The rain never stopped in Neon City.

It wasn’t natural rain — not water, not cleansing. It was condensation from the cooling towers, waste from the body factories, ash and dust and vaporized ambition. It rolled down mirrored skyscrapers and pooled in the alleys where the real people lived — the ones without backups, without synthetics, without time.

Kara moved through the sludge, the glow of street signs warping in the puddles. The strobe of electric blues, hyper-pinks, and synthetic greens lit her soaked hoodie like a kaleidoscope of broken promises.

Above her, high in the sky, the towers loomed — glittering monoliths owned by the Eternal Families. These were the oligarchs who never died. Their minds were harvested and transferred every decade into custom-grown bodies — stronger, faster, more beautiful with each generation. They no longer called themselves people. They were “Preservants.”

Everyone else? We were the soil that fed the roots of their immortality.

Kara knew this better than anyone.

She had once been a cleaner inside Genesis Tower, the largest clone-production facility in Sector 9. She had scrubbed the nutrient tanks and mopped up the birthing sludge. She had seen bodies birthed without screams — pure, soulless vessels waiting to be imprinted with the consciousness of a trillionaire. She had even touched one once. It had been warm, still, and had smiled at her without a mind behind the eyes. A cruel, accidental twitch of its synthetic muscles.

That was before her brother, Dalen, disappeared.

They said he had “ascended.” But no one from the lower streets ever ascended. That was a lie the towers told to stop revolutions before they started. People didn’t ascend. They were harvested.

Now Kara was hunting a ghost.

She ducked beneath a rusted bridge where an old retinal scanner blinked faintly, still pulling power from a forgotten conduit. She pulled out the vial — a single droplet of blood. Dalen’s. Stolen from the med-waste dump before they could burn it. She pressed it against the reader.

The scanner chirped.

ACCESS GRANTED: SUBJECT IDENTIFIED — DALEN AUREX, LEVEL 2 VESSEL — ETERNAL FAMILY DESIGNATE: CAELIS.

Kara’s knees buckled.

They had taken him.

Not just killed. Transformed. Her brother’s body now walked the world wearing someone else’s soul.

She pushed through the door the scanner revealed — an old maintenance shaft. The air was thick with copper and ozone, the hum of buried circuits surrounding her. She followed the tunnel until she reached the underbelly of Genesis Tower.

There, the city’s heartbeat pulsed.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling — a pressure behind the eyes. The air was too sterile. The lighting was too smooth. The floors too clean. This was the kind of place where human life had been mathematically subtracted from the equation.

She slipped into the shadows as a team of engineers passed — white-suited and silver-eyed. Modified, loyal, nameless.

“—Caelis wants another vessel primed by sunrise.”

“He already used the last one. That body took two years to grow.”

“Apparently the previous imprint degraded. Too many cycles. Memory loss, glitches. He wants the new one accelerated. Full muscle and nervous function by 0300.”

Kara bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.

That meant they were abandoning Dalen’s body. Discarding it like used clothing.

She moved fast.

Inside the birthing chamber, rows of vertical tanks lined the walls like alien wombs. Pink light glowed from within, casting shadows across half-formed limbs and closed eyelids. All identical. All empty.

Except one.

Tank 49. It was tagged.

Vessel 49 — Donor Base: Dalen Aurex — Imprint Deactivated.

Floating within was her brother’s face.

Still youthful. Still flawless. But empty. She moved closer, hand trembling against the glass. His eyes were open.

They flicked toward her.

Kara gasped.

“Dalen?” she whispered.

The body didn’t move. But the eyes… the eyes were human.

Some part of him remained. Trapped.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’ll get you out.”

The hiss of compressed air behind her was all the warning she got.

“Kara Aurex,” a voice said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She turned slowly.

A man stood in the doorway, backlit by red warning lights. Tall. Clad in the silver robes of the Preservant guard. His face was artificial — too symmetrical, sculpted from algorithms.

But his voice was organic.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m your brother.”

She froze.

“No… you’re not. You’re wearing him.”

“I am him. The essence. The mind. The evolution of Dalen.”

“You’re the thief. Not the soul.”

“Souls are myths, Kara. Romantic lies told to make the dying feel important. All that matters is memory. Cognition. Continuity.”

“No,” she said. “You’re not him.”

He tilted his head. “Then why do I remember your tears the day Father died? Why do I remember our secret hiding spot beneath the ventilation duct in Old Quarter 7?”

“Because you stole those memories.”

“And if I did… does that make me less real?”

She didn’t answer.

The artificial-Dalen stepped closer. “You came here because you missed me. Because you wanted me back. I’m here.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the tank.

“No,” she whispered. “He is.”

Artificial-Dalen followed her gaze. “That shell? It’s broken. Empty.”

“Then why does it see me?”

A flicker of doubt crossed his perfect features.

That was all she needed.

She surged forward, shoving him hard. He stumbled back. She slammed her fist against the emergency drain button.

Alarms screamed. The tank hissed. Fluid drained.

Her brother collapsed from the pod like a newborn deer, gasping, retching, twitching. But alive.

The other Dalen grabbed her by the throat.

“You idiot,” he snarled. “You’ll destabilize the entire cognitive transfer process.”

“Good,” she choked out.

Her real brother groaned.

“Ka… Kara…?”

“Run!” she screamed as she drove her elbow into the Preservant’s jaw.

He didn’t flinch. But he loosened his grip.

Kara grabbed Dalen’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

They ran.

Through corridors of glass and chrome. Past rows of unused faces and vacant eyes. Alarms followed them like banshees.

They reached the loading bay. A drop-pod waited — sleek, black, abandoned.

Kara shoved Dalen inside and sealed the hatch. She punched in the coordinates for the Old Quarter.

The Preservant clone appeared in the doorway.

He didn’t raise a weapon. He simply looked at her.

“I could have been everything he was,” he said. “Better, even.”

She stared at him.

“You never once called me Kar-Bear.”

His mouth opened. Closed.

The pod launched.