The Smart Slums of Neo-Europa breathed in static. Neon flickered. Drones buzzed overhead like tired wasps. But none of it mattered to Jolene, because Jolene wasn’t on any grid.
She was a Null.
No Spinal Gate. No Cradle Jack. No mirror eyes or interface hums. She couldn’t enter Cypherspace. Couldn’t even touch it. To the rest of the city, she was static. Ghostweight. A blank.
And she was breaking.
Her feet took her deeper into the alley networks of the Glint District, where bootleg implants glowed faint blue in rusted crates and vendors offered memories like meat. She passed them all, silent. Her breath trembled in the chill.
She found it where they said it would be: a wall with no seam. No entrance. Just steel warped into floral pattern—three petals curled shut. The air was dense here. Thick with rot and magnetism.
Jolene approached. Laid her palm flat.
Nothing happened.
She swallowed.
And then she remembered.
A brother’s hand, slipping below the water. A mother’s scream. The moment she chose to walk away.
Something shifted behind the wall. A heat like breath brushed her cheek.
The petals opened.
Inside, the world changed.
The Bleeding Rose did not speak. It did not signal. It simply began.
A single thread—metallic, flower-thin—descended from above. It brushed her temple.
And her past poured out.
The first kiss she never wanted.
The corridor where she sold a stranger’s secret to survive.
The days spent screaming into silence because no one could hear a Null.
The Rose drank it all.
Lights pulsed.
Steel vines emerged from the walls like muscle memory, spiraling slowly around her limbs, spine, skull. Jolene flinched—but they didn’t pierce.
They read.
They decided.
A thousand surgical arms unfolded like petals blooming in time-lapse. Needles gleamed. Bones sang. Flesh was peeled, not cruelly, but as if the Rose was uncovering the truth beneath her skin.
She gasped when her left arm was taken. Not with violence—more like liberation.
Her chest opened.
Something warm and electric filled the space.
A new spine bloomed up her back, humming softly.
Her jaw clenched as heat flooded her mind. For a second, everything went white.
She woke up in the alley.
Lying face-first in grime. Cold rain tapped her cheeks.
The wall behind her was smooth again. Unmarked. The petals had folded shut.
She sat up, coughing.
Her left hand—no longer flesh—was wrapped in white ceramic coils, soft as bone, ridged like a thorned stem.
Her back itched.
She felt it: the hum.
A Spinal Gate.
Real. Embedded. Live.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for her thoughts—and for the first time in her life, she touched Cypherspace.
The Veil shimmered before her.
No fanfare. No welcome.
Just access.
Just entry.
She didn’t smile. Didn’t weep.
She stood.
And walked away.
Behind her, deep in the Rose, the discarded fragments of her past were still bleeding.
But she would not return.
Not until the Rose wanted more.