Chapter 1: Tomorrow

The Dollhouse

The living room held a paused frame of blue TV light, a laugh track suspended mid-breath over empty furniture. Leon stepped in and waited. A sectional in some neutral, expensive fabric faced the city windows at the angle someone had decided was optimal. On the far wall, a canvas—large, colorless, the kind of thing bought to fill a dimension rather than a room. The coffee table held a single coaster, perfectly centered, with no ring on it.

Leon moved across the hardwood in slow, deliberate steps and came to rest behind the sectional. Elijah was at the far end, cross-legged, bent low over a cyberdeck whose yellow and black casing—grimy stickers peeling at the corners—seemed to swallow the room’s thin light whole, leaving only the red scroll of icons hovering above the display like embers. His fingers worked without hesitation, each keystroke landing with a soft, clockwork click. Occasionally his tongue tapped the roof of his mouth, quiet and reflexive, a metronome buried somewhere beneath the code.

Leon watched him work for a full minute. He had learned, since coming to this place, that interruptions were currency. If you spent one, you’d best need it.

“Where’s Syd—”

The answer came too fast to be authentic. “I don’t know.”

The words hung, brittle. Elijah did not look up. He pressed an edge key and grunted when the result displeased him, then nudged the cursor back to begin again.

Leon traced the edge of the coffee table with his thumb, the cold lacquer a reassuring anchor. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

Elijah’s fingers stilled. A single breath left him, measured and flat. His eyes stayed on the deck. “What you want,” he said, not quite a question.

Leon stepped around to sit at the other end of the couch, just far enough to respect the perimeter but close enough to force acknowledgment. “I want you to teach me to net dive.”

Elijah made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “No.”

“I’m not a moron,” Leon said. “I know the basics. I ran the authorized systems at Trident. I even know how to handle a spike and not get fried. I just—”

“No.”

Elijah finally raised his eyes. In the gloom his pupils had swallowed most of the iris. “You’re not ready,” he said. “And I don’t run a daycare.”

Leon let it land. He sat with it a moment, then: “I don’t have access anymore. I don’t have a home. I don’t have a job. If Sydney’s right, I may not have much else left either. I can’t just sit here and wait for someone else to move the pieces. I need to be able to do something. For myself.”

“Desperation’s not a skill set,” Elijah said. He turned back to the deck. “It’s a liability. You’ll burn through your own cortex before anything out there even notices you.”

“Is it really about me not being ready,” Leon asked, “or is it that you just don’t want me in your world?”

A long, windless silence. The TV changed scenes, turning Elijah’s cheekbones a deep, aquatic green. Leon felt, for a moment, the city had vanished and left only this couch, these two figures, orbiting a wound.

Elijah closed the cyberdeck. His hands, quick and deliberate, folded one atop the other. He looked at Leon, but through him, as if seeing the outline of a person that would only later be filled with substance.

“You got a data port?” Elijah asked.

Leon gave a single, tight nod. He extended his right wrist, palm up, and with a subtle, practiced flex of the tendons, the skin just above his radial pulse thinned and retracted. A circular port was revealed, its rim a polished gunmetal grey, the interior dark and lined with the faintest pinpricks of dormant fiber-optic light. “Standard issue for all Trident IT staff,” he said, his voice flat. “Basic OS and cortex bridge. Came with the contract.”

Elijah’s face didn’t change. “Tomorrow,” he said, and opened the deck again.

“Time?”

“Doesn’t work like that.” Elijah didn’t look up. “Go to bed. You’ll know when it starts.”

Leon rose, the lacquer cool on his palm leaving a negative print behind. He padded out, not looking back, but the sound of keys and wet clicks trailed him like a heartbeat.

He closed the door to the guest room and lay in the blue dark, watching the ceiling until he convinced himself there was a difference between fear and anticipation.

He woke to the gentle, impersonal hiss of the building’s climate systems. The sky outside the window wasn’t a sky so much as a brightening grey, a diffused smear that pressed against the glass but never quite crossed over into the room. Sydney’s spare bedroom was exactly as Leon had left it: bed flat and unslept on, suitcase undisturbed, single black shirt hung neatly on the closet handle. The only change was the faint glimmer of Sterling City, already alive below the penthouse. AV lanes burned white lines through the haze; the city’s tallest towers caught the dawn and turned it to a razor edge.

He lay motionless, counting seconds by the building’s pulse, until his phone vibrated. He swiped it open. A single message, time-stamped four hours prior:

working late again. u know how to order food now. —S

He thumbed the phone off and stared at the ceiling. The air, colder than necessary, made the room feel like a high-end mausoleum. He thought of Elijah on the couch, still awake, still digging.

Leon ran his fingers over his wrist, feeling the flat, coin-sized lid of the data port beneath the skin. It itched, always, especially when he was anxious. He wanted it checked out before Elijah’s test. No one taught you how to fail with dignity, but he could at least be sure he was operational when the time came.

He showered, dressed, and packed his pockets methodically. He palmed the Corpo Centre access card Sydney had pressed into his hand last week, knowing it was the only way he could leave or reenter the district. He checked it twice before walking out.

In the corridor, all the surfaces glistened as if they’d just been born. The penthouse floor was empty; he caught his own reflection in the elevator’s black glass, skin pale and hair dark brown under the hard light. A janitorial drone trundled by at knee level, humming a low lullaby for no one.

At the building entrance, Leon used his palm at the security gate. The guard — real flesh, not hired composite — scanned him without curiosity, then glanced down at the screen. “Have a good day, Mr. Wise,” he said, though Leon could see the prompt reading Thomas, K. on the security panel. He remembered Sydney gave him that assumed name while he was living under his roof.

The outside world was cleaner than any city had a right to be. The sidewalks scrubbed, the vertical gardens in full, unnatural bloom, the street-level air purged of exhaust and the usual city rot. It felt like walking inside an organism that had evolved beyond the need for dirt or bacteria. Above, drones floated in slow, deliberate paths, their blinking blue beacons tracing a grid across the mid-morning gloom.

Leon made for the metro, passing a windowless pharmacy; the red cross projected onto its door in steady pulse and a dry cleaner’s that promised same-hour service, guaranteed. No one made eye contact. He walked at a measured pace, unsure if it was to blend in or to let his nerves cool. For a fleeting moment, he liked it — being just another licensed commuter, the world presuming he belonged.

The metro entrance loomed, a gentle slope of concrete leading into the bright, humming vestibule below. He paused at the top, checked his pockets for the access card, and stepped inside.

The station was crowded but orderly. An automated ticket scanner chimed at regular intervals, and the benches were lined with commuters too disciplined to sprawl. Near the escalator, a pack of couriers clustered, all in matching black windbreakers, each carrying an overstuffed bag marked with the single black feather logo. They looked like murder of crows waiting for the right carcass.

Leon scanned the lines for the Japantown transfer, mind half on the net doc and half on the lessons to come. He didn’t see the boy until the impact.

A small, quick body collided with him at an angle, bouncing off Leon’s thigh and nearly knocking them both off-balance. The courier, younger than he’d guessed, maybe sixteen, face obscured by a cap and surgical mask apologized instantly. “Sorry, sir!” It was a practiced phrase, too earnest to be true. The oversized bag hit Leon’s ribs and rebounded.

“Watch it,” Leon said, but the boy was already five steps past, moving with the current. The black feather on his bag caught the station’s LED light and shimmered like an oil slick.

Leon shook his head, turned to check the terminal board, and only then felt the cold hollow in his pocket.

He reached in, expecting plastic. Nothing. He checked the inside jacket lining, patted down both thighs, tried the outer coat, then back to the pants again — even though it was pointless.

The access card was gone.

Choose Your Entry Point

Begin where the record opens, or return to the newest page Sterling City has released.