It’s the rain I hear first.

  Not the city. Not the murmurs of the crowd below or the distant echoes of synth-beats bleeding from underground clubs. Just the rain. Falling like a thousand tiny collisions against me—each drop a reminder that this world never really sleeps.

  The way it hits me… it isn’t soft. It’s precise. Sharp. Every drop feels like a memory trying to dig through armor. Cold. Controlled. Familiar.

  They land against the surface of what I wear —what I am — and flicker out in quiet pulses of white light that blink slowly across the black that wraps me from head to toe. The water beads. Slides. Then vanishes like it was never there.

  I don’t feel the cold. Not in the way I used to. But I know it’s cold. The rain tells me that much.

  I sit on the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling over a city that doesn’t blink anymore. Neon glows harder than the stars ever could. The sky gave up trying to outshine us a long time ago.

  Down there, it’s alive. But not in a way that feels like living.

  The roads hum with the levitation of vehicles hovering inches above cracked pavement, skimming like ghosts through a deadbeat ballet. No one’s flying anymore. Not above the skyline. Not in this city. They grounded themselves. Maybe out of fear. Maybe out of control. Maybe because it was easier to be hunted on the ground than disappear in the air.

  The people below — they move in waves. Hooded, cyber-strapped, lit in flickering glows from implants and visors. Their outfits scream rebellion, but their eyes? They whisper surrender.

  There are two things everyone in this city has.

  Tech. And trauma.

  Some wear it louder than others—neon dreadlocks, glowing scars running down chrome limbs, headphones tuned to digital white noise just to drown out real thoughts. But even the quiet ones — the ones who walk with their heads low and eyes scanning — carry something under the skin. Something broken. Something hunted.

  No one walks these streets without a past bleeding through.

  Some are hunted for what they’ve done. Others, for what they know. Bounties get dropped in dark net backchannels and picked up by raiders in back-alley deals. You see the exchange happen sometimes. Not with words — but with a look. A flick of the wrist. A silent sync between predator and prey.

  And it always happens where the eyes don’t reach.

  The authority here — if you can call it that — only watches what it wants to control. Cameras don’t see the alleyways. They’re not meant to. There are places in this city designed to be forgotten. Places where pain gets recycled. Where people vanish, and no one files a report because everyone’s got their own mess to deal with.

  I watch. I always watch.

  That’s the curse of standing above it all. Seeing the suffering but not sinking into it.

  I’m not here to save them. I’m just here to understand why they still fight to be human in a world trying to rewrite them.

  ╤?╧

  A shift happened and that’s all it takes.

  My attention pulls to the far left corner of the sidewalk, just beneath a flickering ad screen preaching something about “freedom through connectivity.” I hear it before I see it — flesh on pavement. Boots against ribs. Laughter without conscience.

  A man.

  Mid-thirties, maybe older. He’s on the ground, curled into himself like the bones inside are trying to protect what’s left. His face is bleeding. One of his cyber-lenses is cracked. Still glowing. Still trying to function.

  There are four of them around him — raiders. Not the anarchist kind. The scavenger kind. The this is how we eat tonight kind. One grips the man’s jacket collar and yanks him up, just to shove him back down. Another plants a hard boot to his stomach, not even looking him in the eye.

  His phone — the last connection he probably had to anyone that might care—slid a few feet away. Face-down. Screen still flickering.

  Until one of them stomps it.

  Hard.

  The screen shatters. The sound it makes is sharp, glass and circuitry cracking like bones. No one flinches.

  No one helps.

  People keep walking by. Eyes forward. Heads down. All of them cradling their own devices, watching feeds, reading headlines, liking photos, reacting to drama that doesn’t bleed.

  They walk right past him. Past the blood. Past the violence. Past the proof that something here hurts.

  The raiders keep laughing. Kicking. Calling him names that don’t belong in a mouth. But what echoes louder than their cruelty is the silence around them. The way the rest of the city doesn’t see it. Doesn’t want to.

  As if looking would make it real. As if caring would cost too much.

  “Why do you care?”

  The voice isn’t mine. But it’s close enough to sound like it could be.

  Not a whisper. Not internal. It speaks out loud — raspy, layered in glitch. Like a voice split through corrupted audio, talking through broken speakers in a mask that doesn’t exist. No one else hears it. Only me.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Why does it matter to you if they’re glued to their screens? Why do you bother with people who can’t even lift their eyes to see what’s rotting right in front of them?”

  I exhale. Slow.

  My voice, when it comes out, is soft. Modulated. Like something being broadcast through a filter. Hollow, but not empty. Weighted. Like there’s something deeper behind the calm.

  “Because they weren’t always like this.”

  I keep my eyes on the man below. He’s coughing now. Reaching for his phone like it still works. Like maybe it’ll call someone who gives a damn.

  “They’ve come a long way. We’ve come a long way. From fire to wheel… to sky… to this.”

  The city groans under itself, alive and unfeeling.

  “Whole civilizations built and buried in the name of progress. But no matter how far they evolve, the one thing they’ve never outrun is the cost of forgetting why they evolved in the first place.”

  A long pause. I let the thought sit with the voice.

  “Everything’s digital now. Every breath logged. Every step traced. No shadows left to hide in. And still, they don’t even ask why.”

  I tilt my head just slightly, watching another passerby step over the shattered phone like it’s part of the sidewalk.

  “They live in the age of information… and know less about themselves than ever.”

  “You sound like you pity them.”

  Another pulse of static wrapped in tone. Not accusatory. Just… amused. Curious.

  I don’t answer right away.

  The rain keeps falling.

  “I don’t pity them,” I say. “But I wonder how many of them even realize the world they’re in.”

  ╤?╧

  I stand.

  A slow motion — deliberate. My body lifts from the ledge like it weighs more than it should. Not from mass. From memory.

  The rain keeps falling. It never really stops. Just changes rhythm.

  I look out past the cityscape. Past the neon skyline stitched with synthetic stars. The horizon stretches in both directions, endless and unbothered. And above it all… the sky.

  It’s always night here.

  Not because the sun forgot us—but because we told it to go away.

  In this era, they built something brilliant. Something monstrous. They cancelled the day.

  Massive atmospheric projectors — folded into the clouds, woven into the data streams — beam a false night across the city twenty-four hours a cycle. No sunrise. No natural light. Just neon reflections and artificial moonscapes. The illusion is so perfect most people forget it’s even a lie.

  But it is.

  This city never sees daylight. And in a place like this, the shadows don’t wait for dark. They live in it.

  I go quiet. Let the silence speak for me.

  That’s when I hear it — digital static.

  Faint. Glitching. Like a radio caught between stations. The sound doesn’t come from the city below. It comes from me.

  No — through me.

  The suit begins to hum. A soft surge of life beneath the surface. It’s tuning in. A signal being broadcast. A voice fighting through interference.

  The static clears, slowly. Sharp at first, then smoother, like a system locking into frequency.

  “—incident reported this evening in Sector 14. Sixteen undocumented citizens apprehended and deported through transit gates. Charges range from illegal entry, to digital silence, to failure of registration with Identification Command. No confirmed location of deportation sites. No public comment from Division Heads.”

  I start walking away from the edge.

  “All individuals lacked valid digital ID. Current systems recognize no data trail. No evidence of birth in this city. No permissions granted. Status: non-existent.”

  Sixteen people, gone like they were never here.

  Wiped for not being born in the right zone. For not feeding their fingerprints into a network that pretends to own them. For not logging into life the “right” way.

  Digital silence.

  That’s what they call it. A crime now. To exist without proof.

  I keep walking. My boots tap soft against the rooftop as the voice fades into static again, swallowed by rain.

  They don’t belong here.

  None of us do.

  And no one’s safe — not under the glow, not behind the screens. Doesn’t matter what mask you wear or corner you hide in. Sooner or later, the system notices. And when it does… you vanish.

  People scream about freedom. Cry out about justice. Post long rants on feeds begging for change. But the city doesn’t hear them. It was never built to listen. It was built to filter.

  And it filters everything.

  “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  The voice again.

  Glitch-edged. Curious. Still watching me from the inside.

  “We could fix this. All of it.”

  I stop.

  Only the sound of rain fills the pause. Distant thunder mutters behind the artificial clouds.

  I speak softly. My voice comes through the mask like a ghost talking through a broken intercom.

  “If I fixed it for them… what would be left of them?”

  ╤?╧

  The city hums below. Alive and unaware.

  “This era made them comfortable with silence. Numb to consequence. They don’t fight for anything unless it’s trending. They want answers… without questions. They want change… without sacrifice.”

  My voice drops lower.

  “They want it handed to them.”

  Another long pause.

  Then, from the other voice — just one sound.

  “Hmm.”

  Not disagreement. Not approval. Just… noted.

  I walk into the dark. The rain follows.

  And above me, the sky lies.

  ╤?╧

  The city doesn’t stop when you touch the ground.

  It just gets louder.

  Rain hits harder here.

  Sidewalk splashes. Neon reflections stretching in puddles.

  Everything’s slick. Wet with motion. With apathy.

  I step out from the alley — slow, deliberate — like the night spat me out into a world already too full to notice.

  Nobody looks up.

  Screens float in front of faces like digital masks. Eyes locked in. Bodies moving on autopilot.

  Some are watching SpectralTube — highlight reels of lives they’ll never live.

  Others tuned into Spark feeds, chatting with vtubers who’ve never bled. Hiding, behind trauma.

  A girl with chrome lashes is laughing at a walkthrough for a VR horror sim while a boy beside her messages someone three feet away.

  I glance at the other end of the street.

  The message pops up in the air between them — holographic, flickering lightly with color-coded mood signals.

  “Bro, you out here too?”

  “Yeah lol. Let’s squad up in the server later.”

  They don’t look at each other.

  They don’t even pause.

  They just keep walking — heads tilted, faces lit by conversations happening inches from real connection.

  Not even the rain makes them blink.

  Only the occasional shuffle — one second of eye contact to avoid collision, then back to the glow.

  This city has no spine.

  Just posture held up by dopamine surges and half-read headlines.

  They’re all here… and still alone.

  The voice doesn’t speak aloud. It doesn’t need to.

  It coils into my thoughts like a wire tightening.

  Digital. Broken. Familiar.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “Same space. Same air. Still reaching for each other through filtered code.”

  I don’t answer right away.

  I move through them. Between them.

  Ghost in a system that forgot what ghosts look like.

  Their world doesn’t register me. I’m not tagged. Not trending. I don’t post. I don’t smile for updates.

  Their feeds can’t find me — so they don’t see me.

  “Do you still want me to intervene?”

  I think it. Direct. Measured.

  There’s silence.

  Then static. Not broken — just thinking.

  “No,” the voice says.

  “Not anymore. You were right. No lesson comes wrapped in rescue.”

  I nod.. but, not for it.

  For me.

  I reach the corner of the sidewalk, lean back against the wall of some old transit hub. One leg propped against the concrete behind me, arms folded, head tilted low under the weight of the hood.

  Still raining. Still flickering light across wet street and weary faces.

  The world continues around me, but I don’t move.

  I watch — and I see.

  There’s a difference.

  At first, they look like everyone else.

  Wearing street gear. Talking like locals. Moving with just the right amount of aimless intent.

  Perfect eye contact. Perfect gait. Nothing lagging. No missteps.

  Too perfect.

  They speak with the same slang. Use the same gestures.

  But it’s rehearsed. Replayed.

  Almost like they practiced human.

  But I know they didn’t.

  Because they aren’t human.

  They walk among us like they belong — and the system agrees.

  No red flags. No alerts. No shadows in their data.

  Because the data isn’t theirs.

  It’s stolen.

  Ripped from the ones who disappeared — deported, erased, untagged and untraceable.

  And now, someone — or something — wears them like credentials.

  There’s no glitch.

  No digital silence.

  Only perfect mimicry.

  They’re here… and no one knows.

  I scan the crowd from behind the shadows of my mask.

  Their faces blur in the rain, but those few? Those ones? Crystal clear.

  They’re dangerous.

  Not because they’re hiding.

  But because they don’t need to.

  “Humans are in more danger than they realize,” I think, knowing the voice hears me.

  “The system drowned them before the enemy even showed up. They’re so desensitized by comfort they forgot to be afraid.”

  A pause. Not for drama — for truth.

  “This city made them blind. And now the ones watching from the outside are walking through the front door.”

  I tilt my head slightly, watching one of the beings pass a vendor. It pays in digital credits, nods with just enough casual human awkwardness to seem authentic.

  Seamless. Flawless. Predatory.

  “These things… whatever they are… they don’t come in ships. They come in skin. And when they finally stop pretending—”

  I stop thinking.

  Because the rain gets louder.

  It falls in sheets now — harder, sharper, like the sky is trying to wash the city clean.

  People finally react.

  Some speed up. Some duck under awnings. Some run.

  They cover their heads, curse the system for not shielding them better.

  Pointless.

  Rain finds a way.

  Doesn’t care how polished your city is. Doesn’t care about your screens or subscriptions.

  It just falls.

  And right now — it’s trying to tell them something.

  But no one listens.

  So I stay where I am.

  Back against the wall.

  One shadow among many.

  And I watch.

  Because if this is the end…

  I want to see who closes their eyes first in a world that went silently dark.

  A world.. that we brought ourselves into.