The tremors from Facility Nyx still echoed in Luka’s bones as they emerged through the old freight lift shaft into the upper ruins of District Seven. Dust coated their clothes. The skyline beyond was bleeding orange from a distant fire...one they hadn’t started.Or maybe they had.They stood in silence amid broken concrete and steel ribs of a long-collapsed tower, watching the city below tremble under its own weight. Somewhere far off, emergency sirens wailed like wounded animals. The Foundation would be cleaning up the mess for weeks. If it still could.Luka leaned against a rusted pillar, trying to slow his heartbeat. He felt Alessia’s eyes on him, saw Viktor pacing like a man itching for a war that hadn’t started yet. Vesper, as always, looked like she wanted more.“We didn’t kill her,” Vesper said flatly. “Mirelle. We let her walk.”“She made a choice,” Luka answered, voice rough. “And now she has to live with what’s coming.”Alessia stepped closer. “You think she’ll stand down?”

The safehouse was buried beneath a decommissioned rail yard on the city’s eastern edge...layers of rusted train cars, old freight containers, and rigged tunnels forming a tomb for outlaws and ghosts. Luka’s crew moved fast, hauling Calixa inside just before dawn painted the sky with ash.Steel doors slammed shut behind them. Alessia keyed in a rotating lock sequence. The heavy magnets hissed, sealing them in.“Status?” Luka asked.“Viktor’s back online,” Alessia replied. “Took shrapnel to the shoulder, but he’s walking. Vesper’s still off comms. She stayed behind to divert the drone heat. We’ve got five hours tops before they pinpoint the location of the counter-hack.”Calixa sat on a steel bench in the corner, stripped down to a tank top, fingers trembling as she plugged a neural interface into the reinforced mainframe at the center of the safehouse.“I’m going to need absolute silence,” she murmured.Viktor limped in, jacket torn, blood caked to his side. “She’s got a hell of a defi

The room buzzed with energy as Calixa’s fingers danced over a derelict terminal, long dormant but still laced with enough legacy code to act as a transmitter. Luka stood by her, pacing like a caged animal. His mind wasn’t just racing...it was splintering. Every second counted. Every moment they waited risked the Foundation tightening its noose.Viktor stood near the entrance with his rifle trained on the stairwell, peering into shadows like he expected the void itself to spit out an assassin.Alessia leaned against the rusted wall, reloading with methodical calm, though the tightness in her jaw betrayed the tension that rode her spine. “She was never going to let us walk out,” she said. “Mirelle wasn’t offering a seat...she was offering poison.”Luka nodded grimly. “She wanted to fracture us. Make us doubt. Delay us just long enough for their containment squads to mobilize.”“And they will,” Calixa muttered. “If I were them, I’d be running adaptive trace patterns across all known comm

The old world stank beneath the waves.Sewage-laced water dripped from the vaulted ceiling of the transit underdeck, a rusted sub-chamber carved out decades ago when the city first tried to expand downward. It was the kind of place even rats abandoned. Steel walls buckled from time, half-sunk rail lines glimmered with oil slicks, and the air tasted like mold and electricity.Luka stepped cautiously along the edge of a submerged platform, boots splashing through ankle-deep water. Behind him, Viktor, Alessia, and Calixa moved with blades drawn and guns close."This is where you said he’d be?" Alessia asked, nose wrinkled. "Because it smells like something already died here.""That’s just Skell’s idea of perfume," Viktor muttered. “Trust me, this is his kind of hell.”Calixa held up a dim, blinking tracker. “Signal’s fluctuating. He’s nearby. Below.”A sudden ripple moved across the water. Something beneath.Luka froze. “We’re not alone.”Then—clang.A metal grate behind them slammed shu

The city didn’t sleep anymore.Since the broadcast, the streets had mutated into something feral—sirens layered over screams, burning cars lighting alleyways like fever dreams. Whole neighborhoods erupted in panic or rebellion. Old factions re-emerged, scavenging power from the vacuum left behind. In the silence after the Foundation’s secrets had spilled across every screen, trust had become the most expensive currency, and Luka Gale found himself nearly broke.In a blacked-out floor of an abandoned high-rise, a temporary war room flickered to life. Maps were pinned with blood-red lines, tablets and cracked monitors looping footage from drones and hacked CCTV. The core team stood in a loose ring around a table littered with half-eaten rations and a topographical layout of the city’s power grid.Luka stood at the head, arms crossed, shoulders tight. The wound on his side still hadn’t closed right. Blood crusted the edge of the bandage beneath his shirt.“We’ve got thirty-six hours befo