The neon haze of Sector 18 painted the streets in sickly hues, the air thick with the stench of smog and burning oil.
Karen's boots crunched over broken glass as she and Mags moved through the labyrinth of rusted alleys, the weight of Nex's encrypted chips heavy in her pocket.
Mags walked beside her, silent as always, Neax's shotgun slung across her back like a second spine.
The girl's small frame was swallowed by her oversized parka, but her grip on the weapon was steady—knuckles white, fingers tracing the scratches Nex had left on the stock.
Karen exhaled through her nose. "Mags."
No response. Just the rhythmic scuff of boots against pavement.
"Hey." Karen reached out, fingers brushing the girl's sleeve. "What's your plan here?"
Mags didn't slow. "Interrogation." Flat. Final.
Karen's jaw tightened. She stepped in front of Mags, forcing her to stop. "Those shell casings aren't proof. Not enough."
Mags' dark eyes flicked up, sharp as a knife's edge.
"We need to hear him out," Karen pressed. "If we go in swinging, we're just proving Nex right—that the gang's already tearing itself apart."
A muscle twitched in Mags' jaw.
Her fingers flexed around the shotgun's grip.
Karen lowered her voice. "Nex was hunting this mole for months. Quietly. You know why? Because if he made a move too soon, it would've been the spark that burned everything down." She jerked her chin toward the hideout looming ahead. "And now he's gone. Which means we don't get to be reckless."
Mags' nostrils flared. For a second, Karen thought she might shove past her.
Then—
"Fine." The word was brittle, like glass underfoot. "Talk. First." A pause. "Then. Interrogation."
Karen exhaled. "Fair."
Mags adjusted the shotgun on her back, her small frame straightening, telling quietly. But if he lies...
"Then he's yours."
The wind howled through the alley, carrying the distant wail of a mag-lev train.
Somewhere above, a Reclamation drone's searchlight swept the rooftops, its glow bleeding through the smog like a dying star.
Karen flexed her prosthetic hand, the steel shard of Nex's augment glinting in the neon light. "Let's go."
Mags fell into step beside her, silent again.
But this time, the air between them wasn't just heavy with grief.
It was sharp with promise.
***
The hideout's corridor was narrow, the walls lined with exposed wiring and old gang tags faded under layers of grime.
Karen's prosthetic fingers flexed at her side. While her other hand touching the steel talon fragment on her pocket.
She should've been at Gristle's room by now—sorting through whatever mess the bastard left behind, maybe finding answers about the lab, about what really happened.
But Nex's list had changed things.
And now there was Silas.
Mags walked a step behind her, silent as a shadow.
The girl's parka rustled faintly with every movement, the steel talon sewn into her sleeves clicking like bones.
Karen stopped outside Vey's quarters, the door slightly ajar, the scent of synth-liquor and gun oil seeping through the gap.
His squad—Vey's demolition team—they were the ones that is called in when a problem needed to be erased, not just solved.
Professional.
Brutal.
She knocked twice—firm, deliberate.
"What?" Vey's voice was a wet rasp, the melted side of his face twisting the word into something grotesque.
Karen pushed the door open.
Vey lounged on a battered couch, a half-dismantled explosive spread across the table in front of him.
Silas sat across from him, cleaning a pistol with methodical precision.
His sleeves were rolled up, revealing the three parallel scars on his forearm.
Karen's jaw tightened.
"Need to borrow Silas," she said, keeping her voice casual. "Got some questions."
Vey's good eye narrowed. "Why?"
Silas didn't look up, but his fingers stilled on the gun's slide.
Mags shifted slightly beside Karen, her small frame tense.
Karen exhaled through her nose. "Found something in Nex's stash. A list." She paused, watching Silas's hands. "His name's on it."
Vey's fingers tapped against the table—three slow, deliberate beats. "And?"
"And I want to know why."
Silas finally looked up, his expression unreadable. "Nex had a lot of lists."
"Not like this one." Karen held his gaze. "The others were crossed out."
A beat of silence.
Vey leaned back, his ruined mouth curling into something resembling a smile. "You accusing one of mine, Karen?"
"I'm asking."
Silas set the pistol down with deliberate care. "Let's talk, then."
Mags' fingers twitched toward the shotgun strapped to her back.
Karen shook her head once—not yet—before stepping aside to let Silas pass.
Vey's voice followed them out, low and mocking. "Don't break him too bad. We got work to do."
***
The abandoned storage room reeked of rust and stale coolant, its walls lined with gutted server racks that cast jagged shadows in the dim glow of a flickering overhead light.
Mags stood near the door, her small frame dwarfed by Nex's shotgun, the barrel resting lazily against her shoulder.
Her dark eyes never left Silas.
Little Mags had a reputation.
It wasn't just because Nex had favored her—though that alone would've been enough to keep most of the gang from messing with her.
It was the way she moved with the gun, like it was an extension of her small frame.
The way she could strip it blindfolded, reassemble it in the dark, and put a round through a glow-rat's skull at fifty meters without blinking.
Nex hadn't given her that shotgun out of pity.
He'd given it to her because she was the only one who could make it sing.
And right now, it was very, very quiet.
Silas held his hands up, palms out, his usual swagger replaced by a nervous grin. "Cool it, Mags. Just talk, yeah?" His voice wavered slightly.
Vey leaned against a broken terminal, arms crossed, his melted face twisted into something between amusement and irritation. "Yeah, Karen. You dragged us here. Spit it out."
Karen flexed her prosthetic hand, the steel shard catching the light.
She kept her voice level. "Silas. Those Myriad casings in the east tunnel. Nex had a problem with them. So do I."
Silas exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. "Look, I already told Nex—it was just a collection. Those emblems? Neat designs. That's it." He shrugged, forcing a laugh. "Hell, I've got casings from half the corps in the city. Ask Vey."
Vey smirked. "He's right. Brought him to Nex myself when I found out. Nex chewed his ass, but it wasn't a betrayal. Just stupidity." His good eye flicked to Karen. "You really think Silas would be dumb enough to sell us out and leave evidence?"
Mags didn't move.
Didn't blink.
The shotgun remained steady.
Karen stayed silent, watching Silas's face—the way his fingers twitched, the slight dilation of his pupils when he lied.
She didn't mention the recordings.
Not yet.
Silas shifted uncomfortably under Mags's gaze. "Come on, Mags. You know me. I'm demolition. If I wanted to screw the gang over, I'd just blow the damn hideout up." He tried another laugh.
It fell flat.
Mags's grip tightened on the shotgun.
A beat of silence.
Then—
"Fine." Karen stepped forward, cutting between them. "If it's nothing, then it's nothing." She met Silas's eyes. "But if I find out there's more to it?" She didn't finish the threat. She didn't need to.
Vey pushed off the terminal with a grunt. "Good talk. Now can we get back to work?"
Karen didn't blink.
"Alright," she said, her voice low but carrying. "Last question, Silas."
The room tensed.
"Show us your forearms."
The flickering overhead lights buzzed like angry insects.
Silas—lean, wiry, his eyes darting between them—hesitated just a fraction too long.
Then, with a shrug, he rolled up his sleeves.
Pale, unmarked skin stared back at them.
No three parallel scars.
No old knife wounds or glyph burns.
Not even the faintest scratch.
Mags finally lowered the shotgun, but her stare lingered on Silas a second too long.
Silas swallowed.
The light above flickered again, plunging the room into momentary darkness.
When it buzzed back to life, Karen was already turning away.
***
Karen's fingers tightened around Nex's list as she and Mags stepped into the dim hallway leading to Gristle's room.
"Could be the list wasn't updated yet," Karen muttered, more to herself than Mags. "Nex was meticulous, but the lab job happened fast."
Mags didn't respond.
Her small boots made no sound on the grated floor, but the weight of Nex's shotgun across her back seemed to echo louder than footsteps.
Karen exhaled through her nose. "And Vey...he's been here since the beginning. If there's anyone Nex would trust, it's him."
Vey wasn't just old guard—he was the gang's spine. When Nex had been off carving his legend in the Junkyard's underbelly, Vey had been the one holding their territory together.
His melted face and rasping voice told the story of a dozen battles fought for the Talons.
If Nex had doubted him, he wouldn't have made it to second-in-command.
And Silas?
He'd been running demolition for Vey since before Mags could hold a gun straight.
Mags stopped walking.
"Doesn't matter," she said quietly.
Karen turned.
The girl's face was half-shadowed, but her grip on the shotgun was white-knuckled.
"Nex marked him."
That was the truth that mattered.
Nex might have trusted Vey, might have relied on Silas's skills—but he'd still put their names on that list.
And Nex didn't make mistakes when it came to survival.
The door to Gristle's room loomed ahead, its surface scarred with old blast marks and knife gouges.
Karen's augmented fingers hovered over the handle.
"Whatever we find in here," she said, "we don't share it with the others. Not until we know who we can trust."
Mags nodded once.
The door creaked open, releasing a wave of stale air and the faint, metallic tang of old blood.
Inside, the room was frozen in time—a shrine to a dead man's paranoia.
***
The air in the hideout hung thick with the acrid tang of overheated circuitry and stale instant noodles.
Lucent's fingers danced across the keyboard of his jury-rigged terminal, each keystroke sending ripples through the holographic displays that surrounded him like a digital cocoon.
The blue glow reflected off the sweat beading on his forehead, catching in the fine lines around his eyes that hadn't been there a year ago.
Kai shifted from foot to foot behind him, the nervous energy radiating off him almost palpable.
The kid had that look again—the one that always came before he asked one of his endless questions. Lucent could feel it coming like a storm front.
"So what's all this then?" Kai finally blurted out, leaning in too close, his breath warm against Lucent's neck. "Some kind of gang accounting? Or is this about that mole Karen's hunting?"
Lucent didn't turn from the screen.
The footage playing showed grainy surveillance of the Steel Talons' east tunnel, time-stamped the night before the attack.
Silas was there, yes, but so were three others whose faces the corrupted files refused to reveal clearly.
"Not our circus," Lucent muttered, his voice rough from too many hours without sleep.
"Not our monkeys." He reached for the half-empty cup of sludge that passed for coffee in their hideout, the liquid long gone cold.
Kai's fingers twitched toward the screen before thinking better of it. "But if they're planning something big, shouldn't we—"
"You what?" Lucent finally turned, his chair screeching in protest.
The dark circles under his eyes made him look more like a corpse than usual.
"Go play hero? March into gang business we got no stake in?" He jabbed a finger at the screen where Silas's blurred figure paused mid-conversation with someone just out of frame. "That right there? That's the kind of trouble that gets curious little Spire boys disappeared."
The silence that followed was broken only by the erratic whirring of an overtaxed cooling fan.
Kai's jaw worked, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Lucent watched the internal struggle play out across the kid's face—the stubborn curiosity warring with growing sense of self-preservation.
"Go check the perimeter," Lucent said finally, turning back to the terminal. "Or practice your dampening glyphs. Just make yourself useful somewhere that isn't here."
He waited until Kai's footsteps faded down the corridor before exhaling sharply.
The kid was getting better at listening, but that spark of stupid bravery still burned too bright.
One of these days it was going to get him killed.
The terminal chimed, pulling Lucent's attention back to the screen.
The decryption algorithm had finished its work, revealing a series of fragmented chat logs beneath the video files. His breath caught as he scanned the disjointed phrases:
>> payment transferred
>> east tunnel clear at 0200
>> remember - no Steel Talon insignia
Professional.
Precise.
Exactly the kind of chatter that preceded a corporate wetwork operation, not some back-alley gang hit.
Lucent's fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up a new window.
The GhostKey forums loaded with their familiar dark interface, the login prompt blinking expectantly.
It had been weeks since he'd last dared to access the underground network—not since before the lab job, before everything went sideways.
The screen flickered as his credentials were accepted.
>> WELCOME BACK, USER: [REDACTED]
The forum's chaotic homepage unfolded before him, a riot of encrypted deal offers, bounty postings, and the usual conspiracy theories.
But one thread dominated the recent activity, its title screaming in bold red text:
>> SECTOR 12 MYRIAD LABS "TERRORIST ATTACK" - OFFICIAL NARRATIVE FALLING APART
Lucent clicked through, his pulse quickening despite himself.
The thread was a graveyard of speculation and half-truths, each post more frantic than the last:
>> No way this was some random cell. Demolition pattern matches private contractor work.
>> Heard from a cleanup crew buddy - Reclamation Units were on scene before emergency responders.
>> Myriad stock took an 8% hit after. Boardroom purge incoming.
The more he read, the tighter the knot in his stomach became.
The complete absence of any mention of experiments or containment breaches was... unnatural.
Even for a cover-up.
It was too clean.
Too precise.
Like someone had carefully scrubbed the truth and left only the story they wanted told.
Lucent leaned back, the chair groaning under his weight.
Outside, the perpetual hum of the city filtered through the hideout's makeshift walls, the sound of a world moving on, oblivious to the rot festering beneath its surface.
Lucent's fingers hovered over the keyboard, the cursor blinking mockingly on the GhostKey forums.
Without thinking, he navigated to a familiar profile—one he'd checked a hundred times before with the same futile hope.
CIPHER
Last Login: 3 years, 2 months, 14 days ago
The date stared back at him like a tombstone.
Three years.
Almost to the day everything had gone to hell in the Pit.
Back when GhostKey forums were still littered with Cipher's cryptic posts—glyph hacks, corporate data leaks, warnings about Aether experiments that read like mad ramblings.
Until they didn't.
Lucent exhaled through his nose, the sound harsh in the quiet of the hideout.
He shouldn't have looked.
Some ghosts were better left buried.
Three years.
Long enough for a man to disappear.
Long enough for the world to forget.
Lucent's hand drifted to the old burn scars on his forearm—the kind you got from pushing glyphs past their limits.
The kind Cipher had warned him about, back when warnings still mattered.
He closed the profile with a sharp tap of his finger.
The past was dead.
Whatever game was unfolding now—Karen's mole hunt, the Myriad cover-up, Kai's dangerous curiosity—it was a new kind of fire.
And Lucent had learned the hard way: you either controlled the burn, or you got consumed by it.
The holoscreens hummed, waiting.
He got back to work.
Somewhere in Sector 18, Karen and Mags were digging into Gristle's past.
Somewhere in the Spires, powerful men were covering their tracks.
And here he sat, caught between them, with nothing but fragments of truth and a kid who didn't know when to stop asking questions.
The terminal screen flickered again, a private message notification blinking insistently in the corner of his vision.
Lucent's hand hovered over the mouse, hesitating.
Whatever was in that message, he knew one thing for certain—it wouldn't make anything simpler.