Bronze-coated alloy. Darkened recesses. Benin bronze.

  Aiden tugged at his raincoat, the damp nylon clinging to his fingers. The statue had a sword in hand, frozen in an African warrior’s garb—they dressed up an embalmed corpse and called it important. Something Africans would do.

  **"The ewedu soup I ate was the worst. Too much soy-based protein isolate,"** Aiden heard someone say as he shouldered through the crowd. Technology had drained the life from many things in this floating city, and food was no exception.

  He was in **ìpàg??**, the only place he could stay undetected. You could pass through for a week and never hear a word in any African language.

  Aiden tilted his head, rubbing the back of his neck. A slow, humming pressure crept along his spine—the unmistakable pull of something above. The street lights flickered. Conversations faltered. A baby cried, startled by something it couldn’t name.

  Reflexively, Aiden looked up.

  A figure in a hooded robe streaked across the sky—like a game frozen for too long, suddenly speeding up to catch lost time. Glowing blue energy crackled from its core, illuminating the intricate arcane circuitry embedded in its attire. Its face was obscured beneath the hood, with only a single glowing cross-shaped light visible.

  **Soon.**

  He exhaled sharply, turning toward the intersection. The glow from the café lights was inviting—anyone would want to step inside for a hot drink. The doors slid open, a seamless hiss of pressurized air revealing an industrial-chic café—modern minimalism softened by warm wood and worn leather.

  Aiden found his spot. It was always his spot, where he could watch the baristas work.

  Bola, the African with precise rows of tribal scars, stood behind the counter. For the few days Aiden had been here, the man wore a priest’s robe and a pink bow tie. The kind of man who’d spike your drink, deliver some profound nonsense, then tell the cowboys you didn’t leave in the sky. Something illegal would certainly be his words.

  The servo motors in Bola’s reinforced prosthetic hummed as he reached for the kettle. Matte black plating covered his forearm, its surface etched with serial numbers. **Ghana’s Aldwar combat grade.** Hydraulic pistons adjusted, fingers whirring as they grasped the delicate ceramic cup. A machine built for battlefield efficiency is now devoted to the patient craft of a barista.

  Eerie.

  Aiden flicked his hair back into place. “Militant turned barista?” He chuckled. “Did you ever leave the ground?”

  A slow smile crept across Bola’s face. “Gryphon zealot, how are you?” His ugliness was the stuff of legend.

  Superheated water hissed as it met the loose-leaf blend, steam curling around the articulated joints of the mechanical hand. The pressure regulators compensated instantly, ensuring not a single tremor disturbed the pour. A measured teaspoon of sugar was dumped in.

  A metal hand scraped the table, dragging itself forward, stopping millimeters from Aiden’s drink. A brown paper. No words. None needed.

  Aiden lifted it and ran a thumb along the edge. Heavy stock. Printed ink, not digital.

  **One look and you’d just know.**

  Bola stirred his cup. “One man wanted me to do a job. I did it well. Took off the lady’s head. He brought me up from the Expanse. The first one wasn’t a liar. Lucky me.”

  His chuckle rang, soaked in a bottle of hysteria. He let the tea steep, the arm’s internal diagnostics flashing a green status light near the wrist.

  “It was his wife,” Bola continued. “She cheated and thought she could hide.”

  Aiden leaned on the table. “A foreigner?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know? She was like a fish out of water. Don’t be offended, anyway, white boy.”

  Aiden smirked, lifting his cup.

  “She left heaven for the junkyard. Spent my life trying to escape and still died.”

  Bola’s grin widened. “Ah, the man don kpai. He dey do cardio on top woman wey no be e wife. Small small, heart no gree. His olosho got the better of him.”

  “What about you?” Bola asked. “Might not seem like it, but I know you weren’t born here. You got the smell of death or something. These hoods don’t have that on you. The nice smell—”

  “Why are you trying to be poetic?” Aiden downed his drink, pocketing the paper. “It’s like seeing a gorilla twerking.”

  He stood, adjusting his coat.

  **Walking through these streets. Neo-noir film.**

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  He didn’t notice the absence of electricity—**for the first time in his life.**

  New Africa. The best place to get your chipset done. The seven countries didn’t combine for nothing. People from all over the world were here, and even more tried to come to this floating city. Something he was about to bring to its knees.

  The **cool night air** brushed against his skin, carrying the faint scent of damp pavement and footsteps that smelled like blood.

  He unrolled the paper.

  **Mr. Adebayo Okonkwo**

  Flat 3, Block B, Unity Estate

  10 Opebi Road, Ikeja

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Aiden sucked in a cold breath. **On Tinubu.** He exhaled through his teeth. **I hope this isn’t bullshit.**

  He walked at a steady pace, his fingers idly tracing the frame of his glasses. He slipped them from his face, tilting them this way and that, studying the way the city lights bent along the lenses.

  A bright white glow from a towering building caught the edge of the glass. He turned the angle, letting the light refract—**bend, twist, flare**—until it shot straight into his own eyes.

  A sharp, blinding flash.

  IT WAS A HAZE, BLACK AND WHITE, **intense surgical lights** arranged in a hexagonal pattern.

  “Subject: **___**, cleared for bone graft insertion. Chipset calibration ready,” a voice droned from somewhere beyond the lights. The man squinted, his mismatched eyes—one a pale green, the other a dull brown—catching slivers of movement in the mirrored ceiling above. His reflection looked alien in the antiseptic glow of this operating theater: a wiry body strapped to a table, a bristling black mustache curling over a mouth that hadn’t smiled in years, and legs bound tight with polymer restraints.

  The surgeon’s gloved hands were slightly raised, fingers gently curled.

  “All right, let’s get a look under the hood,” the woman to his left said. She was a distance away from the black table. A variety of forceps, scissors, scalpels, clamps, and retractors were neatly arranged.

  Her giggle, like a car alarm going off repeatedly, went an octave higher. “I’d say, based on what we’ve got here, our friend from Ground City is… _overcompensating_.” She gestured vaguely at the blanket covering the patient’s lower half. Laughter erupted from someone behind the bio-shielding curtain.

  “Oh, give it a rest, Lem,” said another voice.

  “I don’t care how impressive his ‘Ground City imports’ are. What I care about is whether this Atom Gear integration doesn’t blow up in our faces. Or his.”

  “?l?run ran wa l?w?.”

  “Blow up?” The man on the table finally spoke, his voice a dry rasp as the sedative fog wore thin. “Not the kind of encouragement I was hoping for.”

  The surgeon—Dr. Caren, her ID badge proclaimed—bent over his exposed thigh, tilting her head to catch his gaze through her face shield.

  “Relax. If it does blow up, it’ll take your leg, not your… _assets_.”

  She smirked. He didn’t.

  “Right, let’s focus,” Dr. Caren said. She turned to a screen displaying an intricate 3D model of his skeleton. “We’re grafting the chipset just above the femur. Stabilizer node here, interface node there.” She tapped the glowing diagram with a stylus. “We’ve reinforced the implant’s signal array, but this kind of integration? It’s unstable, even with prime Suspended-grade gear. And if his system rejects it—”

  “This chipset can fry you,” Lem said, adjusting his gloves.

  “I didn’t have options,” the man grunted.

  “Hey, it works for some,” Lem said, grinning as he tightened the man's restraints. “Wild splicing’s the poor man’s Catalyst Factor. You’d fit right in.”

  “Quiet,” Dr. Caren snapped. “This is a delicate graft. Either help or get out.”

  She leaned closer to the man, muttering low enough that only he could hear. “Lem’s an idiot, but he’s not wrong. If this doesn’t take, there’s no going back. Once the chipset’s in, it locks out your cellular capacity for the Factor. No second chances. You knew that when you signed up for this, right?”

  “I know,” he said. His eyes darted to the glowing edge of the screen. “Just do it.”

  The hum of the Atom Gear containment unit filled the room. A small surgical drone hovered nearby, its manipulators delicately positioning the gleaming chipset—a tiny, curved piece of darkened alloy, its surface laced with quantum-responsive circuitry that shimmered faintly under the operating lights.

  _Hold still. Don’t move._

  _Goddamn, don’t you move._

  “Stop it. I gotta find your vein!”

  She was straddling his chest, a blue plastic syrette in one hand.

  “You don’t lie still, I'll deal with you!”

  A body jerked against the bonds. Pain amplifiers flooded his system—cytokines, bradykinin, prostaglandins—turning every nerve into fire. It was painful to watch. Blood beaded from his pores, his breath shuddering in short, forced bursts.

  “Are you sure his frame can take it?” another technician asked, glancing from the patient’s lean build to the hefty model of the chipset. “His bone density’s barely at baseline. If his skeleton doesn’t fuse fast enough—”

  “It’ll work,” Caren interrupted. “The bone integration will calcify. Eventually. It’s just…” She trailed off, then sighed. “Let’s talk about the _real_ issue. He wants the Atom Gear in his _watch._”

  The room fell silent, save for the whir of machines.

  Then, Lem let out a bark of laughter. “His _watch?_ What is this, amateur hour? Do you think a wristwatch is stable enough to carry Atom Gear? The surface area is—what? Ten square centimeters, max? You’re asking that thing to channel quantum harmonics. You’d be lucky if it didn’t melt off your arm.”

  “Shut up,” Caren snapped, but her frown deepened. She turned back to the patient. “This watch of yours… It’s barely big enough to house the Gear. You’re talking about cramming one of the most unstable substances on the planet into a casing smaller than a handgun. Do you understand how limited your range of effects will be? Gloves are standard for a reason. Watches… watches are _hell._”

  The man smiled faintly, his mustache twitching as he exhaled through his nose. “I’m not trying to reshape the universe, Doc. I need it for _small effects._ Precise ones. A glove’s too conspicuous for what I’ve got planned.”

  “Planned for what?” Lem muttered under his breath.

  Blood dribbled from his nose. His lips trembled. “Planned for sur…vi…ving,” he gasped, words rattling through a collapsed lung.

  “Speaking of Ground City…” another technician muttered as he calibrated the containment drone holding the Atom Gear. “How the hell did someone like _him_ get up here? You’ve got no Factor, no Council sponsorship, no registered connections. What are you doing on this table?”

  The man’s green and brown eyes shifted lazily toward the technician. “Connections,” he said.

  “‘Connections,’” Lem muttered. “Figures. Seems like everyone’s got ‘em these days. The Council cracks down on the Catalyst Factor labs one day, and the next, half the black-market rats from Ground City are crawling up the lift. Can’t trust anyone anymore.”

  The man said he wasn’t trying to reshape the universe. But here’s the thing about men who say that—they usually end up trying anyway. And when they fail, they fall hard. Suspended doesn’t forgive ambition. It swallows it whole.

  “Careful what you say,” Caren warned. “Connections or not, he’s on _this_ table, and that makes him my problem.”

  “Not for long,” Lem muttered, but he kept quiet after that.