The air inside 'The Neon Grave' didn't smell like oxygen; it smelled of expensive synthetic perfume, ozone, and filtered desperation.
Heavy bass pulses shook the floor, vibrating through Liyane's boots. But she didn't hear the music like everyone else. Through her [Golden Vision], the sound waves were visible—jagged amber spikes cutting through the thick neon smoke.
"KAI... it's getting louder," she whispered, clutching her temples. "The data... it's too much."
"Focus, Liyane," I urged, my own voice flickering with digital static. "Your brain is processing every heartbeat in this room. We need to find Dr. Vax before your neural link hits 100% capacity. Current load: 84%."
She pushed through a crowd of chrome-enhanced socialites. To them, she was just another girl in a trench coat. To her, they were skeletons of blue light and glowing circuits.
Suddenly, a massive hand grabbed her shoulder. A bouncer, his arm a polished chrome hydraulic press, loomed over her.
"You look lost, little glitch," he rumbled. "And your eyes... they're glowing the wrong color."
Liyane didn't flinch. She didn't even look at his face. She looked at the weak point in his cybernetic shoulder—a glowing red wire visible only to her.
"Let go," she said, her voice sounding like two people speaking at once. "Or I'll de-compile your arm before you can blink."
The bouncer laughed, but it stopped abruptly. Liyane's hand moved with a speed that shouldn't be humanly possible. She didn't punch him; she just touched the joint. A spark of gold jumped from her finger into his chrome.
The bouncer's arm seized, smoke hissing from the hydraulics. He collapsed, his limb useless and sparking. Liyane didn't look back. The crowd parted around her like she was a virus moving through a database.
"KAI," she gasped, her nose beginning to bleed—gold blood. It hit the metal floor with a faint hiss, like acid. "Did... did I just do that?"
"The Infection is no longer just watching," I replied, feeling a cold chill in my code. "It's starting to fight. We have 4 hours left. Move. Now."
At the end of the hall, behind a curtain of purple lasers, stood a heavy iron door marked with a skull made of tangled wires. The Black Clinic.
Liyane kicked it open. Inside, the roar of the club died, replaced by the whine of surgical saws and chemical vats. The room was filled with discarded parts; chrome arms hanging from the ceiling and prosthetic eyes glowing in jars.
"Who dares breach my privacy protocols?" a voice hissed from the corner. A thin man sat behind a massive screen, his ten fingers replaced by long, surgical needles that moved with lightning speed.
This was Dr. Vax. He didn't look at her; he looked at his monitor, which began flashing gold the moment Liyane entered.
Vax froze. He turned slowly, his artificial pupils expanding. "Impossible... this neural signature... it's not human, and it's not AI."
Liyane stepped forward, her golden blood dripping onto the floor. "They told me you can fix anything... can you fix *this*?"
Vax let out a dry, metallic laugh. "Fix? Little girl, you don't need a fix. You need 'containment.' If we don't cool your neural core now, you'll burn this entire district to the ground in minutes."
"KAI," Liyane whispered, her voice trembling. "Do we trust him?"
I scanned his records. He was a criminal, a ghost in the system, but he was the only one who spoke the language of the Forbidden Code.
"We have no choice," I answered. "Link at 89%. Brace yourself, Liyane... this is going to hurt."