Kira Vex's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Kira Vex stepped into the grove where the trees glowed with neon circuits in their bark. Fixers used this place because the static killed every signal. She came for a payout big enough to move her family out of the slums for good. One job. That was the pitch. The fixer waited near a trunk humming pink and gold. He slid a chip across his palm. The number on it was clean, real, life-changing. "The client is Kieran Voss," he said. "Every gang in the city wants him in a hole. You get him out alive, the money is yours." Kira thought about the apartment block she passed sometimes on the clean side of the river — glass walls, balconies, her mother on one of them. Then she thought about the glowing lotus blossoms blooming on lampposts three blocks deep in every direction. Four colors. Four factions. All watching this district. All watching Voss. She closed her hand around the chip. "I'll take him." The fixer nodded and walked away. Kira stood alone under the burning branches, already counting the guns between her and the door.