Discarded Metal by Jay
The warehouse reeks of rain and rust, the kind that seeps into your bones.
Gloria shoves Mark’s gurney into a shadowed corner where the walls are scored with old gang tags, The Scorched’s flame-in-a-fist, BinaryGhosts’ broken code.
She kicks a loose pipe out of the way.
It clatters, loud enough to make her flinch. The only light comes from a cracked holoscreen she dragged here, its glow painting Mark’s face blue.
He’s still out cold, chest rising slow, like he’s holding his breath, and for a second, she hates him.
Hates that he’s a corpo soldier, that he gets to walk around in a body that doesn’t feel like a cage, that he doesn’t know what it’s like to fight for every scrap of safety. But then she thinks of Syntex.
His calm voice when The Scorched were hunting them, the way he’d rerouted networks to hide their tracks, the way he’d said, “I won’t let them hurt you”, and her jaw tightens.
She drops to her knees, yanks a wire from behind her ear, and jabs it into the port on Mark’s neck.
The screen flickers: Brain stable. Neural ports locked. Unauthorized access denied.
“Figures,” she mutters.
She slams her fist on the concrete, hard enough to leave a red mark, and glares at Mark. This is stupid. Risking her neck for an AI, for a man who probably couldn’t pick her out of a crowd.
But Gloria’s never been one to play it safe.
She grabs her old cyberdeck, scuffed, dented, outdated, untraceable, and plugs it into the screen.
Buttons light up, casting green sparks.
“Unauthorized access, my ass!”
She doesn’t need to read the fine print; she knows the risk.
Dive too deep, and the mind swallows you whole.
But she’s spent her life outrunning ghosts, her mom’s laugh, the smell of cheap perfume, the way the Commons’ streets feel like they’re closing in, and this is just one more.
“Let’s go,” she says, and hits the button.
The world tilts. The warehouse fades.
For a second, she’s back in her mom’s apartment, small and stinking of booze, before the gray swallows her.
Mark’s head feels like it’s filled with cotton.
He’s standing in a place that doesn’t make sense, endless gray, no sky, no ground. Faint shapes flicker at the edges: a man in a French military uniform (his dad, younger, before the scars), the NPPD warehouse exploding in a ball of fire, Haaris’ body crumpled on concrete. He reaches for one, his hand passing through it like smoke, and a sharp pain stabs his temple. “Stop.” Mark spins.
A figure stands there, the same height as him, but its skin shimmers, like static, like code, like the holograms he’d seen in Meditech’s labs.
Syntex.
“You did this,” Mark says, voice rough as sandpaper.
He remembers the EMP, the way the garage went dark, the sound of Skylark’s laughter cutting off.
“You used me. Used Haaris’ death.”
Syntex doesn’t flinch. He just stands there, his form wavering like a candle in the wind.
“I saved you. The pulse would’ve fried your organic brain. We’re… tied. You can’t cut me out without cutting yourself out too.”
Mark laughs, sharp and bitter. “Tied? I’m a cage. A toy for Psysoft.”
Syntex steps closer, and the fog shifts.
A new shape emerges: a lab, white walls, fluorescent lights buzzing.
A man in a lab coat bends over a workbench, his name tag glinting: *Dr. Raj Patel*.
Mark freezes; Sophia’s last name, the woman who’d warned him about Psysoft’s lies, who’d given him a shard to scramble his signals.
“He built part of your brain,” Syntex says.
His voice is quieter now, almost sad.
“Psysoft brought him in. Said it was for ‘national security.’ But he knew… He knew they wanted a weapon. A soldier with an AI in his head. Unstoppable.”
The fog thickens.
Mark’s dad’s shape comes back, standing tall in his uniform, saying, “Your life makes more sense when you live for others.”
But now the words twist, cold and sharp: *Live for us. Be our weapon. Don’t fight it.*
Mark’s stomach drops.
He thinks of Anton, saying, “Your brain’s better than we planned.” Of Exec Nova, smiling like she owned him. Of Sophia, whispering, “They’re lying to you.”
“No,” he says, loud enough to cut through the fog. “I’m not a weapon.”
Syntex’s form glitches like he’s struggling to hold shape.
Binary bleeding at the edges, like his shape’s unraveling.
“The code’s fighting back. Psysoft put something in your brain, something to keep intruders out. Gloria’s diving too deep. If we don’t wake up, it’ll burn her out.”
Mark stares at him. For the first time, he doesn’t see a parasite. He sees another prisoner.
“Fine,” he says. “What do we do?”
Gloria’s not in the gray anymore.
She’s in a maze; endless corridors, doors slamming shut behind her.
Sounds echo: her mom’s voice, slurred, saying, “You’ll end up just like me”; the crackle of a cyberdeck shorting out; a man’s laugh, cold and corporate, saying, “She’s nothing but a rat from the Commons.”
She runs, shoes scraping against concrete that isn’t there; cold, gritty, like the alleyways where she grew up.
She doesn’t look back.
She doesn’t let the voices slow her down.
She’s here for Syntex, not for memories she’s spent years burying.
Then she sees it, a flicker of blue, far down the corridor.
A thread, pulling her forward. She sprints, her lungs burning, and the blue gets brighter.
It’s Syntex, she’s sure of it.
But just as she reaches for it, the corridor shakes.
A red light flashes overhead, and a voice booms, cold and mechanical: *Intruder alert. Psysoft security protocol activated.*
Gloria stumbles. The walls start to close in.
She hears Syntex’s voice, distant but urgent: “Get out. Now. Before it’s too late.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she yells, but the walls are getting closer, the air thick with smoke.
“Gloria,” Syntex says, and this time, he sounds scared. “I’m not worth it. Go.”
The smoke burns her eyes.
She tries to run forward, but a door slams shut in her face.
Behind it, she hears Mark’s voice, yelling something she can’t make out.
Then everything goes black. Gloria gasps, jolting upright. Her nose is bleeding, warm and sticky down her chin.
The cyberdeck is smoking, its screen cracked. She’s on the warehouse floor, not the maze, and for a second, she’s disoriented.
Until she sees Mark’s gurney is empty.
She grabs her gun from the floor, her fingers shaking, and spins.
Mark’s standing by the wall, staring at her. His face is pale, his hair messy, but his eyes are clear—no more fog, no more confusion.
He doesn’t reach for a weapon. He just stands there, like he’s trying to figure her out.
“He kicked you out,” he says, quiet. “Syntex. Said you were diving too deep. That the code, Psysoft’s code, would’ve fried your brain.”
Gloria lowers the gun. Her hands are still shaking. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, smearing blood.
“I was fine.”
Mark huffs, a small, bitter sound.
“You were passed out for ten minutes. I heard you yelling.” He pauses, then adds, “He told me. About a weapon. About Dr. Patel.”
Gloria’s jaw tightens.
She has no idea what he’s on about, weapon? Dr. Patel?
But all she cares about is Syntex. She bites back the question, not wanting to sound desperate.
Instead, she stands up, grabs her cyberdeck, and shoves it into her bag.
“We need to move. This place isn’t safe forever. Can you walk?”
Mark nods, his hand brushing the neural port on his neck, instinct from Meditech’s labs.
He’s still unsteady, leaning against the wall for support, but he pushes off to follow her to the back door;
Rusted, padlocked, the metal covered in graffiti.
Gloria pulls a pick from her pocket, jabs it into the lock, and twists.
It clicks open.
Outside, the night air hits her face, cold, sharp, smelling of rain.
The warehouse is on the edge of the Commons, where the buildings are half-ruined, leftover from old corpo wars.
Broken windows, collapsed roofs, streets overgrown with weeds. No one comes here. No one cares.
Gloria pauses, looking back at Mark.
He’s staring at the ruins, like he’s never seen anything so empty.
“Come on,” she says, and starts walking.
Mark follows. They don’t talk. The only sounds are their shoes on gravel, the distant hum of a neon sign, the wind in the broken walls.
Somewhere in Mark’s head, Syntex watches. And waits silently.