitch of his wrist, and his pistol barks twice, putting down another. Noir's voice remains steady in his ear, unfazed.
Noir:"Detective, their combat efficiency has dropped by 42% due to panic."
Asher (reloading):"Good. Let's make it zero."
The tide has turned.
And yet, something in the way the guards fall — like puppets cut from string, like pawns discarded — nags at the back of Asher's mind.
This was too easy.
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Finding Mira — The Bait Girl
They don't speak as they breach the final reinforced door. Just a look between the three — then Lucien kicks it in.
The room inside is quiet.
Monitors flicker on every wall. Holographic screens loop memory clips of a young woman — a beach visit, a birthday party, a password typed one letter at a time. Snapshots of a life stolen, cataloged, and sold.
Mira Vance hangs suspended in a neural rig. Thin wires run from her temples, her spine, her fingertips. Her body trembles with every pulse of the machine. Her lips move, forming ghost-words only she can hear.
Asher steps forward and slashes the cords with a blade designed to cut signal threads without frying the mind. She collapses into his arms — barely conscious, but breathing.
Mira (whispering):"They said… they said I'd be remembered forever… in the data-streams. Immortal…"
Her voice is almost childlike. Not because of her age, but because of what they've done to her mind.
Asher's jaw tenses.
Asher (flat):"This city feeds on kids like you. You're not special to it. Just another file to shred."
He brushes her hair back, avoiding the burn marks left by the electrodes.
Asher (softer):"But you're alive. That's enough for now."
Rosa looks toward the hallway. Her expression changes instantly.
Rosa:"Asher."
A sharp whrr-click sound echoes — then a wall at the far end retracts.
From the darkness emerge figures: sleeker, more advanced, armor-piercing red optics glowing like predator eyes. These aren't guards. These are Helix Dominion's Spec-Ops — the kind that doesn't need paychecks.
Voice (female, smooth, inhuman):"Blackwood. You've disrupted our harvest. The bait was never for you… but since you're here, we'll take your memories instead."
Lucien groans, raising both pistols.
Lucien:"Of course. We couldn't just leave, could we? Boss fight time."
Rosa (cracking knuckles):"Let's make this one a combo round."
Asher looks down at Mira, who's shivering in his arms.
Asher (to Noir):"Drone. Get her topside. Don't stop. Not even if I scream."
Noir's drone drops down from a vent and gently grips Mira's arms, initiating lift.
Asher stands.
Eyes narrowed.
Voice quiet.
Asher:"The rest of you? Let's bleed this data bank dry."
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Berserk Protocol Engaged
The fight ignites again — but this time, it's brutal. Unfair.
The Spec-Ops guards are faster. Stronger. Wired into the floor itself.
But so are they.
Rosa charges first, her fist slamming into a soldier's chest — the metal caves inward.
Lucien spins in the air, landing with a backflip, gunfire carving a spiral of death around him. He shouts over the noise, laughing like a man who knows tomorrow doesn't matter.
Asher walks. Always walks.
Each shot he fires finds a weak point — a neck seam, a visor slit, a data-jack exposed. Noir guides his every twitch like he's become part of the system.
They fight in darkness.
Only the flashes of muzzle fire, the glow of red and blue, illuminate the horror.
Blood splashes across the memory vats. It mixes — red and blue, life and data.
They are not just fighting. They are erasing Helix's crime one bullet at a time.
But above them, Mira rises toward the ceiling, eyes half-lidded… and behind her, another drone shadows her ascent — one that doesn't belong to Noir.
[End of Chapter 83]
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The air shudders with screams and steel. Sparks rain from broken lights. The floor is slick with memory fluid and blood. And somewhere, unseen, another predator watches Mira's escape — ready to strike.
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Chapter 84 — Memory Harvest: Showdown in the Data Pit
Trapped beneath the city's skin, Asher, Rosa, and Lucien unleash hell on the Helix Dominion's nerve center — but the enemy has planned deeper than they ever guessed. Every punch, every bullet, comes at a cost… and Mira's freedom may be the bait that binds them all.