Cyberpunk City AI

The Zenith Dynamics storefront was too quiet. Marcus slipped through the glass doors after midnight, his boots echoing against immaculate tiles that didn’t belong in Iron Alley. The shelves were lined with sterile displays—cybernetic parts gleaming under cold white light. But they were decoys. He felt it in his bones.

He moved deeper, past a false wall that clicked open under his cybernetic touch. A stairwell spiraled down, the sterile brightness above giving way to industrial gloom below. The air grew colder. Quieter. Until everything went black.

When Marcus woke, his head was heavy, his arms shackled to a metal chair bolted into the floor. A dim strip-light hummed overhead, casting harsh shadows across a narrow cell. The scent of antiseptic and rust mingled in the air.

The door hissed, and a figure stepped inside—a Zenith agent in a crisp black coat, augmented eyes glowing faint gold. His voice was calm, clinical.

“Marcus Cain. The relic who betrayed his own. You’ve been a ghost a long time. Did you think we’d forgotten the MagRail?”

Marcus didn’t answer. His cybernetic eye scanned, quietly mapping the seams of his restraints. Servo-motors in his arm twitched against the metal cuffs, pressure building.

The agent leaned closer. “You should’ve stayed buried. Now, you’ll serve a different purpose. The harvest requires strong subjects.”

The word harvest was the spark. With a violent wrench, Marcus snapped one shackle, the groan of bending steel drowned by the agent’s startled curse. He surged upward, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him crashing into the wall.

The room exploded into chaos. Blows landed, metal against flesh, until Marcus stood over the agent, unconscious, the cuffs hanging broken from his wrists. He didn’t linger.

Throwing open the door, Marcus staggered into a wide corridor that stretched far beyond what could exist beneath Iron Alley. Cold blue lights lined the ceiling. Rows of reinforced doors marked each side. Behind some of them, muffled cries echoed. Others rattled faintly, as though something inside clawed for release.