The abandoned subway's vents wailed like a broken pipe organ. Ayla stepped over fluorescence-smeared tracks, Caged Moon fragments clinking in her grip. Max crouched at the turnstile-turned-control-panel, shoving licorice into his mouth faster than usual—their coded danger signal.
"You're building harps for these cyber drifters?" His cane tip tapped rusted rails, shaking loose dust mingled with Neumann micro-trackers. "Stick to C minor—their cochlear implants got fried by Selene's ultrasound last time."
Ayla stayed silent. Her fingers traced piano key fractures—white keys from Caged Moon gypsum embedded with slum kids' neural sensors, black keys from Lucas' memory alloy. Tuning triggered biochips in gypsum, projecting holograms of her carving Wolf in the Thorns three years prior—Lucas' profile flickered outside the studio window.
Three minutes to showtime, Lucas' spinal implant buzzed like swarming hornets. When he ripped his collar open, cerulean raindrop patterns emerged below his collarbone—perfect replicas of their first storm.
"Avoid F-sharp." He tossed painkillers into the timpani, pills bouncing an encrypted rhythm. "That frequency'll burn through my L3 vertebra. Unless you want a marionette collapsing mid-solo."
Max killed the lights. Prosthetic eyes glowed crimson as the laser violin bow split air. Ayla's nape scar throbbed. Gypsum keys illuminated with each movement, Lucas' spine translating soundwaves into pulsing glyphs—their sheltering overpass redrawn on his skin, lightning forks mirroring memory.
During the crescendo, the drummer shattered a bass key. Biochips erupted from gypsum, holograms switching to Neumann lab feeds: Odile inputting Lucas' pain data into AI composers, timestamped the eve of Ayla's debut exhibition.
"You missed an eighth note heartbeat." Lucas seized her wrist, coolant dripping between metallic fingers. His smoking spinal implant scorched raindrop patterns. "This score's written with my pain thresholds... Beautiful, isn't it?"
When Selene's drones pierced the ceiling, Ayla found a cold metal box in the piano's belly. Lucas' biometric lock opened to her cerulean blood—twelve neural sedatives inside, labeled: "Apply to T6 vertebra. Preserves the rain's first-night shape."