The Puppeteer | NEON LIT

I've broken prettier.

That's what I tell myself when they bring her in—wrists bound in smart-cuffs, hair tangled, blood drying on her split lip. She's beautiful in that engineered way the elite prefer: high cheekbones, full mouth, eyes the color of honey drizzled over amber. Perfect proportions, perfect skin, perfect everything.

Except for the defiance burning in those eyes like a house fire.

Ah, I think. This one's going to be fun.

My name is Marcus Chen. I'm thirty-four years old, and I've spent the last decade turning broken people into perfect dolls for the upper echelons of Neo-Singapore's corporate aristocracy. Companions. Toys. Living ornaments for the penthouses of the powerful.

I'm very good at what I do.

They call me the Puppeteer.

"Subject 7-Alpha," my assistant recites, scrolling through the intake file on his tablet. "Real name: Lyra Vance. Twenty-six. Former corporate liaison for Meridian Industries. Debt defaulted after embezzlement charges—three hundred million credits. Sentenced to ten years of indentured service under the Companion Allocation Protocol."

I circle her slowly. She kneels on the concrete floor of the conditioning room, spine ramrod straight despite the cuffs, chin lifted in a way that screams defiance to anyone who knows how to read it.

I know how to read it.

"Embezzlement," I say. "That's a new one. Most of the ones they send me are gamblers or addicts. What did you spend three hundred million credits on, Lyra Vance?"

Her eyes track me as I move. Sharp. Calculating. Not the glazed desperation I usually see in fresh acquisitions.

"Information," she says. Her voice is low, controlled. "The kind that could have brought down half the corporate council."

"Could have?"

"They caught me before I finished."

I stop in front of her. Crouch down until we're eye to eye. This close, I can see the fine tremor in her jaw—the only sign that she's afraid.

"Let me explain how this works," I say, keeping my voice pleasant. "You've been assigned to me for conditioning. Over the next six months, I'm going to strip away everything you think you are and rebuild you into something useful. Something beautiful. Something that the person who buys your contract will treasure."

"And if I refuse?"

I smile. "No one refuses. Not for long."

Something flickers in her expression. Something that almost looks like anticipation.

"We'll see," she says.

She doesn't break.

Week one: isolation. No human contact except me. No stimulation except what I provide. Most subjects crack within three days, desperate for connection, willing to do anything for a kind word or a gentle touch.

Lyra uses the time to meditate. I watch her through the cameras—sitting motionless for hours, her breathing deep and even, her expression serene. When I finally enter her cell, she looks at me like I'm an interruption.

"You're supposed to be lonely," I say.

"Am I?" She tilts her head. "Sorry. I've always enjoyed my own company."

Week two: sensory manipulation. I flood her cell with light that never dims, sounds that never stop, temperatures that shift without warning. It's designed to destroy equilibrium, to make the subject crave stability—stability that only obedience can provide.

Lyra adapts. I watch her build routines around the chaos, finding patterns in the unpredictability, turning my weapons into tools. When the lights strobe, she dances. When the sounds assault her, she hums louder.

"You're remarkably resilient," I tell her during our daily evaluation.

"I had good training." Her smile is a knife. "Corporate liaisons deal with worse than this before breakfast."

Week three: reward conditioning. Pleasure as a teaching tool—good behavior earns comfort, contact, release. It's the phase where most subjects discover that surrender feels better than resistance.

But when I touch her—when I show her what compliance can earn—she doesn't melt.

She watches.

I pull back, unsettled in a way I haven't been in years.

"What are you doing?" I demand.

"Learning," she says. Her eyes are very bright. "You're an excellent teacher, Marcus. I'm paying attention."

It takes me too long to realize what's happening.

By week four, I'm thinking about her constantly. Not as a subject—as a puzzle. I lie awake at night replaying our sessions, searching for weaknesses I've missed, strategies I haven't tried. I dream about her honey-amber eyes, her controlled voice, the way she looks at me like she can see through my skin to the ugly machinery underneath.

By week five, I'm making excuses to see her. Longer sessions. Extra evaluations. I tell myself it's professional diligence—she's my most challenging subject ever, and I need to understand her.

But when I'm with her, my pulse quickens. My hands want to shake. I find myself wanting to please her, to impress her, to earn one of those rare, sharp smiles.

By week six, I understand.

I'm not conditioning her.

She's conditioning me.

"How long?" I ask.

We're in her cell. It's late—long past when I should have gone home. She's sitting on her cot, legs crossed, watching me with those knowing eyes.

"How long what?"

"How long have you been playing me?"

She doesn't bother to deny it. Just smiles—that knife-smile, the one I've started dreaming about.

"Since day one. Though I admit you made it harder than expected. Most handlers break within two weeks."

"Most handlers." My voice is hollow. "You've done this before."

"Four times." She uncrosses her legs, rises, moves toward me with the fluid grace of a predator who's already won. "How do you think a corporate liaison gets information worth three hundred million credits? I don't hack systems, Marcus. I hack people."

She stops inches away. I should restrain her. I should call security. I should do something—anything—other than stand here like a fool while my entire worldview collapses.

"What do you want?" I manage.

"What I've always wanted. Access to the corporate council." Her hand rises, fingers tracing down my chest. My whole body lights up at her touch. "You're going to help me get it."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're already mine." Her palm presses flat over my heart. "You've been mine since week three, when you stopped looking at me like a subject and started looking at me like a person. Since week four, when you forgot to run the evening conditioning because you were too busy thinking about me. Since week five, when you whispered my name in your sleep."

My blood runs cold. "How do you know that?"

"I have cameras too." Her smile widens. "Did you really think the Puppeteer was the only one who knew how to watch?"

I should turn her in.

I should report what she's done—the manipulation, the security breach, the fact that she's played our entire facility like a goddamn instrument. They'd terminate her contract. Ship her to the mines, probably. No one would ever know how badly she'd compromised me.

Instead, I do something worse.

I kiss her.

It's not gentle. Not tender. It's furious—all teeth and desperation, punishment and plea wrapped into one bruising collision. She laughs against my mouth, victorious and vicious, and her fingers rake through my hair hard enough to hurt.

"There he is," she murmurs when we break apart. "The man under the mask. I've been wondering when he'd show up."

"I hate you."

"I know." She kisses me again. "That's what makes this fun."

We fall onto her cot in a tangle of limbs. She's nothing like the pliant, perfected dolls I've created—she bites, scratches, demands, takes. When I try to control the pace, she flips us with a twist of her hips that speaks to combat training no corporate liaison should have. When I try to hold back, she digs her nails into my shoulders and whispers more like it's a threat.

I give her more.

I give her everything.

And somewhere in the wreckage of my self-control, I realize: this is what it feels like to be broken. This is what it feels like to surrender.

She's made me into exactly what I make others.

A doll.

Her doll.

"You could destroy me," I say afterward.

We're lying in the narrow cot, her head on my chest, my fingers trailing patterns on her spine. The cameras are still running—recording evidence that would end my career, my reputation, my life as I know it.

"I could," she agrees.

"Why haven't you?"

She's quiet for a long moment. Her breath is warm against my skin.

"Because you're interesting," she finally says. "Most people are predictable. Most handlers are worse—they see themselves as gods, untouchable. You..." She traces a circle over my heart. "You knew you were a monster. You did it anyway. But you never convinced yourself it was righteous."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"It's supposed to be an observation." She props herself up to look at me, and for the first time, there's something soft in her expression. Something almost vulnerable. "I've spent my whole life manipulating people, Marcus. Playing roles. Being whatever the situation required. Do you know what that's like? To never be real?"

I think about the masks I wear. The careful control. The walls between myself and anything that could hurt me.

"Yes," I say. "I think I do."

"Then you understand why I'm not going to destroy you." She leans down, brushes her lips against mine. "You're the first person in years who's looked at the real me and not run screaming. You're the first person who might actually be able to keep up."

"Keep up with what?"

Her smile returns—sharp, dangerous, alive.

"What I'm about to do next."

The corporate council falls like dominoes.

Lyra plays them the way she played me—finding their weaknesses, exploiting their hungers, turning their own systems against them. She's not doing it for money anymore. She's doing it for revenge. For every person they ground into dust in their climb to power. For every "doll" they bought and broke and threw away.

For the little sister who died in a conditioning facility six years ago, her mind shattered by handlers less careful than me.

I didn't know that part until the third council member went down. She told me in the dark, her voice steady, her eyes dry.

"Is that why you came after me?" I asked.

"Partly. You trained the handler who broke her." She didn't flinch. Didn't look away. "I was going to destroy you. Ruin you the way you ruined her."

"What changed?"

"You did." Her hand found mine. "You looked at me like I was a person when you had every reason to see me as a project. You fell for me when falling was the one thing that could hurt you." Her fingers interlaced with mine. "I came here to take revenge. I stayed because somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to destroy you and started wanting to keep you."

"That's not how this works," I said. "The hunter doesn't fall for the prey."

"No." She smiled, and for once, it wasn't sharp at all. "But sometimes the hunter realizes they were the prey all along. And sometimes that's okay."

The last council member falls on a Thursday.

I watch it happen from the penthouse we've acquired—repurposed from one of Lyra's earlier marks, a man who thought buying a pretty doll made him untouchable. The feeds show corporations imploding, executives being dragged from their towers, a decade of secrets spilling into the light.

Lyra stands at the window, the neon glow of Neo-Singapore painting her face in shades of fire.

"It's done," she says.

"What happens now?"

She turns to look at me. In the six months since she walked into my conditioning room, she's transformed—not into a doll, but into something fiercer. A woman who burned her way through the upper echelons of corporate power and came out the other side with ash in her teeth and victory in her eyes.

"Now?" She crosses to me. "Now I have a choice."

"About what?"

"About you." She stops in front of me. Close enough to touch. Close enough to destroy. "I have enough evidence to bury you, Marcus. Everything you've done, every person you've broken—it's all documented. One transmission, and you're finished."

"I know."

"But I could also delete it." Her hand rises, cups my face. "I could erase every trace, let you start over. You could be someone new. Someone who doesn't carry all that weight."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I love you."

The words land like a blow. I don't deserve them—I know that. I've spent a decade building cages for people just like her. I've turned human beings into objects, sold their dignity for profit, and told myself it was just business.

But she's looking at me like none of that matters. Like the monster I've been is less important than the man I could become.

"I love you too," I hear myself say. "And I don't deserve it."

"No," she agrees. "You don't." She leans in, presses her forehead to mine. "But I'm not in the business of giving people what they deserve. I'm in the business of getting what I want. And I want you, Marcus Chen. Strings and all."

She kisses me, and the city burns neon beyond the glass, and somewhere a system built on broken dolls begins to crumble.

I was the Puppeteer.

Now I'm the one dancing on strings.

And for the first time in my life, I don't mind at all.