Float-Hab 7 was not a place; it was a condition. A chaotic accretion of repurposed freighters, container stacks, and modular platforms, all lashed together with groaning cables and makeshift bridges. It floated in the grey, churning expanse of unregulated international waters, a stateless tumor on the face of the planet. The air was a thick soup of smells: salt, ozone from failing power conduits, and the cloying sweetness of nutrient paste from a hundred different food stalls. The hum of generators was a constant drone beneath the babble of a dozen languages. Sineus moved through the press of bodies, a ghost in the machine of raw, desperate commerce.
His destination was a stall in the market’s deepest recess, a cramped alcove overflowing with scavenged tech and blinking, obsolete hardware. The broker, Jax, was a collage of low-grade cybernetics, their face a patchwork of mismatched chrome and synth-skin. One optical implant, a cheap Shenzhen knock-off, whirred audibly as it tracked Sineus’s approach. A flickering Palimpsest Phantom, a silent grey ghost of a man staring at his own empty hands, was trapped in a loop beside the stall, a permanent fixture of this place where people came to sell their pasts.
— You’re the one, — Jax’s voice was a rasp of static from a corroded vocoder. — Got the glitter.
Sineus said nothing. He placed a small, dense data-wafer on the cluttered counter. It contained a sliver of pure, uncorrupted pre-war code, a fragment of a dead network’s operating system. A relic. The price for this meeting was a piece of history he could not afford to lose, but the key was a necessity. Resources were ammunition. Jax picked up the wafer, their cybernetic fingers clicking as they slotted it into a reader. A line of green text scrolled across their good eye.
— Old code for old doors, — Jax grunted, satisfied. They pushed a small, tarnished brass key across the counter. It was archaic, physical, its teeth cut for a lock that likely hadn’t existed for a century. — Your problem now.
Sineus took the key. The transaction was complete. The truth was one step closer.
Then the world dissolved into violence.
Ten figures dropped from the gantries above, their movements silent and synchronized. They landed in a crouch on the slick metal deck, their matte-black armor absorbing the neon light. The sigil of Shenzhen Ascendant was stenciled in grey on their shoulders. They raised their kinetic carbines, and the market erupted in panic and the flat, hard crack of projectile weapons. The price of seeking the truth was that the truth’s other owners would come to collect.
Sineus didn’t think. He acted. The world shifted into the grey overlay of his Ghost-Sight. He saw the memetic residue of the kill-team’s training, the faint, spectral lines of their programmed attack patterns. He saw the ghost-limb of the lead operator’s rifle swinging toward him a half-second before the physical weapon moved. He was already dropping behind Jax’s counter as the first volley of rounds tore through the space where he had been standing.
Sparks and shredded metal filled the air. Jax screamed, a sound of pure electronic terror, and dove into the tangled mess of their own stall. Sineus used the counter as cover, his eyes tracking the ghostly vectors of incoming fire. He saw their pincer formation before they committed to it, the memory of their doctrine laid bare. He vaulted the counter, not away from them, but toward the edge of the pier.
A five-meter gap of churning, black water separated his platform from a moving mag-barge loaded with rusted shipping containers. The barge groaned as it slid past, its deck slick with rain. He saw the memory of the kill-team’s flanking maneuver, two operators breaking left to cut off that exact escape route. He adjusted his trajectory mid-stride.
He ran, his boots finding purchase on the wet grating. The kinetic rounds followed, chewing up the deck behind him. He pushed off, a controlled explosion of muscle and sinew, launching himself across the gap. For a moment, he was suspended in the rain-swept air, the neon chaos of Float-Hab 7 a blur below. He landed hard on the mag-barge, rolling to absorb the impact against the cold, corrugated steel of a container. His bones, laced with carbon-fiber, ached from the strain.
The fight was not over. The threat escalated.
Three combat drones, sleek and insectile, detached from the underside of the gantry above. Their optical sensors glowed with hostile red light as they acquired his heat signature. Their plasma drives whined, cutting through the noise of the storm and the battle. The air filled with the high-velocity thrum of their rotary cannons, a sound like tearing metal that promised total annihilation.
Rounds stitched across the container beside him, leaving a trail of glowing craters. He was pinned. The ground team was already boarding the barge from the far side, their movements efficient and relentless. He was out of options, his path forward a dead end. He needed a different system.
He dropped low, crawling along the base of the containers. A thick plume of superheated steam erupted from a ruptured pipe on the barge’s deck, a common malfunction in this city of failing parts. It was a wall of white, opaque vapor, a temporary blindness for man and machine. It was cover.
Sineus plunged into the steam. His thermal vision was useless, the heat overwhelming his sensors. The drones’ targeting locks would be just as confused. He moved by touch and memory, his hands tracing the cold metal of the containers, navigating the narrow space between them. He could hear the shouts of the Shenzhen operators, their frustration cutting through the hiss of the steam.
He emerged on the other side of the barge, dropping from its edge into the lower levels of the hab. He landed on a narrow maintenance catwalk, the structure groaning under his weight. Below him was a labyrinth of pipes, conduits, and darkness, the city’s forgotten underbelly. The rain and the endless clouds of steam from the lower decks swallowed him whole, his heat signature lost in the noise. He had the key. But now Shenzhen Ascendant knew he was in the race, and they knew what he looked like.
The cognitive load from the combat analysis hit him, a sharp spike of pain behind his eyes. The world swam for a second, the edges of his vision flickering with static. It was the price for running his systems that hot. He leaned against a cold, wet pipe, letting the pain subside.
The key was a cold weight in his pocket. The path forward was clear, but now it was crowded.
He had the key, but the lock was still a world away.
The rain washed the scent of cordite from the air, replacing it with the clean, cold smell of the open ocean. The distant sounds of the firefight faded, absorbed by the immense, indifferent quiet of the water.
