The Tesla-Edison hybrid lamps hummed at eleven thirty, casting sharp shadows through the windows of the Bounty Hunter Association office. Sean Covington crushed his sixth Coca-Cola bottle against his desk, glass fragments scattering across surveillance footage printouts. Fourteen hours of analyzing Edison-scope recordings had left his eyes burning with the acrid smell of electrical components overheating.
"You're going to vibrate right out of that chair," Estela Montenegro said from her Underwood typewriter, not looking up from Manager Delgado's disaster of a filing system. The metallic clacking of keys filled the silence between them. "At this rate, your heart will give out before you solve anything."
Sean rubbed his temples, tasting copper from where he'd bitten his tongue earlier. The familiar ache reminded him of taking punches at the gym, except this pain came from staring at screens instead of absorbing hits. At least physical pain made sense. This investigation felt like shadowboxing. "Someone's feeding these street thugs cybernetic ammunition. The ballistics don't match anything in our standard catalogs."
"And you think staring at the same footage will magically reveal new evidence?" Estela's dark eyes held that mix of irritation and concern that always made his chest tighten. The same look that made him want to either argue with her or protect her from everything dangerous in the world.
Sean pushed down that second impulse. Caring about people was how you got hurt. How you gave others power over you. "The pattern's there. These enhanced rounds aren't random black market purchases. Someone with serious resources is arming local gangs."
He stood, joints protesting with audible pops. "Want some real coffee? Not the motor oil from the break room."
Estela paused her typing, the sudden silence making the office feel larger. "You offering to steal Delgado's Colombian reserve again?"
"Resource redistribution. The man makes three times our salary and can't organize a paper clip." Sean headed for the break room before she could say no. Before he could start caring too much about her answer.
The pneumatic tube system wheezed as he worked, delivering more reports from headquarters with the smell of oiled brass and compressed air. Sean found Delgado's hidden coffee stash behind boxes of ammunition receipts. The Italian espresso machine gurgled to life, steam hissing as it filled the silence with mechanical opera.
"Sean, there's something wrong with these patterns," Estela called from the main office, her voice carrying a new edge of concern.
"What kind of wrong?"
"The ammunition signatures. They're not just enhanced. They're tracking specific frequency patterns used by our own equipment."
Sean's hand stilled on the coffee grounds, the rich aroma suddenly cloying in his nostrils. Pain flickered through his temples, the kind that usually meant trouble was coming. His body had learned those warning signs after years of taking hits. "That's impossible. Our tech specs are classified."
"Unless someone with access is providing them."
Internal corruption. Every hunter's nightmare. Sean started back toward the main office, but stopped in the doorway. Something about the way Estela was bent over her desk, completely focused on the data, made his throat tight. She looked so damn vulnerable sitting there, the warm lamplight catching the small mole on her right cheek.
He shook his head hard. That kind of thinking got you killed.
The building's security system chimed, its brass bell echoing through empty corridors.
The elevator. At 11:35 PM.
"Estela," Sean called softly. "Who has night access?"
"Manager Delgado, Captain Martinez, Director Vasquez." Her voice carried new tension, barely audible above the hum of electric lighting. "They're all off duty."
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway. Multiple sets. Moving with precision that belonged to military units, not late night janitors. The sound of leather boots on polished terrazzo flooring.
Sean grabbed his Colt .45 from the break room cabinet, the cold steel grounding him. The familiar weight settled his nerves, but his eyes kept drifting back to Estela at her desk. Exposed. Defensible position. He wanted to tell her to hide, to get behind him, to let him handle this.
Instead, he said, "Get to the emergency telegraph."
Three figures emerged from the corridor shadows. Enhanced. Their tactical gear gleamed with modifications that pushed beyond standard military issue. Professional. Expensive. This wasn't street gang equipment.
The lead figure moved differently from his companions. Where they advanced with mechanical precision, he carried himself with the fluid confidence of a true believer. His pale face showed surgical enhancement, but his dark eyes burned with something organic. Fanatical.
"Brothers," he said to his companions in accented English, "the digital revolution begins with paper trails. How wonderfully ironic."
One of the other soldiers, younger with cybernetic eye implants that glowed softly red, shifted uncomfortably. "Target acquisition only, Hakim. The Americans trained us for surgical strikes, not philosophical debates."
"The Americans trained us to be their tools," Hakim replied, his voice carrying the fervor of a convert. "Dr. al-Zawri opened our eyes to the greater purpose. We are not mere contractors. We are instruments of digital liberation."
The third soldier, massive with reinforced limbs that hummed with hydraulic pressure, spoke in a Russian accent. "Philosophy later, Hakim. Mission parameters now. The girl has already activated emergency protocols."
Estela's finger had indeed found the telegraph key. Electrical signals raced through copper lines toward PAD headquarters.
Hakim's head tilted slightly, enhanced hearing picking up frequencies beyond human range. "Emergency signal transmitted. Expected response time: four minutes, twelve seconds. More than adequate for our purposes."
His eyes fixed on Estela with unsettling intensity. "The capitalist machine requires so much paperwork, doesn't it, sister? All those files. All those secrets. Do you ever wonder who truly benefits from your labor?"
"I wonder who benefits from breaking into government offices," Estela replied, her voice steadier than Sean expected.
Hakim smiled, revealing teeth that had been replaced with titanium implants carved with Arabic script. "A fair question. We serve no government. No corporation. No false flag of nationalism." His voice rose with religious fervor. "We serve the inevitable revolution that will free humanity from digital slavery."
He moved faster than physics should allow.
Sean threw himself forward as Hakim's enhanced fist shattered Estela's desk. Mahogany exploded across the office, the sound like artillery in the confined space. Her typewriter crashed to the floor, keys scattering like broken teeth, metal ringing against terrazzo.
"Run!" Sean emptied his clip at the closest supersoldado, bullets sparking off advanced armor. The rounds that should have dropped a normal man barely staggered him.
The young soldier with cyber-eyes, calling himself Yusuf, moved toward the filing cabinets with reluctant efficiency. The massive Russian, Dimitri, positioned himself to block the exits, hydraulic servos whining under his weight.
Hakim advanced on Sean with mechanical precision, but his eyes held organic madness.
Sean's nanobots activated as Hakim's fist connected with his ribs. The impact should have shattered bone, but instead his body drank up the force like a familiar friend. Pain flooded his nervous system, sharp and clean, carrying with it the metallic taste of blood and the electric burn of enhanced combat systems. He'd learned to welcome that sensation in his father's house, when absorbing punishment was the only way to survive.
Hakim's surgically enhanced eyes widened as Sean began to glow with accumulated energy. "Fascinating. American nanobotic technology. How many innocents died in its development?"
"Crime," Sean growled, feeling power build in his bones like static electricity before a storm.
"And Punishment."
The uppercut sent Hakim flying into a support beam with a sound like a church bell tolling. Steel groaned. The enhanced soldier slumped but stayed conscious, enhanced bone density keeping him functional.
"Your anger feeds the machine, brother," Hakim said, wiping blood from his mouth with almost religious reverence. "But anger without purpose is just violence. We offer you purpose."
Meanwhile, Yusuf had reached the classified files, his cybernetic implants interfacing directly with the filing system. Data streamed across screens faster than human eyes could track, but Sean caught the hesitation in the young soldier's movements.
"I don't like this, Hakim," Yusuf said, his enhanced vision scanning the data. "These files... they contain information about our own augmentation procedures. The Americans kept records of everything they did to us."
"All the more reason to complete our mission," Dimitri rumbled from his position near the exits, but even his mechanical voice carried uncertainty.
"Project Lazarus assets located," Yusuf reported, but his tone held none of Hakim's fervor. "This data... it shows what they were planning to do to captured ATA operatives. Human experimentation. Digital consciousness transfer. We're stealing our own torture records."
Sean's blood went cold. They weren't just after random intelligence. These supersoldados were recovering evidence of their own creation. Someone had told them about Lazarus because they were its victims.
Energy weapons discharged as Dimitri's patience ran out. Sean rolled as the wall dissolved into molten slag, the heat searing his exposed skin, the smell of vaporized concrete and metal filling his nostrils. This technology belonged in Tesla's private workshops, not a street fight.
Through the chaos, he caught sight of Estela diving behind an overturned desk. Smart. But not safe enough. Not nearly safe enough.
"Brother," Hakim called to Sean over the sound of destruction, "you protect her because she matters to you. This is human. This is beautiful. But the Americans who created us severed those connections. We remember love only as phantom pain."
The office windows exploded inward, glass shards catching the electric light like falling stars.
PAD tactical rappelled from the roof, their equipment designed for superhuman threats, boots hitting the floor with coordinated precision. But the supersoldados moved like they'd expected this exact response.
"Thirty seconds ahead of schedule," Hakim observed with professional interest. "The Americans taught us their response protocols very thoroughly."
Flash-bangs detonated in sequence, turning the world into chaos of light and sound that tasted like copper and burned ozone. Smoke grenades filled the air with acrid chemical fog. When Sean's vision cleared, the supersoldados had vanished, leaving only scorch marks and the lingering smell of combat stimulants.
Blood marked where they'd stood, but also something else. Yusuf had left behind a small data crystal, intentionally dropped near the destroyed filing cabinet.
Kasper de la Fuente emerged from the smoke, exoskeleton gleaming with battle damage, servo motors whining as they compensated for structural stress. Douglas Berston followed, Colt drawn and tracking for targets, his breathing controlled but his eyes showing the adrenaline spike of a man thinking about his own family's safety.
"Where?" Kasper demanded, his voice distorted by the exoskeleton's speakers.
"Arsenal. Three floors down." Sean wiped blood from his split lip, tasting iron and defeat. "They took what they came for. But they left something too."
Douglas knelt beside the destroyed workstations, his detective instincts engaged despite the carnage. As a father, scenes like this hit harder than he liked to admit. Civilian workspaces turned into war zones reminded him what could happen to innocent people like Marcus. "How did they breach security this easily?"
"Inside information." Sean's nanobots buzzed with stored damage, making his skin crawl like ants made of electricity. "But it's more than that. They knew our protocols because Americans trained them. These aren't random enhanced soldiers. They're ATA operatives who were created by our own people."
But his attention kept drifting to where Estela had been hiding. Was she hurt? Had she made it out? The questions tasted like panic in the back of his throat.
Stop. Caring was a luxury he couldn't afford.
The arsenal's security door hung twisted from its frame, metal groaning as residual heat made it expand. Emergency lighting bathed everything in hellish red that reminded Sean uncomfortably of his father's rages. Sean slipped through first, Colt reloaded, the weight of it steady in his hand.
Rows of confiscated weapons lined steel shelves. Crates of evidence created a maze of shadows that seemed to move independently of their light sources. The air smelled of gun oil, electrical burns, and something organic that made his stomach clench.
A whimper echoed from deeper in the room, barely audible above the hum of emergency power systems.
Sean's heart hammered as he followed the sound, each step echoing with metallic certainty off the concrete floor. Behind stacked crates marked "Classified: Project Lazarus," he found her.
Estela had built a barricade using riot shields and desk components. The structure showed calculated angles distributing weight across multiple load-bearing points, geometric precision that would have made her brother proud. Blood streaked her navy blouse, but she was breathing, her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of someone who'd refused to give up.
Relief flooded through him so hard it almost buckled his knees, tasting like copper pennies and salvation. Then anger followed. Anger at himself for caring this much, for letting someone get close enough to matter.
"How did you build this?" he asked, voice rougher than intended, catching on the words.
"Structural mechanics from my brother's engineering courses. Load distribution and stress analysis." She managed a shaky laugh that carried the metallic edge of controlled hysteria. "I calculated optimal bracing angles to withstand 200-kilogram impact force."
Smart woman. Too smart to be sitting in this death trap because he'd been too proud to send her home earlier. "Where are they now?"
The lights died with the finality of a coffin closing.
Emergency power kicked in a heartbeat later, pulsing red like a mechanical heart. In that moment of absolute darkness, Sean heard movement. Coordinated. Professional. The soft whisper of enhanced limbs moving through combat-ready positions.
"They were waiting," Estela whispered, her breath warm against the cold air. "Playing games."
Three supersoldados emerged from different directions, surrounding them with the precision of a closing trap. They'd been hunting Estela for sport while Sean stumbled around in the dark, and the knowledge tasted like failure.
But now Sean could see the differences between them that he'd missed upstairs. Hakim moved with the fluid grace of a true believer, every gesture carrying religious significance. Yusuf advanced with reluctant professionalism, his enhanced eyes scanning constantly for threats and escape routes. Dimitri positioned himself like a fortress, hydraulic systems adjusting to create maximum defensive coverage.
"Sean Covington," Hakim said, his voice carrying the fervor of a convert addressing a potential disciple. "The Americans gave you power without purpose. We offer you both. Join us in the digital liberation of humanity."
Sean felt something crack inside his chest, the careful walls he'd built to keep people at distance beginning to crumble like ancient masonry. The rules he'd made about not getting attached crumbled under the weight of seeing Estela's determined courage.
"Here's the thing about your liberation," Sean said, his voice deadly quiet, tasting the words like poison. "It looks a lot like slavery to me."
But as he prepared to attack, his tactical mind raced through scenarios painted in blood and failure. Three enhanced soldiers with superior technology and combat experience. Limited cover in a confined space. If he engaged directly, they might kill Estela while he was fighting.
If he surrendered, they'd take him and probably execute her as a witness.
If he created a distraction, she might escape, but he'd lose any chance of stopping whatever Phase Two involved.
No good choices. Only degrees of disaster that all tasted like ashes.
Sean made his decision with the finality of a closing door.
He activated his nanobots and threw himself at Hakim, not to win, but to draw their fire away from Estela. Every impact would hurt, but the pain would make him stronger. "Run! Get to the stairwell!"
Hakim caught him mid-air, enhanced strength crushing his ribs with hydraulic precision. Sean felt bones crack like breaking kindling, but his nanobots absorbed every ounce of damage. Pain sang through his nervous system like a familiar song, sharp and almost comforting in its predictability.
"Your sacrifice is beautiful, brother," Hakim said with genuine admiration. "This is what they tried to take from us. The willingness to suffer for others."
Estela hadn't moved. She crouched behind her barricade, eyes wide but determined, her small hands steady despite the chaos around her. Why wasn't she running?
Yusuf produced an electrical weapon, Tesla coils crackling with lethal voltage that painted everything in sharp blue-white light. "Hakim, we have our orders. Extraction, not conversion."
"Sometimes conversion requires demonstration," Hakim replied, but Sean caught the subtle positioning as Yusuf aimed the weapon not at Sean's center mass, but at his shoulder. A disabling shot, not a killing one.
"Compliance would have been simpler," Dimitri rumbled, but his massive frame shifted slightly to block any killing shots aimed at Estela.
Sean twisted desperately as electricity arced toward his chest. The weapon struck his shoulder instead, sending voltage through his body that made every muscle contract simultaneously, the taste of copper and ozone flooding his mouth.
His nanobots tried to process the electrical damage, but energy weapons operated on principles beyond their design parameters. Pain overwhelmed storage capacity, flooding his nervous system with feedback that made him scream, raw and animalistic.
He collapsed, every nerve on fire, muscles spasming with electrical aftershocks. Hakim raised his weapon for what should have been a killing blow.
The arsenal door exploded with the sound of the world ending.
Kasper came through the wreckage like mechanized vengeance, exoskeleton systems tracking targets with mathematical precision. Douglas followed with tactical specialists carrying weapons designed for superhuman threats, their coordinated movement speaking of professional training and grim determination.
Douglas's jaw tightened as he took in the scene, his protective instincts as a father flaring at seeing civilians terrorized by enhanced soldiers who'd once been someone's children too.
But instead of immediate violence, Hakim raised his hands in a gesture of surrender that somehow managed to look like a blessing.
"We have what we came for," he announced, and Sean realized the entire engagement had been a performance. A distraction while Yusuf downloaded the Project Lazarus files.
"The revolution is patient," Hakim continued, his eyes finding Sean's with something like compassion. "We will meet again, brother. When you understand what the Americans really did to all of us."
The three supersoldados activated some kind of cloaking technology, fading from view like ghosts made of static and regret.
But they left behind more than destruction. Yusuf's data crystal lay near the filing cabinets, and Dimitri had deliberately damaged the wall to reveal hidden wiring that suggested surveillance equipment.
Sean forced himself upright through pure stubbornness, nanobots slowly converting electrical trauma into usable energy. But instead of fighting, he grabbed Estela's hand and pulled her toward the exit, her fingers warm and steady in his grip.
Behind them, the arsenal smoldered with the smell of burned metal and lost innocence.
They reached the stairwell as emergency systems wailed. Sean and Estela collapsed against the wall, both breathing hard, the taste of smoke and fear sharp in the air between them.
"Are you hurt?" Sean scanned her for injuries with desperate intensity he couldn't hide anymore, his voice catching on words that mattered too much.
"Just scared." She looked at him with new understanding, seeing past the walls he'd tried so hard to maintain. "Sean... what you did back there... your ability..."
"Crime and Punishment. I absorb damage and return it." The admission felt strange, like confessing to a sin he'd committed against himself. He'd never told anyone about learning to love the taste of his own blood, about finding strength in agony. About how his father's fists had taught him that pain was just another tool.
But looking at Estela, seeing how she'd refused to abandon him even when he'd told her to run, something in his chest cracked open completely like an eggshell revealing new life.
"Thank you," she whispered, her breath warm against the cold air between them. "For coming after me."
Sean felt the last of his walls crumble, reduced to rubble by her quiet courage. All those careful rules about not getting attached, not caring too much. Looking at her now, he realized it was too late for any of that.
The damage was already done. He cared. Despite every lesson his father had beaten into him about the cost of vulnerability.
"Always, princesa. Always."
The words hung between them, heavy with implications neither was ready to examine but both understood. For once, Sean didn't try to take them back.
An hour later, PAD medical bay:
Douglas studied the recovered data crystal with methodical attention, his detective instincts parsing information that shouldn't exist outside theoretical physics journals. The supersoldados had left them evidence of their own creation, files detailing enhancement procedures and psychological conditioning that turned captured ATA operatives into weapons.
"Project Lazarus," he murmured to Kasper, who sat having his exoskeleton examined by technicians whose faces showed the strain of processing what they'd seen. "They didn't just target those files randomly. These soldiers were recovering evidence of their own torture and enhancement."
Kasper's expression darkened behind his visor. "They were created by our own people and turned into weapons against us. Someone's been playing both sides of this war."
Across the bay, Sean sat on an examination table while a medic treated his electrical burns, the smell of antiseptic sharp in the recycled air. Estela refused to leave despite repeated offers to go home, her presence a steady anchor in the chaos.
"They knew exactly what to look for," she reported to Douglas, her administrative training keeping her voice steady despite everything she'd witnessed. "But they also left us intelligence about their own operations. This wasn't just theft. It was some kind of message."
Douglas nodded grimly, his mind already cataloging the implications. Enhanced supersoldados created from captured ATA operatives. Weapons technology that surpassed government arsenals. Someone with resources and motivation to wage war against the institutions meant to protect civilians, using victims as weapons against their former allies.
A young PAD analyst approached with a telegraph message, face pale with exhaustion and growing fear. "Sir? We intercepted communications about the attack. Multiple encrypted transmissions, all carrying the same message."
"What message?"
The analyst's voice caught on the words. "Phase One complete. Lazarus assets acquired. Primary targets identified and tagged for extraction. Initiate Phase Two per operational timeline. The digital revolution begins at dawn."
The medical bay fell silent except for electrical equipment humming and the distant wail of emergency vehicles. Whatever had begun tonight was just the opening move in a larger game that stretched back to American intelligence operations and forward into a technological revolution that promised to reshape the world.
They were already behind, playing catch-up to an enemy who knew their every move because they'd been trained by the same people who'd created the systems they were now fighting against.