Caleb sat handcuffed to a steel table.
The interrogation room smelled of bleach, overheated wiring, and old iron. Security had stripped his surplus armor and left him in a sweat-soaked undershirt. Cold air raised goosebumps along his arms.
His body wanted food, his brain wanted silence, and neither request mattered.
Vice Captain Iris Calder walked in and dropped a military datapad between his chained wrists.
"The mainframe registered a standard Tier-Four drill," she said.
She tapped the glass. A still image of the pulverized Class-Five brute filled the screen.
"My engineers are hauling twelve tons of unauthorized wreckage out of Sector Four. Jaxson claims a scrubber with marginal sync executed it with a knife."
Caleb kept his breathing even. "I hit the exhaust vent."
"Class-Five models do not overheat in three minutes."
"This one did."
Iris leaned scarred knuckles against the table.
"Someone bypassed the military firewall. Blast doors locked. Squad cameras went black. Training targets exceeded safety thresholds. That does not happen because a rookie finds a warm vent."
Caleb studied the image.
The vent had been there. The hit had been real. The rest of it could hang him if he said too much.
"The vent was glowing," he said. "I drove the knife in. It died."
Iris swiped to a telemetry chart. "A standard combat knife cannot pierce industrial casing."
"Gravity helped."
"Gravity?"
"I jumped from the chassis. My weight drove the blade through the grate."
Iris studied him.
Fear was everywhere in the Seventh. Iris was searching for comfort with the lie.
Caleb gave her none.
He let the lie sit on the table between them like a wrench covered in blood. Useful, ugly, not worth admiring.
"You survive disposal yards," Iris said. "You survive the urban zone. You survive this."
She pushed off the table.
"You are either a complete fluke, or an inside threat."
The heavy door unlatched.
Captain Ren Kade entered carrying a separate datapad, irritated in the specific way commanders got when lawyers had touched a battlefield.
"We have a political problem," Kade said.
Iris's mouth tightened. "Of course we do."
Kade turned to Caleb.
"Mitsurugi Corporation flagged the kill-house telemetry. Because you were wearing their surplus armor during the breach, they are classifying the spike as a proprietary hardware anomaly."
Caleb absorbed that with the flat disbelief it deserved.
"That armor was garbage."
"Garbage built by the people who keep half our division supplied."
Kade stopped at the edge of the table.
"To protect intellectual property, they invoked a contract clause demanding immediate oversight of your physical output. We cannot afford to lose the Mitsurugi supply chain over a technical dispute."
Iris exhaled through her nose. "They want eyes on him."
"They are getting one set."
Kade's voice turned administrative.
"Recruit Kikaru Mitsurugi is assigned as temporary metrics monitor until my engineers clear your gear. This is corporate containment. Leave babysitting out of it. You comply."
Caleb pictured Kikaru's face when she heard the order.
Pride would come first, then offense, then the grim satisfaction of being handed an official reason to stand close enough to judge him.
The thought would have been funny without the corporation putting a hand on his spine.
"He is a variable," Iris said.
"He is a Defense Force asset until data proves otherwise."
Kade gestured to the corridor.
"Move him to solitary. Aris needs his helmet."
Two guards entered and hauled Caleb out of the chair.
The chains bit his wrists as they walked him down the sterile hallway.
-----
Holding Cell Four was a concrete box with no window and one steel door.
The guards locked him inside.
Caleb sat on the metal cot. His right arm throbbed. The caloric deficit left his muscles heavy and slow, like his bones had been packed with wet sand.
The deadbolts clicked open.
A man in a white lab coat over a wrinkled gray uniform entered with Caleb's cracked helmet under one arm and a diagnostic terminal under the other. Dark circles bruised the pale skin under his eyes.
"Chief Engineer Aris," he said, dropping the terminal onto the table. "I run the grid."
"Congratulations."
"Do not make me dislike you faster."
Aris plugged a thick black cable into the helmet's data port and began working with sharp, irritated speed.
"The proctors think a rogue Guild cell bypassed external firewalls," Aris muttered. "They are wrong. The intruder piggybacked on a biometric feed from inside the kill house."
He turned the terminal just enough for Caleb to see the nested signal map.
Most of it meant nothing to him, but he understood routes. Disposal yards lived on routes: which conveyor jammed, which drain backed up, which gate stuck during rain. The map on Aris's screen showed the same idea in cleaner language.
The ghost had found a pipe through the wall.
Code scrolled green across the terminal.
"They shredded our encryption, but they left the tether open."
He tapped a red progress bar crawling across the top of the display.
"I trapped the ghost code inside this helmet's motherboard. I am locking them out of purge protocols. Trace goes back to physical server."
For the first time all day, Caleb saw someone smile because a hard piece of work had actually held.
The bar hit eighty percent. Static crackled from the helmet. Purple text bled across the broken visor.
[Unknown User] He is too fast.
Aris froze as the next line burned across the visor.
[Unknown User] Burning the bridge.
"No," Aris snapped, lunging for the cable.
The helmet's battery casing screamed.
White smoke vented from the seals. An electrical pop cracked through the cell. The surge raced up the black cable and blew the diagnostic terminal in a shower of sparks and dead pixels.
Emergency lights washed the room pale red.
Aris stood over the ruined hardware, breathing in melted plastic.
"She destroyed the physical drive," he whispered.
He dragged a shaking hand down his face.
"She burned her own backdoor just to stop the trace. Evidence is gone."
He grabbed the fried terminal and rushed out, and the door sealed behind him.
Caleb remained on the cot, replaying the last ten seconds. Aris had forced her to run. The ghost could be cornered, even if Caleb was not the one with the right tools yet. Someone patient enough to follow wires instead of fear could make her burn something expensive.
Ten minutes passed.
The deadbolts disengaged.
Kade filled the doorway.
"Chief Engineer Aris claims a hostile entity hijacked your helmet and overloaded his terminal," he said. "The physical drive is destroyed. My engineers have no usable data tying you to the Sector Four breach."
He stepped aside.
"You are cleared of active sabotage charges. You return to duty under the temporary oversight condition. Step out of line once, and I discharge you into the street."
Caleb stood. "Understood."
"I doubt that." Kade walked away.
-----
By the time Caleb reached the Seventh Division locker room, the place was nearly empty.
Caleb found his assigned locker and pulled the handle.
A black garment bag hung inside.
Caleb stopped with his hand on the handle. Inside was a tailored charcoal-gray suit cut from heavy wool. A burner comms chip had been pinned to the lapel. A thick cream card waited in the breast pocket.
Caleb pulled it free.
The handwriting was precise.
[They let you out. Put the suit on. Dinner reservation. Upper Sectors. Eight o'clock.]
Caleb gripped the locker door until the metal creaked.
Aris had forced her out of the grid, and she had answered by stepping into the physical world.
She wanted him at a table.