The stars barely reached Connection City.
They hung behind layers of smoke and steam, dim and distant, as if the sky itself was tired of trying. Street lamps burned steadily along the Second Level, their brass housings humming softly as compressed steam circulated within them. Above, massive ducts crisscrossed the air like veins, carrying heat, power, and sound from one end of the city to the other.
From every building, smoke rose endlessly.
In the city that never slept, this was an ordinary night.
Until the megaphones spoke.
Their voices echoed through the streets, calm and carefully controlled, bouncing off metal walls and reinforced facades.
"Attention, residents of Connection City, Second Level. Reports indicate a sharp increase in hostile activity beyond city borders. Unless absolutely necessary, all citizens are advised to remain within the city."
The message repeated, unchanged. No panic. No urgency. Just reassurance wrapped in authority.
People barely looked up.
That was the strangest part.
In a narrow maintenance alley several blocks away, Ironhand listened without slowing his pace.
"Hostile activity," he muttered. "That's one way to put it."
He pulled a cigarette from his coat and lit it with a quick motion. The flame reflected briefly off the metal of his right arm—iron plates fitted together with visible seams, worn joints that told stories of use rather than design. It wasn't polished. It wasn't hidden. It was simply there.
Tonight's work was finished.
No alarms followed him. No pursuit echoed through the ducts overhead. The city allowed him to walk unchallenged, and that alone felt suspicious.
Connection City wasn't a city in the traditional sense. It didn't spread outward. It rose upward and sank downward around a reinforced core, like an endless apartment tower built by someone who never planned for it to stop growing.
Levels stacked upon levels.
The upper levels lived in artificial daylight, clean steam, and flawless machinery. Corporate districts gleamed with polished brass and glass. Below them, the middle levels housed workers, traders, and those who still believed the system worked.
And beneath that lay the Fourth Level.
By the time you reached it, sunlight was no longer something you missed. It was something you forgot. The air grew heavier with rust, oil, and rot. Broken machines piled up where no one bothered to move them. People used what they could afford—and in the Fourth Level, affordability came at a cost.
That was where Whiplash stories were born.
Ironhand had heard them all.
Ironhand stopped in front of a half-collapsed building wedged between two massive support ducts. The door looked abandoned, its lock corroded and useless. Most people passed it without noticing.
Good.
He took an unusual key from his pocket—thick, asymmetrical, and unmistakably wrong—and slid it into the lock.
Light leaked out instantly.
The door shuddered. Metal groaned. Hidden mechanisms activated, reshaping the ruined entrance into something precise and intentional. Gears turned without sound as the structure folded inward.
Ironhand stepped through.
The alley disappeared behind him.
His office greeted him with quiet warmth. Soft lights illuminated shelves filled with sealed containers, old devices, and neatly filed records. The walls were covered with pinned documents—not unsolved mysteries, not failures, but completed jobs. Names, locations, dates. Some of them crossed paths more often than coincidence allowed.
He removed his coat and draped it over a chair. The iron arm beneath it caught the light again. No explanation followed. None was needed.
Ironhand poured himself a drink and sat down.
Tonight's job had been simple. A cleanup near the lower maintenance shafts. The client had paid well and asked no questions. They rarely did.
But Whiplash sightings were becoming too frequent.
Everyone below the Second Level knew what Whiplashes were, even if the companies pretended otherwise.
They weren't monsters created in laboratories. They weren't weapons gone wrong.
They were people.
In the Fourth Level, implants weren't a luxury. They were survival. Cheap neural ports, recycled limb augments, unstable processors—devices built fast and sold faster. Over time, those implants degraded. And when they did, something spread through them.
A virus.
Not digital. Not biological.
Something in between.
It fed on the interface between flesh and machine, slowly stripping away higher thought. Language went first. Then restraint. Then memory. What remained wasn't madness, but instinct—human instincts twisted by faulty metal and constant hunger.
Whiplashes didn't leave the Fourth Level because they didn't need to.
The city dumped its waste there. Among it was residue from the Fragments of Eden—unstable byproducts, useless to corporations but potent enough to sustain the virus. The Whiplashes learned to feed on it, learned its scent, learned to follow it.
That was the balance.
And now the balance was shifting.
Ironhand turned on the television.
The screen flickered before settling on William Lockwork, president of Keytech Industries. He stood behind a polished podium, wearing a calm expression perfected over decades. High-grade mechanical components were visible beneath tailored clothing—clean, seamless, expensive.
Beside him stood his vice president. Her body was almost entirely mechanical, save for her face. She didn't smile. She observed.
A reporter spoke from off-screen.
"Mr. Lockwork, recent attacks on trade routes outside the city have increased sharply. Some witnesses claim the attackers were… not human. How does Keytech respond?"
William folded his hands.
"These reports concern us all," he said evenly. "But speculation only fuels fear. What matters is protection. Keytech will increase security support for all outgoing caravans."
Ironhand took a slow sip of his drink.
"Bandits," he muttered. "Always bandits."
Down below, people whispered the truth.
Whiplashes were leaving the city.
Not climbing upward.
Leaving entirely.
No one knew why.
Some said the virus was changing.
Some said the Fourth Level was starving.
And others whispered something far more dangerous.
What if the Fragments of Eden were beginning to run dry?
If less waste was being dumped, the Whiplashes would follow the source. Hunger had a way of pushing things past their limits.
A sudden clatter broke the room's silence.
Papers slid off Ironhand's desk and scattered across the floor.
He didn't turn.
"You're not welcome here," he said calmly.
A soft laugh answered him.
"Still sharp," a woman's voice said. "Good."
Ironhand raised the weapon integrated into his iron arm, aiming it toward the empty space behind him.
"One chance," he said. "Speak."
"You can't shoot me," she replied. "Not like this."
Her silhouette shimmered into view.
Ironhand's eyes narrowed.
Keytech's vice president stood in his office.
"No one gets in here," he said. "Explain."
"I didn't," she replied. "Not physically."
She tapped the side of her head. A sleek implant glinted beneath synthetic skin.
"Experimental cognitive transmitter. I'm communicating directly."
Ironhand exhaled slowly.
"So this is how Keytech knocks now."
"I needed your attention."
"You have it. Talk."
"I can't," she said. "Not here."
He gestured with his glass.
"You're already in my head."
"And still, this isn't the place," she replied. "What I have to show you can't be transmitted."
Ironhand studied her.
"You could've sent someone else."
"We did," she said. "They failed."
That earned a pause.
"And now you're here."
"Yes."
He finished his drink and stood.
"Show me."
Her image vanished.
The office door reshaped itself into a jump gate, metal folding into a glowing frame.
Ironhand stepped through.
Moments later, he stood in the upper levels of Keytech Industries. Clean air. Bright lights. Guards stiffened as he passed, whispering behind their hands.
"Is that Ironhand?"
"That's just a story."
The vice president turned to him.
"how rude am i My name is Phirl Keytech," she said.
She led him through a secured corridor to a sealed door.
Before opening it, she stopped.
"No information leaves this room."
Ironhand shrugged.
"Then open it."
The door slid aside.
William Lockwork lay inside.
Dead.
His head shattered, eyes empty.
"Has the news come out?" he asked.
"None," Phirl said. "Yet."
"Because if the city hears about this," Ironhand said, "everything breaks."
"Yes."
He tilted his head.
"Or is it because announcing the death of the city's most trusted security provider," he added,
"might make investors question how secure your technology really is?"
Silence stretched.
Phirl didn't deny it.
"A public loss of confidence," she said carefully, "would destabilize more than just Keytech."
Ironhand gave a dry laugh.
"So panic for the people," he said, "and doubt for the shareholders."
Phirl's eyes hardened.
"You see the problem."
"I see the priorities," Ironhand replied.
He looked back at the corpse.
"And now," he said, "you want me to find who did this—before the truth starts climbing up from the Fourth Level."
Phirl nodded once.
"Welcome to the case, Mr. Ironhand."
For the first time that night, Ironhand didn't reach for another cigarette.
Somewhere deep within Connection City, something had finally broken.
And whatever it was, it had already begun to move.