S0ZEN
patreon
OverClocked [A Cyberpunk Progression Saga]
🕑 Added 2025-07-19 19:17:51 +0000 UTCMercer is an Argus Corp employee with Level 10 Avatar, his job is simple as a data-carrier, his cyber space Avatar is just high enough to deliver encrypted payloads through the Net without dying, but low enough that his name doesn’t show up on anyone’s threat board. It’s honest work. Mostly. He doesn’t shoot things, he doesn’t hack into blacksite servers, and he doesn’t tangle with rogue AIs at least when he is on the job. His job? Pick up the package. Walk it across cyberspace. Deliver it without letting anyone delete him or His package.
Then one day the package is not what it seems.
During a very not standard-issue delivery run for Argus Corp, the sealed code bundle headed to a private lab—Mercer gets jumped by Cyberspace gangs the package is almost deleted.
But from it something that shouldn’t exist. No logos, no traceable origin, and definitely not in the script is let loose. Within seconds, his avatar is twitching, his firewall’s gasping, and he’s infected with something that rewrites the rules.
Literally.
His avatar starts… misbehaving. His Body twitches. Abilities show up in his loadout that he didn’t earn. His vision flickers with ghostlights—data shadows of users who should be long gone. He hears voices in the static.
Now Argus Corp Japan is calling in debts, black market fixers are sniffing around, and rogue AI fragments are trying to recruit him for something called “The First Mirror.” And Mercer? He’s stuck in the middle with a corrupted skill tree, a data-thread running hot in his spine, and a growing suspicion that he was never meant to survive this run.
Turns out, the delivery wasn’t a job—it was a test.
And Mercer’s already failed.
