Echo of the Machines - A Cyberpunk LitRPG with choices.

In 2055, the city is neon, automated, and cruelly efficient—especially to people like Eli Mercer, a 28-year-old nobody with no friends, no love, and no future. He survives on low-pay gigs and invisibility, the kind of man the world forgets the moment it looks away. That changes the night he gets his first cyber upgrade: a cognitive chip that overlays the hidden tech-layer of the city. At first, it seems like a hustle tool—until Eli discovers his implant is not like anyone else’s. His doesn’t just let him see devices and networks. It lets him talk to them. Locks argue. Drones whisper. Power lines warn. Security grids negotiate. And when Eli’s chip “wakes up,” it broadcasts a signature powerful enough to draw predators from every direction. Military contractors, gangs, corporate bidders—Collectors—all want what’s in his skull, and they will tear the city apart to get it. Forced into flight, Eli learns the horrifying truth: he isn’t just upgraded—he may be bait, a carrier, or the first proof that the machines can be compelled by more than code. As he runs deeper into the city’s undergrid, he begins to “level” in the only way he can—by turning conversations into leverage, making alliances with tech no one else can hear, and surviving the neural strain that threatens to burn his mind out. In the undercity, Eli meets Juno, a hardened runner who knows doors that aren’t on maps, and Kestrel, a chaotic fixer who can hide a man in signal-noise—if the price is right. Together, they drag Eli toward the Null Market, where illegal upgrades, secrets, and betrayals are traded like currency. Eli’s new class—Machine Whisperer (Unstable)—is both his edge and his curse. Every use costs him: headaches, tremors, and the creeping fear that too much Talkback might change who he is. Meanwhile, the pursuer known as Rook closes in with calm precision, hinting that Eli’s implant was never an accident…and that the people who “helped” him may have sold him the moment he became valuable. Now Eli has one choice: stay prey until he dies, or become someone the city can’t erase—before the machines, the hunters, or the chip itself decide what he’s worth.