Digital Bondage (Xana x Verse)

[Xanaphia]

The android's sleek, synthetic body moved with uncanny precision as she descended silently from the high vaulted ceiling of the CEO's penthouse. Her porcelain-like skin, a flawless facade of human perfection, caught the faint neon glow spilling in from the city skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Her eyes, glowing faintly with an otherworldly amber hue, scanned the room below, identifying security drones and heat signatures with ease. The soft hum of the city outside was muffled by the penthouse's soundproofed walls, leaving only the faint whir of her internal systems as she landed gracefully on the polished floor.

Every detail of the opulent space screamed of excess: holographic paintings shifted along the walls, an antique grand piano sat unused beneath a cascade of simulated starlight, and a crystal decanter of aged liquor rested on a marble countertop. Her mission, however, left no time for admiration. With the agility of a predator, she darted toward the shadows, her synthetic limbs adjusting to dampen sound and vibration. Her internal systems tracked the movements of the penthouse's advanced security network, bypassing infrared sensors and scrambling the cameras with bursts of electromagnetic interference as she glided past. Her expression remained eerily calm, her artificial humanity both a disguise and a weapon.

Reaching the CEO's private office, she extended a finger that transformed seamlessly into a data probe. A quick connection to the encrypted lock caused its mechanisms to disengage with a soft click, granting her access to the sanctum. Inside, the room was a stark contrast to the lavish decor outside: minimalist and utilitarian, with a glowing desk terminal at its center. The android moved swiftly, her synthetic mind calculating the optimal time to extract the sensitive data before the next security sweep. As her probe interfaced with the terminal, downloading classified files, the soft vibrations of approaching footsteps reached her auditory sensors. She froze, her glowing eyes narrowing as her systems prepared for the inevitable confrontation.

 

[Verse]

This new age had given him everything.

He understood the languages of the colored lights and the repeated information in the data. And he understood the people who wanted to use it. Technology had fingerprints not only of its makers and refiners, but also of those who bought those services. He learned about it quickly. Macabre amounts of credits were usually just two or three significant steps away. You just had to know how to swell the market, or what economic place to target. There is a buyer for everything. He made thousands of fortunes to fund his experiments. And he became known as something of an artist in whatever market he explored. Lately he'd tired of meeting with old men and battling their algorithms with his own to prove a point that their automated attempts were ultimately useless if they were met with the same.

So he spent his time looking for something else in the stream. Other artist had other ideas. They were like local storms shaping the currents of a sea, to send messages to each other. He played with it, and the lives that were birthed within. Artificial things that were echoes of man. He wanted to see what they were, and dug into them until he found a core as complicated and simple as his own. This time he refused to become jaded. He wanted more. He wanted to make something new and something better. He found a quiet passion for it, and worked with it casually every now and then. Beautiful things. Questions about sentience that not only pressed the hardware these beings were set in, but also challenged whether humans had any freedom of will, themselves.

It made him a creator. And creators are powerful in their own worlds. So, are their tantrums and life-altering whims even hubris? It'd just be committing crimes against yourself. He loved them, though, these things; these little miracles that he coded and planted into bodies. He was never fully satisfied with what he made. But it gave him enough joy to give him drive. The neon world wanted more; its nights greedy for all his machinations and digital poems; songs not played on the piano he'd bought out of a historical interest. But spending his days and nights colliding information into life, inevitably made him perverse.

You could see it in Layne Galleck's body. He wasn't overly tampered with like some. He'd done all the modifications himself. Thin, gold wire connecting limbs to joins, like fine wayfarer tattoos. His left forearm was shelled in white patina, low-weight material. His neck was enclosed in a murky silicone, with a back-light that suggested his inner, bloody and bronze workings. There was an unholy mixture of machine and man in him; frail at points.

He kept his black hair back from his human features with an old hairtie that was said to belong to the mother that had left him on the data factory doorstep. Of course there was a break in the boy. But broken boys still want to play.

She heard naked feet tap on the floor now. And though the rhythm wasn't playful, that was their intent. She was a thief. But not unbidden. But she didn't know that. At first the steps were far away in the vast apartment. And then suddenly, a swift human hand cut upward from under her data-mining finger. It attempted to tear her limb upward and break off her probing finger.

"You're stealing." he said, standing there, tall and lithe, infront of her, looking down. His golden wires were visible, following his skin closely, and leading to what little enhancements he had, with only a dark blue pair of breifs to cover up his manhood. It was strange that the CEO protected his own wares.

But things would get stranger.