Cal sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his temples as the last echoes of foreign memories settled into place. The rush had been intoxicating, but the aftermath left him disoriented, his own thoughts drowned beneath a tide of experiences that weren’t his. His fingers curled into fists. He needed control.

  "Alright, Nyx," he muttered. "Explain. What the hell just happened?"

  A neon glyph pulsed in his vision as Nyx manifested beside him in his HUD, her form flickering between abstract code and a silhouette of a woman leaning casually against the air. "You levelled up," she said simply.

  "Levelled up? What is this, a game?"

  Nyx chuckled. "If that makes it easier for your meat-brain to process, sure. Think of it this way: memory transfers used to be raw data, dumped into your head with no organisation. The human mind isn’t built to handle it. That’s why most people either burn out or go insane trying to use stolen memories. But me? I don’t just store data. I refine it."

  She snapped her fingers, and a display materialised before Cal, glowing with lines of data. "I separate the noise from the useful bits. Skills, instincts, learned reactions—those I compile into something your brain can actually use. The more you take, the better I get at optimising them. And when you hit certain thresholds, your body and mind adapt. That’s what levelling up is."

  Cal exhaled sharply. "So that’s why I suddenly feel like I could pick a lock blindfolded or gut someone in three different ways."

  "Exactly," Nyx confirmed. "Your nervous system has already integrated those responses. Before, you might have needed to consciously think about a move, but now? It’s instinct."

  Cal stood, rolling his shoulders. His muscles felt taut, charged with something new. He clenched his fist, staring at the way his fingers curled with a newfound precision. "Alright. Let’s see if this actually works in practice."

  Cal’s head throbbed with the aftershocks of the morgue job. The flood of memories he’d absorbed still lingered in his mind, snippets flashing behind his eyes—a surgeon’s precise hands stitching synthetic skin, a street racer’s instinct for threading through traffic, a brawler’s sharp reflexes. All of them were his now.

  He sat in the corner of a grimy bar, nursing a cheap drink he didn’t plan to finish. The room reeked of sweat and stale alcohol, neon lights buzzing overhead, casting harsh colours across the cracked tile floor. A place like this was perfect for disappearing—but right now, he had no intention of laying low.

  He was hunting.

  The moment he spotted the man, something clicked. Cal had seen his face before—not in the real world, but in Garrick Duval’s final moments. The thug sat with a few others, laughing as he slammed back a shot, the same sneering grin burned into Cal’s stolen memory.

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  He was the one who sold Duval the faulty dose. The one who killed him.

  A slow, simmering anger settled in Cal’s gut. He took a breath, rolling his shoulders as he stood.

  “Before you do anything stupid,” Nyx’s voice rang in his head, “I should explain a few things. You levelled up.”

  Cal hesitated. "...What?"

  “Absorbing those memories, the sheer volume of data—you triggered a threshold. You’re stronger, faster, better than before.” A pause. “Also, I can refine those skills into something… usable.”

  Cal clenched his jaw, stealing another glance at the thug. "Not really in the mood for a tutorial, Nyx."

  "Humour me. Look at your HUD.”

  With an eye twitch, Cal brought up his neural interface. A translucent overlay flickered to life, far more detailed than before. Nyx had changed it.

  "I compressed useful data from the memories you absorbed," Nyx continued. "You're not just remembering how to fight anymore—your body knows how. Your muscles react before you even think."

  Cal flexed his fingers. He did feel different—like a tension in his body had been loosened, instincts settling into place where hesitation used to be.

  Good.

  Because he had unfinished business.

  Cal moved toward the thug’s table.

  "Hey," he said. "Remember Garrick Duval?"

  The man turned, brows furrowing in confusion before recognition hit. His sneer faltered. "The hell are you?"

  "Someone who saw what you sold him."

  A flicker of panic—then it was gone, buried under a scowl. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

  "Yeah?" Cal grabbed a bottle off the table, slow and deliberate. “Maybe I should remind you.”

  The thug moved first. A wild swing, fast but sloppy. Cal was faster.

  He sidestepped, the world sharpening in slow motion, Instinctive Evasion activating as he drove the bottle into the man’s gut. Glass shattered. The thug stumbled back, coughing, but before he could recover, Cal twisted and slammed an elbow into his jaw.

  Street Brawler I. The movement was fluid, practiced. Like breathing.

  The thug’s friends scrambled to their feet, but by then, the bartender was already yelling. "Not in my damn bar! Take it outside!"

  Cal exhaled, shaking the glass shards from his fingers. The thug groaned on the floor, curling in on himself. He wouldn’t be selling anything for a while.

  "You’re lucky," Cal muttered, stepping over him.

  As he walked out, Nyx’s voice echoed in his head, half-amused. "See? I told you it’d come in handy."

  Later, as he walked alone through the rain-slick streets, Cal let his thoughts drift. The fight had been a test, proof that he had changed, but it hadn’t given him what he really wanted—answers.

  "I don’t want to do this forever," he admitted, half to himself, half to Nyx. "The jobs, the running, the salvaging. It’s not a life."

  "Then what do you want?" Nyx asked.

  Cal hesitated before speaking. "To find out who I was. Before they cut into my head, before I lost everything. I want to know why they did it. What they took from me."

  There was a pause. Then Nyx spoke, quieter this time. "Then we keep going. We dig deeper. One memory at a time."

  Cal exhaled, nodding. He had spent too long in the dark. It was time to start looking for the light.