Neo-Noir: Cyber Falcon

Unveil the Vision Behind Neo-Noir: Cyber Falcon

Dive into the heart of Neo-Noir: Cyber Falcon, where every twist in the narrative reflects a commitment to immersive storytelling and thought-provoking choices shaping a world of intrigue.

Chapter 1 “The Cybernetic Client”

‘In the megacity of Neo-Noir, where data is currency, and secrets kill. I, Sam Spade, a private detective, play for survival.’
Neo-Noir is a city that represents the dark future the corporate overlords wished for. Governments were assembled to protect the corporations from the people’s wishes. The average person spends most of their time in the area where they live, trying to earn enough to keep their head above the waterline in any way they can. They keep the local enforcers on their side and pray they never need medical treatment.
Crowded tower blocks, gangs, cyber docs, and power cell-fuel cars. Some manage to get off-world mining in the asteroid belt. But our story is set in the city of Neo-noir.
Welcome to Neo-Noir cyberpunk future.

Even in an age with face recognition, data tracking, and healthy meat, people were still people, and sometimes, they needed a detective to uncover things for them. Especially if you want to find something the corporate authorities would not like or decide to take instead, this is where Sam came into the equation: an ex-police detective who would hire out his help to the private citizen or a corporate entity that wanted to look clean and have someone else do the dirty work. After all, when you leave the police force, what skills do you have for another life? At least now, he can investigate the perpetrator and not try to frame an innocent person for the crime to save a corporate executive.

The acid rain tapped a chaotic rhythm against Sam’s office window, neon signs from the street below bleeding pink and blue through the blinds. He flicked his index finger, scrolling through the Otterflame case files one last time before archiving them—another corporate coverup, another paycheck that would barely keep his neural implants updated for another month.
“Incoming client,” announced his AI assistant, her voice modulating to sound almost concerned. Brigid Welka. Profile clean. Unusually clean. “
‘Let her in, ’ says Sam, glances towards the monitor, and clears his browser tabs. Having something incriminating on screen when a new client enters the office is never a good idea.
The door hissed open. The woman who stepped through wore a high-spec cyber suit that screamed ‘hacker,’ but her eyes, analytical and calculating, suggested she was the business end of whatever operation she ran. Too confident for someone supposedly in distress.
As Brigid walks into Sam’s office, she notices the dreadlocked black man sitting behind a monitor looking up at her. She could imagine him pulling on his goatee beard when thinking hard about something.

“Hello, I’m worried for my partner’s safety. We helped our client build new software for a cutting-edge cyber warfare company. Of course, I can’t say the name or exactly what we were doing. But your AI will have verified who I am, so you know I’m not lying.”
Sam looked at Brigid.
“You’re looking for someone,” Sam said. Not a question. People only came to Neo-Noir’s forgotten districts when the corporate authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t help.
Sam asked her why she hadn’t involved the authorities. After all, they were cheaper than hiring him. Not that he wanted to turn work down, but someone wanting to track a person down normally and avoid the authorities usually meant extra danger.
‘Please, I need your help to find him. He means a lot more to me than a normal business partner.’
‘OK, ’ says Sam, and he questions some more with his AI taking notes.
The case looked like a missing person or, at worst, a kidnapping. Maybe things weren’t as rosy as Brigid made out, but it didn’t sound outside his limits.
As she left the office, Sam decided it was time to close the office for the day.

As he reached toward the screen to turn it off, it suddenly flashed the message ‘Find the Cyber Falcon’.

Chapter 2 “The Shadowed

Pursuit”

This wasn’t just another missing person case. There was blood in the air and data shards in the shadows.

After reading the message, Sam’s heart hammered against his ribcage. The Cyber Falcon. He knew that name from somewhere—a whisper in digital back alleys, something valuable enough to kill for.
He slammed his terminal shut and bolted for the door. Brigid couldn’t have gotten far.
The neon-drenched streets of Neo-Noir greeted him with their familiar cacophony—street vendors hawking black-market tech, the hiss of food stalls venting synthetic meat smoke, and crowds of augmented bodies pushing through the perpetual twilight the megastructures created.
Sam spotted Brigid’s distinctive cyber suit cutting through the crowd, heading toward the Night Market. He kept his distance, just close enough to keep the electric blue trim of her suit in view.

Neither noticed the surveillance drone hovering twelve feet above, its matte-black carapace designed to blend with the urban ceiling of pipes and cables. Its ocular implant tracked Brigid with military precision.
The Night Market throbbed with illicit commerce—augmentation parts spread across dirty tarps, memory chips promising experiences impossible to have naturally, and street doctors performing tune-ups on those who couldn’t afford proper clinics. Brigid navigated it with the confidence of someone who belonged, occasionally stopping at stalls to exchange credits for small packages that disappeared into hidden pockets.
When she suddenly veered into an alley between two decrepit tower blocks, Sam quickened his pace. The narrow passage reeked of synthetic garbage and discarded dreams. Halfway down, he realised he’d lost sight of her completely.
“Shit,” he muttered, breaking into a jog.
He nearly collided with her when she stepped out from behind a dumpster, her face illuminated from below by the glow of her palm interface.
“Why are you following me?” Brigid’s voice was steely, and her free hand hovered near what Sam suspected was a concealed weapon.
“The message—” Sam began, but the whir of descending machinery cut him off.
The drone had stopped pretending to be discreet. It hovered directly above them, spotlight activated, bathing them in harsh white light. Before either could react, the walls around them erupted with movement.
Six figures in adaptive camouflage materialised as they dropped from the rooftops, landing in perfect formation around them.

Military-grade augmentations hummed beneath their armoured exoskeletons. Tactical masks obscured their faces with glowing red optical units, and their weapons—pulse rifles capable of frying neural implants before shredding flesh—were trained on Sam and Brigid.
“You will come with us.” The lead soldier’s voice was artificially flattened and processed through a vocal modulator to remove any trace of humanity.
Brigid squared her shoulders. “If we don’t?”
The soldier tilted his head slightly. “These are not toy guns.” No emotion, no emphasis—just the cold delivery of fact.
Sam’s mind raced. His old police combat implants were outdated, but they weren’t completely useless. He accessed the local district grid through his neural interface, efficiently bypassing basic security—a leftover privilege from his enforcer days.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL DELTA-7. AUTHORISE: SAMUEL HAYES. COMMAND: LUMINARY OVERRIDE SECTOR 12-B. EXECUTE.
As the soldiers took a synchronised step forward, Sam locked eyes with Brigid. “When it happens, follow me. Don’t hesitate.”
Before she could ask what “it” was, every light in the alley and surrounding buildings surged to maximum intensity. The night market beyond the alley entrance became a sea of blinding white. The soldiers’ night-vision implants, calibrated for the dim alley, overloaded. They staggered, temporarily blinded, their formation breaking.
Sam’s AI assistant remotely accessed the drone’s essential command functions, forcing it into a diagnostic loop that sent it spiralling upward in confusion.
He grabbed Brigid’s wrist and yanked her through the narrowest gap between two disoriented soldiers. As they sprinted past, Sam’s hand darted out with the precision of muscle memory, fingers finding the exposed neural port at the base of one soldier’s skull. A quick twist and pull, and the module disconnected.
They ran past the blinded market-goers, through service corridors, and across elevated walkways between buildings. Sam pulled Brigid into a maintenance shaft, and they climbed down three levels before emerging into a different sector altogether.
They finally stopped in a cramped space between climate control units on a rooftop, their breath coming in ragged gasps.
“They’re gone,” Sam panted, scanning their surroundings. “So is the drone.”
“And me?” Brigid asked, eyes narrowed. “Were you planning to explain why you were stalking me?”
Sam opened his palm, revealing the neural chip he’d extracted from the soldier. Its surface glowed with a faint blue light, microscopic circuits pulsing with stored data.
“After I received your payment, my screen displayed a message: ‘Find the Cyber Falcon.’ I thought you might be in danger,” Sam explained, turning the chip over in his fingers. “And it seems I was right.”
“The Cyber Falcon,” Brigid whispered, her expression changing from suspicion to something like fear. “So it does exist.”
“You want to tell me what we’re really dealing with?” Sam asked, pocketing the neural chip. “Because those weren’t street thugs back there. That was military hardware.”
Brigid’s eyes darted to the chip in Sam’s hand. “Can you read what’s on that?”
“I know someone who can,” Sam said. “But first, you need to tell me the truth. All of it.”
The distant wail of security drones searching the sectors below filled the momentary silence between them.

Chapter 3

The Cyber Falcon mythical construct is rumoured to hold the access key to an ancient vault of wealth

Sam ducked through back alleys and maintenance corridors on his way to his office, the carbon-fibre breather mask obscuring his features. Its filtration system hissed softly with each breath, scrubbing the toxic particulates from Neo-Noir’s perpetually polluted air. The mask was necessary in this district, but it also served as convenient anonymity—a fact Sam was particularly grateful for tonight.

If those military types come looking, let them come to my turf, he thought. His office systems would alert him to any surveillance. It is better to control the encounter than to keep running.

The familiar hum of his security grid welcomed him as he pressed his palm against the hidden scanner beside his door. Inside, the office remained precisely as he’d left—a controlled chaos of data pads, old-fashioned paper notes, and empty synthetic whiskey containers.

“VERA, full spectrum scan,” Sam commanded, removing his mask.

“Scanning complete,” his AI assistant responded, her voice emanating from hidden speakers. “No surveillance devices detected. No pursuit indicators were observed. Blood pressure elevated. Recommend a mild sedative.”

“Not now,” Sam muttered, dropping into his worn synth-leather chair. He fished the neural chip from his pocket, examining its glowing circuits. Military-grade, quantum encrypted—it would take specialised tools to crack.

He slotted the chip into his desk terminal. “AI, initiate full decryption protocol. Use the old enforcer backdoors.”

“Warning: Military-grade encryption detected. Estimated completion time: seven hours, twenty-two minutes.”

Sam leaned back in his chair. “Wake me when you’ve got something.”

The terminal hummed, holographic code sequences dancing above it as VERA attacked the encryption. Sam’s eyes grew heavy. The day’s events—Brigid’s appearance, the soldiers, the chase—had drained him more than he’d care to admit. His consciousness began to drift.

He snapped awake to VERA’s alert tone.

“Partial decryption achieved. File fragments accessible.”

Sam blinked sleep from his eyes, checking the time. Nearly four hours had passed. He leaned forward, scrolling through the fragmented data VERA had extracted.

“The Cyber Falcon,” he read aloud. “Prototype. Quantum-entangled access protocol.”

The technical specifications scrolled by, most still corrupted or incomplete, but enough to piece together the truth. The Cyber Falcon wasn’t physical tech—it was software. A gateway algorithm is designed to access the global banking network anonymously, leaving no digital footprint. In the corporate-controlled world of Neo-Noir, where every transaction was tracked, taxed, and scrutinised, such technology was worth more than blood diamonds.

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered. “This would sell for millions on the black market. Billions to the right corporate entity.”

“Decryption continuing,” AI informed him. “Estimating additional—”

The subtle shift in air pressure was Sam’s only warning. The door to his office hissed open, bypassing his security protocols completely. Sam reached for the pulse pistol beneath his desk but froze when he saw who had entered.

Two men stepped inside. The first was tall and impeccably dressed in a tailored cyber suit that probably cost more than Sam’s office. His augmented eyes gleamed with an unnatural amber sheen, and the manicured hand resting casually in his pocket bulged slightly—concealed weapon: corporate aristocracy.

The second man was pure muscle. Military-grade combat augmentations stretched his massive frame to the point where he barely fit through the doorway. His face was a patchwork of scars and subdermal implants, one eye replaced with a targeting system that emitted a faint red glow.

Before Sam could react, the more prominent man moved surprisingly quickly, clamping a hand on Sam’s shoulder and forcing him back into his chair. The grip was precisely calibrated—painful enough to communicate the threat, not enough to cause damage. Professional.

“Hello,” the well-dressed man said, his voice cultured and pleasant. “Sorry for the late reply, but I’d like to employ your services.”

“Didn’t think I had much choice,” Sam replied, eyes fixed on the mountain of augmented muscle looming over him. The man’s augmentations weren’t street-level tech—they were military-spec, maybe even black-market experimental.

The well-dressed man smiled, revealing perfect teeth that were too symmetrical to be natural. “Well, I assume you want to know what your job is for me.” He gestured toward the neural chip in Sam’s terminal. “I want you to find the Cyber Falcon. Something I already know you’ve been employed to do.”

He adjusted his immaculate sleeve. “I’m Kasper Gutman, and this is my chief security officer, Cairo.” Gutman’s smile never reached his amber eyes. “You don’t want to upset me because when I’m upset, so is Cairo. You don’t want to see Cairo upset.”

Sam glanced up at Cairo, whose expression remained immobile as carved stone. Only the slight whirring of his ocular implant adjusting focus betrayed any sign of life.

“Finding the Cyber Falcon. Sure. I can do that,” Sam said carefully. “My fee is—”

“Money is not an issue,” Gutman interrupted with a dismissive wave. “Success is.”

Cairo moved with that same unsettling speed, grabbing Sam’s arm in a vice-like grip. Gutman produced a small injector from his pocket, its contents glowing with a sickly green luminescence.

The needle bit into Sam’s forearm before he could react, burning like liquid fire as it deposited its payload.

“What the hell was that?” Sam demanded, wrenching his arm free and inspecting the injection site where a small lump was already forming beneath his skin.

“An insurance policy,” Gutman replied, pocketing the empty injector. “It’s a tracker. I like to know where my people are at any time.” His amber eyes gleamed. “It also monitors your vital signs. Any attempt to remove it triggers a rather… unpleasant neurochemical reaction.”

Sam rubbed his wrist, mind already racing through contacts who specialised in extraction procedures. Whatever this thing was, it was coming out at the first opportunity.

“I’d advise against trying to remove it,” Gutman said as if reading Sam’s thoughts. “The last operative who attempted that spent three days experiencing what his brain interpreted as being flayed alive. Fascinating technology.”

Cairo moved to the door, his massive frame blocking the exit as Gutman straightened his perfect suit.

“Goodnight, Mr. Spade,” Gutman said, using Sam’s surname as a clear message that he knew exactly who he was dealing with. “I expect an update within forty-eight hours. Otherwise, Cairo comes looking for you.”

Cairo’s ocular implant flashed briefly as it scanned Sam’s biometrics, storing them for future reference.

After they left, Sam slumped back in his chair, the burning sensation in his arm gradually subsiding to a dull throb.

“AI, scan my arm. Tell me what that bastard put in me.”

“Scanning,” VERA replied. “Foreign object detected. Biometric tracker with neurochemical payload. Military-grade. Attempting to isolate frequency.”

Sam stared at the data fragments still scrolling across his terminal. The Cyber Falcon was a software key that could unlock the global banking system. No wonder everyone was after it.

“AI, any sign of Brigid on the city surveillance systems?”

“Negative. The subject has gone dark. However, I have identified the military unit from the neural chip fragments. Black Echo Division. Private military contractors employed by Tanaka Corporation.”

Sam rubbed his temples. Tanaka Corp was one of the six mega-corporations that ran Neo-Noir from their orbital headquarters. Gutman was likely working for one of the others.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Sam?” he muttered.

The tracker in his arm pulsed, a constant reminder that the clock was now ticking.