VampireMJ on Nostr: Here's a Cyberpunk Story. I couldn't help it. 😅 #Cyberpunk ...

Here's a Cyberpunk Story. I couldn't help it. 😅
#Cyberpunk

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How the hell did this happen to me?

Box stared down at his legs—chrome and myomer ground into so much glittering scrap. Component rings, microlines, feedback relays: he’d never realised how many tiny pieces made a man walk again. Rider, his only street doc and a drinking buddy from way back, had sold him the implants for next to nothing. Still, three months of synth-soy and sleep-rotted nights to afford the surgery.

He lay on his side in the alley garbage, breathing spoiled burrito, leaking actuator fluid, and the sharper note of his own piss.

The punks who’d jacked him were already at the mouth of the alley, howling with laughter. Then they caught a look at someone, flinched, and took off. A second later a wheelchair squeaked into the dark.

Rider looked down at him. “You look better than the legs, Box. Almost.”

Box only grunted. His hand found the pistol he never had time to draw.

Getting him into the chair was ugly. Bits of shin-strut snagged in a wheel and ground out a noise like feedback shriek. As Rider pushed onto the sidewalk, Box cradled the gun in his lap and went inside himself.

“Null-shit stains,” he muttered. “Not even good enough for fertiliser. They don’t get happy. They don’t get forgiven. They don’t get to breathe.”

“Box.” Rider’s voice was low. “You never saw their faces before tonight. Don’t let their ghosts own you.”

“Don’t give me that. Those little bastards shattered my limbs and lifted my credstick. I hate them. Hate my life. Hate this rotting city.”

“You’ve crawled out of worse.”

“No. I’m done. First thing at home, barrel in the mouth. I mean it.”

Rider said nothing. Then he spun the chair.

Box was facing the two attackers, now huddled around a girl with nervous tics—a thin, twitchy thing whose shoulders jumped in a rhythm nobody could control. The kid who’d done most of the kicking pressed the stolen credstick into her palm. They hadn’t noticed the wheelchair at the alley’s edge.

“Li, go. Doc will patch you up.” The kid’s voice came out soft.

Box’s mouth moved but no words came.

“Where… where’d you get that?” he finally rasped.

“Solid tip, old man. Just luck. Please, Li—get fixed.”

Tears spilled down her face. She stared at the chip like it was a window onto some clean, quiet future. A job maybe. A place off the booster-gang grid. She hugged it and smiled.

Box’s hand lifted. The gunshot slapped the alley. The round took Li in the temple; she was dead before the blood mist settled. The attacker blinked at her, uncomprehending, and then looked toward Box—eyes wide, mouth already forming something that would never get said. The second shot took him in the throat.

The other kid ran, bullets chewing brickwork around him.

Box rolled forward, or maybe Rider pushed him—he never remembered. He leaned down to pull the credstick from the dead woman’s fingers. The attacker’s face stayed with him, that look of something curdled, almost offended. Like the kid had been so sure.

“That expression,” Box said. “You see it?”

Rider tugged the chair away. “No idea. Come on. I’ll get you new legs. Heavy discount.”

The credstick felt warm, stupidly light. Box couldn’t stop seeing the kid’s face. Couldn’t stop wondering what answer it had owed him that now he’d never get.