TESSA

The clinic doesn't have a name.

Just a blinking neon tooth hanging over a rusted doorframe and a long smear of blood dried into the pavement like someone meant to clean it—but got tired halfway through and said screw it. 

I stand outside for maybe a minute. 

Hands jammed deep in my coat pockets, breath fogging in tight little clouds. 

Not fear. Just... caution. 

Just checking my exits.

The chip blinks again—sharp pulse behind my ear, sick and rhythmic like a countdown. 

To what? I don't wanna know. 

It's been doing that for days now. 

I've tried ignoring it. 

Tried pretending it was just static. 

Nerve damage. 

Old tech having a bad day.

But it's not stopping. 

And that means it's time to figure out what the hell is living in my skull.

I hit the buzzer.

A camera whines as it pivots down from a rotting awning, lens fogged over with grime. 

It scans my face like it's bored already. 

A voice crackles out of the speaker:

"State your issue."

"ID chip. Removal."

A beat. The door buzzes open.

The inside smells like antiseptic and cheap coffee. 

Lights flicker overhead like they can't decide or not they've given up. 

Walls are lined with peeling posters of nerve maps and biotech charts that haven't been accurate in ten years. 

Everything reeks of biohazard and medical malpractice. 

Someone should burn this place down just to give it mercy.

The guy behind the desk doesn't look up. 

He's old. 

Not frail old—just... used. 

One glass eye. 

Scars under the collar. 

A barcode on his neck that looks like it got lasered off and grew back wrong.

"Cash or credit?" he mutters.

"Qin." I toss the wad. 

Crumpled, sweat-soft. The last of my Akagane pay.

He grunts. 

"Cheap ID jobs are upstairs. You want a real extraction, sit down."

I do.

The chair's cold. 

Sticks to the back of my legs. 

He rolls over on a rusted stool, magnifier clamped to his brow, muttering to himself as he powers up a scanner older than I am. 

"Let's see what you're so desperate to ditch."

The scanner hums. He presses it behind my ear.

The screen lights up.

Then flickers.

Then freezes.

His whole body shifts—not big, but enough for me to notice. 

The kind of stillness you get right before someone drops bad news.

"Where'd you get this chip?" he asks.

I keep my voice calm. "It was implanted a few months ago. I was told it was clean, Federation issue. Alias protocol."

He doesn't respond.

Just scrolls. 

Hits the side of the screen like it insulted him. 

Then he turns it so I can see.

A string of red text flashes up:

My stomach knots.

"What does that mean?"

He leans back. 

Lights a cigarette. 

Doesn't offer me one.

"Means someone gave you a ghost key."

"A what?"

"Ghost key. It's a hybrid tag—part ID, part neural integration. Doesn't just sit in your skull. It lives in your system. Adapts to your brain's bioelectric map. Latches on like it belongs."

My spine goes rigid.

"Can you remove it?"

He exhales through his nose, slow.

"No. I wouldn't even know where to start. You tear this thing out wrong, your brain forgets how to breathe. Whoever implanted this? They weren't giving you protection. They were hijacking you."

The room starts spinning, just a little.

I grip the chair. 

Tight. 

My nails dig into the armrests.

"It's been blinking. Constantly. I thought it was... broken."

"It's not blinking because it's broken," 

he says. 

"It's blinking because it's talking. Probably to a beacon. Remote network. Maybe even a buried handler protocol."

My throat's dry.

"And it's using me to do it."

"Looks like it."

Silence presses against my chest.

He finally stands. 

Walks to the door. 

Opens it without ceremony.

"You didn't hear this from me. But I've only seen one other chip like this. On a body that didn't stay dead long. No prints. No ID. Just this exact same signature, blinking like it had something to say. Whoever's on the other end of that chip?"

He looks me over.

"They already know you're alive. And they're probably not happy about it."

I don't move. I can't.

The chip buzzes again—softer this time. 

Like breathing.

I get up. 

Legs heavy. 

Brain louder than my footsteps.

As I pass him, I stop. Just for a second.

"One last thing," I say. 

"The name it's registered under... Tessa Kite."

He doesn't even blink, just hands me a print out.

"Then I'd start finding out who she really was."

He steps aside, still watching.

The door slams behind me.

And the city swallows me like I was never here.

Step one: find a body.

A dead one.

The printout the old man gave me isn't much. 

Thermal paper. 

Timestamped logs. 

One final ping—coordinates jammed into the margin like a whisper.

Last place the chip went active... before it found me.

Akagane.

Of course it was.

All the gutters in the world, and it had to be that one.

My last job. 

The pit match. 

The back-alley rig shop. 

The sprint through scanners, lungs full of smoke, blood in my sock.

I got the whole arena shut down.

Didn't even know why, at the time.

But now? Now I do.

It wasn't me they were tracking.

It was this.

The chip. 

The ghost key. 

The parasite living behind my ear.

It remembered Akagane. Like a dog catching the scent of its old grave.

And it screamed.

Akagane station looks worse than I remember. 

Not that it was ever pretty to begin with. 

But this time, there's a weight to it. 

A hum in the metal beneath my boots. 

Like the city's remembering me before I've even stepped inside.

I exit fast. 

Hood up. 

Bag slung low. 

Chip throbbing like a war drum behind my ear.

I shouldn't be here.

But answers rot slower in places like this. And if anyone keeps the dead breathing, it's Akagane.

The Organ Market.

I cut through the alleys, past noodle carts, past bootleg mech shops, past a toothless man yelling about birds being drones and something about Exodus never ending. 

No one looks twice. 

No one ever does here.

Smells like copper and bleach. 

Like someone tried too hard to make death sanitary.

The door creaks shut behind me like it's trying to be merciful. 

Yellow strips flicker overhead. 

Drawers line the walls, each marked in slanted, hasty handwriting.

"Looking for something?" a voice calls.

I turn.

The pathologist is already watching me. 

Grizzled. 

Unshaved. 

Half his face lit by the screen of an old holopad. 

There's a burn mark on his neck that looks too clean to be accidental.

"I'm looking for a body," I say.

He snorts. "Aren't we all."

I hold up the printout. 

The chip signature. /K1-T3_Sentinel.

"I need to know if you've seen anything like this."

His expression stills. 

Then darkens. 

He slides the holopad away and gestures to a drawer in the back.

"About a year ago. Male. Early thirties maybe. No ID. But that chip was blinking under his skin like it had somewhere to be."

I step closer.

"What happened?"

"He coded. Flatlined. But the body didn't stay cold."

He opens the drawer.

Inside is a body bag—empty now. Labeled VOID.

"No rigor. No lividity. Thirty minutes after they declared him, the chip activated a motor function. Just a twitch at first. Then full-on seizure."

My breath shortens. 

"You're saying he woke up?"

"I'm saying he moved. I'm saying something inside him did." 

He taps the side of his head. 

"This isn't biotech. It's override tech. You know what that means?"

I nod slowly. 

"Someone—or something—was trying to bring him back."

He gives me a long, pointed look. "Same chip signature. Same blink." 

"The guy," I say, voice flat. 

"Who was he? He sure as hell wasn't Tessa Kite."

He shrugs, dragging a hand down his face like he's trying to wipe the memory off. 

"Who knows? Another nullskin hoping for an upgrade."

A hollow laugh slips out—sharp and sour.

"Probably thought he scored an elite chip—finally claw his way outta the 'Gan. Get a real job. A ticket out. Skytrams and soft beds."

Then he goes quiet.

His fingers drum against the edge of the autopsy table—light, rapid, uneven. 

Like his body knows something his mouth hasn't said yet.

"Then one day," he mutters, "he blows his face off with a pulsecore revolver."

The drumming stops.

His hand clenches, then relaxes. 

Clenches again. 

He doesn't meet my eyes.

"I think it was the chip that made him do it," he says, voice low now. "I should've destroyed it when I had the chance."

The air in the autopsy room thickens, heavy with bleach and regret.

I don't thank him. 

Don't ask anything else.

What's left to ask, when the answer's already in your skull?

I step back out into Akagane's rusted lungs, heart hammering, chip whispering.

The man before me lost his name. 

His face. 

His life.

Because he carried the same ghost I do.

And if I don't find out what it wants?

If I don't stop it from finishing whatever it started?

It'll use me next.