The water in the subterranean canals of Circadia did not move. It was a black, still mirror reflecting the rust and damp concrete above. On the bank of the secondary channel, Jax, the rebellion's lead technician, watched a timer on his wrist-terminal count down. His team was crouched behind the corroded housing of a massive, silent pump. They were men who trusted steel and code, and tonight they were using crude chemistry to break a very large piece of steel. The objective was simple. Force the Warden prison barge off its primary route.
— Five, — Jax muttered into his comm-link. — Four. Three.
He did not look at the timer anymore. He looked at Canal Lock 7, a monolithic slab of metal a hundred meters down the waterway. It was a monument to the Mandate’s control over the city’s forgotten arteries.
— Two. One.
A muffled whump, more a deep cough than a sharp crack, echoed through the tunnel. The base of the lock shuddered. For a second, nothing happened. Then, with a groan of tortured metal, the gate sagged sideways. Water, thick and black, began to pour into the secondary channel. The current had been changed. The trap was set. The price was twenty kilograms of scavenged explosives and the only functioning hydro-spanner they had left.
Two kilometers away, Lena Petrova stood at the prow of a low, ugly mag-skiff. The craft hummed a few inches above the water, its hull a patchwork of mismatched panels. Eight dreamers sat behind her, their eyes closed, their faces tight with concentration. They were the engine.
— Now, — Lena said.
The dreamers exhaled as one. It was not a breath of air. It was a breath of pure, weaponized grief. A thick fog, a physical manifestation of their shared sorrow, began to bleed into the world. It was not a natural mist. It smelled of cold ozone and something like wet pennies. The fog rolled across the black water, dense and disorienting, a Grief Storm made real. It clung to the concrete walls, swallowing the dim service lights. Visibility dropped to less than five meters.
On the bridge of the prison barge, a vessel three times the size of a rebel skiff, the Warden Commander watched his primary sensor displays dissolve into static. He was a man defined by order, and his screens were now showing him chaos.
— Report, — he snapped.
— Commander, visual scanners are offline, — a technician’s voice replied, tinny with alarm. — Heavy atmospheric interference. Unidentified source.
— It’s not atmosphere, — the Warden Commander said, his voice cold and certain. He had read the reports on the new rebel tactics. This was not weather. This was a weapon. — Deploy the nets. Full-spectrum sweep. I want a psychic signature reading of the entire channel.
A web of faint blue light, a sonar-logic net, pulsed from the barge, designed to ping the coherent thought of a controlled dream. It was a net for catching minds, not boats.
Lena’s two skiffs surged forward. They were sharks in the sudden gloom. The Grief Storm that blinded the Warden’s optical scanners also cloaked them from his psychic ones. The sonar-logic net washed over them, searching for the clean, predictable pattern of a dreamer’s intention. It found only the incoherent scream of the storm and registered it as an error. The skiffs were invisible. They accelerated into the barge’s blind spot on the port side, their magnetic drives making almost no sound.
— Hooks! — Lena yelled.
Grappling lines shot from the skiffs, their magnetic heads clanking hard against the barge’s hull. The rebels were climbing before the lines were even taut. They moved with a desperate, practiced speed. Lena was the first over the rail. Four deck guards turned, their faces a mix of confusion and alarm in the swirling fog. The fight was not with guns. It was with knives and fists and the brutal, close-quarters efficiency of a boarding party. It was over in thirty seconds.
From the canal bank, Jax’s team opened fire. Their scavenged pulse rifles were inaccurate but loud. The shots were not meant to kill. They were meant to suppress. Bright-red energy bolts stitched across the barge’s automated turrets, forcing the machines to retract into their armored shells. The covering fire gave Lena’s team the window they needed.
— Hold is midship! — Lena shouted, pointing with her blade. — Move!
They stormed the central superstructure. The metal corridors were sterile and gray, a stark contrast to the chaotic fog outside. Lena kicked open the door to the prisoner hold. It was a small, bare room. Six figures in gray jumpsuits were strapped to benches, their heads lolling, their eyes glazed with sedatives. They were alive.
— Get them up, — Lena ordered.
As her team began unstrapping the prisoners, the Warden Commander made his own move. He hit the distress beacon, sending a high-priority alert across the city-wide Warden network. He rallied the four guards from his internal security detail.
— They are in the prisoner hold, — the Commander’s voice boomed over the barge’s internal address system. — Seal the corridor. No one gets out.
A heavy firefight erupted in the narrow passage leading to the engine room. The clean, gray walls were instantly blackened by weapons fire. A young rebel, a boy named Ren who had been with them for only three weeks, went down, a clean hole burned through his chest. Another fell a moment later, his cry cut short. The price of the raid was being paid in blood.
— We’re out of time! — a rebel shouted, dragging a groggy prisoner toward the exit.
— Fall back! — Lena commanded, her voice raw.
They retreated, half-carrying the freed dreamers. The exchange of fire was wild and desperate. They left the bodies of their two comrades behind. They also left the bodies of the four guards. It was a brutal accounting. They scrambled back down the grappling lines to the waiting skiffs.
The small boats peeled away from the barge, their drives whining as they pushed for speed. They melted back into the dense, sorrowful fog they had created. The mission was complete. Six rebels were free. Two were dead.
On the bridge of the crippled barge, the Warden Commander watched the skiffs disappear on the one functional scanner he had left. They were ghosts, swallowed by a fog made of feelings his machines could not comprehend. He looked at the casualty report on his terminal. He looked at the alert confirmation that was now screaming across every Warden channel in the city.
The hidden war was over. This was something else now.
The fog began to thin, revealing the black water and the weeping concrete walls of the canal. The air still smelled of ozone and blood.
The Mandate would answer this, and the answer would be total.
