The first sign of Enclave 3 wasn't the wall, but the sky. It was bruised. A permanent, artificial twilight hung in the west, the glow of a city so vast it created its own horizon and murdered the stars. For two days, it had grown from a faint promise of light to a sprawling, oppressive aurora.
Enclave 7 was a fort. This was a disease.
Kael felt the change in the thrum of the transport's deck plates. The ride smoothed out, the crude, patched-together suspension of the land-crawler no longer fighting the terrain. He peered through the grimy plastek viewport and saw why. They were driving on a road. A true road, a wide, unbroken ribbon of dark, pre-Fall polymer that had been cleared of the Scar's crystalline grit. It was the first truly Ancient thing he had seen that wasn't broken.
"We're in the Core Zone," Maya murmured beside him, her voice a low hum that barely disturbed the air. She'd been tending to a gash on her arm, a parting gift from the Geode ambush, but her hands were still now. Her eyes were fixed on the impossible vista unfolding outside.
The wall of Enclave 3, when it finally rose to meet them, was an act of geological arrogance. It wasn't a single barrier but a series of them, concentric rings of polished obsidian-like material and shimmering energy fields, layered like the petals of some monstrous, mechanical flower. The outermost ring alone dwarfed Enclave 7's entire structure. Drones, sleek and silent, patrolled its upper reaches, their movements a stark contrast to the lumbering, jury-rigged machines of home.
This place hadn't just survived the Fall. It had prospered in its shadow.
The convoy slowed, joining a queue of other vehicles waiting to be processed. The gate was a cavernous maw in the wall, crawling with a level of activity Kael had never imagined. Guards in flawless, deep-blue armor, their Aethel Frames humming with a clean, powerful resonance, moved with an unnerving, synchronized efficiency. They weren't the scarred, weary veterans of Enclave 7. They were soldiers from a storybook, untouched by the true desperation of the wastes.
"Papers," a guard said, his voice clipped and impersonal through his helmet's external speaker. He didn't look at them; he looked at a data-slate that materialized in his hand. Ryker, their grizzled convoy commander, handled it, his own rough-hewn authority seeming coarse and out of place here.
Kael felt the probe of a dozen different passive scanners wash over their vehicle, over him. It was a cold, intimate violation. They weren't checking for threats. They were taking inventory. He felt his own Aethel Frame bristle, the three ghosts within him—the Hound, the Scuttler, the Stalker—falling into a rare, unified silence. A predator's caution in the den of a greater one.
They were waved through. The city that opened up before them stole the breath from Kael's lungs. It was a forest of steel and light, towers that scraped the artificial ceiling of the upper dome, connected by sky-bridges that glittered with speeding vehicles. The air tasted different—clean, but sterile, with the faint, chemical tang of recycled oxygen and industrial coolant. It was the air of a machine, not a home. Holo-screens the size of hab-blocks flickered on the sides of buildings, advertising everything from high-yield kinetic spears to faction-sponsored Chimera hunts.
It was too much. Too bright, too loud, too… full. After the profound, empty silence of the Sunken City, the sheer density of life and energy was a physical assault.
The debriefing was a cold, quiet affair in a room that felt more like a laboratory than an office. An administrator in a crisp uniform, a woman with a face that had never been exposed to the unfiltered sun, listened to Ryker's report with polite disinterest. Her Aethel Frame was a faint, disciplined hum, the energy of a clerk, not a warrior.
Kael and Maya stood in the back, trying to make themselves small. They recited their rehearsed story—a scouting run complicated by an unexpected Chimera pack. They omitted the Grave-crawler. They omitted the use of Synthesis. They omitted the fact that their entire world now pivoted on a secret buried in a dead man's hard drive.
The administrator nodded, her eyes flicking over their worn gear and provincial accents. "Your report corroborates Commander Ryker's. Hazard pay has been credited to your enclave's account. You are dismissed. Find lodging in the Outer Ring Domiciles. Your convoy departs in forty-eight hours."
She didn't ask about their methods. She didn't care. To her, they were components from a subsidiary, delivering raw materials. Insignificant.
The relief Kael felt was so potent it made him dizzy. It was immediately followed by a chilling realization. In Enclave 7, Jax had seen through them in a heartbeat. Here, in the heart of human power, no one was even looking.
They found a public observation deck in the central hub, a vast, tiered space overlooking the main Frame User commons. It was a place for civilians to watch their protectors, a piece of political theater on a grand scale. Below, hundreds of Users moved, their Aethel Frames a chaotic symphony of light and power.
It was here they saw the real Enclave 3.
They weren't a unified force. They were tribes.
One group, clad in the same immaculate blue armor as the gate guards, moved with the unshakeable arrogance of owners. Their gear was flawless, their weapons the latest models Kael had only seen in schematics. They didn't walk through the commons; they parted it. Other Users, even veterans whose scarred armor spoke of real combat, gave them a wide berth. A crest—a stylized lion's head—was emblazoned on their shoulder plates.
"House Valerius," Maya whispered, her voice tight. She had been studying the public bestiaries and mission boards since they'd arrived, her own form of reconnaissance. "They control the eastern hunting grounds. The most lucrative contracts. Oldest bloodline in the enclave."
Another faction was a collection of shadows. Their armor was matte black, designed to absorb light, their movements economical and silent. They didn't interact with anyone, standing apart in small, tight-knit groups, their Aethel signatures muted and controlled. They watched everyone, their faces hidden behind smoked visors.
"House Thorne," Maya supplied. "Rivals to Valerius. They run the intel and infiltration ops. No one trusts them. Everyone's afraid of them."
Then there were the others. Smaller groups, freelancers, independents. They were the grunts, the fodder, picking up the less glamorous missions the great Houses ignored. Kael watched a lone User, his armor a mismatched collection of parts much like Jax's, get shouldered aside by a Valerius brute who didn't even seem to notice him. The man's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He just stepped back, swallowed the insult, and faded into the crowd.
Kael felt a cold knot form in his stomach. He looked at the faces, the gear, the unspoken rules of this brutal ecosystem. This wasn't just a city. It was a different kind of Scar, with its own predators and its own prey. The monsters here just wore better armor.
He pulled the data slate from his pouch, its surface cold and smooth against his palm. On it was Thorne's shopping list. A stabilizer from an Adamant Tortoise. A dampener from a Shrieker. Ingredients for his own survival, for his own evolution. He cross-referenced the names with the Enclave 3 mission board he had memorized.
The Adamant Tortoise territories were Valerius-controlled.
The Shrieker nesting grounds fell under the purview of House Thorne.
He felt Maya's gaze on him. She didn't need to see the slate. She had seen the same thing he had. The board was not open. The pieces were already owned.
"This is going to be harder than fighting Stalkers," he said, the words feeling like a profound understatement.
Maya didn't reply. She just looked down at the human sea below, at the cold, beautiful, and terrifying machine they had just walked into. Her hand rested on the hilt of her kinetic spear, a gesture Kael now understood was not for reassurance, but to remind herself it was still there.
The hunt for the past was over. The hunt for the future required them to navigate a jungle far more dangerous than any ruin. Out here, the Chimeras weren't the only things that would eat you alive.