The data shard was a cold, dense weight in Ksenia’s hand. The truth. 1.2 terabytes of it. They had it. And now they had to get it out of Sector K before Maximilian Voss, the man who wore his company like a collar, realized his secrets were gone.
— Move, — Sineus said. His voice was low, but it cut through the market’s chaotic symphony.
They plunged back into the river of people. Zora led the way, her hand resting on the hilt of her scavenged blade, her eyes scanning the gantries and catwalks above. Ksenia followed, the shard protected in her fist, her face a mask of calm analysis. Ansel brought up the rear, a paranoid ghost watching their backs, his hand nervously polishing the glass of his useless, unmoored compass. Sineus was in the center, the axis of their small, desperate machine.
Sineus caught his reflection in the polished chrome of a food vendor’s stall. His face was a fractured, colorful mask. The image wavered, and for a heartbeat, it wasn't his face at all, but the fanatical, cruel one from the Consensus Chorus broadcast. The flickering reflection was a constant reminder of the ghost they were hunting, the ghost that wore his face.
— This way, — Ksenia directed, her voice tight. — The west causeway. It’s the fastest route to the lower access tunnels.
They pushed through a throng of people haggling over scavenged drone parts. The noise was a physical thing, a wall of sound they had to force their way through. They were almost to the causeway, a narrow metal bridge suspended 30 meters above a chasm of discarded technology and darkness. It was a bottleneck. It was exposure.
It was a trap.
The first one landed with a heavy, solid thud that vibrated through the metal walkway. It was a Pacifier Frame, its white and grey ceramic armor gleaming in the neon haze. Before the scattered screams of the crowd had even registered, another landed. And another. Three in front of them, blocking the path. Five more dropped from the gantries behind, sealing their retreat. Eight of them. A pincer.
Then came the hum.
Four Shepherd Drones descended from the darkness above, their movements like spiders on invisible threads. Their optics glowed with a flat, predatory red, cutting through the steam and smoke of the market. They were boxed in. Pinned. The air crackled with the silent scream of targeting systems locking on.
— Veil! — Ansel shouted, his voice raw. He didn't hesitate. He slammed a battered, briefcase-sized device onto the metal grating of the causeway. Exposed copper coils glowed for a second before the Static Veil activated.
A wave of visible noise erupted from the device, a 25-meter bubble of shimmering, colorless distortion. It was like looking through heated air, but the air itself was screaming with silent static. The red eyes of the Shepherd Drones flickered, their targeting systems fizzling into uselessness as the jammer scrambled their biometric locks. The immediate threat from the air was gone.
The Pacifier Frames were not so easily fooled. They were piloted by men. They raised their pulsed energy rifles, the barrels glowing with contained power. They all targeted the source of the interference. They targeted Ansel.
— Ansel! — Zora screamed. She didn't think. She acted. She shoved the old man toward the meager cover of a thick support pillar.
A bolt of brilliant white energy screamed past her, striking the pillar and exploding in a shower of molten sparks. The air smelled of ozone and burnt metal. Another shot came from behind, impacting the floor. It didn't pierce the metal; it ricocheted.
The bolt of redirected energy was a blur of white light. It caught Zora high on the left shoulder. She cried out, a sharp, choked gasp, and stumbled against the railing. The fabric of her jacket vaporized, and the smell of cooked meat filled the air for a sickening second. Blood, shockingly dark in the neon glare, soaked through the cloth. The price for their proactive hunt was being paid, right now, in her flesh.
They were pinned. Zora was hurt, trying to stay on her feet, her face pale with shock. Ansel was crouched behind the pillar, his hands trying to keep the unstable Static Veil from overloading. Ksenia was at Zora’s side, her pistol out, firing disciplined shots that sparked harmlessly against the Pacifiers’ armor.
Sineus knew they couldn't win. They couldn't fight eight exoskeletons. But he could break them. He focused on the two lead Frames, the ones advancing on Zora and Ksenia. He didn't see the pilots. He felt them. Two small, frightened points of consciousness wrapped in ceramic and steel. He reached for their minds.
He found the memory of the solid metal floor beneath their feet. It was a simple, absolute truth. He took that truth and he broke it.
He didn't create an illusion. He forced a memory. A shared, vivid, false memory of rusted metal groaning, of rivets popping, of the entire causeway giving way beneath them. A gut-wrenching lurch of falling.
The two pilots reacted instinctively to a danger that wasn't there. Their Pacifier Frames, extensions of their own bodies, lurched. Servos screamed as the pilots fought to regain their balance on a floor that had never moved. One stumbled, its heavy leg catching on the other's. For one and a half seconds, they were a tangle of white armor and confusion.
A spike of pure agony drove through Sineus’s skull. The world flashed grey, the vibrant neon of the market bleeding out into monochrome. He tasted blood and ozone at the back of his throat. The strain of forcing a memory on two minds at once was immense.
— Now! — Ksenia’s voice cut through his pain.
She and Ansel grabbed Zora, hauling her upright. Sineus shook his head, clearing the grey from his vision, and led them toward the edge of the causeway. There was a maintenance hatch, rusted and forgotten. A steam vent.
He put his shoulder into it. The metal groaned. Ansel added his weight. It gave way with a screech of tortured metal, revealing a vertical tunnel filled with hot, hissing darkness. They didn't hesitate. They plunged through the opening, one after another, into the city's steaming guts.
The sounds of the ambush, the screams of the crowd, the crackle of energy weapons, all faded above them, replaced by the roar of steam and the drip of water in the dark. They slid down a wide pipe for 20 meters, landing in a heap on the grimy floor of a main conduit.
The air was thick and wet. Ksenia immediately went to work on Zora’s wound, tearing strips from her own shirt to make a pressure bandage. Zora was conscious, her teeth gritted, her face slick with sweat. Ansel stood guard, his functional pistol looking like a child’s toy after the battle above.
Sineus leaned his head against the cold, damp concrete of the tunnel wall, the pounding in his skull slowly subsiding. He replayed the ambush. The flawless coordination. The white and grey armor of the Pacifier Frames. The immediate deployment.
Those weren't MemTech mercenaries. He had seen MemTech forces at the Neptune Platform. They were sleek, black, efficient. This was different. This was state-sanctioned. The armor, the drones, the response protocols—they were Ministry of Public Harmony assets.
The realization settled in his gut like a block of ice. Maximilian Voss, a senior executive at a private corporation, had deployed the Ministry’s elite compliance units to kill them in a public market. The lines weren't just blurred. There were no lines. MemTech and the Ministry were not rivals or partners. They were two heads on the same monster. The collar Voss wore wasn't just a symbol of corporate loyalty. It was a leash, and the hand holding it belonged to the state. Or maybe Voss held the state's leash. It didn't matter. They were one.
He looked at his team. Zora, wounded. Ansel, his face grim, the useless compass back in his hand, a nervous habit he couldn't shake. Ksenia, her face set with fierce concentration as she tied off the bandage. They had won the skirmish. They had the data. But they were fighting something bigger than a corporation. They were fighting the system itself, and it had just shown them how easily it could reach them, anywhere, with any of its arms.
The hot steam condensed on a polished pipe near his head. He saw their reflections in the curved surface. The image was distorted, but it was steady. Grim, wounded, and unified by the shared violence. The wavering uncertainty was gone.
The flickering was over. This was real.
The air was still and heavy with the smell of rust. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic drip of water.
