The knuckles of a heavily armored mercenary, Lester, pounded the acid-mist-laden glass counter of an underground black-market stall. With a sharp clang, he slid a frost-blue dagger across the surface toward the reseller. In New Manhattan, acidic rain poured down through cracks in the subterranean market’s ceiling, while the iridescent shards of holographic ads mingled with the acrid mist and drifted through the dim alleyways. Outside, corporate mercenaries’ scent hounds were scouring the third floor above, tracking Lester—the thief who’d stolen a neural inhibitor. This sleek, nonmetallic straight blade, 3D-printed in one seamless piece, was the result of three sleepless nights spent in a derelict workshop. Its honeycomb-patterned, slip-resistant grip fit perfectly in the palm, while the grooved blade reduced weight without sacrificing cutting power—enough to slice through the lightweight cybernetic armor of augmented humans. A metal detector would never pick up this PLA-made knife; Lester needed it to infiltrate the corporate sky-rise tower and destroy the neural lab that was injecting addictive drugs into the underclass. He tucked the dagger into his bootleg and turned to plunge into the neon-lit alley, the cold glint of the blade reflecting off the rebel graffiti on the wall. No one could have imagined that this cheaply printed little blade would upend the corporate-controlled neon city’s neural network—a system that had kept the populace under its thumb for nearly a century. The rain kept falling, the bounty notice on his comms screen had just been updated, and the blade’s temperature was slowly rising with each beat of Lester’s pulse 🔥.