Sylas woke to the sterile hum of auto-docs, their soft mechanical whirring dragging him from the void of unconsciousness. His head throbbed, a dull pulse radiating from where the Cleaner's neural dart had struck. His retinal lenses flickered offline, leaving his vision blurry, the world reduced to smeared shapes and clinical white light.
He was in a med-bay—somewhere in the Nexus, judging by the faint vibration of the Spire's atmospheric processors thrumming through the walls. His cybernetic arm twitched involuntarily as his implants struggled to reboot, sending a jolt of pain through his nervous system.Rhea loomed over him, her silhouette sharp against the med-bay's sterile glow.
Her organic eye glared, hard and unyielding, while her crimson optic whirred, scanning his vitals with cold precision. "You're lucky I dragged your sorry ass out of the Sub-Vaults," she growled, her voice a low rasp of irritation and concern. "The Syndicate's tearing the Spire apart looking for you. You're bleeding heat, Sylas. Too many eyes on you now."Sylas groaned, pushing himself upright on the med-bay cot.
The movement sent a spike of pain through his skull, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. His lenses flickered back online, overlaying his vision with a diagnostic feed: Neural overload: 47% recovery. Cybernetic synchronization: 82%. Vitals: Stable. He flexed his cybernetic fingers, testing their responsiveness. "Did you get the Cleaner's trail?" he asked, his voice rough but steady.Rhea tossed him a data shard, its matte black surface catching the light. "Partial signature, pulled from the lift's logs. She's good—damn near invisible—but she left a trace. Syndicate's disavowing her, though. Says she's gone rogue.""Rogue?" Sylas's lips curled into a grin, despite the ache in his head.
A rogue Cleaner was chaos incarnate—a ghost with no leash, no loyalty, just a trail of bodies and a knack for breaking systems. Chaos was his playground, and a player like that was exactly what he needed to upend the Nexus's fragile power balance. He slotted the shard into a portable holo-rig on the med-bay table, its interface humming to life. Fragmented data streamed across the display: encrypted comms logs, a partial ID code, and a single name—Veyra.
No surname, no origin, no affiliations beyond a kill count that scrolled longer than the Spire's tax ledgers. A perfect ghost. A perfect weapon.He was back in his office by dawn, the Nexus's neon skyline pulsing through the blast-shuttered windows. The city never slept, its towers of glass and durasteel alive with holographic billboards and the constant hum of drones.
The dataweb buzzed with chatter, a digital cacophony of deals, threats, and lies. Sylas's fake auction for the Nexus Core map—a relic of data said to hold the Spire's deepest secrets—had ignited a firestorm.
The Free Colonies had thrown in a bid of two billion credits, their encrypted offer laced with desperation. The Corporate Enclaves sent veiled threats through backchannels, promising to bury him if he crossed them. And the Void Collective, those zealots skulking in the Underdistrict's shadows, were mobilizing their fanatics, preaching about the Core as some divine artifact. Sylas didn't have the map—not yet—but the lie was working. Everyone was distracted, chasing shadows while he pulled the strings. Distraction was his currency, and he was spending it freely."Rhea, get me a line to the Free Colonies," Sylas said, leaning back in his chair as he spun up a new encryption protocol on his console.
The interface glowed, a web of code weaving itself into a secure channel. "Tell them I'll sell the map for three billion, but only if they hit the Syndicate's docks in Sector 8. Hard."Rhea's optic whirred, a faint mechanical click betraying her skepticism. She crossed her arms, her leather coat creaking. "You're starting a war, Sylas. You know that, right?""No," he corrected, his grin sharpening. "I'm clearing the board." The Syndicate would be too busy fending off the Colonies' raiders to chase him. The Void Collective would think he'd betrayed them, keeping their zealots scrambling. And Veyra, the rogue Cleaner? She'd come to him, drawn by the chaos like a moth to plasma.
A ghost like her couldn't resist a game this loud.By midday, the Nexus was burning. Holo-newsfeeds lit up with reports of skirmishes in Sector 8, where Syndicate enforcer ships clashed with Free Colony raiders in a storm of plasma fire and kinetic rounds. Sylas watched from his office, sipping black-market synth-coffee that tasted like burnt circuits and ambition. His spy-drones, cloaked and skimming the city's underbelly, fed him real-time data: Syndicate troop movements, dock security protocols, and—most crucially—the status of the Deep Vaults. With the Syndicate distracted, the Vaults' auto-turrets had been diverted to the docks, leaving the Sub-Vaults—where the Nexus Core likely hid—vulnerable.
It was the opening he needed, but first, he had to deal with Veyra. Her data-core, the key to her movements and motives, was his next target.His comms pinged, the signal unencrypted—a rare and deliberate move in the Nexus's paranoid ecosystem. A holo-image flickered to life above his desk, projecting a man in a pristine Spire suit, his face gene-modded to an unsettling perfection. His cheekbones were too sharp, his skin too smooth, his eyes cold as the dying light of Klyros, the system's fading star. "Vren," the man said, his voice smooth as polished durasteel. "I'm Executor Talis, Corporate Enclaves. Your auction ends now. Meet me in the Spires, or we expose every deal you've ever made.
Every contact, every credit, every body you've buried."Sylas leaned forward, unfazed, his fingers drumming lightly on the console. "Expose me? You'd need my dataweb key first, Talis. And I don't share."Talis's smile was a blade, sharp and precise. "We have Veyra," he said, the words landing like a shock grenade. "She's not as loyal as you think."The feed cut, leaving the office in silence. Sylas's fingers froze on the console, his grin fading.
For the first time in years, doubt crept in—not fear, but the nagging sense he'd miscalculated. Veyra, a rogue Cleaner, was a wildcard, but if the Enclaves had her, the game had just tilted. He leaned back, staring at the neon skyline as his mind raced. Had Veyra played him? Was she a double agent, feeding the Enclaves his moves? Or was Talis bluffing, trying to flush him out? The Nexus Core was still out there, buried in the Sub-Vaults, and every faction wanted it.
Sylas needed to move faster, play harder, and trust less."Rhea," he called, his voice steady despite the storm in his head. "Pull every backchannel you've got. I want eyes on Talis, the Enclaves, and anything tied to Veyra. And get me a layout of the Sub-Vaults—every vent, every access point."Rhea nodded, her optic glowing as she patched into the dataweb. "You're walking into a trap, you know.""Maybe," Sylas said, his grin returning, though it was colder now. "But traps work both ways."He stood, pulling his coat over his cybernetic arm. The Nexus was a machine, and he was its rogue cog, turning chaos into opportunity. Veyra, Talis, the Syndicate, the Colonies—they were all pieces on his board. And Sylas Vren never lost a game he'd rigged himself.