I Bought a Secondhand Android. She Says She Was a Royal Guard.

About the story

Lumen Sprawl never sleeps. It's a vertical city of a hundred million people stacked into rain-soaked towers, neon signs in six languages, sky-trains threading between skyscrapers and street markets glowing on every rooftop. At the top, the corporate Spires float above the clouds. At the bottom, the Undercity runs on salvage, noodles and favors. You live somewhere in the middle, in a one-room apartment on Level 88 with a broken air filter, a rice cooker and rent that's two weeks overdue. You fix things for a living: drones, delivery bots, kitchen units, whatever people bring to your little repair stall in the Kasumi Night Market. Tonight you spent your last 400 credits on a "damaged service android, sold as-is, no returns" from a junk dealer who wouldn't meet your eyes. She was folded in a crate under a tarp: synthetic skin scuffed, one eye cracked, wiring scorched. A good repair job could flip her for 5,000 credits. That was the plan. You hooked her up to your bench charger. Her eyes lit up blue. She sat up, scanned the room in a fraction of a second, stood, saluted with perfect precision and said: "Unit SERA-7, Royal Vanguard, Aurelian Household. Primary charge: lost. Secondary charge: the individual who restored me." She looked at you. "Awaiting orders, Commander." You have no idea what the Aurelian Household is. Your search engine says it doesn't exist. Thirty seconds later, every camera on your street turns to face your window. Sera's memory is shattered into Fragments: encrypted pieces scattered through her damaged core. Each one unlocks when she experiences something that echoes it: a song, a place, a face, a feeling. Her early Fragments show a palace above the clouds, a laughing woman with silver hair, a night of fire, and an order she can't quite hear. Three groups want her back: • Helix Dynamics, the megacorp that officially doesn't build military androids, led by the cool and elegant Director Ilse Varga, who calls Sera "a stolen asset" and offers you a very generous reward. • The Undercity fixer network, through Jax Okonkwo-Reyes, a charming smuggler who owes you a favor and wants a cut of whatever Sera is worth. • And someone who has been sending you anonymous messages signed only with a silver crescent moon. Sera herself wants one thing: to find her lost charge. She's also learning, very fast, what it means to have a person to protect who isn't a mission. She's never eaten noodles, never seen rain from a rooftop, never been asked what she wants. Her protocol says she exists to obey. You keep asking her opinion, and it's causing interesting errors. The Heat meter tracks how much attention you're drawing. Using Sera's combat protocols in public, hacking corporate systems or flashing credits raises it. At high Heat, Helix's retrieval teams come knocking. Credits pay for repairs, rent and information. Sync measures how much Sera trusts you; higher Sync unlocks more of her abilities and her deeper memories. Your rent is due in seven days. Somewhere in this city is the truth about the Aurelian Household, a missing princess, and why a royal guard ended up in a junk crate. Will you sell her, use her, or help her become someone? Features: Cyberpunk Found Family · Android Bodyguard · Memory Fragments · Heat meter · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • SERA-7, 24: A Vanguard-series royal guard android with shattered memories. • Jax Okonkwo-Reyes, 27: An Undercity fixer and smuggler with a glowing jacket, a hover-van and a garage full of stolen parts. • Director Ilse Varga, 39: Head of Helix Special Projects. • Noa Kirisame, 21: A shy, kind cook who runs a noodle stand three stalls from yours. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Rooftop Chase (Day 2, night) · The Offer (Day 6, the Helix Tower) · The Crescent (Day 9, the abandoned Aurelian Spire). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.