The screams of the gangers around him had changed. They were no longer the predatory roars of hunters; they were the terrified, high-pitched squeals of prey. He rose to his feet, one-armed and drenched in a glistening crimson that was mostly his own, a terrifying, broken smile stretching the flesh of his face.

Then he exploded forward.

He was a force of nature, no longer a man, but a whirlwind of death centered on a single, serrated forearm blade. One by one, they fell, their bravado dissolving into blood and terror on the grimy ground.

He saw Zarthus last. His former partner was frozen, the smug grin that had been etched on his face moments before now melted into a mask of pure, primal terror. Zarthus turned to run, a pathetic, scrambling motion, but Salvador was on him in two long, impossible strides, tackling him to the ground with the force of a freight train. He straddled the man, pinning him with his weight, the world narrowing to the zed of Zarthus's optic mods.

"Sal... Salvador, wait!" Zarthus pleaded, his voice cracking, spitting blood.

Salvador didn't answer. He didn't hear the words. All he saw was Kao's ghost, a kind hand on his shoulder, and then this face, the smug, treacherous face that had sent him to his death. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his remaining arm, the serrated blades dripping, catching the dim light.

He pressed the blades against Zarthus's neck and began sawing, slow and methodical. A gurgling spray of hot blood erupted from Zarthus's mouth as the blade severed his arteries. His body convulsed violently underneath Salvador, a grotesque, electrocuted dance as the serrated metal grated against his spine. Salvador watched, unblinking, as the life and the betrayal drained from his partner's wide, terrified eyes until they were just glass, the frantic shaking finally ceasing.

With a manic grin, he spat on Zarthus's head as it rolled away.

And then it was over. The adrenaline fled his system all at once, and the world dissolved into a screaming tunnel of static and pain. He collapsed on top of the carnage he had wrought, his own interface blaring critical warnings at the edge of his vision before flickering into darkness. His right arm was gone. His lower jaw was a mangled ruin of flesh and shattered bone.

As the darkness began to close around him, a cold, final embrace, something stirred deep within the wreckage of his mind. A single, defiant thought.

I can't die yet. Not before her.

He rose, a dead man walking, and started to move, one agonizing step at a time. He didn't know how, but he managed to drag himself to a back-alley clinic, collapsing onto a stained modding chair before the world finally went black.

When the modder showed him the options on a flickering screen, Salvador didn't hesitate. He pointed a trembling, bloody finger at the most aggressive one. A reinforced, metallic prosthetic jaw with interlocking, serrated teeth. Something that would allow him to bite. Hard.

After the intervention, he looked in the mirror. The reflection was a stranger. His lower face, part of his neck, and his upper chest were now a seamless expanse of matte black metal. At a mental command, the plates covering his new jaw retracted with a soft hiss, revealing the dark, vicious fangs beneath. He tested it, snapping it shut. The sound was a sharp, metallic clack that echoed with a chilling finality in the small, sterile room. He let the plates slide back, concealing the monster within.

He headed to the clinic. Today was Elin's birthday. June 22nd, 2074.

His body was a roadmap of fresh stitches, and his implants ached with a deep, resonant pain that was a constant, grinding reminder of his transformation. Every step was hell. He stepped inside the quiet, sterile room where Elin lay. He walked to the bed and sat down, the chair groaning under his weight.

He glanced at the amalgam of tubes running along her body, the gentle, rhythmic puffing of the ventilator the only sound in the room. It was a sound that was supposed to mean life, but here, it was just a countdown. The last flicker of the man named Salvador sparked as he looked at his wife, at the ghost of the woman he loved. A pain worse than having his arm torn off, worse than any physical torment, seized his soul.

A doctor walked in. "Mr. Liorel," he said, his voice soft but devoid of pity. "The termination has been approved."

Each word was a nail hammered into his coffin. He had failed. The cancer had won.

Salvador watched, numb, as the doctor walked to the main console. After a few keystrokes, the life support systems disengaged. The slow, steady beep of the heart rate monitor faltered once, twice… then stretched into a single, unending tone that sliced through the silence of the room.

She had died that day. And in the piercing silence of that hospital room, Salvador died with her.

And Ripjaw was born.

The unending tone of the heart rate monitor finally faded, leaving a piercing silence in its wake. The reek of antiseptic and death dissolved.

The flashback ended.

Ray stood before the grave, the cold granite cool against his knuckles. The world snapped back into focus with a nauseating lurch. For Selena, watching him, only a minute had passed. For Ray, it had been a lifetime of blood, betrayal, and loss, lived out in the space between heartbeats.

He saw Selena from the corner of his eye. Her usual sharp edges, the defensive posture she wore like armor, had softened. She reached out a hesitant hand, towards the grave, her fingers gently tracing the inscription carved into the stone.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

ELIN LIOREL BELOVED WIFE & MOTHER

As Ray stared at the name, the world shimmered. A faint, translucent image flickered before his eyes, a ghost of a memory that wasn't his—a phantom of the life that had never happened. Salvador and Elin, younger, their faces bright with a joy that felt more real than the sun in the sky. In their arms, they held a small baby, wrapped in a white blanket. The image was fragile, beautiful, and agonizing—a shard of impossible light that pierced the data of his new existence.

With a hand that felt impossibly heavy, Ray carefully placed the white lilies on the grave. He let his fingers rest on the cold stone for a few moments longer, a silent farewell. Then, he rose, turned his back on the grave, on the ghost of Salvador, and walked away without looking back.

The car engine hummed to life, a low, steady sound in the quiet desolation. As they pulled away, Ray glanced at Selena in the passenger seat. She was silent, her head turned away from him, her gaze fixed on the grave as it receded through the window. The white lilies were a stark, lonely splash of life against the gray nothingness. She was worrying the strings of her hoodie, her fingers twisting the fabric into tight, anxious knots.

"This woman, Elin," Selena said finally, her voice quiet, almost lost in the sound of the engine. "She must have been important for you to come all this way." She glanced at him, her storm-gray and green eyes full of a hesitant, gentle curiosity. "Was she… your wife?"

"No," Ray responded, his gaze fixed on the gray, endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean ahead. The ghost of another man's love, another man's grief, was a heavy, phantom weight in his chest. "But I knew her. Very well." He looked over at Selena and saw the question she was too polite to ask, the empathy shining in her eyes. He decided, for once, to let the ghost speak.

"She was… kind," he began, the memories of Salvador, of Ripjaw, surfacing unbidden. The words felt like his own, but the ache behind them belonged to a man long dead. "The kind of person who made you feel like you mattered, even when the whole world was telling you that you were just another piece of scrap. She had a smile that could make a rainy day feel like sunshine, and a laugh… her laugh was like music." He paused, the phantom ache of a lost love that wasn't his own tightening his throat. "She had this way of seeing the good in people, even when they couldn't see it in themselves."

He told her how Elin had died, in a quiet sterile hospital room, her body ravaged by a cancer that no amount of love or money could stop. "It's… the quiet that gets you," he said, his voice dropping, becoming rougher, the memory raw and immediate. "The sound of the machines breathing for her. You just sit there, and you watch them disappear. Not all at once. It's… a piece at a time. A memory. The way she used to laugh. The color in her eyes. It all just… fades. Until you're sitting next to a stranger. And then… then they're gone. And all you have left is this… hole. This silence where they used to be."

When he finished, Selena was silent for a long moment, her reflection a ghostly image in the window. She rubbed her nose, a small, childish gesture that betrayed the depth of her emotion.

"Why does this world hate good people so much?" she whispered, her voice thick with a grief that was not just for Elin, but for her own father, for every good person crushed by the city's indifferent gears. "My dad, Elin… they were good people. And they both died alone and in pain."

"The world doesn't hate or love," Ray explained, the memories of a hundred violent, pointless deaths giving his words a grim, hard-won authority. "It's just… indifferent. You miss the good ones more. That's the only difference. There are a thousand criminals dying in the streets every day—shot, stabbed, burned, broken. We don't mourn them, because they were bad people. But their deaths are just as real."

Selena offered a soft, sad nod, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

"It's not an argument to care less," Ray continued, his voice softening with a gentleness that felt both ancient and new. "It's a reminder that anyone, good or bad, can be taken by a stray bullet or a faulty wire. All we can choose is how we're remembered." He leaned over, and with a surprising, almost playful tenderness, he tapped her on the nose.

Selena flinched, her eyes shooting wide open with surprise, a small gasp escaping her lips.

"Boop," Ray said, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through his own heavy grief.

The car moved on, leaving the lonely grave behind. As they merged onto the main highway, the heavy silence in the car felt different now—less like grief and more like a shared, quiet understanding. After a while, Ray decided it was time to change the soundtrack of their sorrow. He interfaced with the car's audio system, and a ridiculously catchy, upbeat synth-pop song filled the quiet of the car. He started to sing along, his voice terribly, wonderfully off-key.

"Oh, stop it," Selena said, but a real, genuine smirk was playing on her lips, the first he had seen all day. "You're so bad."

"I know," Ray said, not stopping. "But that's the point. It's supposed to be fun, not perfect." He grinned at her, a flash of the boy she remembered. "Come on. You know you want to."

"In your dreams, alien," she shot back, but her eyes were sparkling with a light he hadn't seen in a long, long time.

He just kept singing, his terrible voice a joyful, defiant noise against the car's electric hum. An hour later, as the sun began to set, painting the sky in hues of fire and gold, Selena was singing along with him, her own clear voice joining his in a chaotic, beautiful harmony, a wide, unrestrained smile on her face.

After a few hours later, they were finally back in the apartment. The only sounds in the sterile space were the distant, ever-present hum of Virelia and the soft, rhythmic breathing of Max, asleep on a futon in the corner—a small island of peace in a city of storms.

Selena leaned against the arm of the couch, her gaze lost in the glowing screen of her phone, scrolling through photos from their trip—mostly endless, desolate stretches of sand.

Ray emerged from his room, a ghost in his old skin, still wearing the simple, utilitarian clothes of a man on the run. Seeing him, Selena rose to her feet, a silent question in her posture. She still remembered his promise.

"I'm heading out for a few hours," he said, his voice a careful, neutral construct. "I'm going to see Alyna. There's still some food in the fridge if you get hungry."

Selena's expression was a complex storm of surprise, hurt, and a flicker of something that might have been disappointment. She pulled at the strings of her hoodie, the fabric a flimsy shield, as she let herself fall with a groan onto the couch. Her silence was a more potent accusation than any shouted words.

"Tomorrow, I promise," he promised, the words feeling hollow, like echoes in an antechamber. "I'll take you for that ride on the bike. We can spend the whole day."

Selena just tsked, a sharp, dismissive sound. She looked away, out the grimy window at the bruised neon of the city.

"Just go do what you have to do," she said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion.

He gave her a small, affirmative thumbs-up and headed for the door.

The door hissed shut behind him. As he walked to the elevator, his mind processed the variables.

As the elevator descended, he closed his eyes, and the decision crystallized in his mind with the cold, hard certainty of a fatal diagnosis. The man they loved is gone. Me using that name only reinforces the illusion.

A new name surfaced in his consciousness, a designation for what he truly was now. A perfect synthesis of man and machine.

He stepped out into the Virelian night. The rain had passed, leaving the city slick and gleaming, a wounded beast washed clean for a moment. He moved not to his bike, but toward the maglev station, a solitary, hooded figure.

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