The case was cold in his hand, a shielded block of metal containing the third fragment. Kaelen clutched it, his knuckles white. The Ganymede auction hall was a universe of gold light and polished black marble, but the geometry of the room had collapsed into a simple, brutal equation. Three agents, three vectors, all converging on his position. They moved with the placid certainty of a corporate system correcting an error. He was the error.
Walter Bell stood beside him, a silent monolith of black composite. The raven Uplift’s amber optic was a point of unnerving stillness in the sea of motion. Kaelen felt the low, insistent thrum of the Ghost-Eater Shunt at the base of his neck, a familiar pain that was now a focusing lens. He could feel the agents’ shielded minds, three quiet voids in the shimmering psychic noise of the hall. They were less than thirty meters away, flowing through the crowd like sharks through a school of glittering fish.
— I am initiating diversion protocol, — Walter’s synthesized voice was a clipped whisper in his ear, a stream of pure Yama-Mitsui corporate dialect.
The air grew thick. The psychic hum of the room, a curated murmur of ambition and credit, warped into a discordant shriek. A broadcast of pure corvid id washed over them: the vertigo of a high dive off a chrome spire, the glint of a thousand stolen things, the dry-leaf rustle of wind through black feathers, the raw joy of a kill. The Ghost-Eater Shunt flared, a hot needle against his skin, but it filtered the raw chaos into something he could navigate, a storm he could see through.
The hall broke.
Men and women in fabrics worth more than his life cried out, stumbling, clutching their heads. A woman in a silver gown collapsed against a marble column. A man stared at his own hands as if they were alien things. The high-fidelity holograms above the stage dissolved into strobing static. The curated calm of the auction shattered into raw, animal panic. This was the chaos Walter had promised. A window.
Kaelen moved. He used the panic as cover, a human tide to mask his retreat. He shouldered past a man staring into the middle distance, his eyes wide with a memory of flight he’d never had. He slipped between two security guards whose attention was fixed on the screaming crowd, their own minds reeling from the psychic blast. The price of this escape was the sanity of a hundred strangers, a cost he filed away without examination. He had to get to the service corridor.
A klaxon blared, a sound of brutal efficiency cutting through the human noise.
— Lockdown initiated, — a calm, automated voice announced from hidden speakers. — All exits sealing.
Heavy blast doors began to descend with a deep, grinding groan, their polished surfaces reflecting the panicked faces of the crowd. He saw the main exit across the hall, a closing rectangle of darkness. He had maybe 90 seconds. The agents would be recovering, their corporate-grade shields filtering the worst of the psychic noise. They would be adapting.
He reached the designated rally point, a small alcove behind a nutrient dispensary, the air suddenly smelling of processed algae and fear. Walter was already there, a black shadow against the wall, his amber optic scanning the chaos. The raven Uplift was a statue of purpose in the middle of a riot. They were a team, a hostile alliance forged in a dusty tomb, and their movements were now a shared, unspoken language.
They moved together, turning away from the main exits and toward a narrow, unmarked door Kaelen had noted earlier. A service corridor. Walter’s multi-jointed hand shot out, a thin fiber-optic cable snaking from his wrist and into the door’s control panel. The lock clicked open. They slipped inside just as the main blast door slammed shut with a final, echoing boom.
They were in a tight, grimy space that smelled of ozone and hot lubricants. The gold light of the hall was replaced by the dim, functional glow of emergency strips. Kaelen leaned against the cool metal wall, his breath coming in ragged bursts. Through a small, reinforced viewport, he saw two of Julian’s agents reach the sealed door, their perfect suits now looking absurdly out of place. They were trapped. They had gained a lead.
The adrenaline began to fade, leaving behind the sharp, metallic taste of exhaustion. The Ghost-Eater Shunt, which had burned hot during the psychic assault, now settled into a low, clean vibration. It felt different, its circuits aligned.
The low hum of a ventilation fan filled the sudden silence. A single drop of condensation fell from a conduit overhead, landing with a soft tick on the floor.
They had the fragment and were running on fumes.
