Neo Soul City

Neo Soul City smells different when you wake up before sunrise.

It's not just the usual cocktail of hot concrete, vape smoke, and whatever flavor of garbage got left behind after the clubs closed. No — at 5:27 AM, it smells like metal and ozone, like the city itself is sweating.

I notice it the second I open my window. My smart glass is supposed to filter out the worst of the city air, but something always sneaks through. Something sharp. Something ancient. I tell myself it's my imagination — some trick my brain plays after binge-watching too many conspiracy streams the night before. But the smell sticks, like the air's been cut open and no one bothered to stitch it up.

I don't have time to think about it.

Not with class at 7, a term paper due, and a rent payment bouncing in my brain like a warning shot.

I'm just a student. Nineteen, broke, and allergic to good decisions. My name's Marcus Reyes — just Marcus, because nobody in this city remembers your last name unless you owe them money or blood. I go to Neo Soul University — which sounds impressive until you realize it's half-sponsored by FloorStore and half-run by whatever tech firm donated the most that month. Most of my professors are holograms. My textbooks update themselves every six hours. And nobody asks why the campus Wi-Fi glitches every time there's a full moon.

That's just life here.

That's just Neo Soul City.

You learn not to ask.

The streets are still damp from last night's rain — the neon in the puddles looks like blood from a synthetic god.

I cut through Rust Road, where the vending machines sell everything from ramen to unlicensed implants. A homeless guy sleeps beneath a drone-charging station, one arm cybernetic, the other cradling a broken Muti crystal like a teddy bear. A girl my age — pink hair, chrome legs, dead eyes — tries to hand me a flyer for some underground church that worships the old gods nobody believes in until they see one standing at the end of their bed.

I don't stop.

I can't.

Because this city eats the slow.

At the train platform, my AR glasses glitch — not the usual pop-ups trying to sell me synthetic sneakers or discount memory implants. No, this is something else.

A symbol flickers across my lenses, just for a second: a spiral made of broken bones.

I blink, and it's gone.

I don't know it yet, but that symbol is older than the city. Older than the corporations. Older than the sky itself.

I'm not special. Not yet. But the bones remember me.

The sky is leaking.

That's what the old man next to me mutters when the train arrives. His skin's the color of old paper, his veins glow faintly blue beneath the surface — Muti poisoning, probably from working too close to one of the underground veins back in the day. He looks at me, pupils spiraling like black holes, and says it again:

"The sky is leaking. The bones remember."

I laugh, because what else are you supposed to do?

I get on the train.

I put in my earbuds.

I tell myself he's crazy.

And somewhere beneath my feet, deep below the tracks, something laughs back.

The train's humming through the veins of the city now. We pass broken billboards, rusted drone ports, and a gang of kids tagging the inside of the tunnel with bio-luminescent spray paint — their graffiti pulses like a heartbeat.

My AR feed tries to recover, but it's lagging. I see faces where there aren't any. Hear whispers layered beneath my playlist. Static hisses between the beats. Someone says my name.

I yank the glasses off.

Nothing. Just tired eyes and my reflection in the dark glass of the train window. But the symbol's still burned into my mind — the spiral of bones. Something about it feels… familiar.

Like déjà vu.

Like the dream I had as a kid — falling through a crack in the sidewalk into a cavern full of voices.

Class is boring, because of course it is. Professor Weiland's hologram flickers with every passing cloud, and half the students aren't even real — just bots logging attendance for someone who paid extra to sleep in.

I try to focus. Really, I do. But the static hasn't stopped. It's like it's inside my ears now. Like I'm hearing something I'm not supposed to — not through the glasses, but through the walls.

The floor beneath my desk trembles. Just once.

Like something massive is shifting beneath the building.

Nobody else notices.

Nobody ever does.

After class, I head to the campus café to pretend I can afford coffee. There's a student protest forming near the front gates — something about AI grading bias, or maybe the cafeteria meat being cloned from extinct animals. Hard to tell.

That's when I see her.

She's leaning against a light post, watching me like she's been waiting for hours. Pale skin. Black eyes. Tattoos that look like circuit boards climbing up her neck and disappearing beneath her coat. She doesn't blink.

When I pass, she says nothing. Just holds up a single card.

It's blank.

Or at least, it looks blank until I tilt it.

Then I see it: that same spiral.

Broken bones.

Cracked sky.

I look up to ask her what it means — but she's already gone.

Like she was never there.

I head home early. I tell myself it's because I'm tired. Because I need to work on that paper. Because the city's getting weirder by the hour.

But deep down, I know the truth:

I saw something today.

Something real.

Something that knows me.

I fall asleep with the lights on. And in my dream, I'm walking through tunnels that stretch beneath the city, older than any map. The walls are made of skulls. The ceiling drips with blood that turns into stars.

And the spiral is everywhere.

Welcome to Neo Soul City.

Class starts again tomorrow.

Hope you survive the lesson.