The underground tunnels beneath New Shanghai reeked of desperation and synthetic hope.
Maya pressed her back against the grimy wall of Sector Five's maintenance corridor, watching the steam from her breath dissipate in the frigid air as she waited for Lin to arrive. Around her, the city's forgotten infrastructure hummed with illegal activity—black market memory dealers, neural hackers, and the desperate souls who haunted the spaces between legal and criminal.
Her wrist communicator buzzed with an encrypted message from her clinic's security system: Marcus Webb arrived early. Currently waiting in reception. ARIA has informed him you're unavailable until 3 PM. He appears... displeased.
"Shit," Maya muttered, her fingers flying over the holographic interface as she sent instructions to her AI. The last thing she needed was to antagonize the Webb Syndicate before she understood what they wanted.
"Maya?" Lin's voice echoed from the tunnel entrance, tinged with the kind of fear that made Maya's protective instincts flare like a solar storm.
"Over here, sis."
Lin Cho emerged from the shadows, her university bag clutched against her chest like armor. At twenty-one, she still looked impossibly young to Maya, all sharp angles and brilliant eyes, her black hair pulled back in the messy bun that indicated she'd been buried in quantum physics textbooks again. But there was something different about her today, a tension in her shoulders that made Maya's stomach clench.
"The man with the neural scanner," Lin said without hesitation, "he wasn't just taking pictures. He was running deep memory scans. I could feel it tickling the edges of my consciousness."
Maya's blood went cold. "That's impossible. Deep scans require physical contact with neural ports. You can't—"
"Unless you have military-grade scanning equipment," Lin interrupted, her voice carrying the kind of authority that reminded Maya her little sister was actually a genius. "The kind used for memory reconnaissance during the Corporate Wars. Maya, what the hell is going on?"
Before Maya could answer, footsteps echoed from both ends of the tunnel. Multiple sets, moving with the coordinated precision of corporate security teams.
"We need to move. Now." Maya grabbed Lin's hand, pulling her toward a maintenance shaft she'd scouted months ago. "There's an emergency exit through the old subway system. We can—"
"Dr. Cho." The voice was smooth, cultured, and absolutely certain of its own authority. "There's no need to run. I simply want to talk."
Maya spun around to find herself facing a man who radiated wealth and power like heat from a forge. Marcus Webb was younger than she'd expected, perhaps forty, with silver-streaked dark hair and eyes the color of brushed steel. His suit probably cost more than Maya made in six months, and the neural implants glowing softly at his temples were the kind that marked him as memory aristocracy.
But it wasn't his appearance that made Maya's heart hammering against her ribs. It was the way he looked at Lin—like a collector appraising a priceless artifact.
"Mr. Webb," Maya said, stepping protectively in front of her sister. "You're early for our appointment."
"Appointments are for people who have the luxury of time," Marcus replied, his smile cold and calculating. "I don't."
Three more figures emerged from the shadows—corporate security in black tactical gear, their faces hidden behind neural dampening masks. One of them carried what looked like a portable memory extraction unit, the kind used for field harvesting.
"This is highly illegal," Maya said, trying to keep her voice steady. "Memory extraction requires informed consent, medical supervision, and—"
"Dr. Cho." Marcus's voice cut through her words like a blade. "Let me be very clear about something. The Webb Syndicate doesn't operate within the same legal framework as your little extraction clinic. We have agreements with law enforcement, with government officials, with the very people who write the regulations you're so fond of citing."
He took a step closer, and Maya caught the scent of expensive cologne mixed with something else—the ozone smell of recent neural interface use. Marcus Webb had been harvesting memories recently, probably within the last few hours.
"Now," he continued, "I'm prepared to make this worth your while. Lin possesses something extraordinarily rare, a pure childhood memory from before the age of seven. Specifically, a memory of your parents before their death in the factory explosion. Such memories are worth..." He paused, as if calculating. "Conservative estimate? Fifty million credits."
Lin gasped behind her. Maya felt her sister's hand tighten on her arm, trembling with fear and something else—recognition.
"How do you know about our parents?" Maya demanded.
"The Webb Syndicate knows about everyone, Dr. Cho. Your parents, Chen Li and Chen Wei, died in the Nakamura Industries explosion twelve years ago. Lin was nine years old. But here's what makes her memory so special—she was with your parents the morning they died. She has a pure recollection of that final conversation, untainted by grief or trauma processing. It's the last authentic memory of two people who are now dead."
Maya's world tilted. She'd never told anyone the details of that morning. Hell, she barely remembered them herself, she'd been seventeen, working a part-time job, when the news came. But Lin...
"The breakfast memory," Lin whispered, her voice barely audible. "They were laughing. Mama was making dumplings, and Papa was reading the news feed, complaining about factory safety standards. They were... they were happy."
"Exactly," Marcus said, his eyes lighting up with the fervor of a true collector. "Pure parental joy, untainted by knowledge of impending death. Do you have any idea what the wealthy would pay to experience that kind of authentic family happiness? Most of our clients have never had a genuine moment of parental love in their entire lives."
"You're talking about my family," Maya snarled, rage burning through her like acid. "Those aren't commodities. They're the last pieces of my parents that exist in this world."
"Everything is a commodity, Dr. Cho. The only variable is price." Marcus gestured to his security team. "I'm offering Lin fifty million credits for a single memory. That's enough to buy citizenship in the Upper Sectors, to live in luxury for the rest of your lives. All for something she'll never miss once it's gone."
"Never miss?" Lin stepped out from behind Maya, her young face fierce with anger. "That memory is the only proof I have that my parents loved each other. That they were happy. That their lives meant something before..." Her voice broke. "Before the corporations killed them."
Maya's head snapped toward her sister. "What did you say?"
Lin's eyes were bright with unshed tears, but her voice was steady. "The Nakamura Industries explosion wasn't an accident, Maya. I've been researching it for my thesis on corporate negligence. The safety standards Papa was complaining about that morning? Nakamura knew their equipment was faulty. They knew workers would die. But fixing it would have cut into their quarterly profits."
"Clever girl," Marcus said, his tone almost admiring. "But you're missing the bigger picture. Nakamura Industries is a subsidiary of Webb Syndicate. We've been harvesting memories from industrial 'accidents' for decades. Your parents weren't just victims, they were product development."
The words hit Maya like a physical blow. Their parents hadn't just died in a random accident. They'd been murdered for their memories, killed to create the very desperation that would force their daughters into the memory trade.
"You bastard," Maya breathed.
"I'm a businessman," Marcus replied calmly. "And right now, business is booming. Lin, I'm going to give you one chance to do this the easy way. Come with me voluntarily, undergo the extraction in a proper medical facility, and walk away fifty million credits richer. Refuse, and my team will extract the memory here and now, with none of the safeguards that prevent neural damage."
"She's not going anywhere with you," Maya said, her hand moving to the neural disruptor she kept hidden in her jacket—a black market device that could overload memory extraction equipment.
"Dr. Cho, you're a skilled memory technician, but you're not a soldier. My team has military-grade enhancement, combat memories from the Corporate Wars, and authorization to use lethal force if necessary." Marcus's smile never wavered. "Stand down."
"Maya." Lin's voice was quiet, resigned. "Maybe I should—"
"No." Maya's voice cracked like a whip. "I won't let them take the last piece of our parents. I don't care what it costs."
She pulled the neural disruptor from her jacket, but before she could activate it, the tunnel filled with the high-pitched whine of charging energy weapons. Marcus's security team had their neural stunners trained on both sisters.
"Dr. Cho," Marcus said, his tone patient but final, "you have ten seconds to reconsider. After that, my team will extract the memory from Lin's corpse if necessary. Pure memories retain their integrity for up to six hours after death."
Maya's finger hovered over the disruptor's trigger. One pulse would overload their extraction equipment, but it would also alert every security system in the sector. They'd never escape the tunnels alive.
"Five seconds," Marcus announced.
That's when the lights went out.
Emergency lighting flickered on, casting the tunnel in hellish red. In the confusion, Maya heard the distinctive sound of neural interface equipment shorting out—multiple units failing simultaneously.
"What the hell—" One of Marcus's security operatives spun around, his weapon's targeting system dark.
"EMP burst," another reported. "Someone's jamming our equipment."
A new voice echoed from the darkness—young, male, with an accent that suggested Upper Sector education but carried genuine concern.
"Maya! Lin! This way!"
A figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the tunnel—a young man with dark hair and kind eyes, wearing the kind of expensive casual clothes that marked him as corporate elite. But he was running toward them, not away, and his neural implants were flickering with the telltale signs of self-induced system shutdown.
"Adrian?" Marcus's voice carried genuine surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Stopping you from making a mistake, brother," the young man replied, extending his hand toward Maya and Lin. "These people aren't criminals. They're victims."
Maya stared at him in shock. Marcus Webb had a brother? And he was... helping them?
"Adrian Webb," he said quickly, meeting Maya's eyes. "I know this looks bad, but I've been trying to contact you for weeks. Marcus isn't just after Lin's memory—he's dying. Brain cancer. He thinks her pure memory contains some kind of neurological healing property."
"That's enough," Marcus snarled, drawing a personal sidearm—something Maya had never seen a corporate executive do. "Adrian, stand down. You don't understand the stakes."
"I understand perfectly," Adrian replied, positioning himself between the sisters and his brother's security team. "You're killing people for their memories, Marcus. Dad would be ashamed."
"Dad built this empire on exactly these kinds of decisions," Marcus shot back. "The weak sell their memories to the strong. It's the natural order."
"There's nothing natural about murder."
Maya watched this family drama unfold with growing disbelief. Two brothers, corporate royalty, arguing over her sister's life in a maintenance tunnel beneath New Shanghai. It would have been absurd if it weren't so terrifying.
"Maya," Adrian said quietly, not taking his eyes off his brother's security team, "there's a service tunnel behind you. It leads to the old subway system. From there, you can reach the Underground Markets. You'll be safe there."
"What about you?" The question slipped out before Maya could stop it.
Adrian smiled, and for a moment, his face was transformed by genuine warmth. "I'll be fine. Corporate immunity has its advantages."
"Adrian," Marcus warned, "if you interfere with this extraction, I'll have you declared mentally incompetent and committed to neural rehabilitation. Don't test me."
"Then I guess we'll see who Dad left the company to in his will," Adrian replied calmly.
Maya realized this was her chance. She grabbed Lin's hand and pulled her toward the service tunnel Adrian had indicated. As they ran, she heard the brothers continuing their argument, their voices echoing through the tunnels like the ghosts of their corporate dynasty.
"This isn't over!" Marcus shouted after them. "I'll find her, Maya! Pure memories like that don't stay hidden!"
But they were already gone, disappearing into the labyrinthine underground of New Shanghai like drops of water absorbed by an infinite sponge.
As they ran through the darkness, Lin's voice came back to her, barely audible over their footsteps: "Maya, I keep having these dreams. About Mama and Papa. But they're not dreams—they're too real, too detailed. What if Marcus is right? What if I really do have something special in my head?"
Maya squeezed her sister's hand tighter and ran faster into the unknown darkness ahead. Behind them, the corporate world was mobilizing to tear apart her sister's mind for profit.
But ahead of them, somewhere in the Underground Markets, maybe they could find allies. Maybe they could find answers.
Maybe they could find a way to fight back.
The hunt for Lin Cho's pure memory had begun in earnest, and Maya was beginning to realize that their parents' death had been just the opening move in a game that had been playing out for decades.
A game where human memories were the ultimate prize, and the Webb family held most of the cards.
But games could be won by players who were willing to break the rules.
And Maya Cho was quickly running out of rules she wasn't willing to break.