The servers hummed, and the stale air smelled of ozone.
Mika Aoyen's fingers danced across the interface with practiced grace.
With a single tap, crimson light bloomed on the console.
Data threads twisted like veins, showing a map of stolen life.
A drip of condensation echoed from a corroded vent overhead.
The sound was a constant, metallic tick in the silence.
It reminded Mika of a clock, counting down to something she feared she would find.
Jax Rivenweld watched her, his hand hovering over the console but never touching the light.
His own implants buzzed faintly, a feeling he had grown to hate.
Aya Holt leaned closer, her tablet syncing with the map as hope burned in her sharp eyes.
Nearby, Ren Rourke stood in the shadows like a statue of doubt.
His arms were crossed, his gaze never leaving the screen.
"Anything yet?"
Jax asked, his voice a low rumble in the quiet den.
"Patience," Mika said, her focus locked on the data stream.
The threads were a lie meant to hide the harm, and Mika felt the old pull to expose the truth.
She had to find it in the dark, to drag it into the light.
She tapped the screen again, and the holo-display zoomed in.
The crimson veins pulsed faster as a line of code glowed, revealing a river of stolen credits.
The river flowed from the underlevels, always upward.
Anger formed a cold knot in her gut.
Ren stepped from the shadows, his boots making no sound on the plasteel floor.
"What is it, Mika?"
His voice was gravel.
"A credit scam," she whispered, her eyes fixed on the light.
"Rigged flux subscriptions."
The words tasted like poison on her tongue.
She pointed a single finger at the map, highlighting a central node.
"They're siphoning from debtors."
Her voice was flat and empty.
The discovery was a familiar fire, the very reason she did this.
This was the harm she hunted in the digital wilds.
The elites feasted on the broken, and rage simmered just under her skin.
"Show us the core," Jax said.
His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the console, but the cool metal did not stop the heat in his blood.
"The core binds all of us," he added, his voice tight with purpose.
"Expose the veins."
He needed the anger to have a target.
"My patches will crack those veins," Aya said, her hope a weapon against the gloom.
She held up her tablet where a schematic glowed on its screen.
Ren's doubt was a physical weight in the room.
"Patches?"
he asked, shaking his head slowly.
"The risk is too high.
They'll trace it back to us."
Jax's jaw tightened.
He remembered the last time Helix traced a ghost signal.
Guilt twisted in his gut.
"He's right," Jax admitted, his voice low.
"People died."
"The risk is letting them bleed," Aya shot back, her eyes flashing with defiant light.
"We can't just watch."
"And the fallout?"
Ren countered.
"What about the people we're trying to save?"
He had seen this before, good intentions paving roads to slaughter.
He would not walk that road again.
"We build firewalls," Aya insisted, her voice sharp and certain.
"We protect them."
"Firewalls break," Ren said, his certainty an iron wall forged from loss.
He had lost soldiers to broken firewalls and would not lose civilians the same way.
A sudden whine cut through his words.
The console sparked once, a flash of blue-white light that made them all flinch.
The server hum dipped as the holo-map flickered.
Jax's hand shot out, steadying the console with a firm, mechanical touch.
Aya grabbed her tablet, shielding its screen from the electrical ghost.
Ren simply watched the instability, another test in a world full of them, until the lights steadied and the hum returned to its rhythm.
The argument hung in the charged air.
"No," Mika said, her voice cutting through the tension.
It was quiet but absolute.
"We release the truth."
As she spoke, the data surged again.
The crimson knot on the display flashed and overloaded, filling the den with blinding white light.
Faces appeared in the static, ghosts in the machine.
They were Helix elites, their expressions serene before they vanished.
Mika felt a sudden, sharp cold—the fear of being seen, of what she had just unearthed.
A memory flashed, unbidden and raw: a family from a trace two cycles ago.
A father's face, hollowed by default notices, and a child's empty bunk in a repossessed hab-unit.
That family was gone now, erased.
The cold fear burned away, and resolve, hard as steel, took its place.
She would not let another family vanish.
Jax's implants echoed the surge, and he saw the faces not as executives, but as masters.
Owners.
A silent vow formed in his mind, a promise to break every last chain.
The silence that followed was heavy, pressing down on them all.
The truth was colder than the den's stale air.
This was not a glitch in the system; it was the system itself.
"They're funneling lives into their own vaults," Aya whispered, her earlier hope cracked and replaced by disgust.
She felt sick.
Mika felt a hot, aching shame, not for herself, but for the world they were forced to live in.
Hope had to defy it.
She tapped the console again, and a new data stream bled across the map.
"Sector Gamma-9," she said, her voice thin.
"Look at the life support metrics."
The numbers glowed red, critically low.
"Clinic power diverted.
Food rations down forty percent."
The stolen credits were not just numbers.
They were stolen breaths and stolen meals.
The crime became real, a weight they could all feel.
"This is how they keep control," Ren said, his voice a low growl.
"Invisible chains."
He had worn them his whole life.
"Chains break," Jax insisted, his implant ports humming with a new energy.
It was not a leash.
It was a weapon waiting.
"My code can open their eyes," Aya said, her resolve returning harder and sharper.
"The public has to see."
"They will see," Jax muttered.
His motivation burned, a clean, bright flame pushing back the darkness.
Mika nodded, her own vow taking form.
It was silent but unbreakable.
She was not just an observer anymore.
"We hit the vaults," Jax said, his eyes fixed on the fading ghosts.
"My code will give them a voice," Aya promised.
The old fear of failure was a quiet hum beneath her hope.
Ren watched them both, his gaze heavy with the cost of war.
"My networks can shield them," he said.
"Some of them."
He would not lie; he could not save them all.
"My traces will guide the blow," Mika stated, her hands perfectly steady.
Her purpose was clear.
The den's quiet changed into the calm before a storm.
The crimson light on the holo-map pulsed like a steady heartbeat.
It was a countdown.
Mika's fingers rested on the interface.
The threads were bare, the lies exposed.
"The vow holds," she said softly.
It was both a promise and a sentence.
Jax stared at the glowing map, his voice a low oath.
"It holds against the elites."
The hum from his implants found a new, dangerous rhythm.
The code was a weapon now, ready to be fired.
The whole city would see the truth.
He swore it on the ghosts in the machine.
He would be the ghost that haunted them back.
Fear was a distant memory; only the vow remained.