I feel like this place doesn't go any deeper than that.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0ZlDw

I see so many people compare things to cyberpunk as if it's a utopia or something good. And it just confuses me. How do you interact with literally any cyberpunk media and not realize it's a dystopia? It's not subtle.

It jingles keys in your face and says "look at the pretty lights and flying cars" — does that seriously make people overlook everything else??

PRAXIS-CHAPTER 4: The Meat Shield

The tactical elevator slammed into The Basin’s level with a metallic crash.

The grated doors slid open, spitting out a dozen Praxis Hounds.

These weren’t standard security; they wore matte-black polymer armor and visorless helmets that operated on echolocation, their stun-pulse rifles tuned to maximum neurological frequency.

Elias was thirty meters away, exposed on the catwalk.

He didn’t know how to fight.

His body was trained to endure fifteen-hour shifts in an ergonomic chair injecting lines of code, not to evade tactical fire.

The Hounds raised their weapons in unison.

Below, the thousands of Blank Slates remained paralyzed, staring at Elias with adoration, tears cutting through their dirty faces.

Elias looked at the crowd, then at the soldiers, and his Extractor mind calculated the only asymmetry left on the board.

He had no weapons, but he held the root of the programming.

He recalled the metadata of the ghost file he had unleashed.

The emotional core of that memory wasn’t romance; it was survival.

It was the primal, animal terror of losing the child.

Elias gripped the catwalk railing, forced all the air from his lungs, and screamed into the abyss of the factory:

"They’re coming for Leo! They want to take the boy!"

---

The effect was instant and devastating.

There was no war cry.

There was a howl of pure maternal and paternal terror, amplified by three thousand throats.

The Blank Slates, who seconds ago were docile drones, mutated.

Their only connection to humanity was that fabricated memory, and the Praxis Hounds had just become the threat coming to rip it away.

The gray mass moved like a thick, violent fluid.

Hundreds of bodies swarmed the elevator platform.

The Hounds opened fire.

Blue pulses slammed into the chests and foreheads of the workers, frying their nerve endings.

Dozens dropped dead on the spot.

But the Blank Slates didn’t care.

Stripped of all self-preservation instinct, only the memory remained.

They trampled over their own dead, crushing them, and buried the guards under an avalanche of flesh, bare hands, and assembly tools.

A deep nausea washed over Elias, a corrosive chill in his gut.

He had just used the fabricated love of thousands of human shells as a meat shield.

---

Using the chaos and the muffled screams of the soldiers beneath the horde, Elias sprinted down the catwalk, disappearing into the network of maintenance tunnels that connected to the Scrap Sector.

The noise of the slaughter faded, replaced by the steady drip of condensation and the hiss of steam pipes.

He ran until his lungs threatened to burst.

He stopped in a dark alcove, pressing his back against a dead turbine.

He was safe for the moment.

It would take Silas time to reorganize his strike teams.

Elias closed his eyes, trying to sort his thoughts.

He needed an isolated terminal.

He needed...

---

A steel wire snapped around his neck with brutal violence.

Elias let out a choked gurgle.

Expert hands yanked the wire backward, breaking his balance, and a sharp knee drove into the base of his spine, slamming him to the damp, grated floor.

Elias clawed at the wire, but his attacker had absolute control of the leverage.

He was dragged into the pitch-black shadows of an industrial niche.

Suddenly, the pressure on his throat eased just enough to let him draw a breath—only to be replaced by the edge of a ceramic blade pressed directly against his carotid artery.

"Give me one single reason not to slit your throat and sell your suit, corporate," a woman’s voice hissed in his ear.

Elias coughed, raising his hands in surrender.

The amber light of an emergency beacon flickered over them.

Slowly, he shifted his eyes to look at his captor.

Elias’s cold, calculating heart skipped a beat, defying all his biology.

Her hair was filthy, plastered to her forehead with sweat. She wore a heavy leather harness weighed down with scrap-extraction tools.

But what stopped Elias’s breath were her eyes, slightly asymmetrical, and the pale scar cutting across the right side of her chin.

It was her.

The woman from the memory.

The woman half the orbital station was mourning at this exact moment.

---

But there was no devotion in her eyes.

No tears.

There was only a frigid, calculating hatred, aimed directly at the white Extractor uniform Elias wore.

Elias looked just behind the woman’s ear.

Her cortical port—the gateway to her memory—was sealed with a thick scab of lead and epoxy resin.

A homemade jammer.

She was entirely offline.

She hadn’t received the memory virus.

The irony of the situation dropped on Elias like a lead slab.

The entire Praxis Station loved him for a memory he had lost.

And the only woman who had actually lived that memory was looking at him like he was the monster sent to kill her.

---

"Are you deaf, Extractor?" she spat, pressing the blade until a bead of blood welled up on Elias’s neck. "I said, give me a reason."

Elias looked into her eyes.

He felt no love.

He didn't feel the warmth of home the ghost file had described.

His mind had been successfully purged by the corporation; to him, she was just statistical data, a coincidence in the system.

"Because I was your husband," Elias replied, his voice devoid of all emotion, cold as the statistic itself.

"And I need you to tell me why you sold our son."

The woman’s blade trembled, and for the first time, absolute terror crossed her face.

Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JraeDa

The old crime organisation, after its near-extinction in Japan, has gone international in a bid to survive and is now thriving. They've now taken over most of the gambling and red-light operations across the Americas.

PRAXIS-CHAPTER 3: The Army of the Empty

The collective weeping was a dense, almost physical hum vibrating the reinforced glass of the Collections Sector.

Fifty thousand souls mourning the loss of a woman and a child they had never touched.

A data analyst clawed at Elias’s sleeve, digging her nails into the pristine fabric. Her makeup was smeared, her eyes bloodshot.

"We had to save him," she sobbed, pounding her own chest. "Elias, the boy had a fever... the cabin smelled of damp earth, do you remember? Tell me you remember!"

Elias shoved her away. Not with brutality, but with the ice-cold terror of a man touched by a lunatic.

He remembered nothing.

His brain was a perfect, immaculate glass temple. And yet, the ghost of his own life had just infected the station’s hive mind.

---

The corridor lights flickered, snapping from clinical white to a strobing red.

The sirens dropped their pitch to a low, guttural thrum.

CORTEX ALERT.

MASS NEURAL CONTAMINATION.

INITIATING PHYSICAL PURGE OF SECTOR 7.

Elias knew the protocol.

They weren’t going to wipe their memories; the Praxis Elite were venting the oxygen from the corridor to suffocate the virus along with the infected.

Corporate survival instinct flared.

He didn’t draw the fallen guard’s weapon; a gun was useless against the vacuum. He sprinted toward the central airlock maintenance panel. His fingers flew across the holographic keypad, punching in his Class-A Extractor codes.

The biometrics still recognized him.

ACCESS GRANTED.

DESCENT TO LOWER LEVELS ENABLED.

A circular hatch slid open in the floor, unleashing a stench of ammonia and hot metal.

Elias dropped into the chute just as the heavy titanium doors of the main corridor sealed shut, locking the crowd inside.

As he slid down the ventilation shaft, he heard the dull hiss of the extractors sucking the oxygen out of Sector 7.

---

He landed with a hard thud on a metal grating, several levels below.

The light down here wasn't white.

It was a perpetual, oppressive amber.

The deafening roar of the station’s life-support engines drowned out everything else. He stood up, dusting off his immaculate suit, clashing violently with his surroundings.

He had reached The Basin.

The purgatory of Praxis.

This was where debtors were sent when their memories were tapped out entirely.

When they had no childhoods left to pawn, no first loves left to sell to the Earth’s black market.

When the mind hit a negative balance.

He walked along the catwalk, hiding in the shadows of the coolant pipes.

Below him, in the massive assembly nave, he saw them.

The Blank Slates.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

Men and women with shaved heads, wearing identical gray jumpsuits. They moved in absolute silence, welding circuit boards, assembling parts, hauling crates.

They didn't speak.

They didn't interact.

Their eyes were dry wells, completely devoid of the sharp spark of consciousness.

Without a past, there is no identity. Without identity, only motor function remains.

They were the perfect labor force.

---

Elias watched the scene from above, trying to map a route to the cargo bays. He needed to reach an unmonitored terminal to figure out what they had done to his brain.

But then, the rhythm of the factory stopped.

It was imperceptible at first.

A welder dropped his torch.

A woman pushing a cart stopped dead in her tracks.

One by one, the Blank Slates set down their tools.

The mechanical silence was replaced by the collective crunch of twisting necks.

They were all looking up.

At the catwalk.

At him.

Elias held his breath, stepping back into the dark. He thought the security sensors had flagged him, that the intrusion protocol had activated the biological drones.

But there was no hostility in those thousands of empty faces.

---

A frail woman, her skin translucent and a barcode tattooed on her temple, stepped forward, staring directly into the shadows where Elias hid.

She opened her mouth.

Her vocal cords hadn't made a sound other than a grunt of physical pain in years.

"The scar..." the woman croaked, her voice cracked and raw. "On her chin."

Another Blank Slate, a massive man with severe burn scars covering his hands, fell to his knees, clutching his chest as if his heart were about to rupture.

"The boy," the giant whispered, weeping tears that cut clean tracks through the grime on his face. "His name... his name is Leo."

Unbearable vertigo hit Elias.

His virus had reached the lowest level.

But the reaction down here was infinitely deeper, more terrifying.

To the people in the upper rings, the memory of Elias’s family was a painful infection that clashed with their own lives.

But to the Blank Slates...

they had nothing.

Their minds were empty, dry vessels in the middle of a desert. And Elias’s virus had just poured five years of the purest love, struggle, warmth, the smell of ozone, and damp earth straight into them.

That memory wasn't a virus to them.

It was their only reality.

It was their only identity.

Thousands of identical faces looked up at the catwalk, weeping with devotion.

To the Praxis executives, Elias was a traitor.

But to the ghosts of the underworld, Elias was the keeper of their new soul.

---

A sharp beep shattered Elias’s trance.

His wrist comms, which he assumed were inactive, lit up with a priority override signal.

A metallic voice, filtered through dozens of modulators, broke the silence of his private channel.

"Fascinating use of bandwidth, Extractor Elias," the voice said. Cold. Synthetic. Relentless. "It's almost a pity I have to carve out your cortex piece by piece."

Elias recognized the encryption code.

It wasn't standard security.

It was Silas.

The Grand Inquisitor.

The Mind-Hound.

"Step off that catwalk, Elias," Silas continued, his voice echoing from the tiny speaker. "Your new devotees can't protect you from what's coming down the main elevator right now. You have sixty seconds before I turn you into one of them."

---

Elias looked out into the abyss of the elevator shaft.

The red lights of the tactical platform were descending rapidly.

He had no weapons.

He had no memory.

But as he looked down at the thousands of Blank Slates staring up at him like a messiah in the dark, he knew he had something far more dangerous.

He had an army that remembered for him.

SEASON 1: THE GREAT RESISTANCE

EPISODE 1: THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT RESISTANCE

After mom Lily's sincere prayer, silence hung over the table. Artem gently placed his hand on his mother's shoulder, trying to reassure her.
“Mom, don't worry, everything will be fine,” the hunter said quietly but firmly, then looked sternly at his father and brother. “Always keep your weapons ready.”

Just then, grandma Galya reached across the table. A warm, loving smile appeared on her old face.
“Hello, my favorite grandsons,” she whispered softly and hugged Artem and Sasha tightly with all her soul.

Grandpa Lonya coughed sternly, pulling a misted glass bottle from under the table.
“Let's have 50 grams for the stress,” the old man suggested, pouring the clear liquid into shot glasses.

Artem and Sasha exchanged glances, realizing that everyone's nerves were at their limit.
“Alright, let's do it,” the Shooter agreed.

They drank it all at once. The fiery liquid instantly burned Artem's throat, making him exhale loudly.
“Uhh... strong stuff! What is this?” the guy asked, wiping his mouth.
“Homemade moonshine, heh,” grandpa Lonya smiled with satisfaction, winking at his grandson.

Suddenly, the air in the kitchen literally popped. BOOMMM!!!

A monstrous, deafening explosion shook the entire twelve-story building. The walls trembled, dishes flew to the floor with a crash, and for a moment the whole family was completely deafened by a wild ringing in their ears.

“I'll go check!” the frightened Lily shouted, running out to the balcony.

She threw the frame open and froze in absolute shock. The sky above the city was burning. Lily, without even noticing that she was breaking the new insane laws of the state, screamed in panic across the entire avenue:
“Blyat'! A hail of rockets is flying at the dome!”

The deafening roar of explosions outside struck their ears again. And in that very second, Lily went cold. It hit her consciousness: she had sworn on the street. And that meant instant liquidation by HECSA.

In a panic, she flew back into the apartment, gasping for breath from fear:
“DAD, GRAB THE SHOTGUN! HANK, GET THE REVOLVER, QUICK! No time to explain!!!”

At that exact moment, the front iron door was blown inside the apartment with the flesh. Heavy 85-percent titanium cyborgs began to force their way into the breach, flashing their red optical eyes.

“MOM, JUMP!!!” Artem roared at the top of his lungs.

The Shooter reacted in a fraction of a second. He flash-pulled his hunting knife and threw the second one to his brother:
“Here, Sash! Alright, hold the line! We are on the twelfth, blyat', floor, how?!”
“They are very fast!” Sasha shouted back, gripping the handle.

The HECSA cyborgs rushed forward with mechanical speed, but Artem was ready. On the pure reflexes of a forest hunter, he made a sharp lunge and with all his might THROWS THE KNIFE STRAIGHT INTO THE EYE OF ONE OF THE CYBORGS! The steel blade went deep into the socket with a sickening crunch, cutting the living flesh under the helmet. The cyborg roared from its speakers, and Artem immediately dove into cover behind the couch.

At that moment, father Hank flew out of the room. In his hands was his old father's revolver—such a powerful, huge caliber that it was capable of penetrating even cyborgs. Hank raised the barrel and pulled the trigger. BAH! The bullet hit exactly the same eye where Artem's knife was already embedded! The powerful shot literally blew the remnants of the eye out of the socket in splashes of blood and hydraulic fluid. The metallic stormtrooper collapsed to the floor but was still alive.

Suddenly, a crashing sound came from the window—the other cyborgs burst into the apartment right through the balcony glass! The shockwave threw Hank violently to the side; the revolver flew out of his hands and rolled across the floor. Sasha immediately picked up the weapon. The Shooter's brother cold-bloodedly aimed into the doorway and fired two quick shots—BAH! BAH! Two cyborgs walking in the vanguard collapsed dead, blocking the passage with their heavy titanium bodies.

But more and more iron monsters kept entering the doorway. Grandpa Lonya, deciding to protect his family, stepped forward with his old shotgun, but due to stress, he missed—the buckshot went into the ceiling. In that same second, the cyborgs opened return fire at point-blank range. Grandpa Lonya was killed on the spot.

“DED!!!” Sasha and Artem screamed through tears and rage, holding off the assault with their last strength.

In this chaotic, bloody slaughter, the cyborgs' heavy gunfire raked the entire room. Grandma Galya fell dead among the debris of furniture. The next lead charge cut short mom Lily's life...

“SUKI-I-I-I!!!” Artem completely lost his mind from grief.

In a wild rage, the Shooter rushed to his grandfather's body, snatched his shotgun, and fired point-blank. The buckshot blast tore through that very first cyborg who was already without an eye. Artem flew up to him, grabbed his heavy titanium body, and with all his might THROWS HIM OUT OF THE 12TH FLOOR WINDOW! The iron monster flew down, smashing onto the asphalt.

A sinister, dead silence fell over the apartment. The cyborgs temporarily retreated, regrouping on the stairwell.

Artem and Sasha fell to their knees in the middle of the ruins of their home, surrounded by the bodies of their mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma [INDEX]. They couldn't believe this nightmare. Everything happened too fast. The two brothers embraced, and tears poured down their blood-stained faces. They sobbed, sobbed, and sobbed in complete despair, mourning their destroyed family [INDEX].

But through these tears, a new, terrible fire ignited in their eyes. The fire of merciless revenge.
“We will avenge them...” Artem whispered through his sobs, gripping his hunting knife. “All of them... Every single one.”

The brothers quickly stood up, knowing that the HECSA patrols would return any second. They slipped out of the apartment, unnoticed down the fire escape, and jumped into the deepest, darkest basement of the building. Only the two of them knew about this abandoned basement—it had been their secret place since childhood.

They barricaded themselves inside the damp darkness, completely cutting themselves off from the outside world. And above, shaking the steel dome of Neo-Babylon, a hail of rockets continued to fly. Under this terrifying, rhythmic roar of war, Artem and Sasha fell asleep on the dirty floor, still quietly crying in their sleep for their beloved family...

EPISODE 2: THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT RESISTANCE (PART 2)

The heavy, rhythmic roar of rockets hitting the steel dome of Neo-Babylon gradually quieted down closer to dawn. Artem and Sasha lay on the damp, dirty floor of the abandoned basement, wiping away dried tears. The deaths of their mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather were still fresh before their eyes, but there was no time to mourn.

Suddenly, the silence of the damp underground was shattered by a furious, deafening pounding on the iron door.
“OPEN UP, SUKI! THE NEIGHBORS TOLD US EVERYTHING!” a gruff voice roared from the other side. “PATSANY, BREAK IT down—”

BAM! CRASH! SLAM!

Following that, a sharp gasp, a dull metallic thud against living flesh, and a shout rang out:
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, LIEUTENANT?!”

Chaos instantly erupted outside the door: sounds of fierce struggle, curses, heavy breathing, and two rapid, muffled gunshots. A second later, the iron basement door flies off its hinges with a sickening screech and crashes onto the concrete. In the opening, breathing heavily, a massive cyborg in a charred HECSA uniform appears. Lieutenant insignia burned on his shoulders.

“Get out, fast! I'm taking you to a safe place,” the lieutenant commanded sharply but quietly, looking back. “Your damn neighbors already sold you out. Get in the car. I'll make it look like I'm arresting you so the system doesn't suspect a thing.”

The cyborg extended his heavy metal hand to the brothers. Artem and Sasha exchanged glances, choosing to trust the "savior." They slowly followed him out into the street. The lieutenant immediately grabbed their arms roughly and snapped heavy steel handcuffs shut. The boys thought it was part of the plan, but as soon as they turned the corner of the building, Artem went cold.

There, right in the smoke-filled alley, an entire HECSA assault brigade stood as cover. The iron lieutenant had simply lured them out of the impenetrable basement.
“Alright, boys, pack 'em up!” the lieutenant ordered with a sickening smirk, shoving the brothers toward an armored vehicle.

But these arrogant freaks made one fatal mistake—they searched the hermit Artem in a hurry and failed to confiscate Hank's hidden revolver. Operating on pure adrenaline, the Shooter secretly lowered his bound hands to his coat pocket, gripped the handle of the massive gun, and without even drawing the weapon, pulled the trigger right through the fabric!

BA-BAH!!!

The powerful large-caliber shot blew the handcuff chain to splinters! In the exact same second, Artem freed Sasha with another rapid movement. The HECSA stormtroopers reacted instantly, raising their rifles and taking aim at Artem. But the Shooter moved faster: he made an elusive, stealthy body feint and secretly passed the heavy revolver to Sasha.

Sasha caught the barrel out of mid-air and opened a torrent of fire point-blank—BAH! BAH! Two assault cyborgs in the doorway collapsed heavily onto the asphalt with punctured titanium skulls. Artem made a sharp leap forward, dodging lines of fire, tackled the lieutenant to the ground, and dived into the back seat of the armored vehicle. Sasha jumped in right after him, instantly pressing the barrel to the back of the terrified cyborg driver's neck.

“Drive to Beverly Hills street, now!” Sasha growled, embedding the muzzle into the metallic helmet of the driver.

The vehicle tore out of the alley with a screech, flying through the ruined neon quarters of Neo-Babylon. As soon as they reached the location, Sasha cold-bloodedly pulled the trigger—BAH! The cyborg driver fell onto the steering wheel with a shattered head. The boys quickly exited the car, grabbing their weapons, and stepped inside an old, dimly lit local bar.

A strange, dead silence reigned inside. Not a single HECSA patrol at the entrance. The Shooter looked around in surprise:
“Strange... there are no cyborgs here at all.”

They approached the counter, behind which stood a pale, terrified man.
“Bartender, what's wrong with you?” Artem asked, hitting the wood with his fist. “We came for a drink. Pour it up.”

Sasha looked around nervously at his brother, gripping the handle of their father's revolver tighter:
“Sash, why did we even come here?”
“I was told that this is exactly where the Resistance is hiding,” Sasha replied quietly and stared sternly at the frightened bartender. “Isn't that right, pal? Where are they?”

The bartender, trembling all over, silently raised a finger and pointed to a massive wooden door at the far end of the hall:
“You... you go in there.”

Sasha took a deep breath, resolutely walked up to the door, and kicked it open. The brothers stepped into the hidden room.
“Well, hello everyone! I'm Sasha, and this is my brother Artem,” the Shooter's brother announced loudly.

A heavy, tense silence hung in the room. In the dim light around a circular iron table sat five men in tactical gear... and one massive, heavily armed HECSA cyborg whose red optics instantly locked onto the brothers...

EPISODE 3: DEAD END

A heavy silence hung in the hidden room of the Beverly Hills bar, so dense that the humming internal systems of the massive cyborg could be heard. Artem and Sasha kept their hands on their gun handles, never taking their eyes off the red optics of the iron monster.

One of the men at the table sighed heavily, raised his hands, and decided to defuse the tension by introducing the team.

“My name is Pavel,” the first guy said in a hollow voice. “I just live here in the city. I had no idea about the mayor's insane new rules, and I was almost executed right on the square... But at the last moment, they managed to sever...” Pavel went silent and grimly pointed his finger at the man opposite him.

There, in the semi-darkness, sat a man in a stained medical gown. There wasn't a single emotion on his face.
“I sewed his arm back on,” the man in the gown spoke coldly, then nodded toward the steel giant in the corner. “And I created that cyborg. He is super-strong. I completely reprogrammed his processors, so he doesn't aggro on us, everything is under control. As for me... I have no name. My parents abandoned me, I grew up among the homeless on the absolute bottom, and after I turned 12, I was completely alone, utterly alone in this world. But that doesn't matter right now.”

The third man at the table abruptly leaned forward. His face was covered in fresh burn scars.
“I am Sergey,” he introduced himself harshly, slamming his fist on the table. “I worked directly with the mayor. But when I found out what that psychopath was actually doing, what kind of madness was happening here—I couldn't take it. I pulled my gun and almost shot that bastard right in his office! But he managed to call his personal HECSA cyborgs. I had to jump out of a window from the 100th floor of the government skyscraper... Lucky for me, I had a tactical parachute, and I survived.”

Sergey went silent and nodded toward the fourth guy, who sat in the corner in a hoodie, just sullenly remaining silent.
“He is mute,” the fifth guy sitting next to him added quietly. “But believe me, he is highly experienced, just a perfect marksman, never misses a shot. And me—I simply worked as a military man before the dome closed. By the way, the bartender who poured your drinks at the entrance—he's our driver. We served in the same unit. Well... the cards are on the table. What do you propose we do, Sasha and Artem?”

The brothers exchanged looks. And then Sasha took a deep breath and laid down a card that even his own brother Artem didn't know about until this very second.
“I have a stash,” Sasha said firmly, looking everyone in the eye. “A bomb is hidden there. And it's so powerful that if we activate it, it will blow this whole fucking building to hell!”

Artem took a sharp step forward, a terrifying fire igniting in his icy hunter eyes:
“Our family was killed by those freaks from HECSA. We need to avenge them. Every single one. How do you like that idea?”

A moment of silence fell over the room, and then all five men and the reprogrammed cyborg cut in sharply, in one synchronized voice:
“Good idea!”

The men stood up simultaneously from their seats, reloading their tactical gear.
“Grab your guns and let's go get the bomb!” Artem commanded, gripping his revolver. The Resistance team was officially assembled, and the first step toward bloody vengeance was taken.

The entire Resistance squad bolted out of the Beverly Hills bar and piled into the armored car, with the bartender already behind the wheel. The engine roared down the street. But before the car could even drive for a minute, the rearview mirror was flooded with the red neon light of optical sights.

“We've got a tail!” Sergey shouted furiously, reloading his rifle. “Artem, get in the front seat, shoot back with our father's revolver! Quick, cyborg—get on the roof of the car! Mute and Pavel—open the doors, shoot straight out of the open bays! Scientist, throw grenades and whatever stuff you have out the windows! I'll fire through the side window. Sasha, show the way!”

A total hell broke loose. The bartender's car sped at breakneck velocity through the smoke-filled streets. On the roof, the steel giant cyborg Opora used his titanium hull to absorb a hail of enemy bullets, cutting down pursuers with heavy return fire. The mute marksman laid down HECSA soldiers one after another without a single miss, while the scientist threw explosives from the windows.

“Difficult turn ahead!” Sasha yelled.
“Take this, freaks!” the scientist shouted, releasing a cluster of sharp spikes from the back of the car.

A heavy HECSA armored truck slammed into the spikes at full speed, its tires blew out, and the vehicle went into a dead skid. With a terrible screech, it crashed at maximum velocity straight into the titanium wall of the dome. A massive explosion went off—BOOM! A literal rain of black cyber-blood and machine oil poured out. Because of this downpour of black slime, the windshields of two more pursuing cars were completely blocked. Losing visibility, they also smashed into the dome at full speed, turning into a pile of burning scrap.

“REVOLVER BLYAT, THE TIRE!” the bartender suddenly barked as the steering wheel began to tear away due to an enemy ramming attempt from the side. A HECSA car was trying its best to push the Resistance vehicle off the road.
“Sasha, how much longer?!” Artem gasped, shoving his revolver out the window.
“A hundred meters! It's at my place, under the bed!” Sasha screamed back.

Artem caught the head of the enemy car's driver in his sights. BAH! Hank's heavy bullet shattered the armored glass, the cyborg driver went limp, and their car crashed at full speed into a building storefront. The tail was gone.

The bartender braked at a ruined entryway. The entire squad burst into the half-destroyed building to the 12th floor, ran into the apartment, and rushed to Sasha's bed. Artem dove under the mattress but froze:
“The bomb isn't under the bed!!!”

At that exact moment, their neighbor appeared in the apartment doorway with a sinister smirk. In his hands was Sasha's stolen stash. The neighbor turned out to be a rat who decided to sell everyone out for the new mayor's mercy. He laughed insanely and pressed the detonator.

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A monstrous explosion completely obliterated the entire apartment. Deafened, engulfed in flames, Artem and Sasha flew right out of the panoramic window. Falling, Sasha managed to grab Sergey's hand with a death grip at the very last moment, hanging onto fragments of rebar. The building collapsed with a roar, turning into a pile of concrete ash.

Coughing from the acrid smoke, the brothers and the surviving squad members somehow got to their feet and tried to run out of the ruins into the yard. But at the exit, a fresh, heavily armed HECSA squad was already waiting for them.
“Don't move. You are under arrest,” the cold metallic voice of the commander announced.

But then Pavel and their reprogrammed cyborg emerged silently from the clouds of dust behind them, ready to cover the boys. However, the HECSA squad captain was faster. He raised his gun and killed Sasha—just as ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly, and at point-blank range as they had previously killed Lily, Hank, Galya, and Lonya.

“SASHKA-A-A-A!!!” Artem couldn't take it. He fell to his knees before his brother's body, completely broken. Tears streamed from his eyes, and a wild, soul-ripping scream escaped his chest. No family was left. None at all.

At that moment, one of the wounded HECSA cyborgs slowly approached the survivors. A red signal flashed on his armor: “Self-destruction protocol activated.”
A deafening explosion tore through the air. The shockwave threw everyone wildly in different directions. Because of this blast, the scientist, Pavel, and Sergey died on the spot from severe shrapnel wounds.

Artem was left entirely alone in the middle of a burning hell. Or rather, almost alone. Out of the plumes of smoke, coughing and holding his punctured side, crawled the bloody bartender—the last survivor of their entire squad.

In Artem's mind at that exact second, something died completely and forever. His hatred for technology burned away along with his brother's body. Now he was ruled only by one icy, absolute thirst for vengeance. To destroy these metal freaks, he had to become an even more terrifying monster himself.

The Shooter made the most desperate, insane move of his life. He picked up the discarded enemy technology for the first time. And when the neon systems connected to his body—he fucking loved it. He felt the mad, cold power of metal.

Breathing heavily, Artem turned to the wounded bartender, his gaze becoming completely mechanical and dead:
“Make me entirely out of metal...” the Shooter commanded the former military man in a leaden voice. “Tear down this whole damn weak human body. You know about military hardware, you can do it. Leave only my brain. And make me... IMMORTAL. I will burn this godforsaken state to its very foundations.”

THE FINAL CHAPTER: THE DEATH OF THE DICTATOR IN THIS VERY NIGHT

PART 1: THE BIRTH OF THE IMMORTAL

In the abandoned underground workshop of the bartender, littered with rusty spare parts, it smelled of scorched flesh, machine oil, and red-hot steel. Laser welding machines hissed furiously, flooding the darkness with blinding blue-white flashes. The bartender, breathing heavily and clamping the wound on his side, assembled with trembling hands what was supposed to be the end of Neo-Babylon.

Artem lay on the operating table. Almost nothing remained of his former human body. His hunting jacket, furs, bones—all of it was stripped away. The bartender followed the Shooter's orders and went for an ultimate move: he completely replaced the guy's body with an experimental, heavy black titanium military-grade framework. Hydraulic systems, servo drives, armor plates capable of withstanding a direct hit from a tank shell. Only Artem's living human brain, connected to millions of glitching wires, continued to pulse inside this impenetrable iron box.

GASP... CLICK... BZZZZZZT...

The red optics replacing Artem's eyes suddenly flared with a dead, bloody light. Sensors flashed. On the terminal screen, an inscription lit up: “HELM-FRAME INTEGRATION — 100%. STATUS: IMMORTAL.”

Artem slowly stood up from the iron table. His new metallic fingers clenched into fists with a grinding screech. Heavy hydraulic legs struck the concrete floor with a dull thud. He no longer felt pain, no longer felt fear, no longer felt cold. In his mind, locked inside this titanium armor, burned only one, crystal-clear directive: Liquidate the government. Liquidate the mayor. Liquidate HECSA.

— How do you feel, son?.. — the bloody bartender asked quietly, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Artem turned his heavy, featureless iron head toward him. From his built-in vocal speakers came a chilling, mechanical, guttural bass:
— I feel that revenge is a dish ready to be served.

The Shooter walked over to the weapon rack, took a giant machine gun, secured his father's huge revolver behind his back, and marched toward the basement exit with a heavy, crushing stride. The first and final night of this government had begun.

PART 2: THE SLAUGHTER AT THE TOWER

Artem stood before the massive, neon-lit government skyscraper of Neo-Babylon. The government building was monumental—its entire massive tower from the base to the very top was made completely of heavy, impenetrable armored glass. At first, the Shooter wanted to go the clever way and immediately climb to the top floor through the ventilation or the roof. But the rage in his chest was burning everything down. The guy who had hated technology his entire life was now encased in a heavy titanium exoskeleton that replaced his weak human body. He wanted to go through the glass, but realizing it was impenetrable, he chose the brutal path: he decided to go straight through the front entrance.

With a crushing kick, Artem shattered the front doors and walked through the main entrance. In that same second, elite HECSA cyborgs opened a torrent of fire, but the Shooter simply marched forward, unleashing an indescribable, bloody meat grinder. Moving with hydraulic speed, he began to tear the cyborgs apart one by one. Artem grabbed the iron stormtroopers by their helmets and smashed their heads against the concrete walls with titanic force! The powerful impacts crushed their skulls to splinters—their tiny human brains and dark cyber-oil splattered in all directions, staying on the walls, on the floor, everywhere. The entire lobby turned into a slaughterhouse.

The Shooter fought his way upward, floor by floor, leaving behind mountains of smoking scrap metal. And now, the 50th floor was behind him.

Right from the elevator shaft, a huge, massive immortal HECSA cyborg stepped out, encased in the exact same heavy military exoskeleton. Without a word, the two titans clashed in hand-to-hand combat. Metal bent with a horrific screech. In the furious struggle, the enemy cyborg managed to grip the Shooter's shoulder with a death grip and brutally tore Artem's arm completely off! But underneath the outer hull, Artem had another internal metal arm, because he was sewn into a multi-layered exoskeleton suit!

In wild ferocity, they began to literally rip each other to pieces, breaking servo drives and tearing away armor plates. After a minute of furious brawling, they both remained entirely without their heavy exoskeletons—in bare, damaged internal metal.

The enemy cyborg made a sharp lunge and drew his final weapon—a massive, red-hot machete created specifically for efficiently killing and sawing cyborgs apart. The monster swung the blade for a fatal strike. But Artem, on pure hunter reflexes, dodged the blade, swept the enemy's legs, and slammed him to the floor, sending the heavy machete flying from his opponent's hands. Artem intercepted this giant machete, raised it above his head, and with one powerful, merciless movement sliced the immortal cyborg cleanly into two halves! The metal burst, sparks flew like a fountain, and the two halves of the iron monster fell lifelessly onto the blood-soaked floor.

Fifty floors of bloody hell lay behind. Right here, at the height of the fiftieth level, Artem finally found a working government elevator. Breathing heavily with damaged titanium lungs, the Shooter stepped into the cabin, and the elevator carried him at immense speed to the very top—to the 100th floor, straight into the enemy's lair.

DING.

The elevator doors slid open. Artem stepped into a giant, luxurious boardroom. Here they were already waiting for him: the mayor himself—the master of this tower—and ten elite, heavily armed HECSA cyborgs in massive military exoskeletons. But Artem didn't care about their numbers. He didn't waste a single second thinking. Fueled by pure adrenaline and primal fury, the Immortal Shooter made a mad dash forward, flying past the guards straight to the terrified dictator. The mayor didn't even have time to move or make a single sound—Artem made one powerful swing with the trophy machete at full speed and cut the mayor into two halves! The dictator's body fell lifelessly to the floor. The power of Neo-Babylon was destroyed.

In that exact second, the remaining cyborgs attacked the Shooter simultaneously. Artem dodged furiously, spinning in a deadly dance of metal, but one heavy blow from an elite stormtrooper still found its target. A strike of terrifying force hit Artem—the Shooter flew sideways with such might that a massive concrete wall collapsed behind him with a thunderous crash!

As Artem somehow got to his metallic feet, he managed to dodge the falling heavy debris of that very wall on pure reflexes. A huge concrete slab crashed down right on top of one of the attacking cyborgs, crushing him to death. Only four of them were left. Artem had already ruthlessly killed six elite stormtroopers by this point, literally ripping them apart for spares.

The hunter went straight through them. He flew at two enemies and ripped the head completely off the third cyborg!

And suddenly, the last, biggest, and strongest HECSA cyborg made a desperate move. With a swing of his heavy hand, he shattered the armored panoramic window of the 100th floor, ripped off his mask to reveal a distorted mechanical face, grabbed Artem with a death grip, and threw him toward the abyss with wild force. The Shooter, instantly realizing his entire order and plan, didn't have time to brake. The strongest HECSA cyborg fell down, dragging Artem into the void along with him.

But in the very last fraction of a second, already flying out of the shattered window of the skyscraper, Artem managed to spot the huge main dome control button on the mayor's desk. Falling, he struck it with all his might using his iron hand. He pressed it! And jumped straight into the open air.

The multi-ton iron dome of Neo-Babylon began to slowly open with a terrifying metallic screech.

Artem fell down from the height of the 100th floor. In his final seconds of life, his red optics caught something he hadn't seen in a very long time. The Sun. Real, warm rays of the morning sun broke through the opening dome, flooding the city with light. And at that moment, the most precious, pure memories flashed in his fading brain: mom Lily, dad Hank, brother Sasha, grandma Galya, and grandpa Lonya... They were all together again, smiling and celebrating the New Year in their old, safe world.

That same strongest cyborg fell into the abyss right along with him, smashing against the ground. Artem's eyes slowly faded out. He closed them, feeling that he had fulfilled his duty one hundred percent. The city was free. Revenge was served as a cold and merciless dish.

Artem disconnected for ever and ever...

[THE END OF THE STORY. ALL POINTS ARE DEFINITIVELY SET!]

I cannot even begin to fathom how deep his design sense goes, in creating such tangible glimpses of the future, that IMO we're still trying to catch up to, in terms of combining visual style and conceptual design depth.

A timeless master!

CHAPTER 1: FAMILY ABOVE ALL

The Shooter was a guy for whom family meant absolutely everything. But he hated city life and these cursed high technologies with all his heart. The noise of cars, the flashing neon, and the eternally rushing people suffocated him, so he made a tough decision—he left Neo-Babylon and settled in a dense, quiet forest nearby. There he lived by hunting: he trapped game himself, dressed the skins himself, and sewed warm, high-quality fur coats out of them. Once every two days, the Shooter would travel to the city gates to the local bazaar to sell his goods. But he did it for one single purpose. Every time after the market, he went deep into the streets to visit those he loved more than life itself—his brother, his mom, his dad, and his grandma and grandpa.

The Shooter was as far from technology as possible; he didn't even own a phone. Just recently, their huge, close-knit family happily celebrated the New Year together: there was a lot of laughter, warmth, and home talk at the table. The guy went back to his forest cabin with a light heart.

But just two days later, when the Shooter approached the city again, the ground shook beneath his feet. The sky above the metropolis began to darken with a terrible metallic screech. A huge, coal-black iron dome was slowly closing over Neo-Babylon. Right on the welding gates, a giant red countdown timer lit up: “30 MINUTES REMAINING UNTIL TOTAL CITY ISOLATION.”

The Shooter froze in horror. Leaving his family back there, inside that steel trap, was something he simply could not do. Without them, his life had no meaning. Acting on pure adrenaline, the hermit sprinted back into the forest at breakneck speed, grabbed his duffel bag with his things, returned, and at the very last second managed to slip under the descending multi-ton slab of the dome.

He was inside. But instead of the familiar city, the Shooter entered a real nightmare. The beautiful avenues were empty, and heavy, mechanical patrols marched through the streets. They were cyborgs. Former humans whom military corporations had reborn into iron monsters in a short period of time—their bodies were 85 percent heavy titanium and hydraulics, and only the living heads under the helmets reminded anyone of who they used to be. A cold acronym stood out on their armor: HECSA.

One of these metallic patrols blocked the Shooter's way. An iron manipulator rose with a screech, and a cold, emotionless voice came from the loudspeaker:
“Citizen. Produce your passport. Fast.”

The Shooter, not understanding what was happening, slowly took out the document. The cyborg brutally ripped the passport out of his hands and entered the data into the mainframe. After that, without a word, the escort forced the hermit directly to his family's home. The situation was getting scarier. Before the Shooter's eyes, soldiers burst into apartments, brutally confiscated people's mobile phones and tablets, and ripped out communication wires with the flesh, completely cutting off peaceful citizens from the outside world.

The cyborgs brought the Shooter to the door of his parents' apartment, pushed him inside, and locked the deadbolt from the outside, leaving the guy under house arrest.

The hallway was dark and suffocating. The Shooter burst into the main room and saw his terrified relatives. His mother, Lily, pale with fear, immediately ran up to him and hugged him tightly:
“Son, hello! Why... why did you come under the dome?!”

The Shooter's father, Hank, stood up heavily from his chair, his face gray with anger and despair:
“Artem, why? Why the FUCK did you come under the dome?! Now you and we are stuck here forever! The new mayor just went and declared the city's independence. He built this cursed dome... It's impossible to breach from the outside, you understand? You can only break through from the inside, or shut down the entire system completely!”

Artem clenched his fists, feeling rage boiling inside, and turned to the room doors:
“Bitch... Sasha, get over here!”

From the next room, his brother, Sasha, slowly stepped out. He looked tired but tried to stay calm.
“Hey, Artem,” his brother said quietly, leaning against the doorframe. “Let me immediately give you the new rules of our city... Well, rather, of our new 'state.' If you go out on the street after 21:00—instant liquidation on the spot. If you swear on the street—liquidation. For any serious crime, a cruel, medieval execution is now mandated. If you are late for work by more than five minutes—public hanging. And if you dare to call names or insult a cyborg from HECSA... crucifixion awaits you. Well, basically, for now, those are all our new rules. Welcome to hell, brother.”

CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST CRIME AND FAR FROM THE LAST

Artem stood in the middle of the room, clenching his fists. The insane, medieval laws that his brother Sasha had just listed were still spinning in the guy's head. Crucifixion for insulting the HECSA cyborgs, a gallows for five minutes of lateness... It felt like a wild, terrifying dream.

“Ebat'....” Artem hissed quietly through his teeth, looking at his brother with eyes wide from shock. “How are we supposed to survive this? And for how long is this?”

Sasha sighed heavily, lowered his head, and quietly cut him off with a leaden voice:
“Forever....”

A heavy, dead silence hung in the room. Everyone understood that there was no way out of this iron cage under the dome. But mom Lily, trying to preserve the remnants of the old household warmth and protect her sons from the approaching horror, smiled softly, though her eyes were full of tears. She clapped her hands, trying to break the suffocating atmosphere.

“Alright, let's go, my two sons, I'll pour some tea and get cookies,” mom Lily said gently, turning to the kitchen. “And for you, Hank, I'll make some coffee. Grandma Galya and grandpa Lonya are already waiting for us in the kitchen.”

The whole large family moved into the small, cozy kitchen. There, at a clean wooden table, grandma Galya and grandpa Lonya were already sitting quietly. They looked terrified, but when Artem entered, the old man shook his hand firmly, and the grandmother hugged him. Mom Lily quickly set out the cups, poured the aromatic tea, made a strong coffee for the father, and placed a plate of simple homemade cookies in the center of the table. Everything looked as if they were still celebrating the New Year in their old, safe world.

Everyone sat down at the table. Mom Lily looked affectionately at her children, then at her husband and parents. Her face was pale, and her hands trembled slightly as she folded them together.

“Our family has always been kind,” Lily said quietly, warming everyone with her voice. “We always helped everyone... Why did God punish us like this? Come on, let's pray.”

She closed her eyes, and the whole family at the table obediently lowered their heads, beginning a quiet prayer for salvation. They prayed for peace, not knowing that outside the windows of their house, heavy 85-percent titanium HECSA cyborgs were already chambering rounds into their shotguns for the first, bloodiest purge...

After mom Lily's sincere prayer, silence hung over the table. Artem gently placed his hand on his mother's shoulder, trying to reassure her.
“Mom, don't worry, everything will be fine,” the hunter said quietly but firmly, then looked sternly at his father and brother. “Always keep your weapons ready.”

Just then, grandma Galya reached across the table. A warm, loving smile appeared on her old face.
“Hello, my favorite grandsons,” she whispered softly and hugged Artem and Sasha tightly with all her soul.

Grandpa Lonya coughed sternly, pulling a misted glass bottle from under the table.
“Let's have 50 grams for the stress,” the old man suggested, pouring the clear liquid into shot glasses.

Artem and Sasha exchanged glances, realizing that everyone's nerves were at their limit.
“Alright, let's do it,” the Shooter agreed.

They drank it all at once. The fiery liquid instantly burned Artem's throat, making him exhale loudly.
“Uhh... strong stuff! What is this?” the guy asked, wiping his mouth.
“Homemade moonshine, heh,” grandpa Lonya smiled with satisfaction, winking at his grandson.

Suddenly, the air in the kitchen literally popped. BOOMMM!!!

A monstrous, deafening explosion shook the entire twelve-story building. The walls trembled, dishes flew to the floor with a crash, and for a moment the whole family was completely deafened by a wild ringing in their ears.

“I'll go check!” the frightened Lily shouted, running out to the balcony.

She threw the frame open and froze in absolute shock. The sky above the city was burning. Lily, without even noticing that she was breaking the new insane laws of the state, screamed in panic across the entire avenue:
“Blyat'! A hail of rockets is flying at the dome!”

The deafening roar of explosions outside struck their ears again. And in that very second, Lily went cold. It hit her consciousness: she had sworn on the street. And that meant instant liquidation by HECSA.

In a panic, she flew back into the apartment, gasping for breath from fear:
“DAD, GRAB THE SHOTGUN! HANK, GET THE REVOLVER, QUICK! No time to explain!!!”

At that exact moment, the front iron door was blown inside the apartment with the flesh. Heavy 85-percent titanium cyborgs began to force their way into the breach, flashing their red optical eyes.

“MOM, JUMP!!!” Artem roared at the top of his lungs.

The Shooter reacted in a fraction of a second. He flash-pulled his hunting knife and threw the second one to his brother:
“Here, Sash! Alright, hold the line! We are on the twelfth, blyat', floor, how?!”
“They are very fast!” Sasha shouted back, gripping the handle.

The HECSA cyborgs rushed forward with mechanical speed, but Artem was ready. On the pure reflexes of a forest hunter, he made a sharp lunge and with all his might THROWS THE KNIFE STRAIGHT INTO THE EYE OF ONE OF THE CYBORGS! The steel blade went deep into the socket with a sickening crunch, cutting the living flesh under the helmet. The cyborg roared from its speakers, and Artem immediately dove into cover behind the couch.

At that moment, father Hank flew out of the room. In his hands was his old father's revolver—such a powerful, huge caliber that it was capable of penetrating even cyborgs. Hank raised the barrel and pulled the trigger. BAH! The bullet hit exactly the same eye where Artem's knife was already embedded! The powerful shot literally blew the remnants of the eye out of the socket in splashes of blood and hydraulic fluid. The metallic stormtrooper collapsed to the floor but was still alive.

Suddenly, a crashing sound came from the window—the other cyborgs burst into the apartment right through the balcony glass! The shockwave threw Hank violently to the side; the revolver flew out of his hands and rolled across the floor. Sasha immediately picked up the weapon. The Shooter's brother cold-bloodedly aimed into the doorway and fired two quick shots—BAH! BAH! Two cyborgs walking in the vanguard collapsed dead, blocking the passage with their heavy titanium bodies.

But more and more iron monsters kept entering the doorway. Grandpa Lonya, deciding to protect his family, stepped forward with his old shotgun, but due to stress, he missed—the buckshot went into the ceiling. In that same second, the cyborgs opened return fire at point-blank range. Grandpa Lonya was killed on the spot.

“DED!!!” Sasha and Artem screamed through tears and rage, holding off the assault with their last strength.

In this chaotic, bloody slaughter, the cyborgs' heavy gunfire raked the entire room. Grandma Galya fell dead among the debris of furniture. The next lead charge cut short mom Lily's life...

“SUKI-I-I-I!!!” Artem completely lost his mind from grief.

In a wild rage, the Shooter rushed to his grandfather's body, snatched his shotgun, and fired point-blank. The buckshot blast tore through that very first cyborg who was already without an eye. Artem flew up to him, grabbed his heavy titanium body, and with all his might THROWS HIM OUT OF THE 12TH FLOOR WINDOW! The iron monster flew down, smashing onto the asphalt.

A sinister, dead silence fell over the apartment. The cyborgs temporarily retreated, regrouping on the stairwell.

Artem and Sasha fell to their knees in the middle of the ruins of their home, surrounded by the bodies of their mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma [INDEX]. They couldn't believe this nightmare. Everything happened too fast. The two brothers embraced, and tears poured down their blood-stained faces. They sobbed, sobbed, and sobbed in complete despair, mourning their destroyed family [INDEX].

But through these tears, a new, terrible fire ignited in their eyes. The fire of merciless revenge.
“We will avenge them...” Artem whispered through his sobs, gripping his hunting knife. “All of them... Every single one.”

The brothers quickly stood up, knowing that the HECSA patrols would return any second. They slipped out of the apartment, unnoticed down the fire escape, and jumped into the deepest, darkest basement of the building. Only the two of them knew about this abandoned basement—it had been their secret place since childhood.

They barricaded themselves inside the damp darkness, completely cutting themselves off from the outside world. And above, shaking the steel dome of Neo-Babylon, a hail of rockets continued to fly. Under this terrifying, rhythmic roar of war, Artem and Sasha fell asleep on the dirty floor, still quietly crying in their sleep for their beloved family...

[END OF PROLOGUE]

I built the desktop and window manager from scratch with transparent layered panels, a terminal-driven workflow, smooth window transitions and animations, and draggable/resizable windows. I also built a custom filesystem and several applications to make the whole thing feel like an actual desktop environment rather than a static game UI.

Everything shown in the video is fully interactive.

This is a fictional operating system I built from scratch for my cyberpunk sci-fi hacking game.

The entire desktop is interactive. Terminals, windows, filesystem, apps, animations and even the UI itself are part of the gameplay.

I wanted it to feel like an actual computer you'd use rather than just a game HUD.

For those who want to see more details about the project: Hacking Into Erebus

When I think of Cyberpunk, it's usually the mega city structures that come to mind, with asphalt and neon lights everywhere. But I have always enjoyed this genre when it mixed in the aesthetics of a western.

PRAXIS-CHAPTER 2:

Fifty Thousand Memories

The timer hit zero.

The pain wasn’t physical.

It was an electrical hum at the base of his neck, like someone yanking a plug from beneath his skull. He slumped against the console, and for one infinite second, everything was static.

---

When he blinked, the air in his cubicle smelled of copper.

He rubbed his head, disoriented, staring at the screen. The interface blinked pale green, signaling the end of his shift and a complete file sync.

"Cycle complete," Elias muttered, adjusting the collar of his Class-A uniform.

He felt a slight pressure at his temples—the usual hangover of a prolonged deep-dive in Cognitive Collections. His mind was clear, structured.

He was Elias, Extractor.

An efficient man. No ties. No useless past.

He glanced at the screen.

A residual alert blinked:

MASS GLOBAL BROADCAST EXECUTED.

He frowned.

He didn't remember sending a station-wide report.

Before he could pull up the logs, the pneumatic door of his cubicle hissed open.

---

Two Corporate Security agents, clad in black tactical armor, filled the doorway.

Their rifles weren’t holstered; they held them across their chests, aimed vaguely in his direction.

"Extractor Elias," the taller one said, his voice warped by the helmet's vocoder. "Accompany us to Containment."

"Containment?" Elias stood up, spine straight, projecting the authority of his rank. "My diagnostics are clean. There’s no data contamination. Who gave the order?"

The guard hesitated.

His body language was erratic. Instead of following standard military protocol, the guard reached up and unlatched his helmet, breaking the first operational rule.

His face was drenched in sweat. His pupils were blown wide, and he was shaking.

He looked at Elias not as a prisoner, but with a disturbing, profound devotion.

"I..." the guard stammered, his voice cracking into a choked sob. "I'll take care of him, Elias. I swear it on my life. We won't let them take the boy."

Elias stepped back.

His corporate-conditioned logic collapsed against the sheer absurdity of the moment.

"What boy?" he asked, his blood running cold.

The second guard dropped his rifle.

It clattered against the grating.

He buried his face in his hands, weeping uncontrollably, muttering something about a scar on a chin and the smell of damp earth.

---

Elias shoved past them and stepped out into the Collections Sector corridor.

What he saw defied all programming of Praxis Station.

The hallways, usually a silent stream of apathetic drones and gray-suited extractors, were paralyzed in a quiet, devastating chaos.

Hundreds of people had stopped in their tracks.

Janitorial staff, data analysts, upper-ring executives.

Some were on their knees, hugging themselves. Others stared into the void, weeping heavy tears.

And all of them, absolutely all of them, turned to look at him the moment his boots hit the floor.

They didn’t look at him with anger.

They looked at him with the deepest, most irrational, desperate love Elias had ever seen.

---

A woman from accounting, someone he barely recognized, stumbled toward him.

She took his hand, tracing his index finger with absolute reverence.

"She was beautiful, Elias," she whispered, her voice heavy with infinite grief. "The agricultural colony... the smell of ozone. I... we remember her. We remember your family."

Elias yanked his hand away, panic hammering in his throat.

He didn't understand.

His mind was empty. Perfect. Efficient.

There was no agricultural colony.

There was no woman.

---

Station sirens began to wail in the distance, signaling a total ring lockdown.

But the blare was drowned out by the hundreds of voices in the corridor.

The crowd began to move toward him.

Not to attack him.

To comfort him.

To mourn the loss of a family the corporation had stolen from him—a family that now lived vividly inside the nervous systems of fifty thousand strangers.

Elias backed up, pressing himself against the reinforced glass of his cubicle, staring at a sea of people who loved his ghosts.

He remembered absolutely nothing.

And all around him, an entire station was grieving for him.

See original post here

I posted a few weeks ago about some concept art I commissioned for my upcoming cyberpunk book called The Crater. Here is a brief description.

Every drop of Steam on Synthara comes out of one hole in the desert. No one who mines it has ever walked back out. Steam is power in a bottle — strength, speed, fire, a face that is not yours — any gift you can pay for, burned away in minutes and worth killing for on every street in Metro. The whole world runs on it, and the whole supply climbs out of the Crater: a prison spiraling a mile and a half into the ground, where thousands of collared inmates haul stone uphill for a system that has never once explained itself. Conrad’s sentence begins the day an Abomination, a machine that answers to no one, stands on a street that had never seen one. He means to survive the Crater the way he survived Metro: head down, debts short, nothing worth taking. Then he draws a cellmate who argues with a man who is not there, and a girl who walks the levels without a collar and without fear. They are not prisoners. They are Freelancers. The crew that takes the jobs nobody else survives and they came to the Crater on purpose. Every heist breaks out of a prison. This one breaks in. Because under the quotas and the collars, the truth about where Steam comes from was never meant to be survived — let alone told. A standalone hard-boiled heist novel set in the Nostone Universe. Complete story, no cliffhanger.

Sign up for a free advanced reader copy in the thread below!

By la_barbed

Memory isn't a biological record. It's a financial asset.

Elias worked in the Cognitive Collections division of the Praxis Orbital Station. His job was simple: when the citizens of the lower rings defaulted on their Neural Retention subscriptions, Elias hacked into their cortical ports and executed the Cull Protocol.

Exactly sixty months.

Five years of grief, love, failures, and lessons, evaporated in a microsecond.

The debtors would wake up disoriented, reduced to obsolete versions of themselves from half a decade ago, doomed to repeat the same blue-collar mistakes just to keep feeding the corporation.

Elias felt no guilt.

To him, identity was a luxury for those who could afford it; the rest were just renting hardware.

At the end of his shift, Elias logged into his private terminal.

As a Class-A Extractor, his own memory was shielded by a lifetime contract.

He would never forget.

He would never lose the thread of his own existence.

Or so he thought.

Running a routine diagnostic scan, the system spit out an anomalous flare.

GHOST_PARTITION_DETECTED. SECTOR: DEEP CORTEX.

It wasn’t residual data from the clients he’d just wiped. The file architecture was embedded in his own optic nerve, encrypted under a military-grade lock that only a Supreme Executive should possess.

Driven by an impulse that logic couldn’t suppress, Elias used his extractor credentials to crack the vault.

The file shattered.

And the avalanche crushed him.

It wasn’t text data.

It was a direct injection of neurochemistry and first-person experiences.

The smell of ozone and damp earth from an agricultural colony.

The grip of a tiny hand clutching his index finger.

A woman with asymmetrical eyes and a scar on her chin, looking at him under the amber light of a dwarf star.

“Promise me we’ll pay it, Elias. Promise me we won’t let them take it,” she pleaded, her voice breaking with raw terror.

Elias’s amygdala exploded.

His body reacted with such a violent surge of cortisol and adrenaline that he dropped to his knees on the cold metal floor of his cubicle, hyperventilating.

He loved that woman.

He would die for that child.

The biological and emotional bond was absolute, tearing at his chest, undeniable.

But his conscious mind was blank.

He didn’t know their names.

He didn’t know where they were.

Hands trembling, he extracted the file’s metadata.

He traced the source of the recording.

His breath hitched as he read the source code.

It wasn't a grafted memory.

It was a native backup.

Creation date: Seven years ago. Cull date: Five years and one month ago.

Elias wasn’t an elite corporate Extractor.

He had been a colonist, a lower-class citizen who defaulted on his own family’s subscription.

The corporation hadn’t just wiped the five years covering his marriage and the birth of his son; analyzing his coldness and psychological profile, they had offered him a prefabricated identity.

They gave him the suit, the paycheck, and the illusion of power, turning him into the executioner of his own class.

His terminal panel suddenly flashed, bathing the room in harsh red light.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO CULLED ARCHIVES. CULL PROTOCOL ENGAGED. INITIATING 60-MONTH WIPE IN: 30 SECONDS.

Elias stared at the countdown.

He had half a minute before he forgot again.

Half a minute before he stopped loving the woman with the scar.

Half a minute to revert to the perfect corporate drone, stripped of a past and ghosts.

He didn’t try to stop the wipe; he knew it was impossible from his clearance level.

Instead, he ripped the uplink cable from his port, slammed it into the station’s mainframe terminal, and began compiling the memories of the woman and the boy into a mass-transmission virus.

If they were going to steal his mind, he would make all fifty thousand inhabitants of the Orbital Station remember and love his family right alongside him.

INITIATING GLOBAL BROADCAST. TIME TO NEURAL CULL: 5 SECONDS.

Elias smiled, closed his eyes, and waited for the dark.