The electric shock from The Ledger was still burning down Davin’s spinal nerves, forcing him to kneel on the puddle of acid water with ragged breaths. At the end of the narrow alley, the heavy boot steps of the Enforcer troops drew closer, blending with the hum of scout drone propellers scanning the building walls.

Thump... thump... thump!

"Target detected in sector nine. Block all escape routes!" the mechanical voice of the cyber soldier echoed sharply from the alley mouth, mere meters from Davin’s hiding spot.

Davin clenched his right hand, fighting the paralysis gripping his body. He prepared to raise his hand and release an Echo wave to face the enemy, fully aware his condition was at its absolute nadir.

Yet, before the Enforcers could round the alley corner, a metal floor panel beneath Davin’s feet suddenly popped open with a loud hydraulic hiss.

Clank-hiss!

Before Davin could react, a black-gloved hand grabbed his coat collar and yanked him downward.

Thud!

Davin plunged into underground darkness, while the metal floor shutter above them snapped shut in less than a second. Almost simultaneously, the sound of plasma gunfire exploded right where he had knelt moments before, shattering the brick wall in a spray of sparks and dust.

"Damn, that was close," a cynical female voice echoed through the dim underground drainage tunnel.

Davin scrambled up instantly, setting his fighting stance with one hand raised before his chest. Before him, under the flickering yellow emergency lights, stood a young woman.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, wearing a black synthetic leather jacket lined with tiny fiber-optic cables. Her hair was styled in an undercut on the left side, dyed a striking neon purple. Yet, the most striking feature was her right eye—instead of a human eyeball, it was an advanced cybernetic implant called a Kiroshi-Optic spinning softly, casting a thin blue light halo as it scanned Davin from head to toe.

The woman smirked slightly, slipping an unlit synthetic cigarette into the corner of her mouth.

"You've got a terrible habit of jumping into the middle of Enforcer patrols without an identity chip on your neck," the woman said, crossing her arms over her chest. "If you're looking to commit suicide, don't do it in my evacuation lane."

Davin narrowed his eyes, staring sharply at the woman before him. He did not drop his guard. "Who are you? And why did you save me?"

"Just call me Lyra," the woman answered casually, raising a hand. "And I saved you not because I'm some angel-hearted philanthropist, but because I saw the drone's optical sensors glitch out hard the moment they got close to you. There's something interesting about that right hand of yours."

Lyra stepped closer, her eyes glancing briefly at the back of Davin’s right hand, where the hourglass symbol still pulsed with residual system shocks.

"You're not a local of Neo-Veridia," Lyra continued with an investigative tone. "There's no biometric record of you in the Aegis Core network. In this city, a stranger without official identity is a walking corpse. So, are you coming with me somewhere safe, or do you want me to let you crawl back up there and become target practice for the Enforcers?"

Davin stayed silent for a moment, observing Lyra’s movements. Although she looked cynical and dangerous, no murderous intent radiated from her gaze. And honestly, right now he genuinely needed a hideout to recover from The Ledger's System Overload.

"Lead the way," Davin said briefly.

Minutes later, they arrived at a massive safehouse hidden behind a false wall in an old water drainage tunnel.

The place turned out to be a chaotic yet fully functional street netrunner hideout. Dozens of obsolete CRT monitors and floating holographic screens lined a wooden desk crammed with cybernetic components, tangled optical cables, and empty energy drink cans. The scent of ozone and cheap coffee dominated the small room.

"Welcome to my humble palace," Lyra sneered sarcastically, tossing her jacket onto an old iron chair. She sat straight down before her blinking primary console. "Sit wherever you want, just don't touch the server cables on the left. If those disconnect, this room's cooling system might blow."

Davin chose to sit on an old wooden stool beside the console desk. He took a deep breath, soothing the lingering ache in his spine.

"So, tell me who you really are, Mr. No-ID," Lyra said, her fingers dancing swiftly across a holographic keyboard. Green lines of code streamed rapidly across the screen before her. "Because if I don't forge an identity chip for you right now, the city's tracking grid will find us in less than an hour."

"My name is Davin," he answered calmly, choosing not to immediately reveal his cross-dimensional origins. People in a cyberpunk world would never believe the concept of a multiverse unless they saw it firsthand. "And I don't need a fake identity chip easily read by their system."

Lyra stopped typing. She turned, looking at Davin with a raised eyebrow while her green cybernetic eye blinked to zoom in its focus. "Oh, trust me, in Neo-Veridia, you desperately need that chip. Unless you have some special way to hack the Aegis Core central firewall guarded by military-grade AI."

"Try scanning my data, then," Davin challenged quietly, placing his right hand atop a small biometric scanner wired to Lyra's console.

Lyra snorted softly, assuming Davin was just trying to act mysterious. "Fine, let's see who you really are beneath that skin."

Her fingers pressed the enter key.

On the main console screen, a red biometric scanner bar slid downward, reading the DNA samples and neural waves transmitted through the symbol on Davin’s hand.

Lyra leaned back in her chair, waiting for the scan results to appear with an expression of boredom.

Yet, less than three seconds later...

Bip! Bip! Bip!

A deafening, high-pitched warning alarm suddenly blared across the hideout's entire computer system.

The holographic screen, previously glowing bright green, instantly shifted to a blazing blood-red. All monitors flickered wildly, displaying scrambled glitch code lines, and the server cooling fans spun at maximum speed, emitting a terrifying roar.

"Damn it! What is this?!" Lyra shouted in shock, instantly bouncing out of her chair and leaping toward the main console. Her hands flew across the keyboard, trying to sever the scanner connection. "The server cooling system is experiencing a load surge! Someone's trying to counter-hack our network!"

"Not hacking," Davin’s voice sounded cold, his eyes locked on the main screen, which had stopped blinking.

In the center of the blood-red screen, large text warnings flashed repeatedly in military-grade high-tier fonts, displaying data that instantly made Lyra’s breath catch in her throat:

[ OMEGA TIER SECURITY WARNING ]

• DNA STATUS: PRIMARY CLASSIFIED ASSET

• SUBJECT NAME: DAVIN RONAN

• ACCESS AUTHORITY: 0.0 (ROOT ADMIN - SYSTEM ARCHITECT PRIME INHABITANT)

• LOCATION: SECTOR 9 - NEO-VERIDIA (ANOMALY DETECTED)

Lyra slowly turned her head toward Davin. Her right cybernetic eye flickered with errors, displaying error messages, while her jaw slightly dropped in utter shock. She stared at Davin as though she had just seen a ghost crawl out of the monitor.

"An... Omega Tier Classified Asset?" Lyra stammered, her voice losing its usual cynical tone. She swallowed hard with great difficulty. "Who on earth are you, Davin? Why does the corporate central database log you as holding supreme access rights above the Aegis Core AI?"

Davin did not answer immediately. He stared at the red screen in silence, realizing that the mystery of his identity and his connection to this cosmic system ran far deeper—and far more dangerously—than he had ever imagined.