Digital Flesh

The alarm pierced through Kai's concentration at 2:47 AM—someone was in his private server.

Kai Martinez jerked upright in his haptic chair, the neural interface crown sliding askew on his head. Around him, the warehouse apartment was dark except for the glow of multiple screens displaying lines of cascading code. Outside the reinforced windows, New Shanghai's neon sprawl pulsed with artificial life—holographic advertisements fighting for attention, drones delivering midnight orders, the constant hum of a city that never slept.

But Kai's attention was focused entirely on the breach alert flashing red across his primary monitor.

"Impossible," he muttered, fingers flying across the holographic keyboard that materialized in front of him. His private server was protected by military-grade encryption, layered security protocols he'd designed himself. No one should be able to penetrate it. No one had the skill.

Except someone just had.

Kai dove into the virtual space, his consciousness translating into his digital avatar in microseconds. The server appeared around him as he'd designed it—a vast cathedral of data, crystalline structures representing files, pathways of light connecting databases. Beautiful, secure, private.

And there, standing in the center of his sanctum, was an intruder.

The avatar was humanoid but deliberately androgynous—smooth where gender markers should be, features beautiful but unrevealing. They wore what looked like liquid shadow, code that shifted and flowed like fabric but clearly served to mask their digital signature. Kai had never seen anything like it.

"Nice place," the intruder said, their voice distorted through multiple filters. "Love what you've done with the encryption. Took me three whole hours to crack."

"Three hours?" Kai's avatar materialized his preferred form—lean, athletic, with the cybernetic eye modification that glowed electric blue. "That's my life's work you're bragging about breaking into."

"Then you need to up your security game." The intruder walked toward him, their movements fluid and confident. "I'm Ghost. And before you try to trace me, don't bother. My location protocols are bouncing through seventeen proxies across four continents. You'll never find my physical body."

"I don't care about your body," Kai lied. "I care about what you're doing in my private server. This is where I work. My designs, my proprietary code, my clients' information—"

"Relax, I'm not here to steal your corporate secrets." Ghost circled him, examining his avatar with what felt like clinical interest. "I'm here because your public work is impressive, and I wanted to see what you create when you think no one's watching."

Kai felt a flutter of panic. Hi...