A wave of impossible heat washed against the hab-unit door, then became a physical blow. The overpressure slammed into the unit, the mag-locked door vaporizing into a cloud of superheated metal and composite. Kaelen was thrown from his chair, the world dissolving into a roar of ruptured metal and the shriek of tortured air. He hit the far wall, his head cracking against an exposed conduit, the breath driven from his lungs. The room was gone.
He scrambled for cover that no longer existed, his ears ringing with a deafening, pure tone. Dust and smoke billowed through the gaping hole where his door had been, the neon haze of the Ceres Down-Spiral bleeding into his ruined sanctuary. His stun lasted only three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. He pushed himself up, his ribs screaming in protest, his vision swimming. Through the swirling debris, a silhouette stood framed in the jagged doorway, perfectly still.
The figure stepped through the smoke, and the chaos of the moment seemed to congeal around him. He wore a Yama-Mitsui Solutions executive suit, the dark gray fabric utterly immaculate, uncreased, and untouched by the blast he had just unleashed. Not a speck of dust clung to his polished shoes. His face was calm, his expression one of mild impatience, as if he had been kept waiting. This was Julian Valerius, an Eraser, a man who didn't just neutralize targets but surgically removed them from the Resonance Field. He was the system's scalpel, and he had come to correct an error.
Julian’s gaze swept the room, dismissing the wreckage, dismissing Kaelen, and landing on the workbench. His eyes fixed on the cracked Mnemonic Spool lying beside the overturned diagnostic tool. He looked back at Kaelen, a flicker of professional recognition in his eyes.
— Property of Yama-Mitsui Solutions, — Julian said. His voice was not loud, but it cut through the ringing in Kaelen’s ears with absolute clarity. It was the voice of a man who had never been disobeyed. — Return the asset.
The word hung in the air. Asset. Not a memory, not a soul, not a fragment of a dead man. An asset. Kaelen’s gaze followed Julian’s. The spool. The source of the silence in his head, the vessel of Aris Volkov’s name. The debate that had raged in his mind—to run or to chase, to erase or to witness—was incinerated in that single, cold demand. The choice was no longer his to make in the quiet of his own fear. It was here, now, embodied in the man who stood before him.
Kaelen’s hand shot out, his fingers closing around the Mnemonic Spool. The crystal was cool against his skin, a point of solid reality in the swirling chaos. He had it. He had chosen. A desperate, lunging grab in the dark for a shard of a dead man's soul.
He didn’t run for the ruined doorway. That was Julian’s space, Julian’s kill box. He spun, launching himself toward the one other exit: the open air of the Down-Spiral. He threw himself over the low railing of his unit’s small balcony, a fifteen-meter drop to the crowded market walkway below. For a heart-stopping second, he was airborne, the spool clutched in his fist, the screaming neon abyss of the Spiral yawning beneath him.
Julian Valerius did not move to intercept him. He simply watched Kaelen’s desperate flight with a detached curiosity. As Kaelen fell, Julian straightened the collar of his suit, a minute, precise gesture of a man tidying a workspace. He made a small, almost imperceptible motion with his hand, a flick of two fingers.
Something detached from the wall of the corridor outside, unfolding with a series of quiet, mechanical clicks. A corporate wardrone, sleek and black, its optical sensor glowing with a predatory red light. It hovered for a moment, its internal systems acquiring a target lock, then shot forward, diving off the walkway in silent, lethal pursuit. It moved at sixty kilometers per hour, a sliver of black composite and deadly intent.
Kaelen hit the walkway below with a jarring impact that shot pain up his legs. He stumbled, nearly falling, but the press of the crowd held him up. He was a stone dropped into a river, the bodies of shoppers and couriers and hustlers parting around him for a moment before closing in. The noise was immense, a wall of sound and psychic pressure. He pushed forward, burrowing into the anonymity of the mob, the Ghost-Eater Shunt at his neck no longer a source of pain but a cold, hard point of focus.
He glanced back. He couldn't see Julian, only the black shape of the wardrone descending, its red eye cutting through the neon haze. It was tracking him, its logic unswayed by the chaos that now served as his only shield. He was no longer hiding. He was being hunted. The spool in his hand felt heavy, a promise and a death sentence all at once.
The ghost of Aris Volkov was silent, but the hum of the shunt had changed. It was no longer a quiet presence. It was a signal, a clean, sharp vibration that seemed to pull him forward, a compass needle pointing away from the hunter and toward an unknown horizon. He had to keep moving, had to lose the drone.
He had to find someone who could read a ghost's last words.
