Page 5 of Neon Flux

The soft beams of light hardened, jerking and fracturing as my Flux melded with them, speeding them up, looking for any echo of the data we needed.

There—a cluster of files marked with POM’s classified tag, their headers glowing ominously. One strike of lightning, and a cascade of images and diagrams burst into life around me.

Blueprints for wearable tech. A prototype for a portable field generator that could absorb and redirect massive kinetic impacts.

I heard whooping from the gang of boys, then I felt it. A presence—a shadow that moved just beyond my reach. I tried to follow it, but it was like trying to catch smoke in your hands. It wasn’t like any other signal I’d ever seen before. My Flux drew me toward it, like I was magnetized, being pulled out of orbit.

A warning flared in my program, and I let the shadow go. I checked my firewall, where I had trapped the group. The boys’ digital avatars still sat happily inside, but Taos…

“What the hell are you doing?”

She’d gotten out while I’d been searching and was messing around in the directory, pulling file after file manually, absorbed completely.

My screen lit up with angry red warnings:Unauthorized Access DetectedandSecurity Measures Activated.

A counterattack program was already launching, fast and aggressive, its algorithms clawing at my code. The purple lightning shredded, dissipating into the virtual space. Now we were all insects in a spider’s web, and I had to hope I was fast enough to escape before its fangs sank in.

Corporate-level, all right.

My fingers flew. I fired off a decoy algorithm, letting it mimic my signal and draw the program’s attention while I got us out of here.

The program adapted, and the decoy burned out. A firewall snapped shut behind me, locking me into a corner of the system. A trap.

Not bad.

I launched a spike program to crack the encryption holding me in place. The firewall shattered, but the system retaliated—a worm program bore down, seeking to trace my location.

In cyberspace, it was massive, like something from an old storybook. I heard swearing from the boys. We weren’t in any physical danger, but if the worm locked our location down, no doubt POM would send security before we could leave this room. Security—or worse.

I threw up a firewall, but the worm broke through instantly.Fuck.

That’s when I felt the Flux in my blood thrumming, and I didn’t hold it back.

A surge shot through me, and I twisted the electrical field, shrinking it down into a controlled pulse. I compressed it smaller and smaller until it swept through the transistors of the server—a micro-EMP. The worm program fragmented. My program swept the remnants, ensuring every trace was gone. No echoes, no backups. Nothing.

My fingers flew across the keys, severing connections, rerouting our location through proxies. The system fought back, trying to chase me, an immune response to a toxic invader.

With a few keystrokes and a surge from my Flux, we found ourselves outside the ICE again, leaving the barrier intact as if it had never been broken.

I scraped the Vysor off my face, coming back to full reality with a hard jolt. Hands caught me as I fell backward—Lock’s hands.

“Damn, that was pretty fucking cool.” He helped me stand up.

“What the fuck were you—” I started, but Taos waved her hand at me.

“Annnnnd, the file is uploaded. We got it, E! We fucking got it!”

She pulled me into an embrace, and I was still reeling from adrenaline, so I didn’t fight it. She pulled back, and Lock grabbed my shoulder to steady me.

“That was some damn good work, Eon,” he said, and I saw the corners of his eyes crinkle up in a smile. “We’re gonna be unstoppable with you! It’s going to be a whole new world.” His eyes lit up, and something in me cracked. More whoops and cheers from the rest of the group, and the corner of my mouth twitched up.

A shot rang over the white noise of the servers, and something wet hit my face. Gore oozed from Lock’s forehead as he fell to his knees and hit the ground with a sickeningthud.

No. Not again.

“Security!” Arms wrapped around me and threw me to the ground as more shots rang out, sparks flying from the servers. The acrid smell of ozone and scorched metal filled the air, mixing with the copper tang of blood. I hit the ground hard.

Above me, chaos erupted. Shouts of panic were barely audible over the barrage of gunfire. Shadows darted between the server stacks, the flickering neon lights casting jagged silhouettes that only made the confusion worse.