Cyberpunk City AI

The room hummed with borrowed electricity and old habits. Neon strips washed the walls in violet and teal, bleeding over graffiti scars and stacked tech like a permanent midnight. Wires sagged from the ceiling like tired veins. The city outside was quiet in that way that meant it wasn’t — just waiting.

Eli sat slouched into the beanbag, headphones glowing faintly at his ears, eyes fixed on nothing. His leg bounced, stopped, bounced again. On the other side of the room, Marcus typed without looking up, code reflecting in his glasses, fingers moving with the calm precision of someone who needed rules to stay intact.

“You ever think,” Eli said, voice low, “that it wasn’t the Bliss that put me in the hospital… just the way I used it?”

Marcus paused. Not stopped — paused. Cursor blinking like a warning light.

“They said your heart spiked,” Marcus replied. “Said you flatlined for twelve seconds.”

Eli smirked weakly. “Yeah. Worst review I’ve ever gotten.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the bass leaking from Eli’s headphones. The room smelled faintly of warm plastic and stale energy drinks. On the shelf behind Marcus, an old NeuroBliss vial sat empty, repurposed as a pen holder — a joke neither of them laughed at anymore.

Eli closed his eyes. When he spoke again, it was softer.

“I miss it, man. Not the high — the quiet. The way everything stopped arguing with me. The way I didn’t feel like I was losing just by waking up.”

Marcus finally turned his chair. The neon carved hard lines across his face, made him look older than he was.

“You didn’t just get quiet,” he said. “You disappeared. You stopped eating. You stopped answering. You stopped being… here.”

Eli swallowed. The hospital lights flashed behind his eyes — white, merciless, sober. Jane’s voice echoed in his memory from weeks ago, talking about how everyone she knew was medicated into being acceptable. How normal was engineered now.

“I see people out there,” Eli said, gesturing vaguely toward the window, toward the city. “They’re all on something. NeuroBliss, mood loops, spiritual hacks, whatever keeps them upright. And I’m just… raw. All the time.”

Marcus stood, crossed the room, and leaned against the desk. “Yeah,” he said. “And that raw feeling? That’s you still being alive.”

Eli laughed, a short, cracked sound. “Alive feels overrated some nights.”

Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled out a small object, and set it on the desk between them. Not a vial — a hospital wristband, faded but intact. Eli’s name still printed on it.

“I kept that,” Marcus said. “In case you ever forgot how close you got.”

Eli stared at it. His leg stopped bouncing.

Outside, a siren wailed and dissolved into the city’s endless noise. Inside, the neon lights flickered, just for a second — imperfect, unstable, real.

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough not to go back,” Eli admitted.

Marcus didn’t answer right away. He just reached over and turned down the lights, letting the room soften, letting the quiet exist without chemical help.

“Then stay here tonight,” he said. “No Bliss. No fixes. Just us and the noise.”

Eli exhaled slowly, pulled the headphones off, and for the first time all evening, actually looked at his friend.

“Okay,” he said. “Just tonight.”

And in a city built on artificial calm, that small, trembling choice felt like rebellion.