Evan Kennedy closed his eyes tightly. He braced his body for the terrible, bone-crushing impact. The solid black glass wall of the transit hub was rushing toward his face. The strange girl in the dark hood was pulling him straight into it. He expected to hear the sound of his own bones breaking. But the crash never happened. Evan did not hit solid glass. He fell right through it. The black glass wall was not real. It was a massive, perfect hologram. It was a trick of the light designed to hide a secret maintenance chute. The air instantly turned cold and damp. Evan slid down a steep, smooth metal tube. He was falling in total darkness. He heard the girl sliding right beside him. "Ahhhh!" a familiar voice screamed from above. Evan looked up into the dark. Two heavy bodies crashed into him from behind. It was Marco and Glitch. They had jumped through the fake wall right after him. They all slid together down the dark, twisting metal pipe. It felt like being swallowed by a giant

"Calm down?!" Jax screamed. His voice cracked with pure panic. He pointed a trembling human finger at Evan. "Do you know who that is?! That is the Glitch! That is the boy who broke Sector One! The Board of Directors just put a billion-credit bounty on his head! The Neon Guard is searching every inch of the city for him!"Jax’s mechanical arms began to twitch nervously. "If the Bank finds him in my shop, they will not just arrest me! They will erase me! They will burn my entire market down! Get him out!""Jax, listen to me," Marco stepped forward, grunting in pain. "We need fake IDs. We need Life-Clock spoofers. We need to become ghosts. We can pay you.""There is not enough money in the world to buy my life!" Jax yelled. Jax’s top mechanical arm suddenly reached under the heavy metal desk. Evan’s eyes narrowed. He saw what Jax was doing. Jax was reaching for a small, red panic button hidden under the wood. If he pressed that button, it would send a silent alarm directly to the Neon

The small, hot room of the black-market forger was filled with thick black smoke. The heavy metal door had just been blown off its hinges. The red emergency lights flashed wildly, casting long, scary shadows on the walls. Evan Kennedy stood in the center of the smoke. He raised his bare fists. He did not have his purple fire. He did not have his magical Spark. He just had his courage. Through the thick smoke, five terrifying figures stepped into the room. They were the Neon Claws. They were the most dangerous bounty hunters in the Mid-Levels. They wore tight, sleek armor painted in toxic green, electric yellow, and deep purple. The leader, a tall woman in purple armor, stepped over the broken computers on the floor. She held a massive, double-bladed sword. The edges of the sword crackled with bright, deadly pink electricity. "Hello, ghosts," the bounty hunter said. Her voice came through a speaker in her helmet. It sounded metallic and cruel. "It is time to die. A billion credits

Everything in the penthouse was perfectly clean. There was not a single speck of dust. "Welcome to Cloud Nine," Rell said, pulling her dark hood down. She smiled, looking proud. "It is a private safehouse used by high-end smugglers and elite data-thieves. It is not registered on any Bank grid. The security here is military-grade. No one can find you.""It is... incredible," Glitch whispered. He ran across the white marble floor, his dirty boots leaving a trail of gray footprints. He jumped onto one of the soft white leather couches. "It is so soft! I have never touched anything this soft in my life!"Marco stumbled out of the elevator. He looked around the pristine room. "You said there was a medical pod?""Down the hall, first door on the right," Rell pointed. "It is fully stocked. It will scan your broken ribs, wrap them in a healing gel, and give you synthetic painkillers. You will feel better in an hour.""Thank you," Marco grunted. He slowly limped down the wide, white hallway,

The blue laser was brighter than the sun. It shot out of the massive sniper rifle held by the Collector in the black gunship. The beam of light moved instantly. It was aimed directly at Evan Kennedy’s chest. But Marco was a grifter. He had spent his entire life watching for traps. He did not wait to see what the Collector would do. "Get down!" Marco roared. Marco threw his heavy body forward. He tackled Evan around the waist. The two of them crashed to the white marble floor just as the blue laser hit the giant glass window. CRASH! The massive window of the penthouse exploded. A million sharp pieces of glass rained down into the room like a deadly, glittering storm. The freezing wind from outside rushed into the warm penthouse, knocking over the expensive glass tables and the bottles of silver wine. The blue laser missed Evan by exactly one inch. It hit the white leather couch behind him, instantly burning a massive, smoking black hole through the thick furniture. "They found