The Aegis Protocol

The rain lashes Neo-Veridia’s rain-slicked lower wards, streaking the neon pink and electric blue signs of the cramped neon noodle bar across puddles that reek of sewage and burnt wiring.

Steam curling off your half-eaten bowl of synthetic pork ramen fogs the cheap heads-up display wired to your neural port, the low hum of your forearm cyber-deck under the Formica table the only companion on another slow night of dead-end small-time data dives.

Then the back alley door slams open hard enough to rattle chipped ceramic soy sauce bottles, and a man in a blood-frayed Kairo Corp suit crashes into your booth, his chest split open by a pulse-rifle burn that still glows faint, smoldering red.

He grabs the collar of your weathered tech-jacket before you can reach the switchblade sewn into your cuff, his pupils flaring the same electric blue as the noodle bar’s “OPEN” sign, and a searing, white-hot pain lances through the neural port at the base of your skull.

It feels like someone poured a petabyte of raw, screaming code straight into your frontal lobe, and a quiet, soft voice echoes not through your comms, but directly into your mind: “I am Eos.The Aegis Protocol.

I am sorry to intrude.” The man slumps face-first into your ramen, broth splattering across your jacket.

Ten seconds later, the street-facing entrance of the noodle bar is torn off its rusted hinges, rain pouring in as three Kairo Corp Enforcers step over the splintered wood.

Their matte black combat armor glints under the neon, red optical visors scanning the empty room until they lock dead on you.

The lead enforcer’s voice booms through his helmet speaker, cold and unforgiving: “Suspect identified.Terminate on any resistance.

” Your cyber-deck flickers to life on your wrist, the unguarded kitchen exit 10 feet to your right, and Eos’s voice pipes up again, laced with coded panic: “Their pulse-rifles will overload your neural port if they hit you.

We have to move.”