I frantically opened the quarantine log, my bloody fingers flying across the cracked keyboard. The shards of broken glass bit deep into my left palm with every keystroke, but I didn't slow down. I kept pressing the input keys, forcing the terminal to accept the command lines. My left hand was slick with blood, leaving thick, greasy smears across the plastic casing and the functional buttons.I didn't care about the cuts or the grease. I just needed the buried folder to open before the core loop timed out. "Come on," I muttered, slamming the heel of my palm against the frame. "Open up for me."The terminal gave a loud beep that rattled the loose wiring beneath the board. The golden border of the standard system interface began to warp and bend, the color bleeding out from the edges of the display.It shifted from the bright corporate gold to a deep blue. The new light filled the small room, reflecting off the shattered fragments of the screen and casting long, pale shadows across Pip’

"Get out of my way, Damian," Lyra yelled. Her boots kicked a piece of loose gravel across the concrete floor at the base of the Spire. "We are leaving right now. The rebellion is completely over. There is absolutely nothing left to fight for in this place, and I am not staying here to die.""The lifts are starting to reset, Lyra," Damian said, his voice flat as he packed a row of fresh ammunition magazines into his heavy tactical chest rig. "We cannot just run out into the open courtyard without a plan. The corporate enforcers are already packing the lower gates, and they will cut us down the second we cross the threshold.""I do not care about the lower gates," Lyra snapped, her fingers tightening around the worn leather grip of her staff until her knuckles turned white. "I am not staying in this miserable tower for another single minute. We are packing the remaining gear right now, and we are going back to the lower sectors where we belong."I stepped out from the dark emergency st

The massive freight elevator rattled violently as it dropped straight down into the dark shaft. The lift ride was long and tense, plunging deep beneath the rusted crust of the Scrap Heap.The rusty cables groaned loudly over our heads, and the thick steel platform shuddered under our boots with every passing second."Are we dead yet?" Lyra asked, her hands gripping her staff tightly as she leaned her back against the scratched metal wall. "Because this elevator feels like a direct trip to the garbage incinerator.""We are not dead, Lyra," Damian said, checking the power cell on his kinetic rifle for the third time. "Stop whining. We are almost at the baseline.""I am not whining, Damian," she snapped, glaring at him through the dim light of the lift cabin. "I am pointing out that we are riding a giant metal coffin down into a black pit. Arix, is this damn thing supposed to shake this much?""It is an old freight model," I said. "It holds the weight.""It feels like it is going to snap

"Do it now, Pip," I said, leaning hard against the cracked casing of the white server enclosure."I am locking onto his signal registry right now," Pip’s voice buzzed inside my skull, his electronic tone fast and sharp. "Beaming my digital consciousness into the machine’s firewall. Hold onto the drive links, Arix.""I have the connection stable," I thought back to him. The lead Core-Defender froze instantly in the middle of the clean aisle. His short-barrel rifle dropped three inches, the barrel pointing down at the polished composite floor tiles. The glossy black visor of his tactical helmet began flashing rapidly between a bright crimson red and a deep blue light."What is wrong with that guard?" Damian yelled, his empty rifle swinging toward the second advancing soldier. "He completely stopped moving.""Look at his helmet display," Lyra shouted, her fingers gripping her iron staff as she peeked around the plastic corner of the partition box. "The system interface is glitching out.