20 Million Credits

The city was dark. Smoke clung to the streets, thick and dirty, lit by the flicker of busted neon signs buzzing overhead. The buildings leaned like they were tired of standing. Sirens echoed somewhere in the distance, but no one looked up.

I stepped over a junkie passed out on the sidewalk, twitching in his sleep. Another one was mumbling to himself, hugging a broken vending machine.

I couldn't do anything.

It's been a year since I got reincarnated into this world. A cyberpunk dump with zero mercy. I showed up with nothing—no name, no ID, no credits.

Back then, I thought I had an edge. I was a hacker. A good one.

Turns out that means jack shit here.

This world doesn't care what you can do unless you've got something to back it. Money. Power. A gun.

I ducked into an alley, found the garage door behind a stack of rusted-out bikes, and yanked it up. It creaked like it hadn't been opened in years.

"I'm back, old man," I said as I walked in.

The place was a mess. Tools scattered across the floor, wires hanging from the ceiling like vines. A half-dismantled drone sat on the table, still sparking. The air smelled like burnt metal and cheap solder.

It was home. For now.

The door in the back creaked open, metal scraping against metal. A short old man stepped out, rubbing a stained rag along his prosthetic arm. The old cybernetic limb hissed softly as the joints flexed—outdated, bulky, but still running smooth. He built it himself.

"Where the hell you been?" he muttered, voice low and scratchy like gravel under boots.

"Had a drink at Ratz's," I said, brushing some dust off my jacket as I kicked the door shut behind me.

He narrowed his eyes. "If you're gonna waste your pay on cheap rotgut, maybe I should stop paying you."

"Don't talk like that," I said, already walking past him toward the workbench.

Duran didn't say anything for a second. Just watched me. Same way he did the first time we met—like he was trying to figure out if I was worth the trouble.

He found me a few weeks after I woke up in this world. Starving. Barely conscious. Didn't ask who I was, didn't care. Gave me food, a roof, and a spot to crash in the back of the shop. No questions.

I owed him more than I liked to admit.

I work here now—fixing analog junk for half-functioning gangs, nomads, and weirdos who don't want the corps tracking their every breath. 

Most people in this city run on Neurolink—an implant jacked into their nervous system that lets them process and use digital code like it's instinct. Apps, data, control systems—all handled through thoughts.

Analog tech doesn't work like that. It still needs hands. Tools. Actual programming.

Lucky for me, that's the one thing I still understand.

I tried to use it to hack into the big boys—banks, megacorps, maybe even poke around in a government server or two. Thought I could climb back up.

Didn't get far.

Hacking Neurolink systems with analog gear is like trying to crack a biometric vault with a toothpick. Doesn't matter how smart you are—it's not happening.

Duran sniffed once, face twitching in disgust.

"Go to sleep. You reek of alcohol."

I didn't argue. He was right.

I stepped into the back storage room. Crates, spare parts, stripped boards, dust. My corner was in the back, behind some shelves. A piece of cardboard, a ragged blanket, and a half-dead fan buzzing in the ceiling.

I lay down, exhaling slowly.

Pulled out my phone. The screen flickered before projecting a faint blue hologram in the air—my balance.

56,192 credits.

That was what I'd made working here. Fixing broken analog crap, building custom tools, rewiring junk into something usable. Word got around. People started calling me one of the best in the analog circuit. Wasn't a lie—I knew my shit.

But it wasn't enough.

20 million credits.

That's how much a Neurolink implant cost. Not the cheap black market knockoffs either. A real one. Certified. Clean.

I stared at the number for a while.

"If I had Neurolink…" I muttered.

I could slip into megacorp networks. Rewrite IDs. Drain accounts. Shred firewalls in seconds. No more backdoor crawling or waiting on analog scraps to open a gate.

I'd be unstoppable.

Instead, I was lying on cardboard in a storage room.

I stared at the hologram for a while, then shut the phone off. The blue light blinked out, and the room dropped back into darkness—just the buzz of the fan and the faint hum of old machines outside.

I rolled over, pulling the thin blanket tighter around me. The floor was cold. It always was.

But I was used to it.

I closed my eyes.

Didn't take long to fall asleep. Not peaceful. Just quiet enough to make it through the night.

* * *

The world is controlled by megacorps. Governments are either dead or just corporate mascots wearing suits.

Cities are massive steel fortresses, each owned and operated by a different megacorp. They run everything inside their walls—laws, infrastructure, military, even birth records. Outside those walls, there's nothing but rot.

The most powerful of them is Tenant Corporation. They dominate the IT industry. Neurolink tech, surveillance networks, AI cores—if it's digital, Tenant has its hands on it.

Each of these cities is sealed off with towering walls. Not for defense against war, but to keep what's outside from getting in.

The outside is wasteland. Ruined land poisoned by decades of corporate waste and unchecked experiments. Air thick with chemicals. Creatures twisted by radiation and bio-tech runoff. No one survives long out there.

Inside the cities, everything is determined by your ID. It's mandatory. Color-coded. It decides your job, your access, where you sleep, what food you can buy.

Yellow is the bottom. Junkies, vagrants, unskilled labor.

Green is factory workers, delivery, janitors.

Blue means you've got a desk and a corp badge.

Purple's management—better housing, actual food, privacy.

Red is high-level. Directors, senior engineers, real money.

Black is the top. CEOs, board members, people who run the entire system.

I don't have one. I'm not even on the system. Which in a city like this… is both freedom and a death sentence.