Lyra regained consciousness to the taste of blood and copper in her mouth. Her ears rang with a distant alarm klaxon, muffled and fading, and for a moment she couldn't tell if the shrill sound was real or just the echo of memory.
She coughed, pain lancing through her ribs, and realized she was slumped against cold metal. Red emergency lighting flickered overhead in a narrow maintenance passage. The last thing she remembered was the black site deep within the Prysm-Sek arcology—the flash of gunfire, the choking fumes of suppressant foam, and the ground disappearing beneath her feet.
A silhouette moved in front of her. Lyra blinked hard, trying to focus. A man crouched at her side, one arm propping her up. His voice cut through her haze—low, urgent, and familiar. "Lyra, hey... stay with me."
"Jax?" she mumbled, struggling to form the word. It felt like a dream or a hallucination conjured by her neural implant. But as her vision steadied, she recognized the sharp angles of his face, the scar running across his right cheek, and the faint glow of a tactical visor over his left eye. Jax. He was really here.
He gave a tight, relieved smile. "Took you long enough to wake up." Despite the light tone, his eyes darted toward the corridor behind them. "We don't have much time. Can you move?"
Lyra sucked in a breath and nodded weakly. Every part of her ached. Her shoulder throbbed where a graze from a security drone's blast had burned through her jacket. There was dried blood on her side, but the bleeding had stopped—Jax must have slapped a med-patch on it. The rest was bruises and exhaustion.
Miraculously, she was alive.
Jax hooked an arm under her arms and lifted. Lyra bit back a groan as she staggered to her feet. "Easy," he whispered.
They crept through the maintenance tunnels that honeycombed the arcology's lower levels. Sparking wires hung from the ceiling where something—maybe an explosion Lyra set off—had rocked the infrastructure. Each step felt unsteady under her feet, and her head swam with exhaustion.
The implant at the base of her skull was feeding her error pings and ghostly afterimages. Translucent HUD icons flickered at the edge of her vision without her prompting. She squeezed her eyes shut to clear them, but the digital phantoms danced on the insides of her eyelids.
"Focus, Lyra," she chastised herself under her breath. Jax cast a worried glance back at her as they reached a junction. He peeked around the corner, his pistol drawn and braced.
"Clear," he muttered, waving her on.
Lyra managed to pick up the pace, falling in behind him. "How... how did you find me?" she whispered as they hurried down another corridor lit by intermittent emergency lights. She recalled the lab's security doors closing, trapping her. The memory of nearly drowning in suppressant foam flashed through her mind. If Jax hadn't pried open that door...
"I never lost you on the tracker," Jax replied quietly, eyes scanning ahead. "Eris kept your signal on our radar. When your vitals flatlined for a second..." His voice tightened, and he didn't finish the sentence. Instead he just said, "I came as fast as I could."
Lyra felt a pang of guilt and gratitude entwine in her chest. She had gone into the arcology expecting to do it alone after their team scattered. Knowing Jax and Eris were still watching over her... She swallowed hard. "You saved my life."
Jax didn't respond immediately. He pressed himself flat against the wall as two shadows swept past an intersecting hallway ahead—Prysm-Sek security troopers, judging by the clink of armor. Holding up a clenched fist, Jax signaled Lyra to halt. She pressed back into a doorway alcove, heart pounding, blood roaring in her ears. The troopers' footsteps echoed, then faded away.
Jax exhaled and looked back at her. "You would've done the same," he finally replied, voice barely above a breath. "And besides, I owed you one."
Before Lyra could argue that he owed her nothing, a burst of static came through Jax's earpiece—so faint she only caught a whisper of a female voice. Eris. The relief that Eris was still online washed through her. Jax tapped behind his ear, likely muting the comm for now.
"Let's get clear first," he murmured. "Eris says extraction's ready, but this place is crawling. We need a way out that isn't the main elevator."
Lyra scanned their surroundings. She noticed a ladder leading upward, marked with a maintenance sign. "There," she pointed. The ladder disappeared into a dark vertical shaft—possibly a conduit to the outer shell of the arcology.
Jax nodded and took point, climbing quickly. Lyra followed, teeth grit against the flare of pain in her side. The metal rungs vibrated with distant machinery. Below, she heard shouts—someone had discovered the passage they escaped through.
They climbed higher, into darkness broken only by the thin beam of Jax's wrist flashlight. At last, Jax pried open a heavy service hatch overhead. A rush of cool night air spilled in, carrying city sounds—distant hovercars and the electric hum of neon signs.
They were almost out.
Jax heaved himself through the hatch and reached down to help Lyra up. She grabbed his forearm and scrambled through, collapsing onto a flat, narrow ledge. They were on the exterior of the arcology now, high above the ground. Wind whipped at them, and far below the city lights sprawled. Lyra's stomach lurched at the height, but a wild surge of relief flooded her to be outside that corporate tomb.
No time to savor it. Behind them, voices shouted—guards emerging onto a balcony a few floors down. A spotlight beam sliced upward, sweeping the arcology facade.
"There!" a voice barked from below.
Jax tugged Lyra to her feet. "Run!"