Category: Cyberpunk City Shorts

Short stories about Cyberpunk City

  • The Mark Beneath the Bar

    Lyra learned early that the best seat in Neon Spire wasn’t at the top of a tower—it was behind the bar, where every lie eventually surfaced. From there, she watched deals happen in reflections: in mirrored liquor shelves, in chrome tabletops, in the way people spoke in fragments and let the silence finish their sentences.…

  • Above the Flicker, Still Rooted

    They used to count time by power outages. In Iron Alley, the lights never fully went out—they just flickered, stuttered, came back weaker. Neon signs buzzed like dying insects, and rainwater pooled in the cracks of rusted walkways. That was where they met: two people leaning against the same malfunctioning vending unit, waiting for it…

  • Signal Amplified

    NeuroBliss cleared Phase V when Elara Kade was still a junior analyst, back when the city thought regulation could keep pace with ambition. Now she worked nights. Elara rented a sublevel room beneath the Neon Labyrinth, concrete sweating from coolant leaks, air thick with solvent and ozone. She wasn’t a chemist by training — systems…

  • Off the Books, On the Grid

    Neon Spire doesn’t run on power or profit alone — it runs on coders in forgotten apartments, working off the grid so the city can breathe. No titles. No conscience. Just code, neon, and NeuroBliss.

  • Just One Night of Relief

    Neon rushes by as regret stays still. One choice. One night of relief. A love lost to NeuroBliss and a city that never gives answers—only momentum. 🌃

  • The Girl the City Gave Him

    By the time Eli first tried NeuroBliss, he had already learned how to disappear. Not in a dramatic way—no runaways, no shouting matches, no slammed doors. Eli simply faded at the edges of rooms. In school, teachers praised his quiet focus and forgot his name by the next semester. In Iron Alley, people stepped around…

  • The Fox That Never Sleeps

    Kira had learned early that Iron Alley wasn’t a single place—it was a vertical maze of survival, stacked walkways and forgotten floors built on top of one another until the sky itself felt optional. She moved through it with practiced ease, weaving past flickering vendor stalls, rusted service doors, and the quiet desperation that clung…

  • The Last Modulator in Iron Alley

    The market in Iron Alley never slept—it only flickered. Neon signs buzzed overhead, throwing broken light across puddles of oil and rainwater, while cables hung like vines from the steel ribs of the alleyway. Vendors shouted in clipped code and half-legal dialects, hawking implants, cracked firmware, obsolete tech no one else wanted anymore. That was…

  • Twelve Seconds From Quiet

    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…

  • Between the Vial and the Vine

    They called her Jane of the Middle Floors — an apartment between sky and squalor, where the Neon Spire’s glow pooled in the windows like water. She worked nights managing a concierge console for Ascendant Holdings: smile, route, sanitize, repeat. High society passed through her feeds in bespoke silhouettes, lacquered hair, and algorithm-approved laughter. They…