Kai delivered his final package with minutes to spare, earning another small performance bonus. The credit uptick did little to offset the exhaustion in his virtual muscles—an oddly convincing fatigue simulation that made him wonder exactly how much of his physical body's neural patterns had transferred into this digital existence.

  He clocked out at Nova Express with 87 credits earned for the day. Better than yesterday, but the math remained brutal—weeks of perfect deliveries just to afford the most basic skate models. His fingers kept returning to Proxy's card, its edges unnaturally sharp against his skin, defying the system's standardization protocols with their unauthorized tactile properties.

  The Neon District wasn't technically off-limits to his contract level, but its reputation preceded it—system glitches, unauthorized modifications, users operating in regulatory blind spots. The exact sort of place where opportunities might exist that could leapfrog him past weeks of credit grinding.

  He spent a small chunk of his earnings on a basic system map from a vendor near Central Transit. The older avatar—face deliberately imperfected to suggest long-term residency—slipped the data crystal into Kai's palm with practiced indifference.

  "First time in Neon?"

  "That obvious?"

  "You're still wearing default textures." The vendor gestured vaguely at his clothing. "Stands out down there. Might want to tone it down."

  Back in his cramped quarters, he ran a customization protocol to dull his clothing textures, reducing their reflectivity. The results weren't perfect but better than the factory-default sheen that marked new uploads like a digital brand. He checked his credit balance: 72 after the map purchase. He transferred 50 to a secure partition—emergency funds—and kept the rest accessible. In places like lower Neon, having some credits readily available might make the difference between safe passage and trouble.

  At 19:15, he set out, following his map through increasingly dense sections of Server Nova. The crowds thickened as he moved toward Neon, avatar diversity increasing with each block he traveled away from sanitized corporate zones.

  The architecture transformed—sharp angles gave way to curved surfaces, corporate minimalism replaced by chaotic expression. Buildings that would have triggered multiple rendering violations in the financial district loomed overhead, their impossible geometries testament to creative code manipulation.

  Light pollution intensified until the "sky" above vanished beneath layers of holographic advertisements and data streams. Colors assaulted his vision—neon reds and electric blues stained his skin as he passed through their glow, casting weird shadows that moved independently of his body.

  The deeper he went, the more the environment showed neglect. Rendering glitches appeared with increasing frequency—textures loading incorrectly, lighting effects stuttering, occasional patches where the wireframe beneath the world's skin became visible. In one alley, a section of wall flickered between solid and transparent, revealing the empty void behind—a reminder that everything here was illusion, code projected to simulate reality.

  System maintenance clearly wasn't a priority in these sections. The trade-off for freedom was living with bugs, glitches, and the occasional rendering collapse that could leave you falling through the world if you were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place during a system hiccup.

  His navigation marker led to a tight alley between two towering structures plastered with flickering advertisements for products that probably violated terms of service in multiple ways. The path narrowed until he had to turn sideways to continue, shoulders occasionally brushing against walls that felt oddly warm and slightly sticky, texture rendering deliberately modified to unsettle.

  The narrow passage opened into a small courtyard hidden from main thoroughfares. Several similar alleys connected here, creating a pocket of space unknown to those who stuck to official routes. The sky above this hidden square was oddly clear of advertisement clutter, revealing a slice of Server Nova's simulated night—a small oasis of quiet in Neon's sensory overload.

  In the center stood a nondescript door set into a wall covered in constantly shifting graffiti—not static tags but animated ones that crawled across surfaces like living things. Tags morphed into words, then abstract patterns, then back to tags in a hypnotic display of unauthorized code artistry.

  A small sign above the door displayed a single word: "UNDERCUT."

  He checked the time: 19:58.

  He knocked on the door. The sound dropped dead in the air, absorbed by some dampening field that prevented audio from traveling beyond the immediate vicinity—another modification skirting system rules about environmental manipulation.

  A viewport slid open, and a pair of eyes peered out—unnaturally reflective, with vertical pupils that expanded and contracted like a camera aperture adjusting for light.

  "Business?" a gruff voice asked, the single word carrying multiple harmonic undertones.

  "I'm here to see Proxy. She gave me this address."

  The viewport closed with a metallic snap. After a moment, the door swung inward, revealing a narrow corridor illuminated by strips of blue light running along the floor. The path pulsed with the rhythm of distant bass, a heartbeat leading deeper into the building.

  "End of the hall," the doorkeeper said—a massive user whose avatar had been modified with industrial parts integrated into flesh. Hydraulic pistons flexed visibly beneath transparent skin patches, and a mechanical jaw clicked slightly when he spoke. "Don't touch the walls."

  Kai moved past, noting how the corridor seemed to stretch longer than the building's exterior dimensions should allow. He kept his hands at his sides, watching occasional ripples disturb the wall surfaces—something liquid or perhaps alive moving beneath the rendered exterior. Spatial rendering manipulation—another gray area bending reality in ways that shouldn't be possible under standard permissions.

  The hallway opened into a sprawling space that thrummed with activity and bass-heavy music he felt more than heard, vibrations passing through his avatar as if his bones were tuning forks. What had looked like a small shop from outside was actually a massive underground venue, dimensions impossible given the courtyard's size—a pocket dimension carved through expert coding or exploiting system weaknesses.

  One section held a bar where users gathered around glowing drinks that shifted colors as they were consumed, leaving trails in the air when moved too quickly. Another featured a performance area where skaters took turns on a series of ramps and rails, executing tricks that drew cheers from onlookers. Bodies twisted in physically impossible ways, defying gravity and sometimes clipping through solid objects in displays of either incredible skill or modified physics engines—possibly both.

  The main focus appeared to be the back wall, lined with equipment racks displaying skating gear in various states of modification. Users clustered around workbenches where technicians disassembled, rebuilt, and enhanced components with tools that occasionally sparked with unauthorized energy signatures.

  "You showed." Proxy materialized beside him, her animated jacket now displaying fractal patterns that constantly evolved across the fabric, each iteration more complex than the last. "Half expected you to chicken out."

  "I'm full of surprises. What is this place?"

  "This, runner boy, is Undercut. Part mod shop, part skater hangout, part rebellion against vanilla server living." She gestured broadly, fingers leaving momentary light trails in the air. "Everything the official channels won't sell you, won't teach you, and definitely don't want you to know about."

  Kai watched a skater execute a perfect wall-run before transitioning into a flip that left trails of light hanging in the air. The maneuver should have been impossible under normal physics parameters, but here, the rules seemed more like suggestions.

  "And you brought me here because...?"

  "Because you have the look." She tapped the side of her head. "That hunger in your eyes when you watch the skaters. I recognize it. Had it myself once."

  "I do want to skate," he admitted. "But I can't afford decent gear on runner pay."

  Proxy grinned, her teeth momentarily glinting metallic in the shifting light. "That's why we're talking."

  She led him toward the equipment section, where a wiry older user was meticulously disassembling what looked like high-end thrust vectoring systems from a pair of frames. His fingers moved with uncanny efficiency, occasionally splitting into multiple digits for especially delicate work before folding back into a more familiar shape.

  "Cipher, got a minute?"

  The user looked up, eyes narrowing behind magnification lenses that seemed implanted rather than worn, mechanical irises rotating as they focused. The man's wiry frame was draped in practical, dark-grey overalls, patched in several places with different, almost matte black materials that seemed to absorb the ambient light of Undercut.

  Thin, almost spidery cybernetic conduits were visible along his forearms where his sleeves were pushed up, pulsing with a faint, irregular amber light. His face, etched with the lines of someone who spent more time staring at circuits than sleeping, was all sharp angles and shadows, making the intensity of his cybernetic eyes even more pronounced.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "For you, Prox? Maybe thirty seconds."

  "Fresh upload. Needs gear. Has potential."

  Cipher's gaze shifted to Kai. His eyes seemed to peer through the avatar, reading the code beneath. "System debt contract, by the look of him. Not much spending capacity."

  "I can work. I'm a fast learner."

  "Everyone says that," Cipher replied dismissively. "Few mean it."

  Proxy leaned against the workbench. "He made the run from Central to Eclipse in seventeen minutes. On foot."

  That caught Cipher's attention. "Navigation system?"

  "Basic."

  "Interesting." Cipher set down his tools, which immediately collapsed into component parts and arranged themselves neatly on the workbench. "What's your background, upload?"

  "Bicycle courier. Three years in metro service."

  "Real-world courier experience. That tracks." Cipher stood, wiping his hands on a cloth that seemed to absorb more than just surface grime—colors seeped from his fingers into the fabric. "Alright, let's see what we've got."

  He led them to a storage area concealed behind a partition that shimmered with some kind of cloaking effect, the air distorting like heat waves over hot asphalt. Inside, racks of skating equipment stretched from floor to ceiling—some new, most used, all modified in ways that defied standard specifications.

  Entire shelves dedicated to different components: power cores arranged by luminosity, their glow casting pools of colored light on the floor; frames sorted by weight and durability, some impossibly thin while others had the heft of military hardware; wheels with varying tread patterns and material compositions, some translucent with visible circuitry inside.

  "Your credit situation?" Cipher asked bluntly.

  "Eighty-seven earned today. Spent fifteen on basics."

  Cipher nodded, unsurprised. "And what exactly are you hoping to accomplish, courier? Recreational skating? Transport efficiency? Or are you aiming higher?"

  Kai thought about the skaters he'd seen the day he arrived—the ones moving like gravity was optional, outrunning everything, careers built on speed and skill. The freedom they embodied was almost tangible, a direct contrast to his contracted status.

  "I want to be a real courier. The kind that matter."

  Cipher and Proxy exchanged a look that contained silent communication passing between longtime associates.

  "That's not a path for the timid," Cipher said finally. "Or the broke."

  "I'm neither," Kai replied with more confidence than he felt. "Just new."

  Cipher grunted, then moved to a rack of particularly worn equipment. He sorted through it before pulling out a pair of black AT-Drive skates that had seen better days.

  The frames were scratched, the boots scuffed, but even Kai could tell they were higher quality than the basic models he'd been eyeing. The power cores in the heels glowed a dull amber—not the bright intensity of premium models, but steadier than rental units. Something about them seemed almost alive, as if waiting for the right user to wake them fully.

  "Factory decommissioned," Cipher explained. "Corporate security model from three cycles back. Some SysAdmin didn't want to pay disposal fees, so they ended up here."

  He turned them over, showing where serial numbers had been filed off, the edges rough under intentionally imperfect rendering. "Not pretty, but the internals are solid. C-Class frame with decent neural response, regulated thrust vectoring system capable of basic vertical maneuvers, wheels with standard grip calibration. They'll get you started."

  "How much?" Kai asked, already certain he couldn't afford them.

  "Two thousand," Cipher said. "Non-negotiable."

  Kai's hopes deflated. "I can't—"

  "But," Cipher continued, "I offer alternative arrangements for special cases."

  "Meaning?"

  "You run packages for me. Special deliveries that Nova Express won't touch. Higher risk, better reward. Use the skates for the work. You keep thirty percent of each payment, rest goes toward the gear. Once you clear the debt, you keep the skates, take a higher cut of future jobs."

  Kai hesitated, weighing ambition against caution. "What kind of packages?"

  "Nothing that would brick your contract," Proxy interjected. "Just gray-market runs. Data that prefers to travel off the main channels."

  The opportunity felt simultaneously perfect and suspicious. "Why me?"

  Cipher actually smiled at that, a thin expression suggesting Kai had asked the right question. His teeth were oddly translucent, as if made of crystal rather than enamel.

  "Because you're a blank slate. No reputation, no connections. Invisible. And fresh uploads who find places like this on their own initiative are either stupid or resourceful. You don't strike me as stupid."

  Kai considered his options. Runner work would take weeks to save enough for even basic gear. This offer meant skating tomorrow, albeit with strings attached. And strings in Server Nova had a way of becoming chains if you weren't careful.

  "What's the catch?"

  "Smart boy," Cipher nodded approvingly. "The catch is risk. You get caught with certain packages, there are consequences. System flags, account restrictions. In worst cases, temporary service suspensions. Nothing permanent for first offenses, but inconvenient."

  "And if I lose or damage the skates?"

  "Then you work off a much larger debt at a much lower percentage." Cipher's expression hardened, the ambient light darkening around him. "I don't recommend testing that arrangement."

  Kai looked down at the skates. Despite their worn appearance, they represented everything he wanted—mobility, opportunity, the chance to become something more than a debt-bound runner. Freedom, or at least the illusion of it.

  "When would I start?"

  Proxy grinned. "He's in."

  Cipher handed him the skates. "First lesson's now. Let's see if you can stay vertical."

  Kai had always prided himself on his balance. As a bike courier, he'd navigated traffic and terrain that would have sent others sprawling. He'd assumed that would translate to skating.

  He was wrong.

  "You're too stiff," Proxy called out as he wobbled across Undercut's back practice area for the fifth time, arms windmilling as the skates seemed to develop minds of their own beneath his feet. "It's not about standing on wheels. It's about the neural interface—you think, it responds. You're still thinking like you're on feet."

  He regained his balance and pushed forward again, trying to loosen his posture. The skates responded differently than expected—more sensitive to intention than physical movement, the thrust vectoring system amplifying even his slightest weight shifts. A mere thought about moving left would send him veering in that direction before his body had fully committed to the turn.

  "Better," Cipher observed from nearby, where he calibrated something on another set of skates, fingers dancing across interfaces that appeared and disappeared at his command. "But you're fighting the momentum amplification. Let the power cores do their job."

  Kai adjusted, finding a more natural stance. The skates hummed beneath him, power cores warming against his heels as the internal systems responded to his movements. They seemed to be learning him as much as he was learning them, a two-way communication forming between user and equipment.

  Proxy's lesson repeated in his head, transforming from abstract concept to tactile understanding with each passing minute. These weren't simple wheeled boots—they were sophisticated machines, forming a direct link to his nervous system through the neural interface. The technology that simulated his body in Server Nova was the same that connected him to the skates, creating a feedback loop of information that bypassed conscious thought.

  "Now try a basic turn," Proxy instructed. "Don't move your feet—shift your intention, let the skates interpret."

  Kai focused on the idea of turning rather than the physical motion, imagining himself carving a smooth arc across the floor. Immediately, the skates' microthrusters adjusted, curving him in a smooth arc. The sensation was unlike anything he'd experienced—an extension of will translated directly into motion, as if the boundary between thought and action had dissolved.

  [SKILL UNLOCKED: AT-Drive Proficiency (F)]

  "Good," Proxy said, sounding genuinely impressed. "Most first-timers can't sync with the neural interface that quickly. You've got natural affinity."

  Kai completed the turn, maintaining his balance through the maneuver. As he did, something clicked inside him—not physically, but a kind of understanding that unfurled like a digital flower. These weren't tools strapped to his feet; they were extensions of his consciousness, responding to his intentions rather than just his movements.

  "He has the basics," Cipher noted, looking up from his work. "Natural aptitude for momentum banking too. But basics won't keep him alive on courier runs."

  "I can learn," Kai said, executing another turn, tighter and more controlled as his neural pathways adapted to the interface. "Just show me what I need to know."

  Proxy circled him, evaluating his form with the critical eye of someone who had trained dozens before him. "AT-Drive theory isn't complicated. Speed comes from sync rate. Sync comes from neural harmony. Harmony comes from practice." She tapped his shoulder. "But the real difference between runners and couriers? Runners follow paths. Couriers create flux lines that others follow."

  For the next hour, they drilled him on fundamentals—accelerating, stopping, turning at various speeds. They taught him how to lean into momentum rather than fighting it, how to use the thrust vectoring system to enhance rather than replace natural movement.

  By the end, he moved with growing confidence across the practice floor, his body adapting to the new way of moving. The skates' power cores had brightened slightly, responding to his increasing synchronization with a deeper amber glow.

  "Enough for tonight," Cipher finally announced. "Neural interface fatigue is real. First-timers who push too hard end up with system feedback headaches."

  Kai reluctantly came to a stop, not wanting to remove the skates. Even these worn, hand-me-down models made him feel more alive than he had since uploading to Server Nova. For the first time since arriving, he felt like more than just another debt-bound avatar trudging through a simulated existence.

  "When do I start making deliveries?" he asked as he unlaced the boots, feeling their weight—both physical and metaphorical—in his hands.

  "Tomorrow night," Cipher said. "Simple run to test your abilities. Meet back here at 21:00."

  Kai handed the skates back, already feeling their absence like phantom limbs. "I'll be here."

  As he turned to leave, Proxy caught his arm. "Word of advice, runner boy. The system tracks everything. When you're on official business for Nova, you're just another delivery drone. But when you're skating for us..." She tapped her temple. "Learn to read flux lines. The pros leave trails in the system that only other skaters can see. Hidden highways that'll triple your speed if you know how to ride them."

  He nodded, filing the advice away.

  Outside Undercut, the Neon District's lower section pulsed with digital life. The main thoroughfares remained busy even at this hour, users moving through pools of colored light cast by ever-shifting advertisements that seemed to respond to the emotions of those passing beneath them.

  He checked the time—nearly midnight. His Nova Express shift started in six hours, which meant getting back to his housing unit if he wanted any simulated sleep before another day of official delivery work.

  As he navigated the quickest route home, he couldn't stop a smile from spreading across his face. The worn skates might still be back at Undercut, but he could feel phantom power cores against his heels, the memory of neural synchronization lingering in his nervous system.

  Tomorrow, he'd be a runner again for Nova Express, trudging packages across the grid for meager credits. But tomorrow night, he'd become something else—something faster, something freer.

  He'd take his first real steps toward becoming a courier.