"Laila!"Omar caught her before her knees hit the concrete floor. Her skin was turning a mottled, icy gray. Inside her chest, the rhythmic thud-click of her synthetic heart had vanished, replaced by the sickening silence of a stalled motor."It... it cut out," Laila gasped, her hands tearing frantically at the collar of her jacket. "The battery... the internal power cell isn't cycling!""Hold on. I'm severing the neural bridge," Omar gritted his teeth, his hand flying to the damp socket behind his ear. "If I disconnect the Sync, the interference stops—""Don't!" Laila screamed, grabbing his wrist with terrifying, mechanical force.The second Omar eased the link back even two percent, Laila’s jaw locked. Her eyes rolled into her head, her spine arching as her lungs starved for oxygen. Her chest flatlined entirely."Laila!" Omar’s heart hammered against his ribs. Panic overrode judgment. He slammed his mind back into the connection, forcing the neural link to surge to full intensity.BZ

"Breathe, Laila! Don't you dare leave me in this silence!" Omar roared, the command ripping through the neural bridge like a jagged blade.Laila’s body spasmed, a violent, kinetic jolt that rattled her teeth. The internal thud-click of her heart didn't return, but the artificial stimulation of the Sync forced her nervous system to reboot. She sucked in a jagged, metallic breath, her eyes snapping open. They were glowing a haunting, translucent blue that mirrored his own."It... it hurts," she wheezed, her voice synthesized, flattened by the sheer volume of data dumping directly into her auditory cortex. "The feedback loop... it’s hungry, Omar.""I know," Omar hissed, his vision swimming with her internal diagnostics. He could see her blood pressure plummeting, a red warning icon flashing in the corner of his peripheral vision a projection only he could perceive. "If I cut the link, your pump dies. If I keep it up, I burn out your synapses. We’re in a deadlock."Laila gripped his forea

It’s not just a collection of corporate secrets," Maya snapped, her voice cutting through the tension like a razor. She stepped forward, ignoring the three muzzles leveled at her chest. "It’s a map. A hard-coded blueprint of the frequency the city is currently vibrating on. Your 'fortress' here? It’s not protecting you from the jumpers. It’s sitting right on top of a signal relay that’s going to turn every living soul in this slum into a receiver."The Captain’s eyes flickered, just for a heartbeat, toward the rusted antenna protruding from the ruins of a nearby shophouse. It was subtle, but for Budi, currently keyed into the hum of the city’s neural decay, it was a thunderclap."You're lying," the Captain rasped, though the certainty in his voice had thinned. "My engineers have been trying to stabilize that relay for months. They said it would bring the power grid back online. They said it would light up the night again.""It won’t light anything but your brains," Budi interjected, h

"How can you tell?" Omar squinted, but his vision was a frantic, glitching mess of telemetry that didn't belong to him."I can read the power drain on the local grid," Laila said, her voice strained. She shoved him forward, her strength far exceeding that of a human woman. "The atmosphere is ionizing. That's not a scavenger’s hand-crank generator. That’s heavy-duty localized EMP shielding. The warlords are here.""Great," Omar muttered, barely keeping his balance as a wave of vertigo washed over him. "Between the Sand-Blind and a professional army, we’re squeezed like a grape in a vice."The tunnel shook again, more violently this time. A plume of pulverized concrete rained down on them, coating their hair in a fine, choking powder. The steady thud of machinery grew louder, vibrating through the soles of their boots, rattling their very marrow."We move now," Laila commanded, her eyes burning with an artificial cerulean glow. "If we stay here, we're just targets waiting for a sweep. T

"Hit the bypass!" Laila screamed over the deafening screech of bending steel. "Omar, right now!""I can't feel my hand!" Omar slammed his palm against the rusted control housing of the pressure release. Raw voltage sparked from his knuckles, turning his veins into bright blue lightning under his skin. "The sync is spiking—it's taking my motor control!""Give it to me!" She grabbed his wrist, leaning her entire weight into him. Her chest cavity emitted a sickening, metallic grinding sound. "I’ll act as the ground! Channel it through my mechanical core!""It'll burn your heart out!""Do it, or we get crushed under ten tons of concrete!"Omar bit down on his lip until he tasted copper and opened the floodgates in his mind. The signal roared like a hurricane inside his skull. Pain, bright and blinding, flashed through his jaw, down his arm, into her wrist, and directly into the rusted pneumatic valve.BANG.The explosive pressure release ruptured with a concussive blast. The heavy iron gr