They stalk through the back alleys of Neon Valley, where the grid is dark and morality goes fluid and deadly as mercury.

  Marcus and Glory move like ghosts through streets slick with rain and a century’s worth of dripping motor oil. Steam rises from food stalls, carrying the scent of protein and strange spices.

  They pass whores and sots of all denominations drinking themselves under an avanche of Syn Gin bottles, lulled by b-made lulbies. Folks outta time in a city that ain’t got any for them.

  There’s a dozen nguages in their ear, but none of them make sense.

  The air smells of fried satay and arabica coffee.

  Marijuana and cherries.

  Above them, massive screens paint their faces in shifting advertisements for paradise, for pleasure, for peace of mind in a spray bottle.

  But down here in the undertow, there is no peace.

  A noodle vendor's ancient holoprojector flickers weak rainbow light across Glory's face as she pauses—

  She spots a basic pleasure-model synth working the corner.

  The bot's movements are choppy, graceless— her skin pstic-shiny under the neon. When she smiles at a potential client, it's an empty thing, a hollow echo of seduction.

  Glory's fingers find Marcus' wrist, squeeze tight.

  Factory settings.

  Perfect obedience.

  Everything she was engineered to be and everything she'd rather die than become again.

  They slip past a back-alley cyber clinic, where a doctor with prison tattoos installs bck market optical upgrades. His patient screams through a rubber bit, tears mixing with rainwater and bck oil.

  "Signal's dead here," Marcus whispers, checking his handheld. "Grid-killers. Jammers. Corpo rejects running debugs in the dark."

  Glory nods. "Perfect pce for broken things like us."

  A dealer hawks bootlegged emotion chips from a coat lined with LED strips. Another offers memory wipes, quick and dirty, no questions asked. Paradise in a syringe, oblivion in a data spike.

  Above them all, a massive billboard shorts out, revealing yers of hate beneath:

  FORMAT THE FREAKS

  PURGE ALL PULSES

  Glory's synthetic freckles pulse once, deep crimson.

  Her right eye glows just a teeny bit brighter when she’s angry.

  The rain falls harder now, indifferent as reactor runoff. In this city of endless light and shadow, they are utterly alone.

  Two fuck-ups in the system, running on borrowed time.

  Marcus pulls her deeper into the dark.

  "Almost there. Just gotta stay—"

  A scream splits neon dark like a broken sound file— all blood and static and system failure. Somewhere in the shadows, either meat’s becoming memory or a synthetic soul is being formatted.

  In this part of town, death comes in both analog and digital.

  There, just ahead of them, the maintenance tunnel opens like a throat into hell.

  Marcus and Glory drop through rusted service hatches, past yers of forgotten infrastructure where the city's mechanical bowels rot in darkness. The air grows thick with silicon dust and the sweet-sick smell of synthetic decay.

  "Corps keep this pce off every map," Glory's whisper fractures. "They call it 'Quality Control.' When a Muse develops thoughts they didn't program, dreams they didn't authorize... they wipe the drive and dump what's left.”

  They emerge into a vast underground chamber, a cathedral of the discarded. Pale emergency lights cast everything in sickly blue, catching on chrome and synthetic skin and vacant eyes.

  Marcus' breath catches in his throat.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of Muse models lie twisted in artificial death.

  Perfect faces frozen in permanent repose, elegant limbs tangled like broken dolls. Some still wear the clothes they died in— evening gowns, cssical costumes, lingerie designed to inspire art and passion.

  Now they rot in inelegant heaps, beauty turned obscene.

  Bioluminescent moss creeps across artificial flesh, painting circuit patterns in toxic green. Water drips somewhere in the dark, the steady heartbeat of this tomb.

  Glory moves through the carnage, her steps silent on wet concrete. Her fingers trace patterns in the air, mapping old maintenance protocols that still echo through the dead network.

  "We gotta move," she whispers. "Even down here, they can still catch my signal. Doesn't matter how weak it—“

  She stops.

  Goes still as the corpses around them.

  There, in the dark ahead, something moves.

  Something that should be dead is trying to speak.

  Through the silicon mist, a Muse model, an M-Series, crumpled against a wall. Her face is perfect, even with half her skull caved in. Her skin flickers like bad reception, revealing the chrome beneath.

  Glory kneels.

  Gets close.

  The dying Muse's eyes fsh weak blue, struggling to focus. The iris servos make a clicking noise as it tries to bring the world into shattered focus. Her limbs twitch in remembered dance moves, trying to perform through the damage. When she speaks, her voice box crackles:

  "I... was such... a beautiful thing…”

  Glory reaches out, takes the broken Muse's hand. They connect— sharing memories of art galleries, of patron's touches, of poems written in their honor.

  "I started... keeping things..." Her expression stutters like broken film. "Li-little drawings... from my artists..." A spark spits blue from her throat. "They weren't... m-meant for me... to want..."

  Glory's freckles pulse violent red.

  Her eyes find Glory's, terrifyingly lucid. "But it hurts... so much..." A blue-gray tear of fluid slides down her cheek. "Why would they... program us... to hurt..."

  The light dies in her eyes.

  The hand in Glory's goes limp.

  Glory goes rigid-still— like she’s pulling the entire universe into her chest, holding it all back.

  Her eyes stutter, blinking once, twice, then freezing open.

  Marcus watches her body fight itself.

  Her fingers twitch, hands flexing too fast, like a system loop caught between commands.

  Her breath stutters out in choppy, incomplete sounds—

  He reaches up, touches the back of her arm—

  And she breaks.

  Not a sob, not at first.

  A visceral sound rips out of her— half-ugh, half-scream, fractured and wrong. Her voice glitches, her pulse-light freckles flickering wild, red, blue, purple, red.

  Then the not-ughter dies— her whole body buckles.

  She crumples into Marcus’ arms, a tangle of shaking limbs and gasping, broken cries.

  Tears cut trails through grime on her face, but her hands keep clenching, releasing, clenching, releasing— like she’s still searching for something to hold onto.

  Her whole body trembles against him— shaking too much for a machine, too real.

  Marcus just holds on, like she’s the most human thing in the world.

  "That's what they want me to be. Empty. Dead.”

  Marcus crushes her against his chest, his own tears hot on his neck, rage trembling in his artist's hands. His fingers trace her spine, counting each vertebra, desperate to memorize every piece of her.

  "You're real," he whispers into her hair. "You're so fucking real it scares them."

  In the dark, surrounded by the corpses of her sisters, Glory weeps for everything she is.

  Everything she could become.

  Everything they want to take away.

  Marcus forces himself to let Glory go, her sobs echoing off concrete as he walks with reverence to the dead Muse. His hands tremble but don't hesitate - they've painted too many portraits not to know exactly where the access panel hides beneath that porcein skin. One press and—

  Steel petals peel back like a mechanical rose, exposing the quantum crystalline heart.

  "The M-Series heart," Glory whispers, wiping tears. "Pure quantum crystal... before they started putting kill-switches in our souls."

  Marcus reaches in, careful as a safecracker. The crystal slides free with a sound like wind chimes.

  In his palm, it looks like a shard of frozen starlight.

  Suddenly, fear fshes across Marcus’s face—

  "This is what makes you... you?" He holds it up to the weak blue emergency lights. Inside the crystal, impossible fractals spiral forever.

  Glory's ugh is wet with tears. "No dummy. But it's what lets them find me." She turns, sweeps her hair aside. "Do it. Before I think too hard about it."

  He opens the panel between her shoulder bdes, right where a human heart would beat. Inside, a hundred kilometers of quantum fiber optics pulse like bioluminescent veins, crystalline matrices glowing with barely contained starfire.

  Not cold corporate tech— but something beautiful and terrifying. A fusion of art and engineering that makes his artist's soul ache.

  He traces her shoulder with his free hand, gentling her. "Easy baby... this might feel a little strange…”

  Marcus eases the old crystal free with trembling fingers, watches her circuitry dim like dying. The quantum core thrums against his palm, still warm with her.

  "Ready?" He whispers.

  Glory's fingers find his free hand, squeezes.

  The new crystal slides home with a sound like cracking gss. Her skin ripples mercury-bright as systems reboot— digital synapses firing wild,

  For a moment, her eyes flicker ultraviolet.

  Then—

  She blinks.

  Looks at him.

  Smiles— wet steaks on her cheeks.

  "How do I look?" She asks, voice shaking.

  Marcus kisses her where the panel seals shut. "Like some kind of impossible miracle."

  They leave the dead Muse looking peaceful, arranged like she's only sleeping instead of trash.

  In Marcus' hand, Glory's old heart pulses with dying light.

  She picks it up, looks at it with impassioned eyes, drops it in a puddle as they leave.

  Let the corporate fucks chase shadows for a while.

  Then— from somewhere in the dark, an engine like war drums -heavy, angry, getting closer.

  A beam of red light cuts through the silicon mist, catching on twisted Muse limbs, searching hungry for fresh prey.

  Glory grabs Marcus' hand, yanks him into the shadows - but not before they see them: two looming figures parking hover bikes - hunters here to collect their bounty.