Cyberpunk City AI

The shelves of Protowares hummed with quiet energy, their rows of glowing bottles casting shifting ribbons of light across the chrome walls. Liora moved carefully between the aisles, her cybernetic arm whirring softly with each step. She’d been in dozens of tech shops before, but this place was different—each vial here seemed alive, as if it carried more than just chemical compounds.

Her eyes locked on one bottle in particular. It glowed a sharp, crystalline blue, brighter than any synth-fuel or neural coolant she’d ever seen. At first glance, it could have been mistaken for NeuroBliss, the infamous street drug sold in every shadowed corner of the Spire. But the old machinist who ran Protowares had called it Luminis Serum, and he claimed it was far stronger—so potent that even the smallest dose could burn through a mind like lightning, not dulling the senses but igniting them. Injected in the right place, it could turn a person’s thoughts into visible glyphs dancing across their skin. Injected in the wrong place… well, nobody had lived to talk about it.

Liora’s fingers curled around the bottle’s neck, feeling the warmth pulsing through the glass. The light refracted across her face, tracing her cheekbones and catching on the faint, etched scars from battles she didn’t speak about. This wasn’t a purchase she could make lightly—not with every gang in the Spire sniffing around for the Serum, not with the Rust Devils’ enforcers rumored to have bought out the last shipment.

She thought about the message she’d intercepted earlier that night—coordinates, a time, and one word: trade. Whoever had the matching vial would be at that meeting, and she needed to be there first. Whether to stop them, or to claim the other half of the set, she wasn’t sure. But the moment she slipped the bottle into a secure compartment in her jacket, her mind was already racing through escape routes.

Outside, the Spire’s neon haze beckoned, humming with promise and danger. Liora didn’t know if she was walking toward salvation or ruin—but as the Serum’s glow seeped through the seam of her jacket, she knew there was no turning back. Whatever happened next, the city was about to see her mark.