Enigma (Rogue #2)

Prologue

May 2057

Towering over the damp, rundown streets of the Tokjin district, the poorly kept buildings formed a familiar blur of drab colours in her peripheral vision, accompanied by the low whir of the hoverboard under her feet.

The girl wobbled on her hoverboard under the tense area. She felt as exposed as if someone had stripped her. And that someone had a laser sight trained on her. She might as well be a walking target.

There was a faint police siren in the air, and she grimaced, shielding her ears from the physically painful sounds. Why were so many things against her? She hated this part. She wanted to stay cooped up forever, but that wasn't a choice.

The girl rode on her hoverboard, taking a dip around another corner. An ache sparked in her eyes as she took in the violent mix of colours that bled over various buildings. For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut, ignoring it. She rode in blindness before opening one eye. The rush of ten thousand voices and sounds filled up the lively district market. Her heart pounded itself into pieces in her chest. The invisible eyes loomed closer with every second.

She then hopped off her hoverboard and clutched it tightly, just in case someone took a dangerous interest. The smell of fried street food wafted around her and she sighed. Walking past so many bodies was suffocating. She felt the noise push at her ears and she tried to hold it back with hands pressed steadily over them. Her face was a perpetual grimace now. Seoul was a constant neon blur of sensory overload.

The girl squinted at the flash advertisements for clearly illegal things: from addictive narcotics to cyborg modifications and body parts, like colour-changing eyes and grown organs. There was a booth selling diet pills that were definitely not approved by health departments. There were even those selling spots to attend the pirated streaming of the upcoming SCOPE tournaments in Seoul, as well as outright hacking services. As she further walked through, holding her breath and her muscles tight, she quickly snapped away from a booth selling virtual sex. There was an abundance of noise from conversations and pinging transactions.

"Can I interest you in a pair of state-of-the-art cyborg hands?" one man said, holding up a pair of racks with lifelike hands dangling from them. His colour-changing eyes smiled at her beyond his metallic black mask. "I can make you trade for your real ones."

The girl grimaced. "Sorry."

She walked further before she suddenly bumped into some people. Both a woman and a man. The girl jumped back at the sight of the gory mouths attached to their masks. The man had a collar attached tightly to his neck, and the girl held it in a tight grip like he was a pet. Maybe that's what they were going for. The girl tore her gaze away.

"Sorry," the girl said again and walked away. She kept her gaze trained in front of her.

She came up to a food vendor who had glowing signs advertising their sweet deal on fish. "Two for one," it said.

"Two fish," the girl asked in the best Korean she could. Someone could track translator goggles. And that was the one thing she couldn't be.

Tracked.

The man smiled, revealing a toothless grin.

She took two large fish off a rack from above, and she nodded. The man put them in and handed them to her in a plastic bag. Because of environmental reform and subsequent laws, using plastic like this had been outlawed many years ago. Considering the other illegal activity in the alleyway, this was the least of all the crimes committed here.

The man's eyes widened as she dug out actual cash to pay him to withdraw. She averted her gaze. No one used paper money unless they were ancient. He took it and nodded her away, and she took her fish.