July 2025: The Neon Verge – Andrew Campbell
The Neon Verge
The cube reeked of ozone and stale synthbrew. A neon panel stuttered overhead, its hum fractured like a broken signal. Detective Reyes sat across from the wreckage of a man. His coat was scorched, his eyes feral, and his stillness too deliberate to be sane. She adjusted the room’s luminescence through her HUD. The cube’s panels flared, bathing them in sterile white. The man tried to shield his eyes with a hand. He got halfway before the magcuffs snapped back to the metallic table.
Her colleagues called this interrogation room the cube. The light had a way of disinfecting the truth out of perps.
“Name?” she asked, voice flat.
“We’ve been over this.” His shoulders slumped. “Dr. Elias Venn.”
“Occupation?”
“Physicist.”
Of course he was. He looked like he’d crawled out of a reactor meltdown, dragging a toaster-sized device that still hissed with residual heat. The thing sat on the table between them, humming like it had secrets. He called it an anchor.
She rose and circled behind Venn, pulling up the Initial Scan Report.
“All augments removed,” she checked behind his ear for surgical traces. “No scars. The Patchless aren’t that neat. Who do you work for?”
“Nobody,” Venn’s voice cracked. He frowned. “The Patchless?”
“Retro-anarchists,” Reyes leaned in closer. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t start the fire,” he pleaded. “I skipped forward… through time. My machine worked.”
“Let me get this straight, Jules Verne.” Detective Reyes straightened, then pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Wells.”
“What?”
“H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine. Jules Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues—”
“Don’t get smart.” Reyes’ eyes flicked to her search bar. She skimmed the top result. “Finally, some truth. So, you expect me to believe you time-jumped into the middle of a shopping plaza that just happens to explode on your arrival?”
“It wasn’t an explosion. It was a temporal shockwave. The temporal anchor was moved. I think. I was in the middle of farmland when I did my test.”
She’d heard better lies from junkies in the lower stacks. Still, something about the way he said it made her hesitate.
The panels on the wall dimmed into a door. It hissed open.
A man stepped in. Tailored synth-suit, retinal HUD flickering with data streams, and the kind of bureaucratic chill that made Reyes’ skin crawl. He didn’t look at her.
Just at Venn.
“Dr. Elias Venn,” his voice cold and polished, like an AI corporate memo.
“Agent Kwan.”
“You’re kidding.” Reyes muttered.
Kwan ignored her. “We’ve reviewed your claim.”
“This is my collar.” Reyes folded her arms.
“Detective Reyes, is it?” Kwan eyed her.
Coolant flooded her veins. Reyes then gathered the courage to ask. “You believe him?”
“His DNA checks out.” Kwan nodded. “Fifty years.”
“Finally,” Venn’s eyes widened. “Fifty?”
“That’s right,” Kwan waved a hand and data cascaded across the table. “Are these your accounts?”
Venn flinched back.
“Dr. Venn,” Kwan stepped forward. “I’m with the ATO. You’re under arrest for tax evasion.”
Andrew Campbell
Right Left Write’s July prompt was One Room Story. New prompts are announced monthly in QWC’s Pen & Pixel email newsletter.
Find out more about Right Left Write at www.queenslandwriters.org.au/rightleftwrite.
Right Left Write’s July prompt was One Room Story.