Argus gripped the wheel tighter as the truck surged past Canal Street, wind screaming through the cracked window, dashboard light blinking a pulsing blue.
SYNCED SUBJECT: DETECTIVE AMY CHEN
PROTOCOL TIER 2: INITIATED – PHASE 1 ACTIVE
The MANTIS system had latched onto her signal. He could see it now mapped in real time, a digital heartbeat pulsing from her apartment building on Delancey. Her badge data had been flagged. Complaint status: Filed. Department note: Pending inquiry – case tampering.
They'd started the process.
Not with bullets.
With rumors.
Smears.
Isolation.
Exactly how Aurelia described it.
He looked at the dash again. The system wasn't just tracking her. It was directing the next steps auto-feeding logs to Internal Affairs and the NYPD records division, laying the groundwork for a formal suspension.
And the worst part?
It was clean. Undetectable. No human fingerprints. Just digital signals just like what had erased Lawson before they ever pulled the trigger.
Argus glanced up. Light turned red. He ran it.
He needed that sync alive but not traceable.
He reached into the side pack, yanked out the comm relay unit, and pried the back off with his blade. Inside: a short-range transmission chip running direct sync to a backend satellite node.
He couldn't kill the system outright. Not yet.
But he could choke the signal.
He pulled two wires, severed the uplink, and looped the feed internally. The truck would still think it was talking to HQ but it wasn't going anywhere beyond the cabin now.
The screen blinked again.
LIVE FEED DISRUPTED LOCAL SYNC ONLY
Good.
He punched the accelerator.
The rain came heavier as he turned onto her block Delancey shrouded in steam and streetlamp glare. Third-floor window. One light on. He knew it was hers.
Then the feed updated again.
PHASE 2 – SOCIAL DETACHMENT PROTOCOL
Trigger Event Scheduled: Immediate
"Shit," he muttered.
He parked hard, tires screaming as he killed the engine.
Two uniformed officers were already halfway up the building steps, sealed black envelope in hand.
Suspension notice.
Tier 2 was happening now.
Argus shoved the truck door open and sprinted.
Third floor.
He hit the landing just as the knock came three solid raps on Chen's apartment door.
She opened it a second later, still in a black tank top and joggers, wet hair towel-wrapped. Eyes narrowed at the sight of the uniforms. "What is this?"
"Detective Amy Chen?" one of them asked, polite, neutral.
Argus stepped in fast behind them. "Officers. That's enough."
They turned.
He held up a badge. One of the last legit ones Lawson's identity had access to. "I'll take it from here."
The younger officer frowned. "Sorry, sir this was flagged for in-person confirmation."
"And now it's been confirmed. NYPD Homicide has jurisdiction. You want a fight, we can make some calls."
Both officers hesitated.
Then the older one shrugged and handed over the sealed notice. "We're just messengers."
They left.
Chen stared at Argus.
"You want to tell me what the hell is going on now?"
He handed her the notice. "Open it."
She did.
Eyes scanned it once. Then again.
"False complaint," he said. "Filed twenty minutes ago. Based on a redacted witness and an edited audio file. Internal Affairs will start sniffing around your open cases by morning."
She looked up. "This is a lie."
"I know."
Her mouth opened. Closed.
"You're being erased," Argus said. "The same way they erased Lawson. Slowly. Quietly."
He reached into his coat and pulled out the portable drive still warm, still humming. "I have part of the Pandora core. Your name's in it."
Her voice dropped. "As what?"
"Tier 2. Under evaluation. You were flagged for instability."
She laughed, sharp and bitter. "Instability. You mean for asking questions."
He nodded.
"Who's behind it?" she asked.
He hesitated.
"Argus," she said.
He flinched at the name. First time she'd said it like that.
"I need the truth. Now."
He looked her in the eye. "Lawson died because he got too close to something called Project Pandora. He was tracking it through a corporate backdoor Procyon Tech. Same people who marked Cutter for death. Same people who tried to put a bullet in you tonight."
Her brow furrowed. "Wait Cutter? That's"
"Yeah," he cut in. "That's me."
She went still.
"You've got ten seconds to hit me or leave," he said. "But if you're staying, we move now. Because Phase 3 is usually the quiet one."
The hallway light flickered.
She didn't move.
"I'm in," she said.
He exhaled once.
"Pack light."
They made it to the alley exit five minutes later. The rain had turned to mist.
Argus unlocked the backup car he'd stashed two blocks down. Basic sedan. No tech.
He opened the driver's door.
And stopped.
Chen stopped beside him.
"What?" she asked.
Stuck to the steering wheel with duct tape
A photo.
Black and white. Sharp. Her living room couch. A single bullet lodged in the drywall above it.
Written on the back:
YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD, DETECTIVE.
Chen stared at the photo. Rain tapped the roof of the car like impatient fingers. Argus peeled the duct tape free with slow, steady hands. The bullet hole in the photo lined up perfectly with the wall she'd stood in front of just thirty minutes ago.
This wasn't a warning.
It was a message from someone inside her apartment. Someone who'd been there. Close enough to plant the shot and frame the moment.
"This is fresh," Argus muttered. "Maybe an hour old."
Chen's jaw flexed. "They were in my home."
"They still might be." He opened the trunk, tossed her his spare hoodie, then popped the driver's door. "We're not going back. Not tonight. Not ever the same way."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere quiet." He slid into the driver's seat, started the engine. "Then you get the rest."
She climbed in without arguing.
The car pulled off slow. No rush. No sirens.
Not yet.
Ten minutes later, they reached a rundown mechanic's lot just off the edge of East River Drive. Fenced in. Closed for the night. Argus punched in an old keypad code behind the dumpster one he used in his previous life. The gate clicked open.
He pulled the car into the bay.
The door shut behind them like the outside world had been sealed off.
Only then did he kill the engine.
He sat there for a second, letting the silence settle.
Then turned to her.
"You're not flagged for death yet. That message it's a psychological opener. Meant to shake you, isolate you. The real wipe starts when you fight back."
"And if I don't fight?"
"They wipe you anyway. Just slower. Easier to explain."
Chen leaned back, arms crossed tight. "So what now?"
"We start ripping pieces off the machine."
She looked at him.
"I want names," she said. "You told me about Pandora. About Lawson. About you. Now I want to know who built this."
Argus hesitated. Then reached for the drive.
He plugged it into the burner tablet and opened the cloned Pandora logs. The screen lit up with lists of flagged officers, predictive behavior reports, and a series of codewords assigned to various active "protocols."
Chen scanned them with narrowed eyes.
"Some of these are real cops," she whispered.
"Yeah. Most of them never knew why their careers collapsed."
At the top of the page, a header pulsed softly.
MANTIS DIVISION – AI Oversight Layer
SUBJECT MAP: CITY-WIDE INFLUENCE GRID
ADMINISTRATORS: A. PARK | V. SPENCE | E. GRIMM
Chen pointed at the last name. "Grimm. That's a deputy commissioner."
"Which makes this bigger than just a side project."
Argus tapped open the admin activity log.
It showed staggered access times Park handled daily operations. Spence oversaw candidate vetting. But Grimm... his name only appeared after deletions.
He was the executioner.
"They've been erasing people by category," Argus said. "Instability. Empathy spikes. Whistleblower tendencies. And anyone flagged with counter-authority logic loops."
"And Lawson?" Chen asked.
He scrolled. Found it.
LAWSON, ETHAN
Status: Terminated
Justification: Phase Drift / Mission Contamination
Handler: E. GRIMM
Her hand curled into a fist.
"They planned it."
"Every detail," Argus said. "Same with me. Same with you."
"And what's this?" She pointed to another tag.
A blinking line of red.
NEXT PHASE DEPLOYMENT: TEST SUBJECT – ALTERNATE HOST ACCEPTED
Argus leaned in.
It didn't show a name.
Just a subject ID.
One he recognized.
"It's me," he said.
Chen's voice dropped. "You mean Cutter?"
"No." He sat back. "They're calling me a host. Not a person. That means they knew about the switch. Maybe even caused it."
She didn't speak for a second. Just stared.
"You think this is some kind of experiment?" she asked.
"I think I wasn't the first."
He clicked the ID.
Access denied.
Even through the admin clone.
"This goes deeper than Pandora," he muttered.
Chen looked at him. "So what do we do?"
He closed the tablet.
"We go higher."
Outside, a car pulled up to the front gate.
Headlights off.
Both of them went still.
Argus reached for the pistol under the seat. Tapped the side of Chen's arm.
"Eyes up."
The front gate creaked open.
A single figure stepped in. Hood up. Hands out. No weapon visible.
Argus raised the gun but didn't shoot.
The figure stopped halfway between the car and the fence line.
And said one word:
"Cutter."
Argus stepped out of the car slowly, gun leveled.
"Then you'd better tell me who you really are," he said.
The figure pulled back the hood.
It wasn't a stranger.
It was someone Argus buried five years ago.