The hum of the cooling units in the corner of the shelter dome blended with the rhythmic tapping of Cora's fingers on the virtual keyboard. The air felt lighter today, even though the antiseptic scent from the bandage on my left shoulder still drifted sharply. I sat leaning against a folding chair, watching the rapid rotation of data streams in the center of the room. Wallen stood beside Cora, connecting a series of cables from his main console to a transmitter he had previously concealed beneath the floor. The Fyskk worked with dexterity, ensuring every circuit connection was locked tight. "Tapping into the Noctis Reach security authority frequencies is one thing," Wallen said, dusting off the transmitter module. The Fyskk grinned, revealing his sharp teeth, his mechanical eye spinning to adjust its focus. "But if you want to see the ripples you're making in a bigger pond, we have to use channels that the Imperium can't track. I'm hooking you up to the boundless information market."

The cold air in the inter-level maintenance shaft crept under my jacket. I stepped into the center of the intersection. The corridor narrowed, flanked by two reactor walls towering high into the darkness of the inter-level ceiling."My position is secure," the bounty hunter's helmet-distorted vocoder voice sounded through my earpiece communicator.I glanced up briefly. Thirty meters above me, concealed behind a tangle of dark pipes, Vex's silhouette was virtually invisible. She held a high-caliber sniper rifle, its long barrel protruding from behind a gap in the iron platform."Remember, Vex, you're our guardian today," I replied softly, tightening my grip on the arcblade handle. "Don't let anyone flank my position.""Just focus on your dance down there, L. Not a single fly will make it past my crosshairs," Vex answered in a calming, icy tone.At the main far end leading to the shelter dome, the sound of forcibly dragged metal echoed. Grox and Jax had piled together cargo ship scrap t

Sitting quietly doing nothing was a torture worse than the slash of a plasma blade. I lay on my bed, staring at the dome ceiling with a feeling of stifled frustration. The bandage on my left shoulder felt stiff, locking my movement under layers of medical glue and tissue-cauterizing sealant. Eleven hours had passed since Cora re-stitched my torn muscles, and this twelve-hour rest period still had sixty creeping minutes left.Jax sat on a folding chair, busy rubbing the hinges of his mechanical knee with a wet cloth reeking of lubricant. The Lumea glanced at me."You look like a desert cat trapped in a cage, L," Jax chuckled, dripping cleaning fluid into the gaps of his titanium hinges. "Just enjoy this free time while you can, my friend. It's rare for a fugitive like you to lie around relaxing like this.""If I lie on this bed any longer, my joints are going to rust like the pile of scrap outside this dome," I replied softly, shifting my back to find a position of comfort that felt im

The dome door hissed shut, severing us from the cold outside air. The sound of the hydraulic locks securing into place felt like a settling heartbeat. I stood in the center of the room, still feeling the residual ripples of atmospheric distortion from the two figures' stealth technology. The air inside the dome was cool, yet the lingering chill of that brief encounter still crept up my neck.Cora stepped toward me, extending her hand with a serious look on her face. "Let me hold that cylinder. We don't know if there's a hidden protocol inside that could trigger an assassination signal or a remote hack into the dome's defense systems."I handed the cylinder to Cora. The metal felt remarkably light in my palm, yet carried a massive weight. Cora brought it over to the isolation terminal in the corner of the room, securing it with a scanner without bridging it to the primary network. We all stood in a circle, monitoring every data movement on the screen, awaiting our administrator's analy

I stood near the window overlooking the inter-level shaft, watching the fog of pollution creep across the giant pipes. My left shoulder still throbbed whenever I rotated the joint, but the layer of medical sealant had fused with the torn muscle tissue.The internal conflict gnawing at the hierarchy of the Nexus Imperium following the Wraith's death had indeed granted us room to breathe. However, the time we possessed was a resource that was slowly running out.I turned away from the window and walked toward the console table. The small black cylinder provided by the mysterious envoys lay inside an isolation box."Cora. Wallen," I called out, my voice breaking the harmony of the machinery inside the dome.Both stopped their activities simultaneously. Cora shut down the weapon calibration screen she had been inspecting, while Wallen laid his welding torch onto the workbench. They stepped over to me, their faces reflecting curiosity."Is something weighing on your mind, L?" Cora asked, c