Kei's breathing was steady, but his mind was a storm. The vision he had seen—the fractured glimpses of his possible futures—wouldn't leave him. Each version of himself was stronger, faster, and wielding abilities beyond his imagination. But right now, he was still just a survivor, trapped in a prison where time itself conspired against him.
The metallic ground beneath his feet trembled. The shifting of the prison had become a constant, but this time, it wasn't the walls moving. It was something else.
A pulse.
Not a sound, but a sensation—a force rippling through the air, making the fragments of time embedded in his body stir violently. His fingers twitched as his vision blurred for a second. He felt it… something awakening.
BZZZZT!
An explosion of energy surged through him, sending shockwaves across the platform. Kei fell to one knee, his nerves burning as if his entire body was being rewritten. A faint, glowing circuit-like pattern flickered across his forearm before vanishing. His head throbbed with an unfamiliar rush of data—codes, structures, digital veins threading through his mind.
Neuromancer…
The word echoed in his thoughts, but its meaning was still unclear. Was this the evolution he was meant to undergo? Had the fragments of time somehow fused with something else inside him?
Before he could even begin to grasp it, a voice interrupted.
"Interesting… Looks like you're finally waking up."
Kei's head snapped upward.
A figure stood at the edge of the next platform—a silhouette against the neon abyss of the prison's depths. They weren't guards. They weren't one of the nameless prisoners either. No, this person was something else.
Something… familiar.
And for the first time in a long while, Kei felt a chill—not from fear, but from the realization that whatever was coming next was about to change everything.