MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Rain hammered the crumbling pavement of Neo-Kyoto’s old sector, each drop catching the lurid neon light like a falling star. Rin Takahashi crouched on a rusted fire escape, the city’s digital ghosts shimmering across her vision. Her cybernetic overlay painted the darkness in layers of comprehensible data. In the top left of her sight, a transparent minimap pulsed, tracking her prey through the skeletal remains of what was once a shopping district. At the edge of her vision, a subtle counter kept a running tally of her experience points, a quiet affirmation of her lethal proficiency. This gamified reality was the only one she knew anymore, a world of targets, bounties, and survival metrics.

The parasite was close. She felt it not as a sound or a sight, but as an electric tingle that ran the length of her spine, a specific frequency that made her illegal grafts hum against their neural pathways. The sensation was a familiar prelude to violence.

*Three hundred meters. Two fifty. Two hundred.*

Her twin plasma blades whispered to life, their violet light cutting a sharp, clean line through the rain-soaked air. The heat signature on her overlay, a pulsing blob of angry red, spiked in intensity. It was there, inside the collapsed shell of an old arcade, where something massive shifted behind shattered windows. A wave of visual distortion spread like oil across her feed, warping the clean lines of her interface into jagged, aggressive static. It was the digital signature of a high-level threat, a corruption so potent it bled into the very air.

Rin dropped from the fire escape, her augmented muscles absorbing the impact. She landed in a crouch that sent a fan of grimy water splashing around her worn combat boots. Her enhanced reflexes, tuned far beyond any legal limit, kept her perfectly balanced as she pushed off into a silent run. The arcade’s entrance gaped like a broken mouth, its sign flickering with half-dead kanji characters that once promised entertainment and now only warned of decay.

She slipped inside.

The parasite waited in the center of the main floor, a grotesque fusion of twisted programming and organic matter. It stood nearly three meters tall, its form constantly shuddering between solid flesh and translucent data streams. Corrupted numbers cascaded down its limbs like diseased blood, a torrent of meaningless information. Where its face should have been, a chaotic mass of broken screens flickered, cycling through fragments of a thousand stolen memories. It was a monument to the world’s collapse, a walking, breathing system error.

Rin’s overlay updated with a quiet chime. *Target identified. Threat level: Alpha. Estimated core value: forty thousand credits.*

A grim smile touched her lips. *Let's dance.*

The creature lunged, its movement a disturbing blend of animalistic fury and machinelike precision. Rin rolled left, her blades carving through the air where her chest had been a moment before. The parasite’s clawed appendage smashed into the floor, cracking the concrete and sending up a shower of sparks that illuminated the room in a brief, violent flash. The corruption spread from the impact point like a virus, turning the solid ground into a field of glitching, unstable pixels.

She came up slashing, her right blade biting deep into what passed for the creature's leg. It screamed, a sound like a thousand dial-up modems dying in screeching harmony. Black ichor mixed with streaming green code poured from the wound. Her experience counter ticked upward, a small, satisfying reward for drawing first blood.

The fight became a blur of frantic motion. Rin moved like water, flowing around the parasite’s clumsy but powerful attacks while her blades found purchase again and again. Her cybernetics burned in her chest, a familiar fire that pushed her reflexes past their natural limits. Pain, sharp and insistent, lanced through her temples. It was the price of her illegal upgrades, a debt she paid in every battle, but she ignored it with practiced ease. She had learned to ignore a lot of things since the world ended.

The parasite’s movements grew sluggish, its attacks becoming more desperate. Rin pressed her advantage, driving it back toward the arcade’s rear wall. Its screens flickered faster, the images cycling through corrupted data at impossible speeds. She saw fragments of faces, places, and memories that did not belong to her, the digital refuse of consumed lives.

One more strike. Just one more, and the valuable core would be hers.

She launched herself forward, both blades aimed at the creature’s central mass where its memory core pulsed like a diseased heart. The parasite raised its arms in a futile attempt at defense. Rin’s blades cut through corrupted flesh and streaming data, ready to deliver the final blow.

Then it spoke.

The sound hit her like a physical blow, bypassing her audio filters and striking directly into her memory. It was not the creature's usual screeching, but a clear, synthesized voice. It spoke a single phrase, a tactical command from another lifetime, delivered in a voice she had spent a decade trying to forget.

“Rin, abort sequence delta. Fall back to rally point seven.”

Elias Ward’s voice. Calm, calculated, and absolutely certain.

Her concentration shattered. For a single, fatal second, she was no longer in a ruined arcade in Neo-Kyoto. She was back in the war, back when his voice was her anchor in the chaos. The parasite’s clawed hand caught her across the ribs, the impact sending her flying through the air. She hit a bank of old arcade machines hard enough to crack their casings, the sound of breaking glass and metal screaming in her ears. Warning icons flooded her vision. *Cracked rib, possibly two. Minor internal bleeding. Concussion probable.*

She forced herself to her feet, pain screaming through her side with every ragged breath. The parasite shambled toward her, its screens flickering with the ghost of that stolen voice. It was going to speak again. She could not let it speak again.

Rin moved on pure instinct and white-hot rage. She crossed the distance in three powerful strides, her blades finding the creature’s core before it could form another word. The parasite convulsed, its scream rising to a frequency that shattered what remained of the arcade’s windows. Then, with a final, shuddering sigh, it collapsed. Its form dissolved into streams of corrupted data that evaporated like smoke in the rain.

The memory core dropped to the ground with a heavy thunk. It was a fist-sized sphere of crystallized data that pulsed with a sickly, unnatural light.

Rin stood over it, breathing hard, her ribs protesting every inhale. Rain poured through the broken ceiling, mixing with the parasite’s dissolving remains. Her overlay chimed softly, confirming the kill and adding the bounty to her account.

She did not care about the credits.

Her hand shook as she reached down to pick up the core. The moment her fingers touched its surface, she felt it. It was a ghost in the code, an echo of something that should have been dead and buried with the old world.

It was Elias’s voice, preserved in a prison of corrupted data, whispering secrets she had tried so desperately to forget.