Chapter 2

Échos dans la Rouille

Echoes in the Rust

Darkness. Not merely the absence of light, but a presence. A dense, tangible entity that pressed against Cyan’s face like a cold, damp shroud, infiltrated the weave of her synth-fabric clothing, and tasted metallic and ancient on her tongue – like licking a corroded battery terminal mixed with cold iron and the cloying sweetness of slow decay. The heavy "thud" of the durasteel hatch slamming shut somewhere in the unseen vertical distance above – sixty metres? Seventy? Eighty now? Accurate Z-axis perspective dissolved rapidly in the uniform blackness – wasn’t just a sound; it was a physical punctuation mark, a definitive caesura separating the frantic, rain-lashed kinesis of the chase from this sudden, suffocating, claustrophobic stasis. The complex, cacophonous symphony of Neo-Veridian’s upper strata – the aggressive hiss of acid rain dissolving ferro-polymer, the Doppler whine of passing corporate VTOLs navigating restricted sky-lanes, the rising and falling binaural beats of distant NeoSec sirens responding belatedly, the omnipresent, almost subsonic electromagnetic hum of the city’s vast data network carrying trillions of encrypted transactions and surveillance feeds per second, a constant subconscious static she hadn’t consciously realised she perceived until its abrupt absence left a ringing void – was instantly, brutally excised. Amputated. Gone.

Silence rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the city's roar, but it wasn't empty. It was thick, viscous, seemingly possessing its own inertia. It carried a weight that seemed to increase the local atmospheric pressure, making her ears pop sharply, painfully. It amplified the intimate, unsettling sounds of her own stressed biology: the too-loud, ragged rasp of her controlled breathing, a conscious effort fighting the primal urge to hyperventilate against the sudden oxygen differential and the shock of confinement; the frantic, heavy thumping of her heart against her ribs, a panicked drumbeat echoing the near-terminal velocity of the recent pursuit; the faint, almost imperceptible high-frequency whine emitted by her own auditory enhancers as they strained against the profound quiet, searching desperately for external input, for threats, finding only the internal noise of her own systems.

And then, emerging slowly, insidiously from that profound silence, the sound that would become the chapter’s bleak, maddening metronome: the slow, agonizingly rhythmic "drip… plink… drip…" of corrosive moisture. Condensation forming on the cold shaft walls? Or seepage from compromised pipes carrying unknown fluids somewhere in the unmapped depths far below? Each individual drop seemed to travel an immense distance through the darkness, gaining weight, gaining significance, before striking unseen surfaces – metal? concrete? pooled liquid? – echoing upwards through the narrow vertical tunnel with unsettling, resonant clarity. A liquid clock, patiently counting down… to what? The arrival of the hunters? The failure of her implants? The moment the corroded rung beneath her boot finally gave way?

She clung to the slick, treacherous rungs of the emergency service ladder, a vertical lifeline descending into oblivion. Her augmented legs, salvaged military tech running custom firmware, automatically braced against the ferro-concrete wall, their internal actuators emitting a barely audible whine – a sound terrifyingly loud in the current silence – as they constantly micro-adjusted load distribution and grip pressure. Feet dangled momentarily over the abyss each time she moved down a rung, the lack of solid purchase triggering a primal jolt through her proprioceptive sensors, a brief wave of vertigo threatening to overwhelm her rational mind. Below her stretched not just visual blackness, a perfect photon vacuum impenetrable to her unenhanced vision, but a void that seemed to possess its own subtle gravitational field, actively sucking the faint cyan glow spilling from her corneal display overlay into its depths. The light, generated by microscopic LEDs projecting directly onto her retina, managed only to carve out a small, fragile, intimate sphere of reluctant illumination. It revealed only the immediate, grim details: the next few rungs down, slick with moisture and coated in "something else", something vaguely yielding; the weeping, rust-streaked texture of the ferro-concrete shaft wall inches from her face, scarred and pitted by decades of neglect; the faint, ephemeral vapour of her own breath condensing in the suddenly cooler, heavier air. It painted her face, her gloved hands gripping the rungs, the matte-black receiver of the Kaito-7 holstered tightly against her thigh, in stark, isolated planes of cold, hard, electric cyan against the oppressive, infinite ink. A solitary firefly trapped in a subterranean ocean, broadcasting its fragile existence into the uncaring dark.

Time. In the frantic, compressed reality of the gantry chase, time had been measured in fractions of seconds, in reactive reflexes, in bursts of neurotransmitters firing across synaptic gaps. Here, suspended in the darkness and the silence, it dilated, stretched, became a tangible, viscous medium, like moving through cold oil. The seconds parsed by her internal chronometer felt agonizingly slow, yet simultaneously, terrifyingly finite. Above, the hunters. NIS. Disciplined, equipped, motivated. How long "exactly" until they bypassed the heavy durasteel hatch? She forced her mind into analytical mode, pushing back the rising panic, accessing ingrained knowledge of NIS breaching procedures. Protocol 7-Gamma-B: High-Security Portal Bypass, Non-Permissive Environment. Thermic lance? Too slow, too obvious thermal signature bleed. Shaped charges? Risk of uncontrolled structural compromise to the Zenith-Infosys spire, potential legal blowback for LCS – unlikely for a Class-4 hatch unless deemed absolutely necessary. Plasma cutter, targeted application at the locking mechanism bolts and reinforced hinges. Yes, that was the most probable method. Quieter, more precise, faster than a lance. Assuming a standard four-man breaching team equipped with Series-3 portable plasma units… factoring in estimated hatch material (likely Tritanium alloy core with ferro-ceramic coating, standard mid-21st century construction), estimated degradation from environmental factors (conservative estimate: 15% reduction in tensile strength), optimal cutting angles, cooling pauses… She ran the complex multi-variable calculation. Plausible timeframe: Initial assessment of seven minutes felt… optimistic for NIS, perhaps pessimistic for her. Recalibrating… 8.5 standard minutes. Maximum. 510 seconds.

The countdown timer at the periphery of her corneal display adjusted: ""T-MINUS: 00:08:28… 27… 26…"" A relentless numerical sequence scrolling downwards, overlaid on the deepening blackness. A subroutine launched automatically by her training, impossible to ignore. Every second spent clinging here, hesitating, analysing, was a second less lead time, a second closer to the inevitable moment when rappelling lines snaked down from above, followed by the menacing cyan glow of NIS visors piercing the darkness. Cornered. Trapped in this vertical tomb between the descending hunters and the unknown perils lurking below. "Descendre. Il faut descendre. Vite" (Descend. Must descend. Fast). No time for existential "ennui" (boredom/weariness).

She forced her limbs into motion again, overcoming the momentary analytical paralysis. Hand over sweating hand inside the worn gloves, boot beneath struggling boot, she resumed the long climb down into the abyss. The movements were intended to be economical, fluid, born from countless hours spent in NIS infiltration training simulations – navigating darkened ventilation shafts filled with simulated tripwires and pressure sensors, rappelling down malfunctioning elevator cables in zero-gravity modules, traversing claustrophobic obstacle courses designed specifically to trigger psychological distress and exploit common phobias. But simulations, no matter how sophisticated the haptic feedback suits or the hyper-realistic VR resolution piped directly into the optic nerve, never captured the "feel", the "smell", the "texture", the sheer, grinding "reality" of this place.

The rungs were terrifyingly slick, worse even than her initial assessment. Coated not just with the weeping chemical rain moisture that had inevitably seeped in around the ancient hatch seals over decades, but with a layer of something else. Something slimy, gelatinous, faintly yielding under pressure, possessing a bizarre, low-level phosphorescence that shimmered slightly where her corneal light touched it. Fungal bloom? A complex bacterial colony thriving symbiotically on airborne pollutants, trace minerals leaching from the decaying concrete, and perhaps even residual organic matter from previous inhabitants? Some kind of bizarre polymeric breakdown product resulting from the shaft’s original atmospheric filtration function, complex chemicals reacting unpredictably over seventy years of abandonment, temperature fluctuations, and constant, corrosive humidity? Her gloves, standard-issue synth-leather worn nearly smooth at the fingertips and palms from years of hard use, offered minimal, treacherous purchase. She could feel the corroded, pitted metal beneath the slime, uneven, sometimes sharp-edged.

Each reach for a new handhold, each placement of a boot, became a rapid, high-stakes calculation of trust against applied material science and probability. Her augmented senses, enhanced by implants designed for covert surveillance, strained to compensate for the overwhelming lack of visual data. Her fingertips relayed subtle textural information, temperature differentials, the faint, worrying vibrations travelling through the metal structure. Her auditory implants analysed the minute tonal shifts in the metal's resonance as she applied weight. Assessing the visible patterns of corrosion illuminated by her fleeting corneal light – trying to differentiate between harmless surface oxidation and deep, potentially catastrophic structural decay spreading from the bolt anchors. Estimating the remaining load-bearing capacity of century-old ferro-alloy steel subjected to decades of thermal expansion and contraction cycles, constant chemical attack from the toxic air, and the simple, relentless effects of gravity and time.

The fear wasn't just the primal, amygdala-driven terror of falling, of the long, final drop into crushing darkness. It was the more specific, analytical fear, born of her technical understanding, of the precise "physics" of catastrophic failure. Understanding the exact point where accumulated metal fatigue crosses the threshold into plastic deformation, followed by brittle fracture. Visualising the chilling probability curve of a single corroded bolt shearing silently, catastrophically under her combined weight plus dynamic load. Imagining the sudden, sickening lurch as a rung detached entirely from the wall, the brief moment of weightlessness before acceleration took over, sending her plummeting into the unseen depths, terminal velocity achieved long before the inevitable, unsurvivable impact. She couldn't stop her mind from running the numbers: "g = 9.81 m/s² (adjusted for Neo-Veridian local gravity variance: ~9.79 m/s²), estimated remaining distance ~250 metres? Velocity at impact = sqrt(2 " g " h) ≈ 70 m/s or 250 kph. Impact force F = m"a... Survivability: 0.00%". Cold comfort, those numbers. "Les dés sont pipés" (The dice are loaded). The dice are loaded.

The air continued to grow heavier, denser as she descended, the pressure building palpably against her eardrums. The metallic tang intensified, becoming coppery, acrid, almost like the smell of freshly discharged energy weapons or ozone near a failing high-voltage transformer. And woven through it, becoming stronger, more dominant, was that pervasive damp, earthy, fungal odour – the true, unfiltered breath of the deep Sub-Grid ecosystem, a complex perfume of decay, desperation, and hidden life. Her corneal display, flickering more insistently now, a visible symptom of the bio-capacitor's struggle, presented the updated atmospheric analysis. The numbers were trending downwards, confirming her fears: O2 saturation 18.1%, decreasing at a rate suggesting poor air circulation below. Particulate Matter (PM2.5) count now exceeding WHO hazard limits by 480%, a dense soup laden with heavy metals (lead, cadmium detected), complex hydrocarbons, and unknown organic micro-particles displaying complex protein signatures – bacterial? Viral? Fungal spores? Elevated methane (CH4) at 3% and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) at 15 ppm – the unmistakable stink of anaerobic decay, sewer gas. "Toxique" (Toxic). Definitely toxic. Not immediately lethal for her augmented physiology, not for short exposure periods, thanks to the military-grade lung filtration implants scrubbing the worst of it. But prolonged immersion, hours spent breathing this chemical cocktail, would be severely debilitating, eventually lethal. Inflammation cascading through her respiratory tract, leading to impaired oxygen uptake. Cognitive impairment setting in subtly – slowed reaction times, poor judgment, memory lapses. Respiratory distress, followed by organ damage. Another clock ticking silently alongside the NIS timer, this one biological, inexorable. How long could she function optimally, maintain peak combat readiness and decision-making capability, in this poisonous environment before hypoxia began to subtly degrade her performance? How long before the high-efficiency nanofiber filters, rated for perhaps six hours of moderate particulate load in standard combat conditions, became saturated, clogged, useless against this specific, dense miasma?

"Drip… plink… drip…" The sound continued, maddeningly regular. But then, a subtle shift. A slight echo accompanying the plink? Her auditory enhancers, hyper-sensitive, flagged it. Was the shaft widening below? Opening into a larger chamber? Or was it simply an acoustic anomaly, a trick of the confined space? She strained to hear, filtering, amplifying. No, it was consistent. A subtle resonance suggesting a change in the environment further down. Hope, fragile and dangerous, flickered briefly. Was she nearing the exit level?

"Flash." Not her implants flickering this time. A brief, almost subliminal visual artifact. A fleeting geometric pattern, sharp-edged, cyan and magenta, superimposed over the darkness for a microsecond, then gone. She blinked, shaking her head slightly. What was that? A power fluctuation in the corneal implant? Or… something else? The Resilience Virus. Mandated globally after the '45 Sumatra Pandemic decimated populations with compromised immune systems. A complex retroviral cocktail delivered via compulsory 'public health initiatives', designed by a consortium led by Bharat CogniGen to bolster baseline human immunity against novel pathogens. Officially hailed as a triumph of preventative medicine. Unofficially, whispered rumours on the dark net spoke of undocumented side effects, neurological glitches, unpredictable interactions with cybernetics, even subtle forms of mood regulation or social control embedded within the complex protein chains. Had that flash been a side effect? A brief misfire in her optic nerve triggered by stress, hypoxia, and the viral agent interacting with her implants? Or was it linked to the street vapes? 'Synth-mist', 'Null-Zone', 'Chiba Chill' – ubiquitous inhalants available in countless formulations on Mid-Level street corners and Sub-Grid kiosks. Used for recreation, self-medication, escaping the grim reality. She'd used them occasionally herself in the past, needing an edge, needing to blend in, needing to forget. Null-Zone was known for causing temporary derealization, visual distortions. Could residual metabolites still be lurking in her system, triggered now? The uncertainty was another layer of fear – the fear of not trusting her own senses, her own mind. Was the darkness playing tricks, or was her own biology betraying her? "Folie passagère?" (A passing madness?) Or the system subtly rewriting her perceptions?

"Clang."

Cyan froze again, instantly, every muscle locking, silencing even the faint whine of her leg actuators. Heart leaped into her throat. This was the sound from before, but louder now, closer. Definitely from below. Sharp, metallic, percussive, substantial. Not a drip. Not settling dust. Something heavier. A tool dropped? A weapon discharged (unlikely, no energy signature detected)? A security door slamming shut? Or… something "moving" purposefully? She strained her auditory enhancers, filtering aggressively, trying to isolate the source, pinpoint the direction, analyse the sonic signature. "Thump… scrape…" A pause. Then… silence again. Silence that felt charged, expectant, predatory.

Was it just settling debris, louder now due to proximity or acoustics? Possible, but her gut screamed otherwise. Was it the first tangible indication she wasn’t alone in this section of the shaft? Glitch’s warning hammered at her consciousness: "Fallen territorial markers… active scav-gang operations…" The Fallen weren't just destitute victims; many were hardened survivors, organized into tribes or gangs, fiercely territorial, often armed with scavenged or homemade weaponry, deeply suspicious of 'surfacers' encroaching on their domain. Had she stumbled into a patrol route?

Paranoia, sharp-edged and insistent, coiled like a viper in her gut. What if…? The alternate scenarios flooded her mind, fueled by stress and uncertainty. What if NIS "had" found another access point? A ventilation duct intersection, a collapsed service tunnel? Were they ascending silently, using advanced stealth protocols, waiting in ambush below? Unlikely, tactically unsound, but possible if they knew her destination level. What if this shaft wasn't truly abandoned, but repurposed? A secret smugglers' route? A hidden escape passage for a Fallen gang? Was she interrupting something?

She forced herself to override the fear with logic. Stick to the primary threat: NIS descending. Calculate their progress. ""T-MINUS: 00:06:15… 14… 13…"" Still time, but shrinking fast. She couldn't afford to freeze here. She needed to reach Sub-Level 82 "before" they reached her.

She risked the Kaito-7's targeting laser again, sweeping it downwards in a rapid arc. The thin cyan beam punched into the darkness, further than before, perhaps forty metres now. Still nothing but the endless repetition of corroded ladder rungs, weeping rust streaks, the glistening organic slime. No movement. No heat signatures. No obvious threats within the beam's limited range. But the action felt reckless, exposing her presence, her technology. "Quelle idée stupide" (What a stupid idea). Was the source of the noise just outside the beam's edge? Or was it smart enough to hide when the light swept past? The sense of being watched intensified, prickling the skin on her neck.

"Flicker-zzzt-CRACKLE-pop." Her corneal display spasmed violently, the entire overlay dissolving into a harsh burst of white noise static that momentarily blinded her, accompanied by an audible crackle from the implant's micro-speaker. "PUTAIN!" (Fuck!) She squeezed her eyes shut reflexively, clinging tightly to the rung, fighting another wave of vertigo. When she opened them, the display slowly resolved, but it was dimmer now, heavily distorted, the numbers flickering almost illegibly. ""BIO-CAPACITOR LEVEL: 11.2% - CRITICAL"". Automatic shutdown imminent. Functionality degrading rapidly. This wasn't just inconvenient; it was catastrophic. Loss of chronometer, loss of atmospheric data, loss of Glitch’s coordinates, loss of enhanced vision modes… She would be operating almost completely blind, relying only on her baseline human senses in this toxic, hostile darkness. The fear returned, cold and sharp, the fear of helplessness, of technological dependency failing at the worst possible moment. Progress. The wonders of the late 21st century. Reliant on tech that could abandon you when you needed it most. "Un zéro absolu" (An absolute zero).

Deeper. Downwards. Driven now by sheer desperation. Focus fading, coordination becoming harder as hypoxia likely began its subtle work. Hand over hand. Boot beneath boot. The rhythmic motion was jerky now, less certain. Calculate NIS arrival time: T-minus approx. 4 minutes? Maybe less? Calculate remaining Kaito-7 charge: 66.9%. Calculate bio-capacitor level: 10.8%... 10.7%... countdown to darkness. Calculate probability of finding the exit without coordinates… low, dangerously low.

And the memories, no longer fleeting shards, but longer, more intrusive sequences, bleeding through her degraded mental firewalls, triggered by the failing tech, the fear, the chemical soup she was breathing.

"Flashback Sequence: NIS Training Facility. A high-fidelity simulation. She’s DG-7, leading a covert data extraction from a rival Bharat CogniGen orbital platform. Zero-gravity combat, hacking secure systems under pressure, bypassing AI guardians. She moves with lethal grace, implants functioning perfectly, tactical overlays providing instant data streams. Cool, efficient, detached. A younger version of Thorne observes remotely, offering clipped words of approval. "Excellent work, DG-7. Your integration with the tactical suite is optimal. Efficiency rated 98.7%." She felt pride then. A sense of belonging, of mastery. The memory now felt like ashes in her mouth, the pride curdling into self-loathing." How could she have been so blind? So easily manipulated by duty and technological prowess?

"Flashback Sequence: A cramped Sub-Grid dwelling, years earlier, before NIS. Smells of recycled air, synth-noodles, and Leon’s cheap synth-oil paints. He’s sketching furiously in a datapad, designs for anti-surveillance tech, ideas for community networks bypassing corporate control. His eyes bright with youthful idealism, railing against the megacorps, against LCS and TenRelDan who’d displaced their family. "We have to fight back, Anya," he’d said, intensity burning in his voice. "Not with guns, not yet. With information. With connection. We build our own network, hidden, secure. We show people they aren't alone." She’d been dismissive then, already seduced by the promise of escape, of power, offered by the NIS recruiters who saw her hacking talents. "Be realistic, Leon. You can't fight them. It's suicide."" The memory was a physical pain, a lance of guilt twisting in her gut. She’d abandoned him, his idealism, for the gilded cage of corporate espionage. And now "this" was the result. The QMC, the Synapse Weaver, Thorne… her realism had led directly to his destruction.

"Flashback Sequence: The moment of discovery. Deep within the NIS secure archives, late cycle, bypassing layers of security using backdoors she'd planted herself. Searching for leverage, for proof of other illegal projects she suspected. Stumbling onto the Synapse Weaver directory. Accessing File P-SW-Subject-117. Seeing Leon’s face staring blankly from the intake photo. Reading the clinical notes. The alien pattern integration protocols. The recorded neurological stress indicators spiking off the charts. The cold, objective assessments of his 'cognitive degradation' versus 'potential integration success'. The world narrowing to a single point of white-hot rage and icy horror. Copying the entire directory onto the QMC, initiating her escape protocols, burning her bridges, her old life, behind her." The rage was still there, a cold, hard knot beneath the fear. It was the only thing keeping her moving downwards now.

She pushed the memories back, compartmentalizing ruthlessly. Need to survive. Need to expose them. Need justice for Leon.

Another sound. "That" sound again. The low, guttural "scrape". Much closer now. Directly below? Maybe only five or six metres. Followed by the wet, clicking noise, louder, more distinct. Like chitinous plates rubbing together? Or oversized mandibles? Cyan froze, every nerve ending screaming. She flicked the Kaito-7’s beam downwards again, the failing implant casting a weak, flickering cyan cone.

And saw it.

Clinging to the ladder rungs just below her, partially obscured by the slime and shadows, was… something. Not human. Not obviously robotic. Roughly the size of a large dog, segmented, multi-limbed, with a dark, chitinous carapace that seemed to absorb the light. Two large, multi-faceted eyes glowed with a faint, internal red luminescence, tracking the cyan beam instantly. Mandibles clicked audibly. It hadn't been there seconds ago. It had moved with terrifying speed and silence. Mutated insect? Escaped bioweapon prototype? Something that had crawled up from the truly deep, unexplored levels? It remained motionless for a second, observing her, head tilted slightly. Threat assessment?

Before Cyan could react, before she could even properly process the nightmarish bio-mechanics of the creature, it "moved". Uncoiling with blinding speed, it launched itself "upwards", directly towards her, claws scrabbling for purchase on the rungs she occupied.

Instinct took over. No time for aiming. She fired the Kaito-7 from the hip, a standard energy pulse, not the shield-buster frequency. The cyan bolt struck the creature mid-torso. It shrieked – a high-pitched, chittering sound that scraped against her auditory implants – and recoiled, losing its grip, tumbling back down into the darkness with a series of sickening thuds against the ladder and shaft wall before splashing into unseen liquid far below.

Silence. Except for her own ragged breathing and the frantic hammering of her heart. Had she killed it? Driven it off? Or just temporarily stunned it? Was it climbing back up? Were there more?

She didn’t wait to find out. Adrenaline surged, overriding the hypoxia, overriding the fear. She scrambled downwards, moving recklessly fast now, slipping on the slime, banging her knee against a rung, ignoring the pain. Sub-Level 82. She had to reach it.

Her boots hit the small, grated platform with a jarring clang. The transition point. She practically fell onto it, swinging around, pistol up, scanning the darkness below for any sign of the creature returning. Nothing. Only the "drip… drip…" and the low hum. She swept the beam towards the rectangular opening in the shaft wall. The ventilation grille. The exit.

She stumbled towards it, augmented legs protesting the rough landing. Closer now, she could see the details illuminated by her dying corneal light. The heavy, corroded bars. The massive, rust-fused bolts securing it to the concrete. The fresh, jagged territorial markers gleaming malevolently beside it. And the spatters of dried blood on the grating at her feet. Not just a few drops. A significant amount, partially washed away but still disturbingly visible. A trail leading towards the grille, almost as if something wounded had dragged itself that way. Or been dragged.

Her mind raced. Was the creature she just encountered responsible for the blood? Was it guarding this entrance? Or was the blood from something else entirely? Something that had fought the creature? Or something that had fallen victim to the Fallen gang whose markers adorned the wall? The possibilities were uniformly terrifying.

"Whumph… WHUMPH… CLANK-SKREEEEEE!"

The noise from behind the grille again. The dying fan’s final protest? Or something else? Something "inside" the duct? Triggered by her arrival? By the energy discharge from her pistol?

The sound galvanised her. No more time for analysis. Get through the grille. Now. She holstered the Kaito-7, needing both hands, and lunged at the grille, examining the bolts, the frame, the concrete surround, searching for "any" weakness.

The bolts were massive, maybe 5cm diameter, hexagonal heads almost perfectly round now from corrosion. No purchase for a standard wrench, even if she had one. The metal of the grille itself was thick, maybe 2cm solid steel bars, coated in layers of rust and slime but likely still structurally sound beneath. The concrete around the frame looked ancient, pitted, but solid. No obvious cracks or weaknesses to exploit for leverage.

She pushed against the grille with all her augmented strength. It didn’t budge. Solid as the spire itself. Electronic lock? She fumbled for her Phase Key, its casing slick in her trembling hand. Flickering corneal display made it hard to see the interface. She pressed it against the metal near the bolts, initiating a broad-spectrum scan for any residual electronic signature, any hidden locking mechanism, any maintenance override port concealed beneath the grime. The device emitted a low hum, its own indicator lights flickering weakly. Seconds passed. Then, a হতাশাজনক ("hatashajanak" - disappointing) negative chirp. Nothing. Purely mechanical. Legacy. Brutal.

Could she cut it? The Kaito-7 on its highest setting might be able to sever a bar, but it would drain almost all its remaining charge, leaving her virtually defenceless, and the noise and light would be an unmissable beacon. Too risky.

What about resonance? Some materials could be fractured by applying precise sonic frequencies. Did she have anything capable? Her auditory enhancers could "receive" frequencies, but not project with sufficient amplitude. Useless.

Leverage? Look around the tiny platform. Any discarded tools? Loose debris? Nothing. Just the slick grating and the dark stains.

Think like a Data Ghost. Exploit the system. The "physical" system. Where’s the weak point? Not the grille itself. Not the bolts. Maybe… the "concrete"? Old concrete, stressed by decades, chemical exposure… could it be brittle? She knelt down, examining the lower edge where the grille frame met the platform grating and the shaft wall. Ran her gloved fingers along the join. Yes. A hairline crack, almost invisible beneath the slime, running from the corner of the grille frame diagonally downwards. A potential fracture point?

Could she use the Kaito-7 as a plasma hammer? A focused, contained burst directed right at that crack? Risky. Could damage the pistol. Could cause unpredictable spalling. But… maybe her only chance.

She drew the pistol again, charge indicator now reading a terrifying 65.3%. She sighted carefully on the hairline crack, took a deep breath, and prepared to fire a controlled, pinpoint burst…

Just as the heavy "thudding" sound started again, much closer this time, coming directly from the other side of the grille. Accompanied by a low, ragged breathing sound.

Someone – or something – was right there. Waiting.

Her blood ran cold. The NIS countdown timer on her flickering display showed ""T-MINUS: 00:00:48"".

Chapter 3

Dans le Labyrinthe des Âmes Perdues

In the Labyrinth of Lost Souls

""T-MINUS: 00:00:47… 46… 45…"" The numbers flickered erratically, struggling against the dying power of her corneal display, each descending digit a hammer blow against Cyan’s already frayed nerves. Forty-five seconds until NIS potentially breached the hatch far above and began their descent. An eternity to wait, yet terrifyingly insufficient time to overcome the immediate, unforeseen obstacle: the heavy, impassive ventilation grille, and the unknown entity breathing raggedly just beyond its corroded bars.

Fear, cold and primal, warred with the ingrained imperatives of her training. Logic dictated retreat was impossible, ascent suicidal. Engagement with the NIS team in this vertical bottleneck was tactical madness. Forward, through the grille, into the unknown dangers of Sub-Level 82, was the only remaining vector, however fraught with peril. But the thing "behind" the grille… its presence was a terrifyingly concrete variable disrupting the already desperate equation.

Its breathing was low, guttural, laboured, punctuated by faint, wet clicks. Not the clean, rhythmic cycling of a respirator or the mechanical whir of an automaton. This sounded organic, damaged, possibly predatory. Was it the creature she’d shot, wounded but waiting? Or something else drawn by the commotion, the scent of blood on the platform, the faint energy signature of her implants? A Fallen scavenger? Worse?

""T-MINUS: 00:00:38… 37…"" Time evaporated. Analysis paralysis was death. Cyan made a decision born of pure desperation, overriding caution. The hairline crack in the concrete beside the lower grille frame. It was the only potential weakness, the only point where focused force might yield results faster than trying to brute-force the bars or bolts themselves. The Kaito-7 felt heavy in her hand, its charge indicator now blinking a critical 64.9%. Using it as a cutting tool or plasma hammer was risky, bordering on insane. It could overheat the core, fracture the emitter lens, deplete the capacitor entirely, leaving her defenceless. But the alternative was capture or being torn apart by whatever waited in the dark.

"Pas le choix" (No choice). No choice.

Grip tightening, stance low and braced on the vibrating, slimy platform, she aimed the oversized barrel with painstaking precision, not at the grille bars, but directly at the apex of the hairline crack in the aged ferro-concrete, where the stress would be most concentrated. She selected the lowest variable power setting capable of generating significant thermal shock, hoping to fracture the concrete rather than melt it, minimizing energy expenditure. Her finger hovered over the firing stud. She could hear the ragged breathing behind the grille quicken slightly, as if the entity sensed her intent.

Taking a final, steadying breath that tasted like rust and fear, she subvocalized the fire command.

"Fzzt-CRACK!"

Instead of a sustained beam, she triggered a single, controlled micro-pulse, channeling a precise amount of energy – maybe 5% of the remaining charge – directly into the crack. The effect was instantaneous and violently loud in the confined space. The cyan energy discharge flashed blindingly, impacting the concrete with a sharp crack like superheated rock fracturing. Ozone filled the air, momentarily overwhelming the scent of decay. The concrete around the crack didn’t vaporize, but spiderweb fractures radiated outwards with audible pops and groans. Dust and small fragments rained down. The lower corner of the heavy grille frame visibly sagged, twisted slightly outwards by the force, pulled away from the wall by maybe two crucial centimetres.

It wasn’t a clean breach, but it was "movement". A potential opening.

Behind the grille, the ragged breathing stopped abruptly, replaced by a low, guttural snarl, followed by a furious scrabbling sound, as if the entity was reacting to the explosion, perhaps trying to force its way "out" or retreat deeper into the duct.

""T-MINUS: 00:00:25… 24…"" No time to admire her handiwork or ponder the entity's reaction. Cyan holstered the Kaito-7 and threw her full weight, augmented strength surging through her limbs, against the damaged section of the grille. Metal screamed in protest as corroded points yielded further. The gap widened. Another centimetre. Then another. Enough? Just barely. A narrow, jagged opening now existed at the bottom corner, wide enough for a slim body to squeeze through sideways, provided one wasn't overly concerned about tearing synth-fabric or flesh on the ragged edges of broken concrete and twisted metal.

She didn’t hesitate. Taking one last glance upwards into the oppressive blackness of the shaft – half-expecting to see the first rappel lines snaking down – she turned and forced herself sideways through the makeshift gap. Metal scraped brutally against her side, snagging on her utility jacket. Broken concrete bit into her hip. Pain flared, hot and sharp, but adrenaline masked the worst of it. For a moment she was stuck, wedged halfway, the rough edges grinding against bone. Panic surged – the primal fear of being trapped, helpless. She pushed harder, twisting her body, gritting her teeth against the pain, feeling fabric rip. Then, with a final, wrenching effort, she was through, tumbling ungracefully onto a surface littered with debris inside the ventilation duct.

She landed in near total darkness, the faint cyan glow from her failing implant barely penetrating the gloom beyond the grille. The air inside the duct was even fouler than the shaft – thick with decades of accumulated dust, the cloying sweetness of mould, the sharp stink of ammonia (likely from whatever creatures nested here), and the underlying metallic tang of the structure itself. Immediately, she scrambled away from the opening, pressing herself against the cold, curved wall of the massive duct, Kaito-7 back in her hand, straining her senses to locate the entity that had been breathing there moments before.

Silence. The ragged breathing, the snarl, the scrabbling – all gone. Had it fled deeper into the duct system when she breached the grille? Or was it hiding nearby, waiting in the deeper shadows just beyond her limited vision? The uncertainty was a physical weight.

Then, a new sound. Faint, but distinct. A low, rhythmic "thump-thump… thump-thump…" Not mechanical. Organic. A heartbeat? But strangely slow, heavy, like a large drum beating underwater. Coming from deeper within the duct, maybe ten metres away.

Her implants flickered violently, threatening final shutdown. ""BIO-CAPACITOR LEVEL: 8.9%"". She had seconds, maybe a minute at most, of augmented sight remaining. She needed to move, find the exit Glitch mentioned onto Sub-Level 82 proper, before she was plunged into total sensory deprivation in this hazardous, potentially occupied space.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in her hip and side, ignoring the ominous heartbeat sound, she forced herself to her feet, staying low. The duct was huge, easily three metres in diameter, clearly part of the spire's primary atmospheric handling system, long defunct but structurally intact. The floor was littered with debris – fallen panels, chunks of insulation, unidentifiable organic matter, and… bones. Small ones, mostly, likely vermin, but also some disturbingly larger fragments she didn’t want to identify.

Where was the exit? Glitch’s coordinates were now just flickering, meaningless static on her dying display. He’d said Sub-Level 82 maintenance access. Ducts like this usually had periodic access hatches for repair drones or personnel. Relying on instinct, memory of similar architectural layouts from past infiltrations, and the faint airflow suggesting a pressure differential, she started moving deeper into the duct, away from the shaft opening, pistol held ready, sweeping the immediate area ahead with the Kaito-7's beam.

The heartbeat sound grew slightly louder, closer. "Thump-thump… thump-thump…" It seemed to resonate through the metal floor. And now, overlaid on it, another sound – a faint, wet, tearing noise.

She rounded a gentle bend in the duct and stopped dead, the Kaito-7’s beam fixing on the source.

Not ten metres away, slumped against the curved wall, was the "thing" that had been breathing. Not the creature from the shaft, the chitinous horror. This was… or had been… human. Or mostly human. A Fallen scavenger, judging by the ragged, layered clothing made from patched-together synthetics and scavenged insulation. Male, heavily built, face obscured by shadows and a crude breathing mask cobbled together from scrap. But what commanded Cyan’s attention, freezing the blood in her veins, was the massive, gaping wound in his chest cavity, torn open with savage force. Dark, viscous fluid pooled beneath him, glistening wetly in the cyan beam. His chest rose and fell with a shallow, rattling finality. The slow, heavy "thump-thump" was his dying heart, laboring against catastrophic trauma. The wet, tearing sound was him, feebly, perhaps reflexively, trying to pull a severed power conduit – or perhaps one of his own cybernetic augmentations – from the wreckage of his torso.

He wasn't waiting for her. He wasn't a threat. He was the "victim". The blood on the platform outside, it was his. He'd likely been attacked by the creature from the shaft, dragged himself here, mortally wounded, perhaps trying to reach safety or simply collapsing from blood loss.

Compassion warred with self-preservation. Her training screamed: "Ignore him, potential trap, secure the exit." But the sheer brutality of the scene, the desperate finality in those rattling breaths, touched something deep within her, something buried beneath layers of cynicism and operational detachment. This was the reality of the Sub-Grid. Not just decay and neglect, but active, brutal violence. This unknown scavenger was someone's son, someone's brother, someone who had likely fought every day just to survive down here, only to end like this, torn apart in a forgotten ventilation duct. Another casualty of this broken world. Like Leon.

She took a cautious step closer, pistol still aimed, scanning the surrounding darkness. No sign of the creature. Had it finished its meal and moved on? Or was it lurking? The scavenger groaned, a low, guttural sound, his head lolling weakly. His one visible eye, glazed with pain and shock, flickered towards her, towards the cyan beam. No recognition. Just primal suffering.

Could she help him? Unlikely. The wound looked catastrophic. She had no medical supplies beyond a basic trauma patch in her kit, utterly inadequate for this level of injury. And saving him meant staying here, risking the creature's return, risking NIS finding her. Self-preservation won, cold and pragmatic, leaving a bitter taste of shame. She couldn't save him. She couldn't even offer a quick end; wasting a precious Kaito-7 shot on euthanasia was a luxury she couldn't afford. "Chacun pour soi" (Every man for himself), she thought, hating the cold truth of it down here.

"Je suis désolée" (I am sorry), she thought, the French phrase for sorrow feeling hollow, inadequate. "I am sorry." She backed away slowly, keeping her weapon trained on the dying man and the surrounding darkness, bypassing the grisly scene. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but disciplined movement was safer.

Further down the duct, maybe twenty metres past the dying scavenger, she saw it. Another rectangular shape interrupting the curved wall. Not a grille this time, but a solid panel, marked with faded yellow and black hazard stripes and the archaic symbol for 'Maintenance Access'. An electronically locked hatch, most likely.

Hope surged, quickly followed by dread. Her Phase Key. Would it even function with her bio-capacitor so low? Could she interface, bypass the lock, before her implants died completely? ""BIO-CAPACITOR LEVEL: 6.3%"". The display was now a barely coherent fuzz of cyan static.

She practically lunged at the panel, fumbling the Phase Key against the access port, ignoring the filth coating its surface. The device hummed weakly, its own power indicator flickering red. "Come on, work, you piece of…" For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. Just the low hum of the key struggling to draw power, failing to establish a handshake.

Then, a faint "click". A small green indicator light flickered weakly to life beside the panel. "Success!" The legacy system was simple, poorly shielded, easily bypassed even by the key running on minimal power. With a pneumatic hiss, the heavy panel unlocked and swung slightly ajar.

Freedom. Or at least, escape from the immediate confines of the duct. She pushed the heavy panel open wider and peered out, pistol ready.

The view was… overwhelming. She emerged not into a narrow maintenance corridor, but onto a wide, crumbling catwalk overlooking a vast, cavernous space. Sub-Level 82. It stretched out before her, a dizzying panorama of decaying industrial grandeur and desperate, makeshift survival.

This had once been a major subterranean infrastructure hub. Massive, silent machinery – colossal atmospheric processors, power conduits the size of transit tubes, skeletal remains of automated cargo movers on overhead rails – loomed like the corpses of forgotten metal gods, shrouded in dust and draped with thick, bio-luminescent fungal growths that cast an eerie, pulsing green-blue light across the scene. Catwalks like the one she stood on crisscrossed the cavern at multiple levels, many collapsed or partially dismantled for scrap. Below, maybe thirty metres down, the cavern floor was a chaotic maze of makeshift dwellings cobbled together from scavenged panels, shipping containers, salvaged vehicle chassis, illuminated by the flickering glow of chem-lights, illegal power taps sparking erratically, and the occasional open fire burning dubious fuel. The air hung thick with the smell of ozone from the faulty power taps, unidentifiable cooking odours, chemical solvents, unwashed bodies, and the ever-present Sub-Grid perfume of damp decay and desperation. Voices echoed dimly from below – shouts, laughter, arguments, fragments of music played on scavenged speakers – a distant, incoherent babble of human life persisting against all odds.

This was the Labyrinth of Lost Souls. The realm of the Fallen. A place utterly removed from the sterile, controlled environments of the corporate spires above. A place of brutal necessity, desperate invention, and raw survival. A festering wound beneath the gleaming skin of Neo-Veridian.

Cyan felt a wave of profound disorientation, coupled with a familiar, corrosive mix of pity and revulsion. Pity for the sheer scale of human misery and resilience on display. Revulsion at the filth, the chaos, the breakdown of order that her NIS conditioning abhorred. And underneath it all, a chilling sense of "familiarity". This wasn't entirely alien territory. Her parents, before the TenRelDan 'realignments', had worked in sectors bordering zones like this. Leon had spent time down here, trying to organize, trying to build his hidden networks, before NIS found him. Part of her history was rooted in this subterranean world, a history she had tried desperately to escape by joining the very corporate machine that perpetuated this suffering. The irony was a bitter pill. She loathed this place, this world, this system that created glittering arcologies for the few and left millions to rot in the foundations. Loathed the greed that drove corporations like LCS, ASG, BCGA, TenRelDan, Zhongqì-Tek to exploit, pollute, displace, and discard human lives like so much industrial waste. Loathed the pervasive fear that kept the Mid-Levels compliant and the Sub-Grid contained. Loathed the societal addiction to cheap thrills, synthetic highs, VR oblivion – the myriad ways people tried to numb themselves to the grim reality, distractions actively promoted by the corps through ubiquitous advertising and accessible, addictive tech. Sex wasn't intimacy; it was transactional friction, often mediated through exploitative 'companion' apps or desperate physical exchanges. Drugs weren't just recreational; they were survival tools – stims to work longer hours in the gig economy, downers to endure the crushing boredom of unemployment, cognitive enhancers for a fleeting edge, hallucinogens like Null-Zone not for enlightenment but for sheer, desperate escape from the oppressive sensory input of the city.

She saw it all reflected in the cavern below. A group huddled around a flickering screen, faces blank, likely jacked into some cheap, pirated VR simulation. A lone figure twitching uncontrollably in a dark corner, probably riding out the harsh comedown from a dose of 'Synapse Static', a nasty street cocktail mimicking NIS tech effects. Scavengers picking through heaps of refuse under the watchful eyes of rough-looking individuals armed with crude melee weapons – likely gang enforcers demanding a cut. The stark reality of uneven technology distribution was everywhere: advanced cybernetic limbs crudely repaired with scrap metal, salvaged military comms units jury-rigged to run off failing batteries, sophisticated diagnostic tools used to repair ancient combustion engines because biofuel was sometimes cheaper or more available than electricity from the grid. High tech and low life, not as a cool aesthetic, but as a brutal, lived reality. "Le spectacle continue" (The show goes on), she thought, the grand, ugly show of survival and despair played out daily.

And why did she live here? Why endure this broken world she despised? Because it was the "only" world. Because escape was an illusion sold by VR parlours and off-world colonization lottery scams. Because her past actions, her time as DG-7, had inextricably tied her to its rotten core. Because Leon was still trapped somewhere within its machinery, a victim of its casual cruelty. Because the QMC fused beneath her skin was both her burden and her only weapon against it. She loathed it, yes, but she was also "part" of it. A product of its pressures, its inequalities, its violence. To deny it was to deny a part of herself. The Labyrinth wasn't just below her; it was inside her too. "On récolte ce que l'on sème" (You reap what you sow). Her past choices had planted her firmly in this toxic soil.

"Bzzt-CRACKLE-fade." Her corneal display finally gave up the ghost. The flickering cyan static resolved into a final, despairing pattern, then winked out, plunging her into near-complete natural darkness, broken only by the faint, alien glow of the bio-luminescent fungi painting the vast cavern in shifting strokes of eerie green and blue. Her internal chronometer vanished. Atmospheric data gone. Glitch's coordinates… lost. The NIS timer… silenced, but she knew, instinctively, that time had run out. They were in the shaft now. Descending.

Panic surged, cold and sharp. Blind. Disoriented. Exposed on a crumbling catwalk overlooking a potentially hostile environment. Her enhanced senses, her technological edge, largely gone. Reduced to baseline human perception, maybe slightly augmented by residual implants running on fumes. She was vulnerable in a way she hadn't been since… before NIS. "C'est la merde noire" (It’s the black shit – utter disaster).

She forced the panic down. Training kicked in. "Adapt. Improvise. Overcome." Basic principles. What did she have left? Her skills. Her weapon (charge now unknown, probably less than 60%). Her physical augmentations (legs still functioning, basic strength enhancement). Her knowledge of urban survival, infiltration, evasion. And the QMC, her secret, terrible burden.

She needed to find Glitch's node. Without coordinates, how? Rely on memory, on Glitch's typically cryptic description? ""Near the old Zhongqì-Tek geothermal conduit nexus, sector seven-gamma-prime, look for the flickering ramen sign hologram – vintage 21st century sim-food ad, he uses it as a marker."" Geothermal conduits… Sector Seven… A flickering ramen sign… Vague, almost useless without a map overlay. But it was all she had. "Il faut tenter le diable" (One must tempt the devil). She had to try.

She peered down into the cavern again, eyes slowly adjusting to the dim, shifting fungal light. The scale was immense. Finding a specific point in this chaotic sprawl seemed impossible. But she had to try. She needed Glitch. Needed information, resources, a way to analyse the QMC safely, a way to find Leon, a way to "use" the data against NIS.

She scanned the catwalk she was on. It seemed relatively intact, stretching towards a massive, cylindrical structure on the far side of the cavern – likely one of the main geothermal conduits Glitch mentioned. That was a potential direction. Carefully, testing each step before committing her weight, she began moving along the corroded metal walkway. The sounds from the cavern floor below seemed to intensify, the babble of voices, the clang of metal on metal, the sputtering cough of a failing generator. Every shadow seemed to writhe with potential threats.

She passed darkened doorways leading off the catwalk into the spire's interior structure – likely abandoned maintenance tunnels or access points to other sub-levels. Each one was a potential ambush point, a potential hiding place for Fallen gangs or worse. She kept her Kaito-7 ready, sweeping it constantly, relying now on her unaugmented hearing and the faint shifts in air currents to detect movement.

Then, a flicker of motion caught her eye. Down below, near the cavern floor, partially hidden behind a stack of discarded plasteel containers. Two figures, small, hunched over something. Children? Hard to tell from this distance in the dim light. One offered something to the other. Food? A piece of scavenged tech? The other accepted it. A simple gesture. Sharing. An act of spontaneous generosity in the midst of overwhelming deprivation. It was a tiny detail, almost insignificant against the backdrop of decay and potential violence, but it registered. A flicker of something other than pure, Darwinian struggle. A hint, perhaps, that not everything down here was predatory. That connection, "caring", might still exist, fragile embers glowing in the crushing darkness. Cyan quickly suppressed the thought. Sentimentality was a weakness she couldn't afford. Connection meant vulnerability. Isolation was safety. She repeated the mantra, but the image lingered.

She reached the massive geothermal conduit. It was easily ten metres in diameter, coated in peeling insulation and layers of grime. Catwalks branched off around it, leading deeper into the labyrinthine substructure. Which way? Sector seven-gamma-prime… The designations were likely based on some archaic municipal grid system. Without a map, it was guesswork. She chose the catwalk that seemed to curve downwards, deeper into the complex, following a faint trail of discarded nutrient paste wrappers – signs of recent passage.

The air grew warmer here, closer to the conduit, carrying the faint smell of sulphur. The fungal light seemed brighter, casting longer, more distorted shadows. She passed more signs of Fallen habitation – crude shelters built into alcoves, graffiti tags sprayed in phosphorescent paint (different symbols from the ones at the grille, suggesting multiple factions), the burned-out shell of an old NeoSec patrol drone, likely brought down and stripped for parts.

Suddenly, a high-pitched alarm blared from somewhere ahead, startlingly loud. An automated proximity alert? A territorial warning system? Lights flashed – harsh, intermittent strobes of red light cutting through the fungal gloom, momentarily blinding her. Simultaneously, heavy metal shutters slammed down with deafening bangs, blocking the catwalk ahead and behind her.

Trapped again. Not by NIS this time, but by the Labyrinth itself. Automated defences, perhaps, still functioning erratically after decades. Or a deliberate trap sprung by watchful Fallen.

She spun around, weapon up, heart pounding, scanning the now-strobe-lit section of the catwalk. Red light flashed on metal, on fungus, on… something else. A motion sensor high on the wall, its indicator light now solid red. And below it, almost invisible until the strobes hit it, a pressure plate integrated subtly into the catwalk grating. She’d triggered it.

The alarm continued its deafening shriek. The strobes pulsed relentlessly. She was exposed, boxed in, her position announced to anyone within earshot. And somewhere, not far enough behind her, NIS was relentlessly closing the distance. The Labyrinth had welcomed her, chewed her up, and now seemed intent on spitting her out directly into the hands of her pursuers. Or perhaps, into the hands of its own hungry denizens.

Chapter 4

La Pression des Ténèbres

The Pressure of Darkness

The alarm wasn’t just sound; it was a physical assault. A high-frequency shriek, calibrated likely to disorient biological intruders, resonated painfully through Cyan’s auditory implants, bypassing their filtering protocols through sheer amplitude. It hammered directly against her skull, each pulse a nail driven into her temples. Simultaneously, the strobing red lights ignited the cavern section, painting the scene in frantic, disorienting flashes. One moment, the eerie, shifting green-blue bioluminescence of the fungi dominated; the next, stark, blood-red shadows leaped and writhed, transforming the familiar decay into a landscape of pure menace. Metal surfaces gleamed wetly crimson, then plunged back into fungal twilight, then flashed red again. Her pupils, struggling to adapt, pulsed painfully. Disorientation threatened to overwhelm her, a deliberate tactic embedded in the archaic security system she’d blundered into.

"Clang-BANG! Clang-BANG!" Heavy metal shutters, thick plates of rust-streaked plasteel, slammed down with concussive force, sealing the catwalk section she occupied. One ahead, where the walkway curved around the geothermal conduit. One behind, back towards the ventilation duct she’d just exited. Boxed in. A cage, maybe twenty metres long, suspended thirty metres above the chaotic cavern floor, now bathed in shrieking alarms and nauseating red strobes.

Trapped. Again. The irony was so bitter it almost choked her. Escaping the vertical prison of the shaft only to be immediately incarcerated in this horizontal one. Not by NIS this time, though their arrival felt terrifyingly imminent, surely drawn by this cacophony. Trapped by the Labyrinth itself. By automated defences, remnants of a more ordered era, still functioning with blind, erratic diligence after decades of neglect. Or worse, a deliberate trap sprung by watchful Fallen inhabitants using the old systems to snare unwary prey? The thought sent a fresh wave of cold dread through her.

She spun, Kaito-7 snapping up, instinct overriding the sensory assault. Body low, seeking cover that didn't exist on the exposed catwalk. She scanned the strobe-lit section, eyes narrowed against the flashing red, searching for threats, for the trigger mechanism, for an escape. The alarm shrieked relentlessly, vibrating through the metal grating beneath her boots. The strobes pulsed, turning the world into a disjointed slide show of rust, fungus, and shadow.

Her gaze locked onto the source of her predicament. High on the inner wall, near the ceiling of the enclosed catwalk section, a motion sensor. An old Zhongqì-Tek model, judging by the casing design. Its indicator light wasn't blinking; it was solid, accusing red. And below it, almost invisible until the strobes hit it at just the right angle, revealing a subtle difference in the grating pattern – a pressure plate. Maybe a metre square, integrated seamlessly into the walkway. She’d stepped right onto it, focused on reaching the conduit, blinded by the relative openness after the suffocating duct. A rookie mistake. Unforgivable. Born of desperation and failing senses.

Panic clawed at her throat, cold and tight. Claustrophobia, not just of the physical confinement, but the "situational" kind. No way forward, no way back. Exposed. Her position broadcast by light and sound to anyone within the cavern. And NIS… how close were they now? Had they reached the platform at Sub-Level 82? Had they found the bloodstains, the damaged grille? Were they already moving through the ventilation duct, following her path, guided by the distant alarm? The imagined cyan visors seemed to burn in the darkness behind her eyelids.

Breathe. "Respire" (Breathe). Force the panic down. Analyse. Control. The mantra felt thin, fragile against the overwhelming sensory input and the crushing weight of her predicament. She needed to disable the alarm, bypass the shutters, find another way out. "Fast".

The motion sensor? Could she shoot it? Risky. A stray shot could ricochet unpredictably in the enclosed space. It might not even disable the alarm; the system could be hardwired, the sensor just a trigger. The pressure plate? Irrelevant now; it had already done its job. The shutters? Thick plasteel, reinforced. The Kaito-7, even at full power, would struggle to cut through quickly, draining its precious remaining charge (estimated <60% now, the exact number lost to the flickering display). Brute force was out.

Think like a Data Ghost. Think like an infiltrator. Old systems often had vulnerabilities, overrides, maintenance access points. "Bien sûr" (Of course - used ironically). She forced her eyes to scan the walls, the floor grating, the ceiling, ignoring the strobes, searching for anything – an access panel, a junction box, a control conduit.

There. Near the forward shutter, partially obscured by fungal growth, a small, corroded metal box mounted on the wall. Faded stencilling identified it: "SYSTEME DE SECURITE – ACCES MAINTENANCE – ZQT". A Zhongqì-Tek security system maintenance panel. Her Phase Key. Could it interface? Could it possibly still draw enough power from her dying bio-capacitor?

She scrambled towards it, stumbling slightly on the uneven grating, the alarm shrieking directly into her ears. She ripped away the thick, rubbery fungal strands covering the panel, revealing a grimy interface port – an ancient serial connector, thankfully not optical. She jammed the Phase Key's multi-adapter into the port, praying the connection was viable, praying the key had enough residual power to initiate a handshake and run an exploit sequence.

The key’s indicator light flickered weakly, then glowed a steady, hopeful amber. Connection established. Her corneal display was useless, so she initiated the process blind, relying on muscle memory and subvocalized commands learned years ago. Initiate broad-spectrum protocol scan… identify OS… legacy ZQT firmware, likely kernel 3.7b, notoriously insecure… search known exploit database… Zero-day vulnerability ZQT-Sec-Override-773 detected… compile exploit payload… execute sequence 'Silent Night'… "Croisons les doigts" (Let's cross our fingers).

Seconds stretched into an eternity, measured only by the relentless pulse of the strobes and the shriek of the alarm. The Phase Key hummed faintly, its light flickering now between amber and red as it drew the last dregs of power from her capacitor. "Work, damn you, work…"

"Click." The alarm cut out abruptly, plunging the catwalk into sudden, disorienting silence, broken only by the faint hum of distant cavern activity and her own ragged breathing. The strobes extinguished, leaving only the dim, shifting bio-luminescent glow. Simultaneously, with a groan of protesting metal, the heavy shutters began to retract slowly, grinding upwards into recesses in the ceiling.

Success. Relief washed over her, so potent it left her weak-kneed, leaning against the cold conduit for support. But the relief was instantly tempered by the chilling realization: the exploit had worked, yes, but launching it, even a targeted one, likely left a faint digital footprint in the spire’s network logs, assuming they were still monitored at some level. Another breadcrumb for NIS to potentially follow, narrowing their search window. And the silence, while welcome, felt temporary, fragile. How long until someone – NIS or Fallen – came to investigate the sudden activation and deactivation of the ancient security system?

She pushed herself away from the conduit, forcing her trembling legs to move. The path ahead, around the conduit, was open again. But the experience had shaken her, eroding her already fragile confidence. The mistake with the pressure plate, the reliance on dwindling power, the sheer luck involved in the exploit working… it underscored her vulnerability. She wasn't the untouchable Data Ghost anymore. She was exposed, running on fumes, making errors. The negativity, the self-doubt she constantly fought to suppress, surged upwards. "You're losing it, Sharma. Too slow. Too sloppy. You won't make it. They'll find you. Or this place will swallow you whole."

She needed to get deeper, find Glitch’s node, find a place to recharge, regroup, "think". Following the curve of the massive geothermal conduit, she moved cautiously into a narrower, darker service corridor branching off the main cavern catwalk. The air here was warmer, dryer, the fungal glow fainter. Pipes lined the walls, thick bundles of insulated cables snaked overhead. The sounds of the main cavern faded behind her. Here, there was only the low hum of the conduit and her own footsteps echoing slightly on the metal floor grating.

The corridor twisted, turned, descended slightly. She passed more sealed maintenance hatches, resisting the urge to check them, needing to conserve the Phase Key's remaining energy for Glitch's marker. She relied on faint airflow changes, subtle temperature gradients, and a deeply buried sense of direction honed by navigating similar industrial labyrinths in the past. But doubt gnawed at her. Was this Sector Seven-Gamma-Prime? Was she even going the right way? Without her implants providing reliable data, she was navigating blind, guided only by fragmented information and increasingly unreliable intuition.

Then, the corridor ended abruptly. Not in a junction, but a collapse. The floor grating ahead simply… wasn't there. It had rusted through or been deliberately removed, revealing a dark, gaping hole maybe two metres across. Below it, darkness. But she could hear it now, distinctly: the sound of rushing water. And smell it: the unmistakable, stomach-churning stench of raw sewage.

She crept to the edge, aiming the Kaito-7's beam (fainter now, flickering noticeably) downwards. The beam illuminated a torrent of murky, grey-brown liquid churning violently through a massive, cylindrical pipe maybe five metres below the edge of the collapsed walkway. A primary sewage main. Ancient, likely carrying wastewater runoff from multiple Mid-Levels down towards some subterranean processing facility or, more likely, just dumping it untreated into the lowest depths.

There was no way forward on this level. The collapse was too wide to jump. Going back meant risking encountering whatever might be investigating the deactivated security system, or worse, running straight into NIS. Her eyes scanned the walls around the collapsed section. Was there another path? A crawlspace? A ladder?

Yes. Bolted to the wall just beside the hole, descending downwards towards the sewage main, was another emergency ladder. Just like the one in the shaft. Corroded, slime-coated, missing several rungs. It led down to a narrow, precarious-looking inspection platform just above the churning torrent. And set into the wall beside "that" platform… another access point. A heavy, circular valve-hatch, like something on a submarine, presumably leading "into" the sewage main itself.

Her stomach churned, mirroring the roiling liquid below. The smell was overpowering, gag-inducing even through her suit's basic filters. Sewage. Filth. Confined space. Darkness. Water. It triggered a cascade of primal revulsions, deep-seated fears. But… was there another way? She scanned upwards. Could she climb? The ceiling was high, maybe four metres, crisscrossed with pipes and cables, but nothing offered a reliable handhold for traversing the gap. Backtracking was suicide.

This… this nightmare conduit of filth… was the only path forward. The realization hit her with physical force, making her feel dizzy, nauseous. The pressure of the darkness, the pressure of the pursuit, now compounded by the pressure of this new, visceral horror. "Pas le choix" (No choice). There truly was no other way.

Self-doubt screamed in her mind. "You can't do this. It's too much. Turn back. Give up. Let them take you. It would be easier than this." Failure seemed not just possible, but inevitable, almost welcome compared to the ordeal ahead. She imagined the cold grip of NIS restraints, the sterile interrogation room, the final oblivion. Part of her, the exhausted, terrified part, almost craved it. An end to the running, the fear, the responsibility. "C'est fini" (It's over - internal thought of despair).

"No." The image of Leon's face, wide-eyed and lost in the Synapse Weaver's cyan glow, flashed in her mind. The cold fury returned, momentarily eclipsing the fear and despair. "Not yet. Not while Thorne still breathes. Not while Leon is… whatever he is." She wouldn't fail him again. She "couldn't". "Jamais!" (Never!) Not like this.

Grit gnashed between her teeth. She holstered the pistol, took several deep, deliberate breaths (filtering the foul air as best she could), and swung herself onto the corroded ladder. It groaned ominously under her weight, shifting slightly on its ancient bolts. She ignored it, focusing only on the next handhold, the next foothold, descending towards the churning filth below.

The proximity to the sewage main was overwhelming. The roar of the effluent filled her ears. The stench was thick enough to taste, burning her nostrils. The air was heavy with moisture and noxious gases. Reaching the narrow inspection platform, she found it slick with slime and condensation, vibrating with the force of the torrent rushing inches below. One slip meant an unthinkable end.

The circular valve-hatch was massive, easily a metre in diameter, secured by a large, rusted wheel mechanism. Likely sealed tight against the internal pressure. Could she even open it? She gripped the cold, slimy wheel with both hands and heaved, putting all her augmented strength into it. Rust shrieked, muscles screamed, but slowly, agonizingly, centimetre by centimetre, the wheel began to turn, protesting with loud groans.

It took several minutes of exhausting effort, her arms burning, her grip constantly slipping on the slime, before the wheel reached its stop. With a final, deep "clunk", the hatch sealing mechanism disengaged. Now to open it. It would be heavy, likely opened inwards due to external pressure design… or outwards due to internal pressure? She couldn’t recall the standard for mains this old. She braced herself on the narrow platform and pulled tentatively at the wheel’s central handle. It resisted, then swung inwards with surprising ease, releasing a fresh wave of concentrated stench and a blast of cold, damp air.

Darkness lay beyond. Utter blackness, punctuated only by the roar of the unseen torrent within. This was it. The point of no return. Entering the bowels of the city, literally.

"Flashback: A childhood memory. Playing hide-and-seek with Leon in the service tunnels beneath their Hab-Block before the Displacement. Laughing, squeezing into tight maintenance crawlspaces, the thrill of temporary confinement mixed with the security of knowing escape was easy, that light and home were just around the corner. The memory felt impossibly distant, impossibly innocent now. A different lifetime."

The contrast between that memory and her current reality was a physical blow. No game now. No easy escape. Just the crushing pressure of darkness and the very real possibility of drowning in filth or getting permanently lost in this subterranean circulatory system.

She took the Kaito-7 out again, its beam weaker than ever, barely a flicker. She shone it into the opening. It revealed the inside of a massive pipe, slick with indeterminate slime, the torrent of sewage rushing past in the lower half, leaving maybe a metre of headspace above the waterline near the edge. The current looked terrifyingly strong.

Could she navigate this? How far did she have to go? Where was the next access point? Glitch hadn't mentioned traversing sewage mains. Had she taken a wrong turn? Was this even leading towards the geothermal nexus he spoke of? Doubt flooded back, cold and crippling.

But behind her lay the collapsed corridor, the triggered alarm, the inevitable arrival of NIS. Ahead lay… this. A horrifying, uncertain path, but a path nonetheless.

She checked her suit seals, tightening wrist and ankle closures, pulling the collar of her jacket higher, a futile gesture against the inevitable contamination. Took another deep breath, held it, and plunged into the opening, feet first, lowering herself into the narrow headspace above the roaring torrent.

The moment she was inside, the sheer oppressive "closeness" hit her. The curved walls of the massive pipe seemed to press in from all sides, inches from her face, her back. The roar of the water was deafening, echoing, disorienting. The stench was unbearable, clinging to her, seeming to penetrate her suit, her skin, her lungs. She landed awkwardly on a narrow ledge or accumulation of solid waste just inside the pipe, inches above the churning liquid. The air was thick, heavy, making each breath a conscious effort.

Claustrophobia, raw and primal, surged like bile. The irrational certainty that the walls were shrinking, crushing her. The desperate urge to scream, to claw her way back out into the (relatively) open space of the shaft, security systems and unknown creatures be damned. Her breathing quickened, shallow gasps against the foul air. Her heart hammered against her ribs, louder than the roar of the sewage. Tremors started in her hands.

"Control, Sharma, control." She fought it, teeth clenched, focusing on tactical breathing exercises – inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six – trying to slow her heart rate, push back the panic. "Calme-toi, idiote" (Calm down, idiot). Panic is a luxury. "This is just another environment. Analyse. Adapt. Move."

She shone the flickering Kaito-7 beam ahead into the pipe. Darkness swallowed it within metres. Behind her, the faint light from the inspection platform access was already receding as she moved slightly forward. She was suspended in a pocket of failing light between two infinite stretches of blackness, the roar of the torrent below her only constant.

She needed to move upstream or downstream? Glitch's directions were useless now. Which way felt… right? Which way did the faint airflow seem to be heading? Impossible to tell amidst the turbulence. She made an arbitrary decision: follow the flow. Downstream. It felt easier, less like fighting the inevitable.

Moving along the narrow ledge was treacherous. It was slick, uneven, sometimes crumbling away underfoot. She moved slowly, cautiously, one hand braced against the slime-coated pipe wall, the other holding the flickering pistol aloft, its beam occasionally cutting out completely, plunging her into momentary, heart-stopping blindness. Each time the light failed, panic surged anew. "It’s gone. Permanently this time. I’m blind. Trapped." Then it would flicker back, weak, unreliable, offering just enough photons to make the darkness feel even more absolute by contrast.

How long did she crawl, wade, stumble through the oppressive darkness? Minutes? Hours? Time lost all meaning, dissolving into a monotonous cycle of cautious movement, near-slips, the roar of the water, the stench, the crushing confinement, the constant battle against her own rising panic. Her hip throbbed where she’d hit the grille frame. Her muscles ached with strain and tension. Hunger gnawed faintly, a distant sensation compared to the immediate physical and psychological assaults.

"Memory Flash: An NIS sensory deprivation training exercise. Suspended in a flotation tank, absolute darkness, absolute silence, for hours. Designed to test psychological resilience, resistance to interrogation techniques. She’d excelled, her mind finding refuge in analytical detachment, constructing complex theoretical algorithms to pass the time. But this… this was different. This wasn’t sterile silence; it was roaring chaos. It wasn’t clean darkness; it was suffocating filth. It wasn't a controlled exercise; it was real, and failure meant a horrifying, anonymous death."

Self-doubt became her constant companion in the pipe. Every sound – a distant rumble, a splash, the scuttling of unseen vermin in the walls – amplified into a monstrous threat. Every shadow cast by her flickering light seemed to coalesce into the chitinous creature from the shaft, or the cyan visor of an NIS trooper. Hallucinations, born of stress, hypoxia, and perhaps those residual vape chemicals or viral glitches, began to bleed into the edges of her perception. Fleeting whispers seemed to echo just beneath the roar of the water – Leon’s voice? Thorne’s? Her own name, distorted, mocking? Geometric patterns, like the one she saw in the shaft, pulsed momentarily in the darkness when the light failed. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her head, but the images lingered, feeding the paranoia. "Am I losing my mind? Is this the Synapse Static effect everyone talks about? Is this place literally driving me insane?" "Je deviens folle?" (Am I going crazy?) The fear of losing mental control was perhaps the deepest terror.

She stumbled, her foot slipping on a particularly thick patch of slime. She fell hard against the pipe wall, the impact jarring her teeth, knocking the Kaito-7 from her grasp. It clattered, its feeble beam spinning wildly before extinguishing completely with a final, pathetic "fizzle".

Darkness. Absolute. Total. Not even the faintest residual glow from her dead corneal implant. The roar of the sewage seemed to intensify, filling the void left by the light. Panic, overwhelming and suffocating, crashed over her. Blind. Weaponless (she couldn't find it in the dark). Lost in a torrent of filth. Trapped. "This is it. This is how it ends."

She slumped against the wall, curling into a foetal position on the narrow, filthy ledge, tears of sheer terror and despair tracing hot paths through the grime on her cheeks. Giving up felt so easy now. Just… stop. Let the current take her. Let the darkness swallow her. Let the Labyrinth claim another lost soul. It would be a release. "Assez" (Enough).

"Leon." His image flashed again, not the victim in the lab, but the idealistic boy sketching in their cramped Hab-Block. "“We have to fight back, Anya.”"

Something shifted within her. Not hope, exactly. That felt too fragile, too naive for this place. But… defiance. A stubborn, gritty refusal to be extinguished here, anonymously, in the literal bowels of the system she despised. A refusal to let Thorne win, to let Leon’s sacrifice be meaningless. It was a tiny ember, almost smothered by the weight of despair, but it glowed faintly in the internal darkness.

Slowly, painstakingly, she began to feel around her on the ledge in the pitch blackness. Her fingers brushed against the cold, smooth casing of the Kaito-7. Relief, potent and sharp. She gripped it tightly, a useless weight now without power, but a talisman nonetheless.

She couldn't stay here. She had to move. Blindly. Guided only by touch, by the feel of the pipe wall, by the roar of the current beside her. She pushed herself back to her feet, trembling but resolute. One hand on the wall, pistol held uselessly in the other, she took a step forward into the absolute black. Then another. "Courage, mon vieux" (Courage, old girl - talking to herself).

Progress was terrifyingly slow, measured in centimetres. Every step was a gamble. Was the ledge continuous? Were there obstacles? Was the water level rising? She focused on the physical sensations: the curve of the wall, the texture of the slime underfoot, the faint vibration of the rushing water. She tried to estimate distance, direction, time, using only her internal sense, a skill honed by years of operating without relying solely on tech.

Suddenly, the roar of the water changed. It became louder, more turbulent, echoing differently. And the airflow shifted – a faint draft against her face, carrying a slightly less foul odour. A junction? An opening?

She moved towards the change in sound, hand sweeping the wall. Yes. An opening. A smaller pipe intersecting with the main one she was in. Big enough to crawl into? She felt around the edges. It seemed to lead upwards, away from the main torrent. Where did it go? Impossible to know. But it was "different". It was a choice. A potential escape from the horrifying main pipe. "Qui ne risque rien n'a rien" (Nothing ventured, nothing gained).

Taking another gamble, she turned and began pulling herself up into the intersecting pipe. It was tighter here, maybe only a metre in diameter, forcing her onto her hands and knees. The climb was steep, awkward, scraping her already bruised body against the rough interior. The air was marginally better, less heavy with sewage fumes, but thick with the smell of rust and stagnant water.

She crawled upwards in the blackness, muscles screaming, lungs burning, driven only by that tiny ember of defiance and the desperate, animal instinct to escape the crushing pressure below. How far she crawled, she didn't know. Time ceased to exist entirely, replaced by the rhythm of movement, pain, and laboured breathing.

Until, finally, impossibly, she saw it. Not imagined this time. Not a hallucination. Faint, unbelievably faint, but undeniably "real". A dim, rectangular patch of greyish light filtering down from somewhere far above her in the pipe.

Light. Air. An exit?

The sight, after what felt like an eternity of absolute darkness and confinement, was almost too much to bear. Hope surged, fierce and painful, making her sob raggedly. With the last reserves of her strength, ignoring the agony in her limbs, she clawed her way upwards towards that distant, blessed rectangle of pale light.

Chapter 5

Le Poids des Fantômes Partagés

The Weight of Shared Ghosts

Light. Not the harsh, demanding glare of the upper city’s artificial suns or the strobing crimson assault of the security trap, but a diffuse, uncertain grey. It filtered down from somewhere high above, possibly through immense grating far overhead connecting to higher, perhaps less polluted levels, or maybe reflected indirectly from distant, unknown light sources within the vast cavern space she glimpsed before the shutters slammed down. It wasn’t much, barely enough to pierce the gloom after the absolute blackness of the sewage main, but to Cyan’s desperately starved optic nerves, it felt almost blinding, achingly beautiful.

She lay collapsed at the top of the cramped, upward-slanting pipe, her body wedged awkwardly, limbs trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline crash. The foul air from the sewage main still clung to her, a nauseating miasma of decay and filth, but here, at the pipe’s terminus, it mingled with a different olfactory signature – dust, ozone from sparking electrics, the faint, metallic tang of welding, and something else… the subtle, almost sweet scent of hydroponically grown moss, a common source of basic nutrition and oxygen supplement in deeper Fallen settlements. Air. Relatively clean air. She dragged it into her burning lungs in ragged, desperate gasps, each inhalation feeling like a physical scrubbing against the residue of the pipe.

Slowly, pushing past the waves of dizziness and nausea, she pulled herself the final metre out of the pipe’s opening. It exited abruptly into a wider space – not the open cavern she’d anticipated, but a complex, multi-levelled tangle of rusting machinery, narrow metal catwalks, and makeshift structures clinging precariously to the skeletal framework of what might have once been a geothermal power transfer station or a massive fluid dynamics control hub. The grey light filtered down through gaps in the corroded ceiling panels far above, illuminating dust motes dancing in the still air. The roar of the sewage main was gone, replaced by a lower, resonant hum – likely the geothermal conduits nearby – overlaid with distant clanging sounds, the hiss of pneumatics, and the faint, incoherent murmur of human voices.

She had emerged onto a small, grated landing platform, similar to the one where she’d faced the grille, but this one felt slightly more stable, less consumed by slime. Below this platform, the space dropped away maybe ten metres to a cluttered floor area where dim lights glowed within jury-rigged enclosures. Catwalks branched off from her landing, leading deeper into the shadowed recesses of the machinery. Where was she? Was this Sub-Level 82? Was this Sector Seven-Gamma-Prime? Without her corneal display, without coordinates, she was utterly lost, adrift in this industrial wreckage.

The silence here felt different from the shaft or the pipe. Not absolute, but watchful. The distant sounds only emphasized the stillness of her immediate surroundings. She felt exposed, vulnerable, lying half-sprawled at the mouth of the pipe like something washed up by the sewer tide. She forced her aching muscles to obey, pushing herself into a low crouch, the useless Kaito-7 clutched tightly in her hand. Her hip screamed in protest where she’d ground it against the broken concrete. Her torn jacket snagged on the grating. Every part of her felt bruised, battered, contaminated.

Her bio-capacitor was completely depleted. No flickering lights, no static, just… nothing. Her cybernetic advantages – enhanced vision, auditory filtering, data overlays, instant calculations – were offline. She was operating purely on baseline human senses, senses dulled by exhaustion, stress, hypoxia, and whatever residual neuro-toxins lingered from past vape use or the insidious Resilience Virus. The thought was terrifying. She felt naked, stripped bare. The technological shell she relied on, the shell that defined her as DG-7, was gone. What was left? Just Cyan Sharma? A terrified woman running for her life, burdened by guilt and a stolen quantum crystal? The self-doubt gnawed again, sharp and insistent. "You’re nothing without the tech. Weak. Slow. Predictable."

A sudden sound broke the stillness, startlingly close. A soft scraping noise from a catwalk slightly above and to her left. Cyan froze, snapping the Kaito-7 up, even though she knew it wouldn’t fire. Old habits. She squinted into the shadows, heart pounding.

A figure detached itself from the gloom near a large junction box. Small, slender, moving with a surprising agility and silence across the rusted grating. Dressed in patched, layered clothing common among scavengers – practical, blending into the industrial tones. Hood pulled low, face obscured. They carried a long pole with a hooked end, likely for snagging salvage from inaccessible places, and a mesh bag slung over their shoulder, bulging slightly with indeterminate objects. They hadn’t seen her yet, seemed focused on examining the junction box.

Friend or foe? Fallen scavenger? Gang lookout? The uncertainty made every nerve ending tingle. Should she hide? Confront them? Her presence here was an intrusion, a potential threat to whoever claimed this territory.

The figure paused, head tilting slightly, as if sensing something. Slowly, deliberately, they turned towards Cyan’s position. The hood shifted, revealing a face younger than she expected – late teens, perhaps early twenties at most. Sharp, intelligent eyes, accustomed to the dim light, narrowed as they took in her dishevelled state, the incongruous (though powerless) high-tech pistol, the torn synth-fabric hinting at surface-dweller origins. The eyes widened slightly in surprise, maybe alarm, but didn't immediately show hostility. There was a flicker of… curiosity?

"You ain't from 'round here," the voice was quiet, slightly hoarse, gender ambiguous initially, but leaning feminine. It echoed slightly in the metallic space. Not aggressive, just stating an obvious fact. "Came outta the overflow pipe? Smelt worse'n usual today."

Cyan remained silent, motionless, weapon held steady, assessing. The figure wasn't heavily armed, just the pole and perhaps a concealed knife. Didn't seem immediately threatening, but appearances were lethally deceptive down here.

The figure took a cautious step closer, keeping their pole held loosely, defensively. "You runnin'? Or just lost?" The eyes flickered over Cyan's gear again. "That gun… looks custom. Worthless without a charge cell, though. You need juice?"

The offer, unexpected, disarmed Cyan slightly. Need juice? Desperately. But trusting a stranger down here? Especially one who could recognize tech specifics? Suicidal. "Who are you?" Cyan's voice was rough, raw from disuse and the foul air.

The figure offered a wry, almost imperceptible smile, a brief flash of white teeth in the gloom. "They call me Wren. 'Cause I get into small places, find shiny things. Like you, maybe?" Wren gestured vaguely with the pole towards the pipe Cyan emerged from. "Heard the ruckus. Security grid near the Geo-Conduit went live, then dead. Big noise from the shaft access, too. Sounded like… energy discharge? Then you pop out the sewer line lookin' like something the sump worms dragged in. Drawin' conclusions ain't hard."

Wren knew about the security trap, the shot she fired at the creature. This scavenger was observant, connected, or just plain lucky. "The alarm wasn't me," Cyan lied, reflexively. "Triggered when I got near."

Wren tilted their head again, studying Cyan's face. "Maybe. Maybe not. Point is, alarms draw attention. NeoSec patrols, yeah, but they rarely come this deep unless it's a major sweep. More likely… scav gangs. Jax's crew controls this node. They don't like surprises. Or surfacers."

Jax. The name resonated. Glitch’s warnings sometimes mentioned faction leaders. Jax ran the ‘Rust Devils’ gang? Or was it the ‘Pipe Syndicate’? Details blurred. Didn't matter. Gang control meant danger, meant needing passage, tribute, or facing violence. "I need to find someone," Cyan stated, keeping her voice level, trying to project confidence she didn't feel. "An info-broker. Goes by Glitch."

Wren's eyes widened slightly again, genuine surprise this time. "Glitch? The arcade wizard? Heard of him. Operates outta the Mid-Levels mostly, sometimes uses dead drops down here. Why you need him?" Then, a look of dawning comprehension. "Wait… energy discharge… custom pistol… running hard… You're the Ghost, ain't ya? The one NIS is tearing the Grid apart looking for?"

Cyan’s blood ran cold. Her carefully constructed anonymity, her primary defence, shattered by a chance encounter with an observant scavenger. How widely known was her escape? Was her description circulating on Sub-Grid networks already? ""Merde" (Shit)." "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, the denial sounding weak even to her own ears.

Wren laughed, a short, breathy sound devoid of malice, more astonished recognition. "Don't sweat it, Ghost. Your secret's probably safer with me than most down here. Heard whispers on the mesh… NIS put a bounty out. High value. Dead or alive, preference towards 'contained'." Wren's expression sobered. "Explains why you look like hell dredged up. You really pissed someone off upstairs."

Contained. That meant neural interrogation, dissection, finding out how she bypassed their systems, recovering the QMC intact. Far worse than a quick death. The bounty explained why trusting anyone was doubly dangerous.

"Why tell me this?" Cyan asked, suspicion sharpening her tone. "Why not just collect the bounty?"

Wren shrugged, leaning casually on the salvage pole. "Bounties attract heat. Competition. Besides," Wren’s gaze drifted towards the pipe Cyan came from, then back to her face, a flicker of something unreadable in their eyes – sympathy? Shared anger? "NIS ain't exactly popular down here. They take people. Run tests. Like those Synapse trials everyone whispers about. Lost my own brother to one of their 'cognitive study groups' couple years back. Never saw him again."

A shared ghost. Wren’s brother. Leon. The connection, unexpected, resonated between them in the grimy air. Wren's motivation wasn't just curiosity or potential profit. It was personal. Revenge, perhaps. Or simply solidarity against a common enemy.

"Synapse Weaver," Cyan said, the name a low growl.

Wren nodded grimly. "That's the one. Heard it twists people. Breaks 'em. Or turns 'em into… something else." A shudder ran through Wren's slight frame. "Anything that hurts NIS is okay by me. Even helping a surfacer ghost."

A fragile thread of potential trust formed, thin as spider silk, precarious in this environment. "I need power," Cyan said, lowering the Kaito-7 slightly, though not holstering it. "My implants are dead. Pistol's dry. And I need to find Glitch's node. Near here, I think. Geothermal conduit nexus… flickering ramen sign?"

Wren considered this, chewing on their lower lip. "Power… that's tough. Grid access is patchy, mostly controlled by Jax. Portable cells cost synth-scrip or serious barter. But… maybe Silas can help. He runs a workshop near here. Fixes tech, builds things outta scrap. Knows energy systems better'n anyone. Bit rough, but fair, mostly." Wren pointed with the pole down one of the darker catwalks branching off. "His place is tucked behind the old heat exchanger array. Two levels down."

"And Glitch's marker?"

"The ramen sign? Yeah, know the one." Wren chuckled. "Old holo-ad for 'Neo-Tokyo Noodles', stuck on loop for fifty years on a busted projector near the main Geo-Conduit Seven outflow valve. Weird landmark, but distinctive. Glitch uses weird markers. It's maybe fifteen minutes walk from Silas's place, through Jax's territory though."

"Jax…" Cyan muttered. "You said his crew controls this node."

"Yeah. Silas pays 'em protection, mostly in repairs and filtered water. They leave him alone. Usually." Wren hesitated. "Me? I know the crawlspaces, the vents. I stay outta sight. But you… you stick out. Big time. Walking through the main pathways to Silas, then to the ramen sign… Jax's patrols "will" spot you. And they "will" report to him."

"Can he be reasoned with?"

Wren snorted. "Jax? He reasons with leverage and synth-scrip. Doesn't care about NIS or Ghosts or causes. Only cares about his people, his territory, his cut. He sees you, he sees trouble, or he sees that bounty. Fifty-fifty chance he'll try to cage you himself and sell you."

The fragile trust felt suddenly frayed. This was the reality. Helping her put Wren at risk, put Silas at risk, could bring violence down on this whole section. "Why help me then?" Cyan asked again, needing to understand the calculus. "It's dangerous for you."

Wren looked away, tracing a pattern on the rusted grating with the tip of the pole. "Maybe 'cause someone has to push back," Wren said quietly, voice hardening slightly. "Maybe 'cause my brother… maybe he deserved better than bein' lab meat. Maybe seein' someone actually "fight" NIS gives… I dunno. A spark. Stupid, probably." Wren looked back at Cyan, eyes intense. "Besides. Down here, sometimes you help someone 'cause maybe, just maybe, next time it's "you" crawlin' outta the sewer pipe, needin' a hand. Call it… long-term investment in karma. Mostly though," Wren offered another quick, wry smile, "it's 'cause this is the most interesting thing that's happened down here all cycle. Beats pickin' through trash heaps."

Altruism, revenge, boredom, a desperate gamble on cosmic justice. A complex, tragically human mix of motivations. "Un vrai méli-mélo" (A real mishmash). Cyan felt a reluctant flicker of respect for the young scavenger's courage, or perhaps recklessness.

"Okay, Wren," Cyan said, making a decision. "Lead the way to Silas. But we move carefully. Stay off the main paths if possible."

Wren nodded, suddenly all business. "Gotcha, Ghost. Stick close. And try not to bleed on anything expensive-lookin'. Silas hates that."

They set off, Wren moving ahead with practiced silence, pole tapping lightly to check floor stability, mesh bag bumping rhythmically. Cyan followed, muscles protesting, hip throbbing, senses straining in the dim, flickering light. Wren led her away from the main catwalks, ducking through low service doorways, traversing narrow maintenance ledges overlooking vertiginous drops, squeezing through gaps between massive, silent machinery. The air grew warmer, filled with the hum of the nearby geothermal conduits and the smell of hot metal and ozone.

This was Wren’s world. A vertical labyrinth of forgotten industrial infrastructure, repurposed, reclaimed, navigated with an intimacy born of necessity. Wren pointed out details Cyan would have missed: loose grating, functioning power conduits (potential recharge points if one had the right tools and nerve), hidden water collection drips, caches of scavenged supplies tucked into dark corners. They passed signs of other Fallen inhabitants – crude murals painted on walls depicting strange beasts or forgotten myths, wind chimes made from scrap metal tinkling faintly in unseen air currents, the lingering smell of synth-smoke from a recently vacated resting spot. Life persisted here, tenacious, resourceful, adapted to the artificial ecosystem.

They descended two levels via a series of rickety stairwells and ladders, emerging into a slightly wider corridor closer to the cavern floor, the sounds of the main settlement below louder now. Wren paused, signalling caution. "Silas's place is just ahead. Around this bend. Sometimes Jax's boys hang around the entrance, shakin' down passersby. Keep that peashooter outta sight 'til we're inside."

Cyan nodded, tucking the Kaito-7 deeper into its holster beneath her torn jacket, trying to look less like a fugitive combatant and more like… what? A desperate, down-on-her-luck Mid-Leveler who took a seriously wrong turn? Unlikely to fool anyone down here.

They rounded the bend. Ahead, set into an alcove beneath a massive, rusting heat exchanger array dripping condensation, was a doorway reinforced with scavenged plasteel sheets. A single, bare chem-light sputtered above it, casting a sickly yellow glow. No guards visible, thankfully. Wren approached the door and knocked a complex, rhythmic pattern. "Tap-tap-tap… pause… tap-tap."

A moment of silence, then the grinding sound of multiple locks being disengaged from within. The heavy door scraped open inwards maybe thirty centimetres, revealing a sliver of a cluttered interior and a single, suspicious eye peering out.

"Wren? What is it now? Find another busted hydro-pump?" The voice was deep, gravelly, laced with weary cynicism.

"Got someone needs your help, Silas," Wren said, keeping their tone light, casual. "Found 'em near the overflow outlet. Rough shape. Got tech needs juice."

The eye flickered towards Cyan, lingering for a moment, taking in her appearance, the non-standard clothing, the exhaustion etched on her face. The gaze was sharp, assessing, missing nothing despite the dim light. "Surfacer," the voice stated flatly, no question mark. "Looks like trouble walked in."

"Maybe," Wren conceded. "Maybe trouble worth havin'. She's lookin' for Glitch."

Another pause. The eye narrowed further. "Glitch? That digital ghost? Why's a half-drowned surfacer lookin' for him down here?" The door started to scrape shut.

"Because NIS is hunting her," Wren added quickly, playing their trump card. "The bounty's real."

The door stopped. The eye remained fixed on Cyan. She could feel the weight of calculation behind it. NIS meant danger, extreme danger. But Glitch, bounty… it also meant information, opportunity, perhaps leverage. "NIS," Silas repeated, the name tasting like old engine oil. "Damn vultures. Alright," he sighed, a sound like rocks grinding together. "Get in. Quick. Before one of Jax's hyenas sniffs you out."

The door scraped fully open, revealing the workshop. It was a cave of controlled chaos. Every surface was crammed with tools, salvaged components, half-finished projects, coils of wire, stacks of flickering datapads displaying complex schematics. Workbenches overflowed with disassembled tech – cybernetic limbs, drone parts, water purifiers, communication arrays. The air smelled strongly of ozone, solder, lubricant, and Silas himself – a faint scent of stale synth-kaf and machine oil. In the center of the relative clearing stood Silas.

He matched his voice. Tall, broad-shouldered despite a slight stoop, probably in his late fifties or early sixties, though the harsh Sub-Grid life aged people quickly. His face was a roadmap of hard years – deeply lined, scarred, framed by thinning grey hair pulled back in a greasy ponytail. He wore oil-stained coveralls over a threadbare thermal undershirt. Cybernetics were visible – an older model optical implant replacing his left eye, glowing with a dull red diagnostic light, and a heavy, functional-looking prosthetic left arm ending in multi-jointed manipulator digits caked with grime. He radiated an aura of weary competence and profound cynicism.

"So," Silas grunted, wiping his prosthetic hand on an equally grimy rag as Wren pulled Cyan inside and secured the door behind them. "You're the Ghost they're whisperin' about upstairs?" His remaining natural eye, a sharp, intelligent brown, scanned her from head to toe, lingering on the Kaito-7, the remnants of her tactical gear, the state of her clothes. "Look more substantial than a whisper. More… problematic."

"I need power," Cyan repeated, exhaustion making her voice thin. "My implants are dead." She indicated her temple. "And my sidearm needs a charge." She unholstered the Kaito-7, holding it out butt-first.

Silas took the weapon, his prosthetic digits surprisingly nimble as he examined it. His organic eyebrow rose slightly. "Kaito-7 core… heavily modified. Overclocked capacitor, custom emitter… Dangerous build. You make this?"

"Assembled it," Cyan admitted. "Core's salvaged."

"Nigerian Alliance drone tech, looks like. Good salvage, if you know where to look." He turned it over, checking the power cell connection. "Dead as a politician's promise. Recharging this safely… tricky. Needs a stabilized, variable frequency feed, or the core might cascade." He placed the pistol carefully on a cluttered workbench. "Implants?" He gestured towards her. "Let's see the damage. Sit." He indicated a reinforced stool that looked marginally less filthy than the surrounding surfaces.

Cyan hesitated. Letting him access her implant ports? Extremely risky. He could disable them permanently, install tracking software, access residual data… But she had no choice. Without power, she was crippled. Reluctantly, she sat, tilting her head to expose the primary interface port behind her ear, hidden beneath her hair.

Silas moved closer, the smell of machine oil stronger now. His prosthetic fingers gently brushed her hair aside. His touch was surprisingly steady, professional. He produced a small diagnostic tool from his coverall pocket, connecting a thin fibre optic cable to her port. A low hum filled the air. Silas squinted at a readout projected onto his optical implant.

"Bio-capacitor fully depleted," he murmured, confirming her diagnosis. "Running on fumes, triggered emergency shutdown. Stress fractures detected in the primary neural interface buffer… sign of recent EMP exposure or severe power surge?" He glanced at her sharply. Cyan didn't reply. "Corneal display processor is fried. Cheap T-Tech components, always the first to go. Auditory enhancers seem functional but offline due to power loss. Basic motor augmentation in the legs still drawing minimal residual charge from muscle bio-electrics, but operating far below peak." He disconnected the tool. "Needs a full recharge cycle, minimum two hours on a regulated medical-grade charger. And the corneal unit needs replacing, can't fix that burn-out."

Two hours. Recharge. The words sounded like paradise. But replacing the corneal unit? Impossible down here without attracting major attention or owing someone like Silas a debt she could never repay. "Just the power," she said. "As much as you can give me, as fast as possible."

Silas stroked his chin, his organic eye thoughtful, his cybernetic eye glowing faintly red. "Fast recharge ain't good for the capacitor longevity. Stresses the cells. And medical-grade power ain't free down here, Ghost. Costs me synth-scrip to keep my generator running and filtered. What's in it for Silas, eh?"

The transaction. Inevitable. "I have… limited untraceable crypto," Cyan said, hating the weakness in her voice. "Ghost Coin. Not much left after paying an info-broker."

Silas grunted again. "Ghost Coin fluctuates like a drunkard's mood. How much?"

Cyan told him the amount – less than four units.

Silas scoffed. "Barely enough to cover the power draw, let alone my time and the risk of havin' NIS huntin' scum like you darken my doorway." He leaned closer, his voice dropping. "That QMC you're carryin'. The Synapse Weaver data. That's the real currency, ain't it?"

Cyan froze. How did he know? Had Wren told him? Or was it just an astute guess, based on the NIS bounty, her desperation? Her hand instinctively went to her collarbone, covering the implant site.

Silas saw the gesture and nodded slowly. "Thought so. Data like that… worth more than all the synth-scrip in Neo-Veridian to the right people. Or the wrong ones." He straightened up, crossing his arms – one flesh, one metal. "BCGA would pay a fortune for NIS's dirty secrets. Apex Synaptic too, probably. Could cripple LCS if it got out right." He paused, his gaze hardening. "Could also get anyone associated with it scrubbed from existence so thoroughly their own mother wouldn't remember their name."

"What do you want, Silas?" Cyan asked, dread coiling in her stomach. Was he going to demand the QMC?

"Want?" Silas laughed, a dry, humourless sound. "I "want" the hydro-pump on level 79 to stop leakin' contaminated coolant into the water recyclers. I "want" the price of synth-kaf to go down. I "want" the damn fungi to stop growin' over my tools." He sighed heavily. "What I "need" is leverage. Insurance. Against scum like Jax breathin' down my neck. Against corporate 'inspectors' lookin' for unlicensed tech. Against everything this damn city throws at us."

He tapped his prosthetic arm. "Lost the original thanks to a faulty BCGA med-scanner durin' a 'routine public health screening' back when I still lived Mid-Level. Fried my nerves, led to infection, gangrene. They offered 'compensation' – credits that barely covered the cost of "their" approved prosthetic, lockin' me into their ecosystem. Bastards." His voice was low, venomous. "NIS ain't much better. Heard stories 'bout their 'recruitment' drives down here. Like Wren's brother. Like…" He trailed off, a shadow crossing his face. His daughter? The thought hung unspoken in the air.

"Here's the deal, Ghost," Silas said, his gaze locking with hers. "I'll recharge your systems. Patch up that pistol core so it don't explode in your hand. Give you maybe four hours of juice, enough to get you movin'. I won't ask for the QMC. Too hot. Too dangerous. But," he leaned in again, prosthetic fingers tapping rhythmically on the workbench, "I want a "copy" of a specific subset of that data."

Cyan stiffened. "A copy? Impossible. The QMC is quantum-entangled, designed to prevent unauthorized duplication. Access requires…"

"Requires the paired key or direct physical interface with specialized hardware, I know," Silas interrupted impatiently. "I ain't stupid. But data ain't just the final product. It's logs. Metadata. Communication intercepts. Project funding authorisations. Personnel manifests. Stuff that "might" be less heavily encrypted, stored in peripheral sectors of the crystal." He held up his diagnostic tool. "This thing ain't just a power reader. It can perform a low-level peripheral data scrape, if the connection protocols allow it. Slow, incomplete, risky. Might find somethin'. Might find nothin'. Might trip an internal security measure on the QMC and wipe the whole damn thing. High risk."

He stared at her, his organic eye intense. "I want anythin' – anythin' at all – you can scrape off that crystal pertainin' to BCGA's involvement or complicity in NIS projects. Specifically, anythin' linkin' them to illegal human trials or faulty diagnostic tech deployment between '50 and '60. Names, dates, project codes. Somethin' I can use. Somethin' to make those "salauds" (bastards) pay." His motivation was stark, personal. "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid" (Revenge is a dish best served cold), and Silas had been cooling his for years.

Revenge. His motivation was stark, personal. He wanted ammunition against BCGA, using her stolen NIS data as the weapon. It was a dangerous proposition. A low-level scrape "could" potentially corrupt the QMC, destroying the evidence against NIS, destroying any hope of understanding what happened to Leon. But refusing meant no power, no repairs, being stranded here, helpless.

And… maybe Silas deserved his shot at revenge too? Maybe using the data this way, even a fragment, was a form of justice? The lines blurred again.

"If the scrape corrupts the primary data…" Cyan began.

"Then you got nothin' anyway, and I got nothin', and we're both screwed," Silas finished bluntly. "But if it works, I get my leverage, you get your power, and maybe, just maybe, we both get a little payback." He held out the diagnostic tool again. "Your call, Ghost. Clock's tickin'."

Cyan looked at the tool, then at Silas's hard, expectant face, then at Wren, who had been watching silently from the doorway, face unreadable. Trust. Leverage. Risk. Survival. The weight of the decision pressed down on her, heavier than the Labyrinth itself.

Just then, a sharp, metallic "bang" echoed from outside the workshop door, followed by rough voices shouting orders.

"Silas! Open up! Jax wants a word! Heard you got company!"

The hyenas had arrived. "Merde encore" (Damn it again). Always something.

Chapter 6

Le Sourire du Léviathan

The Leviathan's Smile

The heavy "bang" on Silas’s reinforced door wasn't a request; it was a demand, resonating through the cluttered workshop like a physical blow. Dust motes, previously dancing lazily in the single chem-light’s yellow glow, shivered in the air. The rough voices outside, amplified by the metal corridor, were laden with casual menace.

"Silas! Open this damn door! Jax wants a word! Heard you got "surfacer" company!" The emphasis on 'surfacer' was thick with contempt and predatory interest.

Silas didn’t flinch, but the weariness in his organic eye deepened, replaced by a flinty hardness. His prosthetic hand clenched momentarily. "Jax's hyenas," he muttered, spitting the words like bile. "Right on schedule. Must have picked up the alarm chatter or seen Wren draggin' you in." He glanced sharply at Cyan. "Stay back. Outta sight if you can manage it in this mess. Let me handle this."

Wren, who had been leaning near the workbench, instantly melted into the deepest shadows behind a stack of salvaged drone chassis, moving with the practiced invisibility of someone who survived by not being noticed. Cyan, however, had nowhere to truly hide in the cramped, overflowing space. She pressed herself back against a humming diagnostic console, trying to shrink, pulling the shadows around her like a inadequate cloak, the useless Kaito-7 held low, out of sight but ready. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic counterpoint to the heavy boot steps now audible just outside the door.

Silas moved deliberately towards the door, picking up a heavy hydro-spanner from his bench as he went – less a weapon, more a tool that could "become" one if necessary. He didn't unlock the multiple heavy deadbolts. Instead, he activated a small, grimy intercom panel beside the doorframe. "What d'you want, Grok?" his voice was gravelly, steady, projecting weary annoyance rather than fear. "I'm busy. Recalibrating a pressure valve for the Sector 7 water feed. Unless Jax wants his hab block flooded with greywater again?"

A coarse laugh answered from outside. "Funny, Silas. Always the comedian. Jax ain't worried 'bout his plumbing right now. He heard you got a visitor. Someone… unusual. Someone who might be worth somethin'. Someone who maybe shouldn't be pokin' around down here." The voice, presumably Grok's, was rough, like rocks grinding together, likely enhanced by cheap vocal resonator implants.

"Got Wren here, pickin' up some parts," Silas lied smoothly, his gaze flickering momentarily towards the shadows where Wren hid. "Found some poor sod crawled outta the overflow pipe lookin' half-dead. Gave 'em a stim-patch and pointed 'em towards the Med-Bay tunnel. Probably crawled off and died somewhere already." He kept his tone dismissive, bored.

"Wren, eh?" Grok sounded unconvinced. "Funny, patrol didn't see Wren come this way. They saw "two" figures. One lookin' decidedly… shiny. Like maybe they got "credits". Or maybe… like they got a "bounty"."

Silas bristled visibly, but kept his voice level. "Bounty? What bounty? You been huffin' weld fumes again, Grok? Only thing down here worth a bounty is maybe that three-headed sewer rat folks keep seein' near the old filtration plant."

"Nah, this one's fresh. Comin' down the wire from Up-Top," Grok persisted, his voice holding a new edge of excitement. "Big payout. From NIS. Lagos Cybernétique Solutions money. For a Ghost. Female. Dark hair. Fancy tech. Sound like your 'poor sod', Silas?"

Cyan felt the blood drain from her face. NIS had broadcast the bounty "already"? And it had filtered down "this" fast? Their reach, their speed… it was terrifying. She was exposed, her identity known, her value calculated by the very people she was trying to hide amongst. Silas shot her a quick, warning glance: "Stay hidden. Stay silent."

Silas let out a long-suffering sigh into the intercom. "Look, Grok, even if I "had" seen someone like that, you think I'd invite that kinda heat into my workshop? NIS trouble is bad trouble. Worse than Jax on a bad day. I got work to do. Now, piss off unless you got actual business."

There was a pause outside. Then, a heavy "thud" as someone likely kicked the door. "Jax ain't askin' nicely, old man! He says we check the shop. Standard security sweep. Make sure no illegal tech is bein' harbored. Make sure everything's… copacetic." The implication was clear: they were coming in, one way or another.

Silas’s jaw tightened. He knew the game. Refusal meant escalation, likely violence, destruction of his valuable equipment. Compliance meant letting Jax's thugs search his private space, potentially discovering Cyan, leading to a confrontation he couldn't win alone. He needed to stall, create a diversion, buy time.

His eyes flickered towards the Kaito-7 lying on his workbench, then back to Cyan hidden in the shadows. Then, inspiration – or perhaps desperation – seemed to strike. He turned back to the intercom, his voice adopting a conspiratorial tone. "Alright, Grok, alright. No need to get your synth-leather panties in a twist. Maybe… maybe I did see somethin'. Not the Ghost, mind you. But somethin'… weird."

"Weird how?" Grok sounded suspicious, but intrigued.

"Down the service tunnel past the heat exchangers," Silas said, lowering his voice. "Saw one o' them… "things". From the lower deeps. You know, the chitinous ones? Scrabblers? Never seen one this far up before. Big one, too. Looked agitated. Maybe that's what set off the alarm grid?"

A murmur of unease from outside. Scrabblers. The name clearly resonated. The creature Cyan encountered in the shaft. They were real, known, feared even by Jax's hardened crew.

"Scrabbler?" Grok's voice lost some of its bluster. "You sure, Silas? Ain't seen one topside of Level 90 in cycles."

"Saw it with my own eye," Silas insisted, tapping his temple near his organic eye for emphasis, even though they couldn't see him. "Red glowy eyes, claws like rusty knives. Headed back towards the Geo-Conduit nexus, last I saw. Actin' jumpy. Maybe the Geo-Conduit fluctuations are drivin' 'em up?"

Another pause, longer this time. More murmuring. Cyan could almost hear the fear competing with greed in their minds. A Scrabbler loose in their territory was a serious problem, far more immediate than a potential bounty they might have to fight NIS for later.

"Alright, Silas," Grok's voice was less confident now. "We'll… uh… check that out. But Jax ain't gonna be happy if you're jerkin' our chain."

"My chain remains un-jerked," Silas grunted. "Just… watch yourselves near the conduit. Thing looked hungry."

Heavy footsteps retreated down the corridor. Silas waited, listening intently, until the sounds faded completely. He let out a slow breath, sagging slightly against the door. "Close," he breathed. "Too damn close. That bought us maybe ten minutes. Fifteen if they actually run into the damn thing." He turned, his gaze sharp on Cyan. "The bounty's public. That changes everything. You're not just hunted by NIS now; every lowlife with a sharpened pipe and a dream of synth-scrip is potentially after you."

"I need to get to Glitch," Cyan reiterated, urgency tightening her voice. "Now."

"Yeah, no kiddin'," Silas grumbled. He moved to the workbench where the Kaito-7 lay beside his diagnostic tool. "Problem is power. That scrape I wanted? Forget it. No time. And definitely not worth the risk now, for either of us. Best I can do is a fast-dump charge. Unregulated. Risky for the capacitor core. Might give you… twenty, maybe thirty percent? Enough for a few shots, maybe power your legs' core functions, but forget the fancy stuff. And it'll take five minutes minimum, even bypassing the safety regulators."

Five minutes felt like an eternity, but it was better than nothing. "Do it," Cyan said.

Silas nodded, already connecting heavy-duty cables from a humming, jury-rigged generator unit in the corner directly to the Kaito-7's power cell port. Sparks flew as he bypassed the standard charging interface. The pistol emitted a low, strained hum. A small LED on its side glowed angry red, indicating the forced, potentially damaging charge cycle.

While the pistol charged, Wren emerged silently from the shadows, face pale but eyes bright with adrenaline. "That was slick, Silas. The Scrabbler story?"

"Saw one draggin' off a Juve near Vent 9 last week," Silas said grimly. "Wasn't entirely a lie. Just… timely." He looked at Cyan. "Alright, Ghost. Five minutes buys you a few shots and maybe your legs workin' properly. Where you headed after Glitch's marker?"

"I don't know," Cyan admitted, the uncertainty heavy. "Find Glitch, get intel, maybe access the QMC somehow… find my brother."

"Your brother," Silas echoed softly, the earlier shadow crossing his face again. "Yeah. Reasons." He turned back to his bench, grabbing a small, dense energy bar – standard emergency ration – and a sealed water pouch. "Here. Take these. You look like you're running on empty."

Cyan accepted them numbly. The simple act of offering sustenance felt strangely profound after the life-and-death tension. ""Merci" (Thank you)," she murmured.

"Don't thank me yet," Silas grunted. "Gettin' to the ramen sign is still suicide alley now. Jax's crew will be swarming the main routes, lookin' for you or the Scrabbler."

"I know the vents," Wren piped up suddenly. "The old Pneu-Service tubes. Mostly sealed off, but I know a few access points near here. One comes out right above the Geo-Conduit outflow valve, near the holo-sign. Tight squeeze. Filthy. But hidden."

Silas looked at Wren, then at Cyan. "The Pneu-tubes? Kid, that's dangerous. Half collapsed in sections. Fulla chem-sludge and who knows what else."

"Safer than facin' Jax's crew with a half-charged pistol and no backup," Wren retorted, meeting Silas's gaze defiantly. "I can get her there. I owe NIS some payback too, remember?" There was a fierce determination in the young scavenger's eyes now, the earlier casual attitude replaced by purpose. Helping the Ghost had become Wren's personal mission.

Silas studied them both for a long moment, the silence stretching, marked only by the strained hum of the Kaito-7 charging. Finally, he nodded curtly. "Alright. Your funeral, maybe. Wren, you get her to the valve, then you peel off, understand? Don't get tangled deeper. This Ghost is radioactive."

Wren nodded sharply. "Got it."

The pistol's charging light flickered from red to amber. Silas disconnected the cables quickly. "That's all she'll take safely. Maybe 28%. Use it wisely." He handed the weapon back to Cyan. It felt slightly warm, humming with barely contained energy. Her leg actuators also felt… stronger, drawing power from the pistol's partial charge through her suit's integrated conduction weave. Better than nothing.

"Okay," Silas said, moving to the heavy workshop door, checking the corridor outside through a peephole. "Coast looks clear for now, but they won't be gone long. Wren, the access panel to Pneu-Tube 7 is three junctions down, behind the bulkhead marked 'Hydraulic Reservoir C'. Go. Now. And," he looked directly at Cyan, his organic eye locking with hers, "try not to die, Ghost. Makes the paperwork messy." It was the closest he'd come to expressing concern.

""(Cut to NIS Perspective - Secure Communications Hub, Upper Levels, Neo-Veridian LCS Tower)""

The room was deliberately understated, clinically minimalist. Cool, recycled air whispered from hidden vents. Soft, indirect lighting illuminated polished chrome surfaces and holographic displays shimmering with complex data streams. This wasn't a grimy Sub-Grid workshop; this was the nerve center of corporate power, sanitized, controlled, efficient. Yet, beneath the surface calm, the tension was palpable.

Markus Jaeger, designation Hunter-Lead Alpha, leaned back in his ergonomic command chair, one booted foot resting casually on the edge of a console displaying a rapidly updating tactical map of Neo-Veridian’s Sub-Grid Sector Seven. He took a slow sip from a bulb of steaming, artisanal synth-kaf – Kenyan AA profile, single origin, ludicrously expensive – ignoring the faint trembling in his hand. He cultivated an image of relaxed confidence, of effortless superiority, but the pressure from High Command, filtering down indirectly from Dr. Aris Thorne’s own office, was immense. A notification chimed softly on his console. Incoming encrypted transmission, Priority Alpha. Dr. Thorne's office. No, not Thorne himself. Luc Moreau. Head of Internal Security, LCS Division. A man whose reputation for ruthless efficiency rivalled Jaeger's own, albeit with a certain... "Gallic" flair for the dramatic and the cynical. Jaeger accepted the connection, Moreau’s lean, sharp-featured face appearing on a secondary holo-display.

"Jaeger," Moreau's voice was smooth, precise, carrying the faint accent of the old Parisian elite. "Oracle informs me your Ghost remains… "insaisissable" (uncatchable). Uncatchable. An amusing, yet costly, development."

"Minor setbacks, Director Moreau," Jaeger replied coolly, masking his irritation. "Containment is imminent."

"Imminent," Moreau echoed, a hint of amusement in his tone. "A word that covers a multitude of operational delays. Thorne is… "impatient". The integrity of the QMC is paramount. You understand this? "Pas de bavures" (No screw-ups)."

"Understood, Director. The asset will be recovered."

"See that it is," Moreau said. "LCS does not tolerate... loose threads. Especially threads carrying such… "explosive" potential. And Jaeger?" Moreau leaned slightly closer to his own pickup, his eyes cold. ""Après moi, le déluge" (After me, the flood - i.e., I don't care what happens after I'm gone) does not apply here. There can be no flood. Only clean, quiet resolution. "Compris?" (Understood?)" The implication was clear: failure, or exposure, would have consequences reaching far beyond just Jaeger's career.

"Perfectly, Director," Jaeger said, ending the transmission, his jaw tight. Moreau always managed to sound simultaneously sophisticated and threatening. A true corporate creature.

"Status update, Comms," Jaeger said, refocusing.

"Target designated 'Ghost' confirmed egress from Shaft 7-Gamma into ventilation system," the comms officer, a young woman with vat-grown purple hair and intense focus, reported crisply, her fingers dancing across a holographic keyboard. "Triggered legacy security system on Catwalk Delta-9, near Geothermal Conduit 7. System subsequently deactivated via remote exploit – Phase Key signature detected, weak but positive match to Ghost's known device profile."

Jaeger allowed himself a small, cold smile. Predictable. The Ghost was good, exceptionally good, her knowledge of legacy systems profound. But even she left ripples, digital breadcrumbs. "Exploit vector?"

"Appears to be Zero-Day ZQT-Sec-Override-773, targeting archaic firmware. Low-level energy signature spike detected consistent with forced charge transfer or diagnostic scrape attempt approximately," she checked a timestamp, "eight minutes prior from within a shielded enclosure at coordinates 7G-82-44B. Cross-referencing with known Sub-Grid structures… indicates workshop of unlicensed tech-mechanic designation 'Silas'."

"Silas," Jaeger murmured, accessing Silas's profile on his private display – flagged for suspected tech smuggling, minor gang affiliations, anti-corporate sentiments. Small fry. Until now. "Did the scrape succeed? Any indication the QMC integrity was compromised?" This was critical. Thorne had been explicit: the Quantum Memory Crystal was paramount, its data potentially revolutionary, irreplaceable. The Ghost herself was secondary, disposable if necessary, but the crystal "had" to be recovered intact.

"Unable to confirm QMC status remotely, Lead," the comms officer replied. "Energy signature was weak, duration short. Probability of successful deep data extraction: less than 3%. Probability of superficial metadata scrape: 18%. Probability of triggering anti-tamper failsafe: non-zero, estimated 6%."

Jaeger frowned. 6%. Unacceptable risk. This Silas needed… attention. Later. The primary target was the Ghost. "Current position?"

"Lost direct track after exploit signature. Security system activation alerted local Sub-Grid elements, designation 'Jax Crew'. Audio intercepts indicate they investigated Silas's workshop but were diverted by fabricated report of… 'Scrabbler' sighting." A flicker of amusement crossed the comms officer's face.

Jaeger chuckled, a dry, humourless sound. "Crude, but effective. The primitives scare easily." His smile sharpened. "But the alarm, the confrontation… it narrows her options. She'll be seeking her known contact. The info-broker. Designation 'Glitch'."

"Affirmative, Lead. Probability analysis suggests Ghost is proceeding towards Glitch's last known physical dead drop marker in this sector: coordinates 7G-82-Nexus-Outflow. Landmark: malfunctioning holographic ramen advertisement."

"Charming," Jaeger drawled. "Alright, people, containment protocols. Team Beta, establish perimeter cordon around Geo-Conduit Nexus 7, primary access routes. Team Gamma, deploy micro-drones into primary ventilation and Pneu-Tube systems radiating from Silas's last known location. Visual/thermal/acoustic sweep. Prioritize Pneu-Tube 7 based on structural analysis – most likely escape vector bypassing ground level patrols." He gestured towards the main display. "I want her boxed in tighter than a corporate merger clause. No escape routes."

He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the swirling data streams representing the Labyrinth below. He could almost smell the decay, the desperation, even from his climate-controlled sanctuary. He despised the Sub-Grid, a festering monument to inefficiency, chaos, human failure. Yet, operating within it required a certain finesse, an understanding of its crude ecosystem. And hunting the Ghost… that required something more. Respect, almost. She was a flawed product of their system, true, but undeniably skilled. Bringing her in – or failing that, recovering the QMC – would be another significant commendation, another step up the corporate ladder, closer to the inner circle, closer to understanding the true scope of Thorne's vision.

Because Jaeger wasn't just a hunter; he was a believer. He’d seen glimpses of the Synapse Weaver project data, understood the potential implications, the "necessity" of it in the brutal corporate landscape. Lagos Cybernétique Solutions wasn't just a company; it was an organism fighting for survival, for dominance, against Apex Synaptic's cold AI ubiquity and Bharat CogniGen's insidious biotech advances. ASG offered processing power, BCGA offered tailored flesh, but LCS, through NIS and Thorne's genius, offered something more profound: transcendence. The fusion of human intuition and alien cognitive architecture.

The science, as he understood it from the restricted briefings, was breathtakingly audacious. It wasn’t just about faster thinking or better memory – crude enhancements offered by competitors. Synapse Weaver aimed for "qualitative" change. Identifying specific Neural Resonance Frequencies (NRFs) within elite human subjects – frequencies indicating high synaptic plasticity and specific quantum-coherent brainwave patterns – and attempting to synchronize them, through invasive neuromodulation and tailored bio-chemical catalysts, with the vastly complex, non-linear cognitive patterns extracted from the alien source. The 'Xylosian' designation in the files? Jaeger suspected it was a deliberate misdirection, a convenient label for something far stranger, perhaps salvaged from the ‘Event Horizon’ wreckage recovered near Jupiter decades ago, or maybe something… else entirely. Something ancient, powerful, and terrifyingly potent.

The math underpinning the project was staggering. Complex probability matrices calculated potential host-template compatibility based on thousands of genomic markers, psychometric profiles, even analysis of dream states recorded during induced REM cycles. Predictive algorithms modeled the terrifyingly high risk of 'integration cascade failure' – psychosis, catatonia, complete personality dissolution – versus the infinitesimal chance of achieving stable 'harmonization'. Integration success was estimated using multi-dimensional chaotic attractor models, attempting to predict stable orbits within the combined human-alien cognitive phase space. It was theoretical neuroscience bordering on esoteric physics, gambling with human minds on probability curves that would make a cautious scientist recoil in horror. Leon Sharma, the Ghost's brother, was apparently one of the few subjects whose NRF profile showed a theoretical probability of stable integration greater than 0.1%. A long shot, but in Thorne's calculus, a necessary one.

And the QMC… Jaeger suspected its quantum entanglement wasn't just for secure offline storage. Whispers in high-clearance R&D corridors spoke of potential real-time applications. Using the entanglement property to subtly "influence" or even "stream" aspects of the alien cognitive pattern remotely into compatible subjects, perhaps bypassing the need for invasive hardware entirely in future iterations. Or using the QMC itself as a focal point to amplify latent psychic phenomena observed in integrated subjects. The potential applications were limitless, terrifying, and staggeringly profitable. Licensing predictive algorithms derived from alien precognitive thought processes? Selling cognitively enhanced soldiers capable of networked telepathic communication? Creating AI sentinels with intuition far surpassing ASG's brute-force logic engines? It would secure LCS's dominance for generations, reshaping the global power balance entirely.

The human cost? Jaeger filed it under 'Necessary Expenditures for Strategic Advancement'. Progress required sacrifice. The weak, the undocumented, the Fallen living unproductive lives in the Sub-Grid… were they not, in a way, being given purpose by contributing, however unwillingly, to humanity's next evolutionary leap? It was a clean, corporate rationalization, one that allowed him to sleep soundly in his luxury hab-unit overlooking the glittering city lights, far removed from the screams in the labs below. Fear was a tool NIS used expertly – the fear of disappearance, the fear of technological inferiority, the fear of being left behind by progress. Fear kept the workforce compliant, the rivals cautious, the profits flowing. "C'est le jeu" (That's the game). The brutal, necessary game of survival at the top.

"Lead," the comms officer interrupted his thoughts. "Micro-drone Gamma-3 reports movement signature in Pneu-Tube 7, consistent with single humanoid, moving towards Nexus outflow valve coordinates. Weak thermal signature, bio-signs indicate stress and fatigue."

A burst of static crackled. Glitch's voice, frantic, layered over explosions. "Whoa! Ghost-girl! You still kicking? Detecting... "beaucoup de" (a lot of) NIS signals converging! Like flies on "merde" (shit)! And... "zut alors!" (damn it!)... is that a Spectre unit ping I see? Nasty! Recommend... "fais gaffe!" (be careful!)... watch your six! Glitch out!"

Jaeger ignored the intercept. "Bingo. She took the bait." He leaned towards his command microphone. "All teams, converge on Nexus outflow valve coordinates. Silent approach. Lethal force authorized for any interference. Priority One remains the QMC. Capture the Ghost alive if feasible, but the crystal is not to be compromised." He settled back in his chair, taking another sip of his cooling synth-kaf. "Let the hunt resume."

"(Return to Cyan - Pneu-Tube 7)"

The Pneu-Tube was worse than the sewage main. Tighter, barely shoulder-width in places. Completely lightless, the fungal glow unable to penetrate here. And the "smell"… a noxious blend of stagnant water, decaying organic sludge (likely accumulated refuse dumped illegally into the system over decades), corrosive chemical residue from whatever the tubes originally transported, and the sharp, ammoniac tang of countless generations of nesting vermin. The air was thick, particulate-heavy, making every breath feel like inhaling sandpaper.

Cyan crawled on hands and knees, the useless Kaito-7 tucked awkwardly into her waistband, its weight a dead drag. Wren moved ahead, astonishingly quiet, navigating by touch and an uncanny familiarity with the cramped, twisting passages. They communicated only through brief hand signals Cyan could barely discern in the utter blackness, or occasional, strained whispers close to the ear.

"Junction ahead," Wren hissed, pausing. "Tube splits. Left goes towards old cargo dispatch – collapsed section, dead end. Right… should lead towards the outflow valve chamber. Steeper incline."

"Right," Cyan rasped, her throat raw.

The right tube was indeed steeper, forcing them into an awkward, exhausting crawl-climb. The smooth metal surface was coated in a viscous, foul-smelling sludge that offered treacherous purchase. Several times, Cyan felt her grip slip, sending loose debris rattling down into the darkness below, each sound amplified, setting her teeth on edge, convinced it would alert something – Jax's patrols, NIS drones, Scrabblers…

Self-doubt was a constant, gnawing presence now. Every metre gained felt like descending deeper into hell. "This is insane. Following a kid I just met through pitch-black, collapsing refuse tubes based on a rumour about a holographic ramen sign? While NIS hunters with advanced tech close in? You're going to die down here, Sharma. A stupid, pointless death." She thought again of Silas's workshop, the relative safety, the offer of a partial recharge. Had she made the wrong choice fleeing into the tubes? Should she have tried to bargain with Jax's crew? The 'what ifs' circled like vultures in her oxygen-starved brain.

The physical toll was immense. Her bruised hip throbbed relentlessly. Her muscles burned with lactic acid. The minimal power boost from Silas seemed to have faded already, her augmented legs feeling heavy, unresponsive. Hunger gnawed persistently now, the emergency ration bar long since consumed, offering only temporary fuel. Thirst was worse, her mouth dry and foul-tasting, the sealed water pouch emptied hours ago. Dehydration compounded the fatigue, the disorientation.

And the hallucinations, or glitches, or whatever they were, became more frequent, more vivid in the sensory deprivation. Whispers seemed to swirl just at the edge of hearing – fragments of NIS comms chatter? Glitch's voice? Leon calling her name? Phosphene bursts behind her eyelids resolved into fleeting images – Thorne’s cold eyes, the chitinous creature’s glowing red gaze, the pulsing cyan of the Synapse Weaver. She blinked furiously, trying to banish them, terrified they were real signals somehow penetrating her skull, or worse, symptoms of her own mind finally fracturing under the pressure. "Is this what happened to Leon? Did the alien patterns start like this? Whispers and lights in the dark?"

"Almost there," Wren whispered, voice strained with effort from the climb. "Can smell… cleaner air? And hear the outflow regulators cycling."

Cyan focused, pushing past the phantoms in her mind. Yes. A faint change in air pressure. A distant, rhythmic "clunk-hiss" sound. And the smell… still foul, but less concentrated, diluted by something else.

They crawled the final few metres, the incline levelling off. Ahead, a dim light source became visible – not the filtered grey light from above, but a flickering, artificial glow. They reached the end of the Pneu-Tube. It opened out, not into a room, but onto a narrow, precarious metal grille platform overlooking another vast space.

This chamber was dominated by the Geo-Conduit outflow valve mechanism – a colossal, multi-storey assemblage of pipes, regulators, pressure tanks, and control consoles, humming with latent power, stained and corroded but seemingly still functional. Steam vented intermittently from pressure releases, creating shifting clouds in the dim light. The rhythmic "clunk-hiss" came from massive regulator arms moving ponderously.

And there, mounted improbably on a wall section across the chamber, partially obscured by steam and decades of grime, was the source of the flickering light: a holographic projector, ancient but still running, displaying a faded, glitching image of a steaming bowl of noodles beneath stylized Japanese characters. The ramen sign. Glitch’s marker. Unbelievably, impossibly, they had made it.

Relief, potent and dizzying, washed through Cyan, almost buckling her knees. But Wren immediately pulled her back from the edge of the opening, signalling silence.

"Wait," Wren breathed, eyes scanning the chamber below. "Something's wrong."

Cyan listened, straining her ears. Beneath the hiss of steam and the cycling regulators, she heard it too. Faint scraping sounds. The click of equipment. And… voices. Low, disciplined, speaking in clipped Neo-English trade language, interspersed with encrypted burst transmissions.

Not Fallen. Not Jax's crew.

NIS.

They were already here. Waiting. The ramen sign wasn't a sanctuary; it was the center of the fucking trap.

Chapter 7

La Danse des Machines Froides

The Dance of Cold Machines

The flickering ramen hologram, Glitch’s absurd beacon in the subterranean gloom, suddenly felt like a cruel joke. A lure. The relative safety of the Geo-Conduit outflow chamber, the target Cyan had crawled through literal filth and psychological torment to reach, was revealed as the kill box. NIS was already here, entrenched, waiting. The precision and speed were chilling. Had they anticipated her destination? Intercepted Glitch's communications despite his encryption? Or simply deployed overwhelming predictive analysis, algorithms calculating the highest probability node for a desperate fugitive seeking an info-broker known to frequent this sector? The "how" mattered less than the "now". They were trapped, pinned down in the cramped terminus of Pneu-Tube 7, overlooking a chamber suddenly revealed as hostile territory. ""Merde" (Shit)."

"How many?" Cyan whispered, her voice barely audible over the rhythmic "clunk-hiss" of the massive outflow regulators below. Her eyes, still adjusting from the absolute blackness of the tube, strained to penetrate the steamy, dimly lit expanse of the chamber, searching for movement, for hostile signatures.

Wren, possessing superior night vision honed by years of navigating these depths, pressed flat against the grille platform beside her, peering intently through the gaps. "Hard to say for sure," Wren breathed back, pointing subtly with a chin gesture. "See the heat signatures? Two… no, three… static positions on the upper catwalks across the chamber. Snipers, likely. Pulse rifles, judging by the energy profile bloom when the steam clears. Down below… more movement. At least four hostiles near the main valve console. Standard NIS Sec-Trooper exoskeletons, Series 8 or maybe even the newer 9s. And…" Wren paused, squinting. "Something else. Bigger thermal signature, non-humanoid locomotion… near the auxiliary pump station."

Cyan followed Wren’s indication. Through swirling steam, she caught glimpses of it – a low-slung, multi-legged form, segmented armour plating gleaming dully, moving with an unnerving, fluid speed across the floor gratings. Not a standard Justicar unit. Something else. Something… insectoid? "Is that… a Scrabbler?" she whispered, recalling Silas’s fearful description, the creature she encountered in the shaft.

"Nah," Wren dismissed quickly. "Too… clean. Too precise. Scrabblers are chaos, all jagged edges and leaking fluids. That thing… moves like it's programmed. Military tech. Maybe one of those new LCS 'Chimeras'?"

Chimera. Lagos Cybernétique Solutions’ bio-mechanical warfare division had been rumoured to be developing cybernetically enhanced organisms, fusing cloned or genetically engineered creatures with advanced robotics and AI targeting systems. Ethical monstrosities designed for urban warfare, infiltration, assassination. Perfect deniable assets. Was NIS field-testing them now? Using her as live bait? The thought was nauseating. A fusion of the biological horror she’d glimpsed in the shaft and the cold, technological menace of NIS.

"Okay," Cyan forced her mind back to tactical assessment, pushing down the rising fear. "Snipers covering the high ground. Ground team securing the primary objective – Glitch's marker, likely expecting me to approach it directly. And a heavy support unit… the Chimera… patrolling the floor. Textbook ambush deployment."

She desperately needed her implants. Needed the tactical overlay, the threat analysis, the weapon charge indicator. Operating blind like this, against "this" level of coordinated technological threat, was suicide. Could Silas have finished the recharge if they hadn't been interrupted? Would even a full charge have been enough? The 'what ifs' were useless noise. Focus on the present. What assets remained?

One Kaito-7 pistol, charge unknown but critically low, maybe 25%, perhaps two or three high-energy shots "if" the capacitor held. Her augmented legs, drawing minimal power, offering slightly enhanced speed and strength, but nowhere near peak performance. Her infiltration skills – stealth, knowledge of tactics, ability to read environments. And Wren. Young, agile, knowledgeable about the immediate terrain, motivated by revenge. A fragile alliance, but an alliance nonetheless.

"The Pneu-Tube," Cyan whispered, glancing back into the absolute darkness they’d just exited. "Can we retreat?"

Wren shook their head grimly. "Heard that? Faint whine? Started right after we got here." Cyan strained her ears. Yes. A high-frequency sound, almost subliminal, echoing from deep within the tube system. "Micro-drones," Wren confirmed Cyan’s suspicion. "NIS scout units. Sweeping the tubes behind us. They know we're here. Retreat means running straight into them in that narrow passage. No way."

Boxed in completely now. Ahead, the ambush. Behind, the closing net of drones. Below, a thirty-metre drop to a floor patrolled by troopers and a bio-mech horror. Above? Only the corroded, inaccessible ceiling panels.

"Options?" Cyan breathed, forcing calm she didn't feel.

Wren chewed their lip, eyes darting around the chamber, analysing escape vectors with practiced scavenger ingenuity. "The valve console area… heavy cover, but guarded. The catwalks… exposed to sniper fire. The Pneu-Tube is death…" Wren paused, gaze fixing on the massive Geo-Conduit structure dominating one side of the chamber. "The conduit itself. Maintenance hatches? Emergency vents?"

Cyan considered it. The conduit was colossal, easily ten metres in diameter, part of the city’s deep geothermal power network, carrying superheated water or plasma – she wasn't sure which at this depth – under immense pressure. Breaching it would be suicidal, triggering catastrophic failure. But maybe… external access points? Ladders? Service platforms attached to its structure?

"Look," Wren pointed again, more urgently this time. "High up. Near where the main pipe bends towards the ceiling. See that platform? Looks like an old sensor relay station. Maybe leads to a different service tunnel network?"

Cyan followed Wren's direction. Yes. High on the curved flank of the conduit, maybe twenty metres above their current position, barely visible through steam and shadows, was a small, precarious-looking metal platform with what looked like antenna arrays attached. A potential vertical escape route, if they could reach it. But how? The conduit wall was smooth, sheer, offering no handholds.

"No way to climb that," Cyan stated flatly.

"Not climb," Wren corrected, a spark of daring in their eyes. "Jump."

"Jump?" Cyan stared at Wren incredulously. "Across "that" gap? From "here"? It's fifteen metres, maybe more. And the angle…"

"Not from here," Wren said quickly. "From the regulator arm. Look." Wren pointed towards the massive machinery cycling below them. One of the huge hydraulic regulator arms, part of the outflow valve system, was currently retracting with a loud "hiss". In a few seconds, it would reach the apex of its cycle, pausing momentarily almost directly beneath the target platform, maybe five metres below it. "When it pauses at the top… we jump "onto" it. Then, when it starts its downward cycle, we use its momentum, jump "from" it across to the sensor platform. Timing has to be perfect."

Cyan stared at the massive, moving machinery, then at the distant platform, then back at Wren. The idea was insane. Utterly insane. Calculating the trajectory, the timing, factoring in the moving launch point, their own physical limitations… the probability of success was minuscule. The probability of plummeting to the floor, directly into the path of the Chimera or the ground team, was astronomically high.

"It's crazy," Cyan breathed.

"Crazy is better than dead," Wren countered fiercely. "NIS has us pinned. This is the only way out that isn't guarded or leads back into the drone swarm. Trust me?"

Trust. A commodity rarer and more valuable than Ghost Coin down here. Cyan looked at Wren’s determined young face, illuminated by the flickering ramen sign’s reflection. This kid, motivated by loss and a flicker of defiance, was offering a sliver of a chance, however insane. What other option was there? Wait to be flushed out, captured, dissected?

"Leap of faith," (Leap of faith) Cyan thought grimly, the phrase tasting like ash. "Ou le grand saut dans le vide" (Or the great leap into the void).

"Okay," Cyan said, the word feeling heavy, final. "Okay. Tell me the timing."

Wren’s face split into a wide, adrenaline-fueled grin. "Regulator cycle is approximately twenty seconds up, five second pause at apex, twenty seconds down. We need to be moving "now" to reach the jump point before the next upward cycle begins. When it pauses," Wren emphasized, "we jump "together", aim for the near edge of the platform. Ready?"

Ready? Cyan felt anything but ready. Every instinct screamed against the suicidal plan. But she nodded, pushing the fear down, forcing her exhausted body into motion. They slipped back from the Pneu-Tube opening, moving quickly but silently along the narrow catwalk towards a point closer to the outflow valve mechanism, staying low, using pipe bundles for minimal cover.

Below them, the NIS ground team seemed unaware of their presence, focused on securing the area around the ramen sign hologram, deploying portable sensor tripwires. The Chimera unit prowled the periphery, its multi-faceted optics glowing menacingly, occasionally emitting soft clicks and whirs as its internal targeting systems scanned the environment. High above, the sniper positions remained static, patient, watching the obvious approach vectors. So far, so good.

They reached the section of catwalk closest to the regulator arm's trajectory. The massive arm itself, easily two metres thick, was currently completing its downward cycle, settling momentarily with a deep "thud" near the chamber floor before beginning its slow, inexorable ascent.

"Okay," Wren whispered, eyes fixed on the rising arm. "When it passes our level… we drop onto it. Softly. Then ride it up. Get ready."

Cyan braced herself, watching the colossal piece of machinery rise towards them like some prehistoric beast surfacing from the depths. The scale of the engineering down here was humbling, terrifying. Built by giants, now inhabited by ghosts and scavengers.

The arm ascended, hissing faintly. As its broad, flat upper surface drew level with their catwalk, Wren gave a sharp nod. "Now!"

They dropped together, a controlled fall of maybe two metres, landing as lightly as possible on the moving metal surface. The impact still jarred Cyan’s already bruised body. The arm continued its smooth, powerful ascent, carrying them upwards through the steam-filled air. Cyan risked a glance downwards. The NIS troopers were directly below now, maybe twenty metres down, still seemingly oblivious, focused on their sensor grid deployment. The Chimera was patrolling further away.

Upwards they rose, towards the dimly lit ceiling, towards the target platform. The five-second pause at the apex was approaching. The platform looked terrifyingly small and distant from this angle.

"Almost time!" Wren hissed, crouching low, judging the distance, the angle. "On three! One… Two… "THREE!""

They launched themselves simultaneously off the momentarily stationary regulator arm, pushing off hard, aiming for the sensor platform. For a heart-stopping second, Cyan felt weightless, suspended in the warm, steamy air above the abyss. Then gravity reasserted itself. They were falling short.

Panic seized Cyan. "Miscalculated! Not enough force!" She twisted in mid-air, flailing, trying uselessly to gain purchase on empty air. Below, the regulator arm began its downward cycle, moving away, leaving them stranded above the kill zone.

Then Wren’s hand shot out, grabbing the front of Cyan’s jacket with surprising strength. "Reach!" Wren yelled, voice strained, pointing towards a thick bundle of cables dangling down from the platform's edge, just centimetres beyond Cyan's outstretched fingers.

Cyan lunged, desperation lending her strength. Her fingers closed around the thick, grimy cables. Her momentum swung her violently into the underside of the platform, the impact knocking the wind out of her. Wren slammed into the platform beside her, also grabbing onto the cables. They hung there precariously, twenty metres above the rising steam, directly above the NIS ground team's position.

Silence, except for the hissing steam and the "clunk-hiss" of the regulator. Had anyone seen them?

Then, a shout from below. ""Contact! Upper platform! Unidentified hostiles!""

Followed instantly by the sharp "crack-hiss" of multiple pulse rifles firing upwards. Cyan beams lanced through the steam, impacting the underside of the platform around them, sending sparks showering down. They were spotted. Exposed.

"Climb!" Wren shouted, already pulling themself up the thick cables towards the platform surface. Cyan followed, hauling her protesting body upwards, ignoring the burning pain in her arms and shoulders. Pulse rifle fire continued sporadically from below, hampered by the steam and the awkward upward angle. "Allez!" (Go!/Come on!)

They scrambled onto the narrow, grated surface of the sensor platform, collapsing behind a low parapet that offered minimal cover. Peering cautiously over the edge, Cyan saw the ground team below repositioning, seeking better firing angles. The Chimera unit was now moving rapidly towards the base of the conduit beneath them, its insectoid head tilting upwards, multi-faceted eyes glowing brighter. And high above, she caught the glint of a sniper scope adjusting its position. Pinned down again.

"Now what?" Cyan gasped, breathing heavily.

Wren was already scanning the platform. "Hatch! Here!" They pointed to a heavy maintenance hatch set flush into the platform floor, similar to the one on the sewage inspection platform. "Leads into the conduit's outer service layer? Maybe?"

Another hatch. Another potential escape into confinement. But better than being fish in a barrel. "Can we open it?" Cyan asked, already moving towards it.

"Wheel lock again," Wren confirmed, examining the mechanism. "Looks stiff."

Just then, a new sound joined the sporadic pulse rifle fire – a high-pitched, multi-tonal whine. Cyan recognized it instantly. "Micro-drones!" she yelled, looking up.

Tiny, insect-like drones, maybe a dozen of them, emerged from the darkness near the ceiling, descending rapidly towards the platform. Sleek, black, NIS tech, likely equipped with low-yield energy weapons or tranquilizer darts. The closing net.

"No time for the wheel!" Wren shouted, pulling something from their salvage bag – a small, cylindrical device with wires trailing from it. "Found this near a busted NeoSec drone. Might have enough charge for one pop…"

"What is it?" Cyan demanded.

"EMP grenade. Low yield, directional," Wren said, fiddling with the activation stud. "Maybe it'll stun the drones, maybe it'll fry the hatch lock electronically? Maybe it'll just piss 'em off more. Worth a shot!" "On verra bien" (We'll see). What else could they do?

Before Cyan could argue, Wren thumbed the activator and tossed the grenade towards the hatch wheel. It landed with a soft clink. Wren tackled Cyan, pulling them both flat behind the low parapet just as the grenade emitted a blinding white flash and a sharp "CRACK" of displaced air.

The whining sound of the micro-drones abruptly cut out. Several small, dark shapes tumbled silently from the air, sparking briefly before vanishing into the steam below. Simultaneously, there was a loud "CLUNK" from the hatch mechanism.

"Did it work?" Cyan coughed, eyes watering from the flash.

Wren peered over the edge. The hatch wheel looked fused, sparking slightly, but the locking bars hadn't retracted. However, the electronic "override" lock beside the wheel now showed a flickering green light. "Fried the manual lock, but triggered the emergency electric release! Get it open!"

They scrambled to the hatch, grabbing the recessed handle and pulling upwards together. It was heavy, but it lifted, revealing another dark opening leading downwards, this time into what looked like a narrow crawlspace between the conduit's massive inner pipe and its outer shielding layer. The air wafting up was incredibly hot, carrying the smell of ozone and superheated metal.

Pulse rifle fire intensified from below, slugs impacting the platform grating around them. The Chimera unit screeched, a horrific blend of animal roar and mechanical grind, and began "climbing" the conduit wall towards them, its multi-jointed legs finding purchase on seams and maintenance fixtures Cyan hadn't even noticed.

"GO! GO! GO!" Wren screamed, shoving Cyan towards the opening.

Cyan didn't hesitate. She slid into the crawlspace, the heat instantly searing. Wren followed, pulling the heavy hatch closed above them just as the Chimera’s menacing head appeared over the edge of the platform. The hatch slammed shut, plunging them into near-absolute darkness again, broken only by the faint red glow emanating from deeper within the crawlspace. The sounds of the chamber – the pulse rifles, the Chimera's screech – were muffled, distant now.

They were inside the belly of the beast, trapped between the unimaginable heat and pressure of the geothermal conduit's core and the cold, relentless machinery of the NIS hunters just metres away on the other side of the hatch. Escape felt less like a possibility and more like a temporary postponement of the inevitable.

Chapter 8

L'Échappée Noire sur Filaments de Lumière

The Black Escape on Filaments of Light

Darkness. Again. But this was a different vintage of black. Hot, oppressive, vibrating with the barely contained fury of the geothermal conduit just centimetres away through a layer of stressed ferro-ceramic shielding. The air tasted metallic, scorched, thick with ozone and the faint, alarming scent of melting insulation. The red glow Cyan had glimpsed emanated from deeper within the crawlspace – likely emergency heat warning indicators, long past their service life but still stubbornly emitting photons. Outside the heavy hatch above them, the muffled sounds of the ambush continued – the "thump-clank" of the Chimera trying to force the hatch, the sporadic "crack-hiss" of pulse rifles searching for penetration points, the distorted shouts of NIS troopers. They were trapped in an oven, with monsters clawing at the door.

Panic, a familiar unwelcome guest, threatened to surface again. Claustrophobia amplified by the intense heat radiating through the floor and walls. The crawlspace was barely a metre high, forcing them flat, pressing bellies against the grimy, vibrating surface. Dust, thick and acrid, choked the air, stirred by their frantic entry.

"Trapped," Cyan rasped, the word dry, tasting of defeat. The heat was already leaching her strength, sweat pouring off her, stinging her eyes. Dehydration, already setting in, worsened rapidly in the intense temperature. How long could they survive in here?

"Not trapped," Wren hissed back, voice tight but focused. They were already moving, crawling deeper into the red-lit gloom, away from the hatch. "Thinking. Always another way out. Always." The young scavenger’s resilience was astonishing, a stubborn weed thriving in concrete cracks.

Cyan forced herself to follow, crawling awkwardly over conduits and bracing struts, the heat radiating upwards making the metal floor almost too hot to touch even through her gloves. The red emergency lights cast long, distorted shadows, turning the cramped space into a vision of industrial hell. The low, powerful hum of the main geothermal conduit resonated through her bones, a constant reminder of the immense, potentially lethal energy flowing just beyond the shielding. A breach here wouldn't just be an explosion; it would be vaporization.

"Where are we going?" Cyan demanded, her voice strained. "This is a service space. It probably dead-ends."

"Maybe," Wren conceded, pausing to examine a complex junction box bolted to the curved wall, trailing thick, armoured cables. "But these conduits need monitoring. Sensor arrays. Cooling systems. Maintenance access points. Gotta be another way "in", means there's another way "out"." Wren ran grimy fingers over the junction box casing, then pointed. "Look. Power feed. Still live, surprisingly. And… data port. Old standard, pre-Consolidation fibre link."

Cyan crawled closer, peering at the port. It was ancient, but familiar – a type sometimes used for bypassing primary controls in emergencies, accessing diagnostic subsystems. Her Phase Key was useless now, its power utterly drained. But Silas… his workshop… could there be another way?

"My implants are dead," Cyan reminded Wren bitterly. "Can't interface."

"Don't need implants for everything, Ghost," Wren said, already pulling tools from their seemingly bottomless salvage bag – a small multi-tool with various prying attachments, a length of optical fibre scavenged from somewhere, a tiny, self-powered diagnostic flicker light. "Sometimes old ways are best ways." With surprising dexterity, Wren popped the cover off the junction box, revealing a dense tangle of wires and fibre optic lines within. Using the flicker light, Wren began carefully tracing connections, murmuring technical jargon under their breath – "Thermal sensor loop… pressure differential monitor… coolant flow valve control… ah, here we go. Primary environmental control network interface…"

While Wren worked, Cyan scanned their surroundings, trying desperately to formulate a backup plan if this failed. The heat was becoming unbearable. Her breathing was shallow, rapid. The first signs of heat exhaustion were setting in – dizziness, nausea, muscle cramps starting in her legs. They couldn't stay here long. Above, the thumping on the hatch intensified, accompanied by the screech of metal on metal – the Chimera was trying to pry it open now.

"Almost got it," Wren muttered, carefully splicing their scavenged fibre optic cable onto two specific points within the junction box using the multi-tool's crimping function. It was a crude, physical hack, bypassing sophisticated digital security by directly tapping into the legacy hardware control layer. "Okay… now for the magic." Wren produced another device from the bag – small, flat, with a simple alphanumeric keypad and a tiny, faded LCD screen. A handheld diagnostic remote, likely liberated from a defunct maintenance drone. Wren plugged the other end of the fibre optic cable into the remote and began rapidly typing command codes from memory.

"What are you doing?" Cyan asked, watching intently.

"Talking to the system," Wren replied, focused. "This old ZQT environmental control network… famous for backdoors. If I can access the local node controller… maybe I can override a different access point. A ventilation outflow, maybe? Or a coolant discharge pipe?"

The tiny screen flickered. Lines of archaic code scrolled past. Wren grunted in frustration. "Firewalls… still partially active. Encrypted command structure… damn it."

"Thump-SCREEECH-BANG!" A section of the hatch above them buckled inwards slightly, showering them with rust flakes. The Chimera was making progress. Time was almost up.

"Try emergency coolant flush protocol!" Cyan urged suddenly, an idea sparking through the heat haze, recalling obscure specs from her NIS days when researching ZQT infrastructure vulnerabilities. "Override sequence 77-Alpha-Gamma! It sometimes bypasses local firewalls to trigger emergency system purges!"

Wren’s fingers flew across the keypad, inputting the sequence. The LCD screen flickered wildly, displaying error messages, then… a single line appeared: `EMERGENCY FLUSH PROTOCOL 77AG ACTIVATED. SECTOR 7G-82-ECP. PURGE INITIATED.`

A deep rumbling sound started from further down the crawlspace, growing rapidly louder. Simultaneously, several of the red warning lights began flashing insistently.

"What did that do?" Wren yelled over the rising noise.

"Opened an emergency coolant purge valve!" Cyan yelled back, already scrambling backwards, away from the junction box, pulling Wren with her. "Somewhere down this crawlspace! Means high-pressure coolant discharge! We need to get clear!"

The rumbling intensified into a deafening roar. A section of the crawlspace floor further ahead suddenly burst upwards with incredible force, spraying superheated steam and blindingly hot, pressurized coolant – thankfully non-toxic, just water, but near boiling – directly towards the ceiling. The sheer force of the eruption blew dust and debris everywhere, momentarily obscuring everything in a chaotic maelstrom of heat and noise.

But crucially, the eruption also blasted "upwards", impacting the ceiling panels directly above the ruptured floor section. With a groan of tortured metal, several ceiling panels buckled, tore loose, revealing… another level above them. A glimpse of slightly cooler, less hostile darkness. An escape route. Created by sheer, desperate, potentially lethal improvisation.

"Up! Go!" Cyan screamed, shoving Wren towards the newly created opening as scalding coolant rained down around them, miraculously missing a direct hit but raising the ambient temperature to furnace levels.

Wren didn't hesitate, finding purchase on exposed struts and hauling themself upwards through the ragged hole. Cyan followed, ignoring the searing pain as hot droplets splashed onto her exposed skin, adrenaline giving her a final burst of strength. She pulled herself through the opening just as another surge of high-pressure coolant blasted the space where she had been moments before.

They collapsed onto another grated floor, this one blessedly cooler, the air breathable, though still thick with dust. They were in a different service corridor, narrower than the one below, darker, quieter. The roar of the coolant purge faded beneath them, muffled by the floor. Above them, the sounds from the conduit platform – the Chimera, the pulse rifles – were now barely audible. They had escaped the immediate trap.

They lay there for several long seconds, gasping, trembling, slick with sweat and condensation. Cyan felt utterly drained, physically and emotionally battered, hovering on the edge of consciousness. But they were alive. And, for the moment, they were free.

"Okay," Wren breathed raggedly, pushing themself up first. "Okay… that was… inventive. Remind me not to let you near plumbing controls again." Despite the situation, a flicker of Wren’s wry humour returned. "Where the hell are we now?"

Cyan forced herself upright, taking stock. This corridor seemed even older, more neglected. Pipes were thicker with rust, cables frayed, lighting fixtures completely dark. It felt… abandoned. Truly abandoned. "No idea," Cyan admitted. "Lost Glitch's coordinates when my display died. Lost the ramen sign."

"Right," Wren said, already scanning the corridor with their flicker light. "New plan. We need out. Surface, or at least Mid-Levels. Somewhere with power, transport, options. Sticking around Sub-Level 82 is asking for trouble now." Wren pointed down the corridor. "This tunnel seems to slope upwards slightly. Maybe leads towards an old cargo lift shaft? Or higher ventilation networks?"

It was as good a plan as any. Relying on Wren's knowledge and intuition, they started moving again, slower this time, conserving energy, listening intently to the silence. They navigated a maze of interconnected service tunnels, some partially collapsed, forcing detours through cramped bypass ducts. They passed reservoirs filled with stagnant, oily water, forests of calcified mineral deposits dripping from the ceiling, vast, silent machinery halls where ancient automatons stood frozen like rusted statues. The sheer scale of the forgotten infrastructure beneath Neo-Veridian was staggering, a testament to centuries of construction, obsolescence, and decay. A city built on the bones of its previous incarnations.

After what felt like another hour of exhausting travel, the upward slope became more pronounced. The air quality improved marginally. And they heard a new sound – faint, but distinct. The rumble of distant traffic. Not the chaotic stop-start of the Sub-Grid floor, but the smoother, more powerful hum of Mid-Level transit systems.

"We're getting closer," Wren whispered, excitement tinged with caution. "Maybe Level 60? 50?"

The corridor opened into a slightly larger chamber, dominated by the massive, sealed doors of what looked like an old subterranean cargo depot, likely connected to the Mid-Level transit lines above via freight elevators long since decommissioned. The depot itself was dark, silent, filled with the skeletal remains of cargo containers and loading machinery. But near one wall, tucked away in shadows, was something else. Something utterly incongruous.

Sleek. Black. Aerodynamic. Resting silently on retracted landing gear.

It was a bike. But unlike any bike Cyan had ever seen. Low-slung, minimalist design, matte black finish absorbing the faint light. It lacked traditional bulky engine components or visible exhaust systems. Instead, integrated seamlessly into the frame were what looked like compact turbine intakes and vectoring thrust nozzles. The wheels were thin, almost impossibly so, solid black but with complex internal structures visible beneath a translucent polymer surface – suggesting some kind of advanced magnetic or gravitic suspension rather than conventional tires. Bolted onto the frame near the handlebars was a small, obviously added-on locking mechanism and a crude charging port adapter, suggesting it wasn't standard corporate tech, but something… appropriated.

"Whoa," Wren breathed, eyes wide, approaching the machine reverently. "What "is" this?"

Cyan recognized the design profile, though she'd only seen it in classified NIS R&D schematics. "It's a 'Night Fury'," she murmured, stunned. "Experimental stealth VTOL infiltration bike. LCS project, very hush-hush. Supposedly cancelled due to cost overruns and instability." She ran a hand over the cool, smooth frame. "Rumoured to have a hybrid drive. Magnetic impellers in the wheels for ground transit, silent running. And a miniaturized light jet turbine core with vectored thrust for VTOL flight. Wheels rotate horizontally to act as ducted fans for lift…"

"VTOL?" Wren's eyes lit up. "It can "fly"?"

"Theoretically," Cyan confirmed. "Fast. Agile. Extremely difficult to detect on standard sensors due to radar-absorbent coating and thermal baffling." She examined the added-on lock and charging port. "Someone… boosted this from an LCS facility. And stashed it down here."

"Someone with serious skills," Wren agreed, running their flicker light over the controls – minimalist holographic touch interfaces integrated into the handlebars. "Power cell looks… almost fully charged? Someone was keeping it topped up."

Escape. Suddenly, improbably, escape wasn't just a theoretical concept; it was sitting right here, sleek, black, and powerful. A ghost of a machine, perfect for a ghost of an agent.

"Can you bypass the lock?" Cyan asked urgently, hope surging, overriding exhaustion.

"This lock?" Wren scoffed, pulling out their multi-tool again. "Amateur hour compared to ZQT security. Give me thirty seconds."

While Wren worked deftly on the added lock, Cyan examined the bike more closely. The design was beautiful, brutal, efficient. A weapon disguised as transport. The hollow-looking tires hinted at mag-lev technology for street use, silent, frictionless. The turbine intakes were barely visible slits. The vectoring nozzles were integrated seamlessly into the rear frame. It was a piece of bleeding-edge military tech, far beyond anything commercially available, even to the elite. Who would steal something like this? And why hide it "here"?

"Click." "Done," Wren announced, pulling the disabled lock mechanism free. "She's all yours, Ghost. If you know how to fly it."

Cyan swung a leg over the saddle. The machine hummed faintly beneath her, responding to her proximity, internal systems coming online. Holographic displays flickered to life on the handlebars – power levels (92%, incredible!), engine status, atmospheric pressure, basic navigation grid (offline, needing connection). It felt… right. An extension of her will, her need for speed, for escape. "Enfin" (At last). A real chance.

"Used to race grav-bikes back on Ares Colony before… before," she murmured, fingers instinctively finding the throttle controls, the flight vector stick. The muscle memory was still there.

"Okay," Wren said, stepping back. "Where to? You still need Glitch?"

Cyan paused. Glitch seemed… less important now. Power was critical, yes, but escape from Neo-Veridian entirely? That felt like the only real option. The bounty, NIS's relentless pursuit, the dangers of the Sub-Grid… staying here was a death sentence. But the QMC… Leon… she couldn't just run. "I need information," she decided. "A secure terminal. Access to the deep net. Somewhere I can try to access the QMC safely, find out what happened to Leon, plan my next move."

"Deep net access down here is suicide," Wren warned. "Monitored. Tracked. Glitch might be your only safe bet for that kinda info."

Cyan nodded grimly. "Alright. The ramen sign. Can this thing get us there fast?"

"Fast?" Wren grinned. "Ghost, this thing can get us to the "Mid-Levels" in sixty seconds if you punch it. Through the old cargo lift shafts. Assuming they aren't sealed."

Just then, a distant "boom" echoed up from the lower levels they'd traversed. Deeper, more powerful than pulse rifle fire. A breaching charge? Had NIS found the coolant purge outlet? Were they clearing obstacles, following her trail relentlessly?

"Time to go," Cyan said, activating the Night Fury's primary systems. The bike hummed louder, a low thrum of contained power. The holographic displays stabilized. She engaged the ground drive – the wheels spun silently, magnetically levitating the bike centimetres above the floor. "On y va" (Let's go - internal resolve).

"Hold on tight!" she yelled to Wren, who scrambled onto the small pillion seat behind her, arms wrapping tightly around Cyan's waist.

Cyan twisted the throttle. The Night Fury surged forward silently, accelerating with breathtaking speed across the dusty floor of the abandoned cargo depot, heading towards the massive, sealed lift shaft doors at the far end.

"Those doors are sealed!" Wren shouted over the rush of air.

"Not for long!" Cyan yelled back, thumbing a different control. A thin, incredibly bright laser emitter unfolded from beneath the handlebars. Not a weapon, but a high-intensity cutting tool. She directed the beam at the massive locking mechanisms on the ancient lift doors as they sped towards them. Metal glowed cherry red, then white-hot, then slagged away under the focused energy beam just as they reached the doors. With a tortured screech, the damaged locks gave way, the massive doors scraping partially open, revealing the dark vertical expanse of the cargo lift shaft stretching upwards towards the Mid-Levels.

Without slowing, Cyan angled the Night Fury upwards, simultaneously engaging the VTOL system. The light jet turbine core ignited with a muted, powerful roar, shockingly loud after the silent ground drive. The wheels snapped instantly sideways, transforming into ducted fans, their blades spinning at hypersonic speed. The upward thrust was immediate, brutal, pressing them deep into their seats. "Liberté!" (Freedom!)

They shot upwards into the darkness of the lift shaft like a black missile, leaving the cargo depot, the Sub-Grid, the crawling horrors, behind them. Below, Cyan glimpsed flashing lights converging on the depot entrance – NIS, moments too late.

The ascent was dizzyingly fast. Concrete walls blurred past. Emergency lights flickered at intermittent levels. The shaft was vast, designed for moving massive freight containers between the industrial depths and the Mid-Level distribution hubs. Wind roared around them.

"Level 55… 50… 45…" Wren yelled, watching the floor markers flash past. "Mid-Level transit access should be around Level 40!"

Cyan focused intently, handling the powerful machine, feeling its responsiveness, its barely contained energy. It felt alive beneath her, a dark extension of her own desperate flight. This was speed. This was velocity. This was freedom, however fleeting.

Suddenly, warning Klaxons blared from "above". Red lights flashed down the shaft towards them. Heavy barriers, designed to seal off sections of the lift shaft in emergencies, began to descend rapidly from Level 40. NIS wasn't just behind them; they were "ahead" of them too, anticipating, cutting off the obvious escape route. "Les bâtards!" (The bastards!)

"They sealed the shaft!" Wren screamed, panic edging their voice.

Cyan didn't panic. Not this time. She saw the descending barriers, calculated the closing speed, the remaining distance. Too fast to stop. Too thick to cut through quickly. Going back down was death. There was only one option.

She pushed the Night Fury's throttle to maximum, angling the bike slightly. "Hold on!" she roared. They accelerated towards the rapidly descending barriers, the gap shrinking with terrifying speed. Metres away. Almost closed.

At the last possible second, Cyan wrenched the bike sideways, executing a brutal, high-G manoeuvre. Instead of hitting the main barriers, she aimed for the narrow gap between the edge of the barrier and the shaft wall – a space maybe half a metre wide, filled with guide rails and structural supports.

The Night Fury scraped against the concrete wall with a horrific screech of metal on stone. Sparks showered around them. The right VTOL fan impacted a guide rail, sending shudders through the frame. For a sickening moment, Cyan thought they’d lose control, tumble back down the shaft. But the bike held, its powerful engine compensating, thrust vectoring fighting the instability. They shot "through" the narrow gap just as the main barriers slammed fully shut behind them with a deafening boom.

They burst out of the lift shaft onto Mid-Level 39. Not onto a transit platform, but crashing "through" the weakened wall of an adjacent, seemingly abandoned warehouse district, showering debris. They skidded across the grimy floor, miraculously staying upright, the damaged right fan sputtering erratically.

They were out. Out of the Sub-Grid, out of the shaft. But into what? Sirens wailed nearby, closing fast – Mid-Level NeoSec patrols, alerted by the commotion. And NIS wouldn't be far behind. The chase wasn't over. It had just moved to a new, more public arena. "Jamais fini" (Never finished).

Chapter 9

Cicatrices sous le Néon Électrique

Scars Beneath the Electric Neon

The transition was brutal, jarring. One moment, the dark verticality of the lift shaft; the next, an explosion of noise, motion, and harsh, flickering Mid-Level light as they burst through the crumbling warehouse wall on the back of the damaged Night Fury. Debris rained down... They skidded across the grimy ferro-concrete floor... finally lurching to a halt...

Silence descended momentarily, broken only by the erratic "sputter-whine" of the damaged fan, the distant wail of approaching NeoSec sirens... They had landed squarely in the chaotic heart of Mid-Level 39... And they had made an entrance that screamed "trouble". ""Merde" (Shit)." That was not subtle.

"Status?" Cyan demanded... Power levels holding at 88%. Back VTOL fan nominal. Front VTOL fan… offline... Ground magnetic drive operational... VTOL escape capability was gone. They were grounded.

"I'm… okay," Wren choked out... "Functioning. You?"

"Functioning," Cyan echoed grimly... "NeoSec. We need to vanish. Now."

"This way," Wren directed instantly... "Old service tunnels run beneath this depot. Connect to the Undermarket grid..."

Cyan gunned the Night Fury’s silent magnetic drive... They sped deeper into the warehouse... They found the service tunnel access Wren indicated... The plate lifted with a groan, revealing dark, narrow stairs...

"This bike won't fit," Wren stated the obvious.

Cyan looked at the Night Fury... "Leave it," she decided instantly. "Tant pis" (Too bad / Oh well). Function over form. "Wipe the controls." ... Better to let NeoSec find it... than lead NIS directly to them.

They slipped down the stairs... plunging themselves back into familiar darkness...

The service tunnel was cramped... "Which way?" Cyan asked...

"Follow the airflow," Wren whispered... "These tunnels eventually connect to the main Undermarket ventilation shafts. Noisy, chaotic, easy to get lost in. Perfect."

They moved through the labyrinthine tunnels... Cyan’s mind raced... Glitch's node was compromised... Silas's workshop was blown... Their only escape vehicle was abandoned... Her implants were dead, her weapon nearly useless... The situation was critical, bordering on terminal. "Quelle situation merdique" (What a shitty situation).

Self-doubt returned... "You failed, Sharma... You can't protect anyone. You couldn't even protect Leon." ... Why did NIS need him...? Profit alone felt… insufficient...

""(Cut to NIS Perspective - Jaeger's Mobile Command Unit)""

Markus Jaeger watched the tactical feed... "Subject 'Ghost' and associate 'Wren' evaded initial containment..." Oracle reported... "Abandoned stolen experimental VTOL unit... Proceeded into sub-level service tunnel network..."

Jaeger allowed a flicker of annoyance... Losing that prototype was an irritating setback...

"Report from Team Epsilon?"

"Workshop secured. Subject 'Silas' terminated during entry – resisted containment," Oracle stated emotionlessly... "Preliminary analysis indicates no significant data breach from QMC. Crystal integrity likely maintained."

A measure of relief... Such was the cost of security. Jaeger felt no remorse...

"And the associate, 'Wren'?" Jaeger asked... Expendable... "Flag Wren for termination if separation from Ghost occurs. Otherwise, collateral damage... is acceptable."

He turned his attention back to the larger strategic picture... Why "was" the Ghost so dangerous? Why was the QMC so vital...? Profit, yes... Power, control… simple corporate Darwinism. But Jaeger sensed something deeper... Synapse Weaver wasn't just about individual enhancement. It was about "scale". The potential for "mass" resonance... a gestalt consciousness... a gentle nudging of societal thought patterns... The ultimate tool for societal management... implemented not through jackboots... but through voluntary... neural upgrades... marketed as wellness...

The 'Xylosian' patterns... hints of collective consciousness, non-linear time perception, embedded pacification protocols... But incredibly unstable... For every Leon Sharma... there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of 'failures'... Thousands tortured, broken, disposed of like faulty components... hidden behind layers of corporate secrecy... "C'est la vie... corporative" (That's corporate life).

And the mainstream NIS products?... Derived from early... Synapse research... Jaeger suspected they contained subtle backdoors... passive data collection... making populations more susceptible to "future" integration attempts... Hurting millions... through slow, insidious erosion of individuality...

This was why Cyan and the QMC were an existential threat... If that data leaked... the backlash would be catastrophic... Control had to be maintained. Secrecy was paramount... The ends justified the means... "C'est le jeu" (That's the game).

"Hunter-Lead," Oracle's voice cut through his thoughts. "...Subjects appear to be navigating Level 48 Service Corridor network... Towards designated Emergency Exit Point 48-C, leading to Undermarket Sector Gamma."

Jaeger smiled again, cold and sharp. Predictable... "Excellent, Oracle... authorize deployment of... one 'Spectre' unit to intercept... Soften them up."

""(Return to Cyan - Level 48 Service Corridor)""

The service tunnels on Level 48 felt different... But the relative cleanliness offered no comfort... Cyan felt exposed... Her paranoia... was becoming a tangible entity whispering warnings...

Wren seemed to feel it too... moving with heightened tension...

"Hear that?" Wren whispered suddenly... Yes. A faint, rhythmic "shhhk… shhhk… shhhk…" Sound... Like… soft footsteps on grating...?

"Behind us, I think," Cyan breathed... NIS. Ground team. Closing in.

"This way!" Wren hissed... down a narrower side corridor...

They half-ran, half-stumbled... the rhythmic "shhhk" sound seeming to follow... Playing with them?

The corridor turned sharply. Ahead... Exit 48-C... Freedom, or at least a different kind of chaos... But the "shhhk" sound was closer... And suddenly, it stopped... Replaced by… silence. A heavy, expectant silence...

"Where'd it go?" Wren whispered...

Cyan scanned... Then, her eyes caught a flicker... distortion... A subtle shimmer in the air... near the ceiling...

"Above!" Cyan yelled, shoving Wren sideways just as the shimmer solidified.

A figure dropped silently... A Spectre. It moved with blinding speed... towards Wren... Wren reacted instantly... The pole passed through... an illusion...? Before Wren could recover... the Spectre's hand lashed out... close to Wren's head.

Wren cried out... "My head! Can't… see straight…"

Neural disruptor... Cyan reacted instantly, drawing the Kaito-7... She fired a single, low-power pulse... The cyan bolt struck the Spectre's chest... The adaptive camouflage flickered... The Spectre staggered back... surprised rather than harmed...

But the shot served its purpose... It drew the Spectre's attention... towards Cyan... The Spectre flowed towards her... hands raised, energy crackling... Cyan backpedalled, firing another pulse, equally ineffective... Outmatched, outmoded...

Just as the Spectre closed... a loud "clank" echoed... Wren... had hurled their heavy salvage pole... It struck the Spectre squarely in the back... enough to momentarily break its concentration...

It turned towards Wren... A fatal mistake.

Seeing her opening... Cyan lunged forward... slammed the heavy butt of the Kaito-7 upwards... aiming for the underside of the helmeted head... The impact connected... The Spectre's head snapped back... It stumbled...

"Run!" Cyan screamed at Wren... pulling them towards the pressure gate.

Wren... scrambled with her. Cyan slapped the emergency release panel... the heavy gate began to slide open, revealing the chaotic scene beyond: Undermarket Gamma.

A sprawling, multi-level bazaar... Hundreds, maybe thousands of people... Stalls... sold everything from recycled protein bars... to dangerous-looking homemade weapons... The air was thick with smoke... and the deafening babble of a dozen languages mingling with loud, distorted music... Neon signs... flickered erratically... It was overwhelming, chaotic, dangerous… and offered the perfect cover.

They plunged into the crowd just as the Spectre recovered behind them... It tilted its head, visor scanning... likely relaying tactical data...

They pushed through the throng... Wren seemed more at home here... pulling Cyan along.

"Where are we going?" Cyan yelled...

"Need to blend," Wren yelled back. "Lose ourselves. Then find a quiet corner. Rethink."

But blending was impossible. A new sound cut through... the unmistakable, disciplined "thump-thump-thump" of NIS exoskeleton boots... Oracle's voice... boomed from overhead loudspeakers... ""Attention Undermarket Sector Gamma occupants... containing two high-risk fugitives... Resistance will be met with lethal force.""

Panic erupted... People screamed, shoved, tried to flee... Stalls were overturned. Shots were fired... "Putain!" (Fuck!) This was worse than the Scrabbler pit on Level 90.

NIS troopers... advanced methodically... forming skirmish lines, deploying stun grenades... The Spectre reappeared... moving silently through the chaos... High above, Cyan glimpsed more micro-drones...

They were caught in the crossfire... Wren pulled Cyan down behind an overturned stall selling glowing fungi... Pulse rifle fire zipped overhead. An explosion rocked the market nearby... Screams intensified.

"This is bad," Wren breathed, eyes wide with fear... "Really bad."

Cyan looked at Wren’s terrified face... at the closing lines of NIS troopers... felt the weight of the useless pistol... the faint pressure of the QMC... This was it. The end of the line... No more running... The Leviathan had found her, and its cold smile offered no escape, only consumption. The weight of shared ghosts... the burden of knowledge... the flicker of defiance… was it all for nothing?

Chapter 10

Le Spectre dans le Miroir Brisé

The Spectre in the Broken Mirror

Chaos erupted. Not the controlled demolition of corporate strategy, but the raw, unpredictable explosion of human panic in a confined space... The Undermarket Sector Gamma... transformed into a churning vortex of fear...

Caught in the initial wave, Cyan and Wren were slammed back... Pulse rifle fire... zipped overhead... An explosion rocked the market nearby...

"This is bad," Wren breathed again... "Really bad. We're boxed in."

Cyan looked around frantically... NIS troopers... were advancing... tightening the cordon... The Spectre... undoubtedly seeking "her". And high above... the micro-drones... They were trapped... "This is it. The end of the line... Just… oblivion." The thought felt strangely seductive...

Then, Wren moved... grabbing fistfuls of... 'Glimmer Spore'. "Diversion," Wren hissed... "Might blind the troopers' visors for a second... Might confuse the drones... Won't stop 'em, but might buy us… something." A desperate, low-tech gamble... "Pourquoi pas?" (Why not?) What did they have to lose?

"Okay," Cyan said... "On three..." Wren threw the spore clouds... Cyan shoved the stall... The shimmering spores dispersed... creating a sudden, localized blizzard... It worked. Sort of. Maybe two seconds of disorientation. But it was enough. Cyan grabbed Wren’s arm. "Move!"

They scrambled left... using the panicked, surging crowd as mobile cover... They reached the relative cover of a cluster of densely packed food stalls... But the respite was brief... NIS troopers readjusted... began firing targeted bursts into the crowd... Cyan heard cries of pain, saw figures fall. Collateral damage... "Les monstres" (The monsters). Their efficiency was obscene.

"They're pushing us back," Wren gasped... "Where can we go?"

Cyan scanned... a narrow, crowded alleyway... Ahead... a larger open area... Behind them, the NIS line advanced... A dead end. Unless… Cyan’s eyes fixed on the ground... A heavy floor grate... "Waste Reclamation Chute?" "Wren! That grate!"

Wren followed her gaze... "Reclamation Chute 3B?... Goes straight down... To the primary recycling compactors and incinerators... Nobody goes down there willingly." "Mon dieu" (My god). This was scraping the bottom of the barrel, literally.

"Can we open it?" Cyan asked urgently.

"Manual wheel lock, usually rusted solid," Wren said doubtfully...

Just then, a section of the stall beside them exploded inwards... A plasma bolt... from the Spectre...

"No time!" Cyan yelled... "We need that grate open "now"!" She looked at the Kaito-7... maybe 15-20% remained... Enough for one more high-energy burst? Maybe? "Cover me!"

Cyan crawled quickly to the heavy floor grate... aiming the Kaito-7... at the most corroded section of the hinge... she squeezed the firing stud... forcing the weapon to discharge... The Kaito-7 shrieked... the cyan beam... unstable... struck the hinge, instantly vaporizing the metal... overloaded... With a final, deafening "CRACK", the Kaito-7 exploded in Cyan's hand.

Pain, white-hot and absolute... She cried out... Shrapnel tore through her glove... The blast threw her backwards... But the hinge was destroyed. Wren... threw their weight against the heavy grate... it tilted upwards, opening onto a dark, vertical shaft... The Grinder.

"Cyan! Come on!" Wren yelled... already swinging their legs into the opening.

Cyan pushed herself up, ignoring the blinding pain... NIS troopers were closing in... The Spectre flowed silently behind them. No time. She scrambled towards the open chute... Just as she reached the edge... a figure slammed into her... One of Jax's crew... "Goin' somewhere, shiny?" he snarled... Cyan reacted on pure instinct... kicking out hard... He howled... Not waiting... Cyan threw herself headfirst into the Waste Reclamation Chute... "Adieu, cruel world... peut-être" (Goodbye, cruel world... maybe).

The fall felt endless... Then, with a final, bone-jarring impact, she landed hard on something surprisingly soft... She lay there stunned... Her right hand was a mess... But she was alive. Wren seemed alive... They were at the bottom of the Grinder... And for the moment... they seemed to be alone...

"Okay," Wren said... "Okay… Plan C? Or are we on Plan Z now?" Cyan almost laughed... "Let's call it Plan Omega." "La fin de l'alphabet" (The end of the alphabet).

Suddenly, a faint, internal sensation... The QMC... Was it interfacing directly with her consciousness now...? Feeding her information? "What the…" "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" (What the hell is this?) This changes the game... "peut-être" (perhaps).

The data stream... felt alien, overwhelming, yet… useful. She focused... "Compactor Unit 7 initiating cycle... Incinerator Feed Conveyor B offline... Emergency Access Tunnel 4-Theta located… 30 metres... thermal signature detected within tunnel…" Biological. Moving.

"Wren," Cyan whispered urgently... "Someone's coming. Access Tunnel 4-Theta..." She pointed blindly... guided by the impossible data feed...

Wren stared at her, bewildered. "How do you…?"

"Don't know," Cyan admitted... "Just… know. Come on!"

They scrambled... reached the location... Tunnel 4-Theta. And emerging from it... Markus Jaeger. Alone. "Ce type est le diable" (This guy is the devil).

How? How had he gotten here so fast?

Jaeger paused... raised his pistol... towards a different section... "Target acquired, Oracle," Jaeger murmured... "Initiate 'Clean Sweep' protocol..."

Cyan didn't understand immediately... Then, a horrifying realization dawned... He wasn't just here for "her". He was here to "sanitize" the situation... To eliminate "all" witnesses...

Far above them... a deep, subterranean "rumble" began... devastating explosions... The entire Undermarket Gamma sector… being collapsed? Buried? Incinerated?... Thousands of people... silenced permanently... The scale of the ruthlessness... staggering, monstrous. "Quel massacre" (What a massacre). All for corporate secrets.

Jaeger watched... impassively... Then, he turned his attention back towards their hiding place... He "knew" they were there... "Impressive improvisation, Ghost," Jaeger called out... "Messy, but resourceful." He took a slow step towards them... "But ultimately futile... Did you really think you could escape...? That LCS would allow technology as vital as Project Synapse Weaver... to simply walk away?"

He paused... "Hear that? That's the sound of loose ends being tied up. The cost of ensuring stability, progress. A necessary, if regrettable, expenditure, we can grow more body parts, life is never guaranteed or fair."

Cyan felt Wren trembling... "Why?" Cyan forced the word out... "Why kill all those people?"

Jaeger tilted his head... "Containment. Information control... Besides," his smile became almost beatific... "in the grand scheme, their chaotic, unproductive lives were… insignificant. Sacrificed for a far greater purpose. The purpose you carry beneath your skin, Ghost." He took another step closer... "Thorne believes Synapse Weaver is the key... to unlocking humanity's true potential... Why fight it? Why not… embrace it?" Was he trying to recruit her? "Il se fout de ma gueule?" (Is he laughing in my face?)

The data feed in her head pulsed insistently: "Jaeger bio-signs elevated… stress indicators present... deceptive intent probability: 72%..."

"You tortured my brother!" Cyan spat...

"An unfortunate but necessary step in calibration," Jaeger replied smoothly... "His… sacrifice… provided invaluable data." He raised his pistol slightly. "Data which now resides with you. The crystal must be recovered... For the future." He was maybe twenty metres away now... This was the end game.

"Last chance," Jaeger said... "Surrender the QMC. Cooperate... Perhaps Thorne can even… help your brother..." "Lie probability: 89%," pulsed the data.

Cyan looked at Jaeger's calm, assured face... She looked at Wren... She felt the phantom weight of the exploded Kaito-7... the impossible data stream buzzing... She thought of Leon... She thought of the thousands dying above them... Something inside her shifted... Defiance... And the data stream… showing her "options"... Was the QMC trying to "help" her? Or was the alien intelligence within it simply calculating survival probabilities...? A sudden, sharp "Aha!" moment... The QMC wasn't just a burden; it was a key... "Aha! La clé!" (Aha! The key!)

"No deal, Jaeger," Cyan said, her voice surprisingly steady. She pushed Wren gently towards the access tunnel... "Run, Wren. Get out. Warn someone."

Wren hesitated... "But…"

"Go!" Cyan commanded... Wren... disappeared into the blackness...

Jaeger watched Wren leave... His focus remained entirely on Cyan. "Noble," he drawled, raising his pistol, taking careful aim. "But ultimately pointless. Nowhere left to run, Ghost, in the rubbish where you belong..."

Cyan met his gaze... focusing instead on the strange new data flooding her senses... "Compactor safety override... High-pressure hydraulic line vulnerability... Drone tunnel exit leads to…"

"You're wrong, Jaeger," Cyan said, a strange, cold certainty settling over her. "The running… it's just beginning." "Ce n'est que le début" (It's only the beginning).

She tensed, ready to move... The final confrontation was here...