The air in the old black market was a soup of stale sweat and rust.
It wasn't the Neon Bazaar yet—that glittering, chaotic sprawl was still a year from being carved out of the district's corpse.
This was its precursor, a maze of interconnected cargo containers, tarpaulin tunnels, and crumbling alcoves under flickering emergency lighting, where deals were whispered and goods changed hands in the shadows.
Ember moved through the cramped chaos like a ghost in her own life.
She kept her head down, her dark red hair tucked under a nondescript hood, her posture tense.
The stolen datastick in her inner pocket felt like a live coal against her ribs.
It contained everything she'd risked her life to pull from WhiteRoot's servers during her final, furious days as their "security"—shipping manifests for unmarked transports, encrypted personnel logs, and references to a project only ever called "LOTUS."
And her sister, Ellie's name was tagged in three of them.
She pushed past a curtain of heavy plastic beads into a deeper, quieter pocket of the market.
The noise of bartering and machinery faded, replaced by the low hum of climate control units and the acrid smell of soldering iron and stim-sticks.
Raker's spot was tucked between a gutted vending machine and a load-bearing pillar crusted with decades of layered graffiti.
He sat on an overturned crate, as much a fixture of the place as the rust.
The chrome-plated jaw still reflected the sickly green light of a nearby work lamp.
The scars along his temple were a bit deeper, the hollows under his augmented eyes a bit darker.
One eye was organic, sharp and weary, the other was a flickering mechanical orb that never seemed to focus on one thing at a time.
He was working through a stim-stick, the ember glowing bright with each inhale.
He didn't look up as she approached.
"Missy," he said, his voice a rough scrape, like gravel dragged over metal.
He blew out a plume of bitter smoke. "Back again. Desperation usually breeds idiocy. But seeing the look on your face… you won't stop at nothing. Even if nothing is all that's left."
Ember didn't flinch at the recognition or the cynicism.
She slid onto a smaller crate opposite him, the movement stiff with lingering pain from a recent close call with WhiteRoot's patrol drones.
"I need the files cracked," she said, her voice low and flat.
She placed the datastick on the crate between them.
Raker's organic eye finally slid to the drive, then back to her face.
The mechanical one whirred softly, its lens contracting. "Cracking a corporates black-box encryption isn't a back-alley job. That's a 'get disappeared by corporate black-ops' job. The tools for that… they don't come cheap. Or clean."
"I'm not asking for clean," Ember said, her jaw tight. "I'm asking for the possible."
Raker let out a long, tired sigh.
He took a final drag on the stim-stick, then crushed it under his boot.
With a grunt, he leaned over and pulled a heavy, reinforced case from behind his crate.
He flipped the latches.
Inside was a nest of tangled wires, jury-rigged circuit boards, and a central processing unit that looked like it had been salvaged from a downed military satellite.
It hummed with a low, unhealthy vibration.
"This," he said, patting the monstrosity, "is the shadiest thing in my shop. A decryption rig. Stolen from a Myriad Labs scrap heap. It doesn't crack codes—it brutalizes them. Fries itself a little every time you use it. And it leaves a footprint in the spectrum about as subtle as a gunshot in a library. Anyone with the right sensors will know someone's prying."
He looked at her, his expression unreadable. "You sure you want to ring that bell?"
Ember stared at the machine, then at the drive.
She knew how fucking absurd it was.
A lone woman, armed with stolen data and black-market scrap, trying to wage war against a pharmaceutical empire that owned city blocks and private armies.
It wasn't a fight.
It was suicide.
But who else was there?
Her old co-workers from The Gilded Cage were either dead, bought off, or too scared to whisper her name.
The Junkyard gangs wanted credits or blood, not a cause.
The other corporations saw her as a loose end, not an ally.
She was utterly, completely alone.
Her sister was gone.
Swallowed by WhiteRoot' "LOTUS" project.
Vanished from the hideout without a struggle, leaving behind only a single, cryptic note: Don't look for me.
That had been six months ago.
Six months of hacking, stealing, running.
Six months of watching her old life burn behind her.
"I'd still ring it," Ember said, her voice hollow with a resolve that had calcified into something harder than bone.
Raker studied her for another long moment.
Then he gave a single, sharp nod. "Your funeral. But you're paying up front. And not in credits."
He leaned forward, the chrome of his jaw catching the sickly light.
His organic eye held hers, while the mechanical one flickered, scanning her face as if assessing her capacity for the task.
"I need a clean biometric passkey. Not a copy, not a spoof. A live, administrative-grade key for the Sector 12 automated waste reclamation hub."
He let the requirement hang in the air.
The Sector 12 hub was a Nimbrix-controlled facility.
Heavily automated, lightly staffed, but protected by layered glyph-locks and motion-trackers.
Getting a passkey meant bypassing security, subduing or co-opting a supervisor, and extracting the data without tripping alarms.
It was a job in itself—a test of her skills, and a way for Raker to get paid without ever leaving his crate.
"Can you get it?" he asked, his tone making it clear that a 'no' would end the transaction here and now.
Ember didn't hesitate.
The answer was already forming before he finished speaking, born of a resolve that had burned away every other option. "Yes."
Raker studied her for another long moment, the stim-stick smoke curling between them like a grey ghost.
He saw the exhaustion etched around her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, the raw, unprotected need in her gaze.
He also saw the hardness beneath it—the flint edge of someone who had already lost too much to back down.
Finally, he gave a low, grunting sound that wasn't quite approval.
"A deal, then."
He didn't hand her the decryption rig.
Instead, he leaned back and took another stim-stick from a worn case, lighting it with a precise flick of his thumb.
The message was silent but unmistakable.
You bring me the key. Then you get the machine.
No trust.
No credit.
Just the oldest law in the Junkyard: proof before product.
Ember understood.
She stood up, the movement stiff.
The drive felt heavier in her pocket, the phantom weight of her sister's absence heavier still.
"I'll be back before the shift change at the hub," she said, her voice leaving no room for doubt.
Raker merely took a drag, the ember flaring in the dimness, his flickering mechanical eye already looking past her, toward the next customer, the next deal.
He'd seen a hundred desperate souls walk out of this market on impossible errands.
Most didn't come back.
"Yeah, see you," he said, the words swallowed by smoke.
Ember turned and pushed back through the plastic bead curtain, disappearing into the noisy, shadowed maze of the black market, one more ghost on a suicide mission.
***
The heavy, familiar sound of Blaze's boots on the hideout's metal grating announced his return long before he appeared in the doorway.
The rhythm was different tonight—lighter, almost buoyant, with a bounce that spoke of victory, not just survival.
Ash didn't look up from the cracked tablet in his hands, its screen glowing with dense columns of text—market reports, shipment schedules, the dry breadcrumbs of his intelligence work.
"You're back early," Ash remarked, his voice flat with distraction. "How was the shit-pay gig? Boring as expected?"
"It was great!" Blaze's voice cut through the damp, stale air of the hideout, too loud, too bright.
It wasn't his usual growl of satisfaction or his theatrical purr.
This was genuine, unfiltered excitement.
That finally made Ash glance over, one eyebrow arched skeptically.
"Really? With that kind of pay? Did they pay you in compliments and a free drink?"
Blaze didn't answer with words.
He strode to the cluttered central table—scattered with Ash's dataslates, Cinder's cleaning kits, and the remnants of a half-dismantled radio—and placed the gunmetal-grey case he'd been carrying squarely in the only clear spot.
It landed with a solid, weighted thud that vibrated through the table, making a loose screw roll and clatter to the floor.
Ash's eyes snapped fully to the case, his casual dismissal evaporating.
He set the tablet down slowly. "What's that?"
"The payment," Blaze said, a wide, sharp grin spreading across his face.
Ash stared.
He looked from the unadorned, serious case to Blaze's triumphant expression, then back.
His mind, always calculating, always suspicious, ran through the possibilities.
A case that size could hold cred-sticks.
Or drugs.
Or severed heads.
But nothing that would explain the look on Blaze's face.
Or the sheer, dense weight implied by that sound.
Bewilderment washed over him, cold and sudden.
The low-paying job at the cabaret club… had paid in something that wasn't money at all.
Something that made Blaze look like a kid who'd just been handed the keys to the city.
Slowly, Ash reached out, his fingers hovering over the cool metal latch.
But just as Ash's fingers were about to brush the cold metal latch, Blaze's hand shot out and snatched the case back, sliding it smoothly across the table toward himself.
"Nuh-uh," Blaze said, his grin turning mischievous, almost playful. "Not for your grubby little paws. This… is for your eyes only."
Ash pulled his hand back, an incredulous look tightening his features. "My eyes only? You march in here vibrating like an overcharged battery, slam a mystery box on my table, and now it's a secret? What is this, a birthday party?"
Blaze didn't answer.
He held the case steady with one hand, his other hovering over the latch.
His expression shifted from playful to something more intense, more deliberate.
He wanted Ash to watch.
He wanted to see the exact moment of understanding.
"Pay attention," Blaze said, his voice dropping to a low, theatrical murmur. "This is what a real investment looks like."
With a deliberate, slow motion, he flipped the latch.
The sound was a sharp click in the quiet hideout.
He lifted the lid.
Ash leaned forward, his skepticism warring with burning curiosity.
His eyes, sharp and calculating, fixed on the open case.
Inside, cradled in the shock-absorbent foam, the crimson conduit lay revealed.
It was not like the utilitarian, gunmetal-grey prototypes Ash had seen in black-market listings.
This was something else entirely—a sleek, predatory artifact.
The deep blood-red casing seemed to swallow the hideout's dim light, while the inlaid silver glyphs along its length glowed with a faint, internal pulse, like a sleeping heartbeat.
It looked less manufactured and more… grown.
Forged.
It radiated potential, violence, and immense, silent cost.
Ash's breath hitched.
All the color drained from his face, replaced by a stunned, almost painful blankness.
His jaw went slightly slack.
The clever, cynical commentary died on his tongue.
For a long second, he just stared, his mind visibly short-circuiting as it tried to reconcile the shit-pay gig with the million-credit weapon now glowing softly on their scrap-metal table.
Blaze watched him, and he couldn't help it—a low, rich chuckle escaped him.
He had seen Ash scared, angry, cunning, and resigned.
But he had never seen him look like this: utterly, completely floored.
The sight was more satisfying than the whiskey, more thrilling than the secret elevator.
The master schemer, the man who always had an angle, a backup plan, a cutting remark, was rendered utterly speechless, his wide eyes locked on the impossible artifact glowing on their table.
Before the silence could stretch any further, a new sound cut through the hideout's stillness—another set of boots on the metal grating outside.
These steps were lighter, crisper, perfectly measured.
They didn't announce a presence so much as they insinuated it.
The door slid open with a soft scrape, and Cinder stepped inside.
She looked weary in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
Her dark tactical gear was dusted with the fine, grey grime of the border zones, and her severe ponytail was slightly frayed.
The sharp planes of her face were set in her usual mask of detached focus, but the faint shadows under her pale grey eyes spoke of two days of uninterrupted surveillance.
"Great timing!" Blaze announced, his voice booming with renewed energy. "Cinder's here now as well. We need to discuss something."
Cinder paused just inside the doorway, her gaze sweeping the scene: Ash, pale and staring; Blaze, vibrating with suppressed triumph; and the open metal case on the table, its crimson contents humming with a faint, ominous energy.
Her mind processed it in a microsecond.
She was too pragmatic to show surprise.
Instead, a faint line of annoyance appeared between her brows.
"Whatever you're going to tell me," she said, her voice dry as desert stone, "can it wait for a shower and a systems check? I've been breathing border dust for over forty-eight hours."
"Just sit down for now," Blaze said, waving a dismissive hand.
His eyes never left the conduit. "No one here is going to smell you. This is priority."
Cinder's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Being ordered around, especially when she was the one who'd just completed the legwork for their next job, grated against her professional pride.
But she was a creature of efficiency.
Arguing would waste more time.
With a quiet, controlled exhale, she moved to the table and sat in the empty chair opposite Ash, her posture rigid.
Her eyes flicked to the crimson conduit, then back to Blaze's face, waiting.
"We've got a new mission," Blaze stated, as if announcing a festival.
"Is that the reason for that… thing?" Ash finally found his voice, jabbing a finger toward the open case.
His tone was a mix of awe and accusation. "But what about the other one? The convoy job? The one Cinder just spent two days chasing?"
Blaze shrugged, the motion casual, final. "We scrap it."
The words landed in the small room like a physical blow.
"What?!" Cinder's voice was a sharp, icy crack.
The detached mask shattered, revealing pure, incandescent irritation.
"What about the time I wasted staking out that route? The risk profiles I built? The shift patterns, the guard rotations, the escape vectors? You're telling me to throw two days of precise intelligence into the trash because you found a shinier toy?!"
Her grey eyes were locked on Blaze, colder than the void between stars.
"Basically, yes," Blaze said, his grin unrepentant in the face of Cinder's frosty glare.
Ash let out a long, weary sigh, dragging a hand down his face.
The shock of the crimson conduit was now being eclipsed by the headache of logistics.
"Blaze. You're our frontliner. Our only frontliner. We built the convoy job around your skill set. Besides, we can't just scrap a mission whenever we get a better offer. It hits our reputation. Hard. And we'd owe GhostKey a cancellation fee that would clean out our operating budget for the next three months."
He gestured toward Cinder. "She didn't spend two days in the dirt for fun. That was an investment. You're asking us to burn it."
Blaze listened, but his expression didn't change.
The calculations of reputation and credits seemed small, distant things compared to the hum of the weapon in the case.
He looked from Ash's pragmatic worry to Cinder's silent, simmering fury.
Then he shrugged.
"If I'm the only frontliner," he said, his tone deceptively light. "Then, time for an upgrade."
In one smooth motion, he reached to his side, unclipped the familiar, gunmetal-grey Ignis-7 prototype from his belt, and tossed it underhand across the table.
It landed with a clatter in front of Ash, skidding to a stop against his forearm.
"Problem solved," Blaze announced. "Now you're a frontliner, too."
Ash stared down at the conduit he'd once watched Blaze wield with terrifying, beautiful control.
It felt alien in his personal space.
Heavy.
Hot from Blaze's body heat.
A tool he had coveted and feared in equal measure.
But it was also the old model.
The one Blaze had just replaced.
The message was as clear as it was insulting: You can have my leftovers. I'm moving on.
Cinder watched the exchange, her irritation hardening into something colder, more clinical.
She looked at the Ignis-7 in front of Ash, then at the predatory crimson artifact still glowing in its case.
Her mind was no longer on wasted time.
It was on the imbalance of power shifting in the room, and the unknown corporate hand that had just placed a new piece on their board.
"You're trading a known job for an unknown patron," she stated, her voice flat. "Who gave you that? And what do they want in return that's worth more than a guaranteed payday and our standing?"
Ash, on the other hand, didn't take Blaze's gesture as an insult.
While Cinder's eyes narrowed at the implied hierarchy, Ash's gaze dropped to the Ignis-7 conduit now resting against his arm.
His initial shock melted away, replaced by a sharp, calculating focus.
He didn't see a hand-me-down.
He didn't see a cast-off.
He saw an opportunity.
This was the weapon that had turned Blaze from a talented street-thief into a localized natural disaster.
The tool that had let him dance through Cinder's traps and burn Cleaners to ash.
The key to a language of power Ash had only ever been allowed to whisper about.
His fingers, stained with conductive grease from tinkering with his own useless low-spec model, closed around the Ignis-7's grip.
It was warm.
It vibrated with a faint, dormant energy.
It felt… right in his hand.
Infinitely more so than the plastic toy he'd been sulking over.
The insult wasn't in the gift.
The insult would have been in Blaze keeping both conduits for himself.
This was a promotion.
A terrifying, potentially lethal one, but a promotion nonetheless.
He looked up, meeting Blaze's expectant gaze, and gave a single, slow nod.
The message was clear: Accepted.
Blaze's grin widened, pleased.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim, black datastick.
He placed it on the table next to the open case with a soft click.
"Here," he said, his voice dropping into a business-like tone. "The contract. The target file. Payment schedules. And the first tranche of operational data. The new patron likes their paperwork clean."
Without waiting for an answer, Ash had already snatched up the stick and plugged it into the battered tablet on the table.
The screen flickered, then resolved into a stark, classified file.
The same image Blaze had seen in the buried suite filled the display, the text stark and clinical beside it.
>> SUBJECT: Morrigan, Ember
>> AGE: 21
>> AFFILIATION: The Gilded Cage Security Detail (Former)
>> LAST KNOWN STATUS: TERMINATED (Disputed)
>> CURRENT THREAT PROFILE: ELEVATED
>> PRIORITY: ACQUISITION / NEUTRALIZATION
Ash leaned back, a low whistle escaping him. "They want us to hunt her, huh. Did she piss them or what."
Blaze nodded, his earlier excitement now channeled into a cold, focused certainty. "It's WhiteRoot."
The name landed in the room like a drop of poison in still water.
Cinder's brows knotted tightly together.
A familiar, visceral disgust welled up inside her, cold and sharp.
She knew the rumors that swirled around WhiteRoot's pharmaceutical empire—the whisper of experimental "volunteers," the black clinics, the drugs that did more than heal.
In her early days as an independent operator, she'd taken a few gigs from their subsidiaries.
The credits had cleared.
The jobs had been clean.
The aftertaste had been sour.
She was a bounty hunter, not a moralist.
A job was a job.
But hearing the name from Blaze, connected to this flashy new weapon and a high-stakes hunt, made her feel hypocritical in a way that grated.
Ash, however, was already moving past corporate ethics.
His mind, freed from the resentment of his low-spec conduit and now buzzing with the potential of the Ignis-7 in his hand, was racing through permutations.
"Hold on," he said, tapping the tablet screen. "Why don't we just do both?"
Blaze and Cinder both looked at him.
A slow, approving smile spread across Blaze's face.
It was the smile of a man who loved a good, chaotic plan.
"That," Blaze said, his voice rich with satisfaction, "is exactly why I gave you the Ignis-7."
***
The low, resonant hum of a newly installed aether node two blocks away filled the small, barren room—a constant, droning backdrop to the silence.
Ember stood under the thin, cold stream of water from the makeshift rooftop shower, a jury-rigged pipe fed from a salvaged tank.
The water was barely more than a trickle, but it was enough.
It sluiced over her skin, turning rust-red as it carried away the blood.
It wasn't her blood.
It was from a low-rank Nimbrix security guard.
Probably just pulling a double shift to make rent.
He'd been taking a smoke break behind the waste reclamation hub when she'd exfiltrated with the biometric passkey.
He'd seen her face in the glare of a security light.
She'd seen the recognition in his eyes—not of her specifically, but of an intruder, a threat to his quiet night.
She hadn't hesitated.
Her hand dropped to her belt, fingers closing around the cold, worn grip of her combat knife.
In one fluid, brutal motion, she drove the blade deep into the guard's temple, just below the edge of his helmet.
There was a wet, grating sound—metal on bone.
His body stiffened, a short, choked gasp escaping him before his eyes went blank.
He slumped against the dumpster, then slid to the ground, a dark pool already beginning to spread beneath his head.
Ember yanked the knife free.
She didn't look at his face.
She didn't watch the light leave his eyes.
She wiped the blade clean on his uniform sleeve, her movements mechanical, detached.
The water ran pink at her feet, swirling down the drain grate in the concrete.
She watched it, her face a mask of weary emptiness.
She was slowly becoming desensitized to it—the killing, the maiming, the necessary violence.
Each act carved away another piece of the person she'd been: the diligent security officer, the protective sister.
What was left was something harder, sharper, and colder.
A tool honed for a single purpose: find Ellie.
She shut off the water and toweled herself dry with a rough scrap of fabric.
The night air was cool on her damp skin.
She dressed quickly in clean, dark clothes—utility pants, a black tank top, worn boots.
On the single crate that served as her table, surrounded by empty nutrient bar wrappers and a scattered toolkit, sat her prize.
The decryption rig from Raker looked even more sinister in her sparse hideout.
A tangle of wires and scorched circuit boards, its central processing unit pulsed with a sickly yellow light, humming in discordant harmony with the distant aether node.
Next to it lay the stolen WhiteRoot data drive.
Raker's warning echoed in her mind: It leaves a footprint in the spectrum about as subtle as a gunshot in a library. Anyone with the right sensors will know someone's prying.
She plugged the drive into the rig.
The machine whined in protest, lights flickering erratically.
A progress bar—glitchy and unstable—flashed on a small, cracked screen.
>> DECRYPTION IN PROGRESS. ESTIMATED TIME: 47 MINUTES.
>> WARNING: AETHERIC SIGNATURE WILL BE UNABLE TO BE MASKED.
Forty-seven minutes.
Then she would have her answers—or her death warrant.
She looked around the tiny rooftop room.
A sleeping bag in the corner.
A backpack with her few possessions.
A photograph of Ellie, tucked into the frame of a broken mirror, smiling a smile that felt like it belonged to another lifetime.
This place had been a sanctuary for three weeks.
It was over now.
As soon as the decryption finished, she would download the data, smash the rig with a hammer, and burn anything that wouldn't melt.
Then she would vanish again, a ghost moving to another shadow, another empty room, another temporary refuge.
The hum of the aether node seemed to grow louder, pressing against the thin walls.
It felt less like infrastructure and more like a heartbeat—the slow, inexorable pulse of the city itself, of the corporations that owned it, listening, waiting, hunting.
Ember sat down on the floor, her back against the crate, and stared at the flickering progress bar.
In her hand, she held the photograph of her sister.
With nothing to do but wait, Ember moved with a grim, methodical rhythm.
The mindless task was a relief—something to do besides stare at the creeping progress bar and listen to the accusing hum of the aether node.
She gathered everything from the tiny room.
The empty nutrient bar wrappers, the discarded clothing, the torn city maps with routes marked in fading ink.
The few tools, her spare jacket, the empty water canister.
Anything that could be tied to her, anything with a scent, a fiber, a memory.
She piled it all in the center of the concrete floor, away from the walls.
The decryption rig sat alone on the crate, its sickly light throbbing like a dying star, connected to the past by a single, fragile data cable.
From a sealed canister, she began pouring gasoline over the pile.
The sharp, chemical stink cut through the damp rooftop air, overwhelming the smells of rust and dust.
The liquid spread in a dark, iridescent stain, soaking into the fabric of her old life.
She left a trail back to the doorway—a fuse line of fuel.
She was standing over the soaked pile, lighter in hand, when she heard it.
She heard a sharp, digital ping from the rig.
The erratic flickering of lights stabilized into a single, steady green glow.
The whining hum ceased, leaving only the distant drone of the aether node.
On the cracked screen, the progress bar was gone, replaced by a simple, stark message:
>> DECRYPTION COMPLETE.
>> DATA INTEGRITY: 94%.
>> PRIMARY FILE ACCESS GRANTED.
Ember's breath caught.
She leaned forward, her damp hair brushing the cold metal of the crate.
Her fingers, which had been clenched around her sister's photograph, now hovered over the rig's interface.
She navigated with stiff, precise taps.
The screen cleared, then filled with a header in WhiteRoot's sterile, angular corporate font.
>> PROJECT LOTUS
>> CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY / OMEGA BLACK
>> PURPOSE: Experimental program designed to achieve biological immortality and/or extreme longevity through synergistic biological, chemical, and aetheric manipulation.
>> PHASE: ACTIVE / HUMAN TRIALS (COVERT)
The words seemed to pulse on the screen, cold and clinical.
Immortality.
Human trials.
Her stomach turned to ice.
This wasn't just corporate espionage or a kidnapping.
This was something older, darker, and far more ambitious.
WhiteRoot wasn't just making drugs.
They were trying to cheat death itself.
Her fingers flew, scrolling.
She bypassed mountains of technical data—aetheric resonance frequencies, cellular regeneration matrices, neuro-chemical stability reports.
She searched for what she needed.
>> SUBJECT POOL: ACQUISITION
A list appeared. Dozens of names, ID numbers, acquisition dates, and sources. Most were marked "VOLUNTEER (COMPENSATED)" or "ACQUIRED (LEGAL GUARDIAN CONSENT)."
Then she saw it.
>> SUBJECT: E-77
>> NAME: Morrigan, Eleanor "Ellie"
>> AGE: 24
>> ACQUISITION DATE: [Six months ago]
>> SOURCE: TERMINATED EMPLOYEE ASSET RECLAMATION
>> STATUS: ACTIVE / PHASE 2 INTEGRATION
>> NOTES: High somatic-aetheric compatibility. Subject exhibits exceptional resilience to preliminary infusion protocols. Proceeding to neural lattice grafting.
The words blurred before her eyes.
Terminated employee asset reclamation.
They hadn't just taken her sister.
They had reclaimed her.
Like a piece of faulty equipment.
Because Ellie was her sister, and Ember had broken her contract when she defended her.
Ellie was the forfeit.
And she was active.
Alive.
Somewhere, trapped in a WhiteRoot lab, being turned into an experiment in a trillion-credit quest to live forever.
A raw, soundless scream built in Ember's chest.
It didn't escape. It solidified. It turned into something harder than steel, colder than the shower water.
Her eyes kept scanning, hungry for a location, a facility name, anything.
But before she could find it, a new window flashed on the screen, overriding the data.
>> WARNING: DATA BREACH DETECTED.
>> SOURCE TRIANGULATION IN PROGRESS.
>> SECURITY PROTOCOL 7 ENGAGED.
The green light on the rig turned a violent, pulsing crimson.
Raker's warning hadn't been an exaggeration.
Time was no longer just up.
It had run out.
With a savage yank, she ripped the data drive from the rig.
In the same motion, her other hand swept the lighter from the crate.
Click.
A tiny, defiant flame sparked to life in the gloom.
She looked once at the pile of her old life, soaked in fuel.
Looked once at the decryption rig, its job done, now a screaming beacon.
As she dropped the flame, Ember's mind went back to the files again.
The Gilded Cage.
To the wealthy patrons, it was a cabaret club.
A place of velvet and vice.
To her, for years, it had been a workplace.
A prison of polished smiles and hidden threats.
But the fragments of information she'd already pieced together revealed its true function—the reason WhiteRoot poured millions into its operation, the reason the "security" was so tight, the reason girls like Ellie were selected from the performer roster and never seen again.
The Gilded Cage wasn't just a front.
It was a live-field laboratory.
A testing ground.
The wealthy clientele were unwilling participants in a long-term, real-world study.
The drinks were laced with subclinical doses of experimental compounds.
The atmosphere was saturated with subtle, aerosolized aetheric agents.
The privacy suites were monitoring chambers, collecting biometric and neural data in real time.
And the performers… they weren't just employees.
They were the primary test subjects.
Monitored for reactions, for compatibility, for "resilience."
Ellie hadn't just worked there.
She had been a designated candidate for Project LOTUS.
Her files showed elevated markers for aetheric sensitivity and neural plasticity—making her "optimal" for the next phase.
Her disappearance wasn't an abduction.
It was a collection.
The gasoline ignited with a soft whoosh, fire erupting in a hungry, orange bloom that consumed the pile in seconds, climbing toward the rig, its light painting her tanned skin in flickering, hellish shades.
She didn't watch it burn.
She was already turning, the stolen data drive clenched in her fist, the photograph of her sister pressed against her ribs, and the name of a facility—WhiteRoot Primary Medical Research Facility, Sector 1—seared into her mind.
***
Blaze stood among a small crowd of late-night onlookers gathered at the edge of the cordon, two blocks from the burning building.
The air was thick with the smell of smoke, wet ash, and the aetheric-tang of active conduits.
Above them, flames licked from the windows of a nondescript rooftop structure.
The official fire response was already there—not with hoses, but with crews wielding specialized industrial conduits.
Glyphs of concentrated water vapor and kinetic suppression shimmered in the air, battling the fire not with brute force, but with targeted, aetherically-cooled mist that snuffed out the chemical blaze with eerie silence.
It was efficient.
Clean.
Corporate-funded municipal service at work.
Blaze watched, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable.
The crimson conduit was a comforting, heavy presence against his side, hidden beneath his jacket.
In his ear, a tiny receiver crackled to life.
<
Ash's voice came through, sharp and clear from the hideout.
<
Blaze's eyes remained fixed on the glowing embers. "So she cracked something big. And tripped an alarm."
<
A firefighter nearby spoke into a comm, his voice carrying on the cold air. "...no remains, just slag. Unlicensed aetheric rig, probably overloaded. Filing it as a tech malfunction."
<
Ash said, a note of grim appreciation in his tone.
<
Blaze watched the last tendrils of smoke curl into the grey dawn.
She was good.
Careful.
Desperate enough to burn her own safehouse.
He liked that.
<
Ash continued, his voice lowering.
<
Blaze turned away from the scene, melting back into the shadows of the waking city.
"Then we dig faster," he murmured into his mic. "She's running toward something. Find out where."
He left behind the smell of smoke and the official story, already moving toward the next shadow, the next clue, the next step in the hunt for a ghost who was fighting a war all on her own.