Wind bells that had lulled the underquarter into a steady hush began to stutter as alarm tongues were pulled down with strings. Blue lamps along the streets shifted tone to a keen white; wardens poured out of barracks in layered mail and polar cloaks, moving with the disciplined cadence of a city that believed in order like it believed in winter.
Selene and Valeria surfaced two streets from the Great Glacial Bridge, their pale breath hissing in air that suddenly felt watched.
Valeria: "We're burned."
Selene (dryly): "We left them a sermon. It would be rude if they didn't attend."
The first squad rounded the corner with shields up—hex panes that refracted the aurora. Frost Wardens, not common patrols. Their captain's visor clicked through settings. He read Soul Aura like a book.
Captain: "Hands visible. Kneel."
Selene glanced at the street's crown and placed her palm to the ice. A film spread thin as breath. When the wardens advanced, their boots froze from their toes until it reached the tip of their hair.
Selene: "No."
Valeria was already moving—arm lengthening into a carbine that drank a strip of iron from a gutter bracket on the fly. She worked the bolt once, calmly, and put three rounds through three shields at exact angles where bending light makes blind spots. The panes spidered. The captain stumbled; his men closed ranks.
Selene: "Right. Alley."
They broke left instead.
A descant of crossbow strings sang from a balcony. Valeria's tail snapped around her thigh—instinct—and her arm reformed mid-turn, the barrel shortening as she drove a single shot through the satchel of a rooftop warden. Dampeners spilled and clattered. One rolled to the gutter, fizzing.
Selene flicked two fingers. The fizz died under a clear lid of ice that formed and sealed like a held breath.
They vaulted a market stall. The vendor hissed and hid her face; her fish stayed neat, crystals forming again around gills where Selene's wake had dusted them. The pursuit kept cadence—boots measuring distance, orders crisp enough to cut.
Valeria: "Two squads funneling from the bridge. One from the harbors."
Selene: "Then we zig."
They cut into a wind tunnel carved between two towers, and the Borealis breath tried to lift them off the floor. Selene pressed her palm to the wall; ice grew in rungs. They climbed three stories in six seconds, rolled onto a catwalk, and ran.
Below, the Frost Wardens split clean: one unit to the stairs, one to shadow the rooftops.
Valeria risked a glance over the railing. The city glowed like a constellation folded into streets.
Valeria: "They're good."
Selene (mildly): "They've had practice with invaders who thought climate was a weapon."
Valeria set her jaw. Her arm unfurled, plates catching starlight as they turned her forearm into a long, quiet sniper. She took a breath the way a soldier does when she refuses to shake.
Valeria: "Bridge turret, east node."
She fired. The admission of the shot was gentle; the effect wasn't. The turret's lens stared and died. Wardens below flinched, then corrected—new angles, new lines.
Selene touched the catwalk's rail. Frost bled down the uprights and into the braces. Metal groaned—just enough to make a warden misjudge a leap and come up short. He hit a banner rope and swung; Selene iced the rope in an instant. He hung there, breathing through his mask, surprised and alive.
They sprinted.
The catwalk delivered them to a service stairwell inlaid with a filigree of frosted glass. Selene glanced at it—admired it briefly—then broke it neatly with a heel; the shards scattered in a pattern that told her where the stairwell bent around a blind corner.
Selene: "Down three flights, east exit. We'll hit the canal."
They went down two. The third was full of wardens.
Selene: "Or two."
Valeria snapped her wrist; her arm flick-formed to a revolving cylinder that vomited a short chain made from the ring rail and a handful of screws. She whipped it low, clipping ankles; Selene salted the stone—an invisible glaze that made momentum into a habit again.
The wardens didn't fall like fools. They slowed like people who understood physics and hated it when it disagreed. One reached for a dampener and threw it; Selene cupped the air, and the dampener sat inside an ice bell that formed around it, hissing in a pretty, harmless way.
They burst onto an arcade facing the canal. Skateships lay tethered in lines, hulls creaking against frozen water. Somewhere under the bridge, a groan ran through the ice—the wounded machine's bad dream echoing up.
Valeria: "We need to reach the jet as quickly as possible."
Selene: "We need to not get caught first."
They dove into the arcade's ribcage, columns like vertebrae, shops closed behind shutters etched with quiet art. The city's eyes were open everywhere. Selene felt it press against her skin the way static does before a storm.
Valeria: "Null will read us for this."
Selene slowed a single step. It was enough to be a question.
Selene (softly): "Will he, or did he write the problem set to see what Borealis does when you draw blood under its skin?"
They ran another twenty meters in silence except for boots and breath. Valeria's shoulders were squared the way you square them to carry something heavier than your bag.
Valeria: "You think he sent us to measure their defense."
Selene: "I think he sent us to do a small job in a big place and hoped the big place would answer so loudly it would save him the trouble of asking."
Valeria didn't look at her. Her ears angled back under the hood.
Valeria (quietly): "I miss Felidra."
Selene stopped. Not all the way—just in the eyes. Enough to turn and see that the line of Valeria's mouth wasn't discipline now. It was an ache.
Selene (gently): "Your family? The work?"
Valeria: "My family. The music. The south wind that smelled like fish and salt, not stone. The way the passes sing at dusk when you've done the day's patrol and you're not dead." A small humorless huff. "Irrelevant."
Selene: "Not irrelevant."
Valeria's tail tightened against her leg. She set her jaw in the shape of a soldier again.
Valeria: "Weakness has no place in my life."
Selene: "Then don't call it weakness."
A beat. The wardens' cadence drew close again. Selene's hands went to the column; frost flowed, painting it in sheets, then stripping those sheets away as if the cold were a hand learning the stone's bones. She mapped routes, decided, and moved.
Selene (coolly): "If Null sent us to measure, we'll give him numbers, even those he didn't ask for."
Valeria: "Such as."
Selene: "How quickly a city learns. How far it goes to keep its face. Who flinches when you bruise the ice?"