​The penthouse of the Chen Spire had been stripped. The luxury Italian sofas, the avant-garde sculptures, the priceless rugs—all gone.​In their place stood rows of server banks, holographic map tables, and crates of scavenged Scion weaponry. The floor-to-ceiling windows, once offering a view of a peaceful city, now looked out over a metropolis under martial law, illuminated by the searchlights of Chen Group security drones patrolling the streets.​Liya stood at the head of the main table. She wore a tactical variant of her business suit—armored weave beneath the silk, a holstered pistol on her hip.​"Status report," she commanded.​Rix, looking exhausted but manic with purpose, swiped a hand across the air. A massive holographic globe materialized in the center of the room.​"The broadcast hit 4.5 billion devices before the Scions managed to kill the satellites," Rix said, pointing to the blue clusters lighting up Europe, Asia, and South America. "The masquerade is dust, Boss. We hav

​Neo-Tokyo did not sleep. It hallucinated.​The team moved through the alleyways of the Shinjuku district, shrouded in Liya’s Widow’s Veil stealth field. Above them, the sky was choked by the Weaver’s Web—a lattice of glowing blue nano-filaments that connected every skyscraper, turning the entire city into a single, thrumming circuit board.​Holographic advertisements for Scion-approved rations danced in the rain—sixty-foot-tall geishas with circuit-board skin weeping digital tears.​"The air is thick," Rix whispered, tapping his deck. "I’m picking up millions of data streams. The Weaver doesn't just watch this city; she feels it. Every camera, every phone, every vending machine is a nerve ending."​"THEN WE STAY OFF THE NERVES," Zane rumbled. He was a massive shadow in the gloom, his metallic bulk draped in a heavy tarp they had scavenged from the docks. To a casual observer, he looked like a piece of construction machinery left in the rain.​Liya checked her map. "The contact signal

​The high-speed elevator ascended smoothly, a silent silver bullet shooting up the spine of the Sky-Tower.​Inside, the silence was suffocating. The air still smelled faintly of the nerve gas that had flooded the factory below. Vara and Kael leaned against the walls, checking their weapons with shaking hands, trying to process the horror of the assembly line.​Zane stood in the center of the car, immobile as a statue. The violet glow of his filaments was dim, pulsing with a slow, seething rhythm. He hadn't spoken since killing the Prototype. The rage radiating from him was so intense it felt like physical pressure on Liya’s eardrums.​"Rix," Liya said, her voice tight. "ETA to the summit?"​Rix looked at his wrist-deck. "Thirty seconds. Boss, the readings up there are off the charts. It’s not just power; it’s data density. It’s like flying into the center of a CPU."​"Get ready," Liya commanded, checking the charge on her phase-rifle. "She knows we're coming. The doors open, we come o

​The Sky-Tower was no longer a tomb. It was a hive of activity.​Three days had passed since the Weaver fell. In that time, Kenji and the Ronin had secured the Factory District. The assembly lines that once butchered humans were now being stripped and repurposed. The remaining "drones"—those too far gone to be saved—were being humanely shut down. Those that could be saved were in recovery.​But on the top floor, in the Weaver’s private fabrication sanctum, a different kind of work was happening.​Liya stood by a holographic workbench, watching Rix type furiously on a new, Weaver-tech deck.​"The fabricating printers are online, Boss," Rix said, grinning. "This tech... it’s lightyears ahead of New York. It prints at the molecular level. We can build anything."​"Not anything," Liya said, looking at the massive containment chamber in the center of the room. "We build what we need to survive the next one."​The Warlord​Inside the chamber, Zane hung suspended in a field of anti-gravity.

​The English countryside was quiet. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of a graveyard.​They moved inland, following Silas through a landscape that defied logic. The rolling green hills were gone, replaced by mounds of grey ash and pulsating fungal growths. Ruins of old farmhouses poked through the mist like broken teeth.​"Keep off the soft ground," Silas warned, his voice muffled by his gas mask. "The Glutton likes to seed the soil with teeth. You step in the wrong patch of mud, it snaps your leg off."​"Charming," Vara muttered, stepping carefully in Zane’s massive footprints.​Liya scanned the horizon with her new helmet. The thermal sensors were struggling; the ambient temperature of the fog was almost body heat. It was like walking inside a lung.​"I SENSE IT," Zane stopped. The vents on his new samurai-esque collar hissed. "SOMETHING LARGE. MOVING."​Silas froze. He dropped to a crouch, pressing his ear to the wet earth. His eyes went wide behind his goggles.​"Down!" Silas