The shard's glow finally dimmed, fading into Jack's palm like it had been swallowed whole. For a long second, the stairwell went quiet—no fire crackle, no groaning metal, nothing but the sound of Jack breathing steady. Too steady.
Halo broke it first. "Jack. Say something. Anything."
He lifted his head. His eyes weren't the same. They burned faint, veins of light flickering under the iris, like something alive had burrowed inside.
"I'm fine," he said. Too calm. Too even.
Jarrod muttered, "That's not fine." He spat, backing a step. "You look like the shard's wearing you, not the other way around."
Jack flexed his hand, feeling the weight of it—not just the shard, but the tier it unlocked. Power pulsed in waves, small shocks that rattled through his bones. His HUD had stopped glitching. It was clean now, sharp lines etched across his vision, red glow smoothed to a quiet hum.
Neural sync: 62%. Stable.
Halo took a cautious step closer, rifle angled low. "Jack… I don't know what you just did, but we need to test it, not dive blind. If Marcus wired shards into the system, they could be—"
"His fingerprints," Jack finished. He nodded, slow, like the thought wasn't fear, but confirmation. "Yeah. I felt him in it. Like his laugh, buried under the code."
Jarrod barked. "And you still jammed it into yourself?!"
Jack turned, sharp, voice suddenly colder. "Because if I don't climb, Marcus wins anyway."
The air around him crackled, faint sparks flicking across his armor, tracing where the shard's energy had grafted itself. He could move different now—he felt it in his joints, the coil of muscles that wanted to spring. His balance had shifted, more precise, like every step aligned with something larger.
Halo exhaled hard. "You sound like him."
The words cut. Jack froze. The silence stretched too long before he forced a chuckle, bitter. "Don't put that on me."
But the doubt was there. He felt it digging behind his ribs.
The city answered before anyone else could.
A low, distant thoom rolled through the Sprawl. Then another, closer. The sky outside the stairwell strobed faint orange.
Halo whipped around. "Artillery. East sector."
Jarrod cursed. "Authority?"
Jack shook his head. No—it wasn't the Authority. He could feel the rhythm. Too fast, too jagged. His HUD flared new signals, red dots rippling across the map like a disease spreading.
"Not Authority," Jack muttered. His mouth went dry. "Revenants."
The shard in him buzzed like a warning, same pitch as those pulses. His stomach turned. Marcus wasn't waiting anymore. He was sending them.
Halo loaded her rifle, voice sharp. "Then we move. Get high ground, find a choke."
Jarrod looked at Jack. "If you're gonna blow up and go full Marcus, do it far away from us, yeah?"
Jack almost snapped back, but the words caught. He saw the fear in Jarrod's eyes. The man wasn't joking. None of them trusted him right now. Not even Halo, steady as she always was.
That was the weight of power. It didn't make him untouchable—it made him untouchable to them.
Jack slipped his helmet back on. The HUD locked clean, no stutter this time. The shard's pulse synced perfectly with his breath. For once, the system didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a weapon.
"Then let's use it," he said. His voice had dropped lower, harder, but it was all he had left. "Because Marcus is already here."
They pushed out of the stairwell. The night swallowed them fast, neon glow bouncing off ruined glass. The Sprawl wasn't cheering anymore—no chants, no crowd. Just the thrum of distant engines and the whisper of drones circling like vultures.
Jack felt the shards calling from beyond the skyline. Felt Marcus's presence riding in with them. And deep down, under the fire and fear, a truth carved itself sharp:
This wasn't survival anymore. This was a race.
And Jack wasn't sure if he was climbing out of the pit—
—or straight into Marcus's hands.