"If I wanted you dead, kid, I wouldn't have shouted first," the veteran Glitch-User growled, stepping into the dim light of the rooftop. He was a mountain of a man, draped in a coat stitched from discarded industrial cabling and thermal padding. He didn't look at Kenji; his eyes were fixed on the flickering, translucent silhouette of Ares-Minus. "And if you keep manifesting your frustration like a toddler throwing a tantrum, you’ll be dead before the sunrise. The Sprawl doesn't tolerate seismic instability."Kenji wiped the dust from his eyes, his heart still thumping a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs. He felt the gravity around his boots surge and snap like a trapped animal. "I didn't mean to do that. It was a reflex.""Reflexes are for the weak," the man scoffed, crossing his scarred arms. "Down here, you control the pulse or the pulse controls you. I’m Kael, and that—" he gestured vaguely toward the horizon where the neon skyline bled into the smog, "—is a death sentence

"Kira," Kael hissed, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble. "The scavenger queen. She doesn't track people; she tracks the resonance of dying gods. She’s smelled your companion, Kenji."The figure on the spire shifted. Even at this distance, Kenji felt a sharp, piercing pressure in his temples—the psychic equivalent of a needle-prick. The drones scattered like iron hornets, their synchronized movement cutting through the smog."Ares-Minus," Kenji whispered, grabbing the flickering entity by the shoulder. The form felt like static-charged smoke, thin and freezing. "Can you hold it together? We need to move. Now."Ares-Minus blinked, his eyes glowing with an agonizingly dim violet hue. "I am... anchored by your fear, Kenji. It is a messy, discordant tether. If you leave me, I will dissipate within minutes. You know this."Kael stepped between them and the edge of the roof, his expression unreadable. "He’s right, kid. The girl is coming for the core. If you jump off the north led

"Wake up, kid! Move your fingers!"Kenji shot upright, gasping as a blinding needle of pain stabbed directly behind his left eyeball. The world tilted violently. The rusted ceiling of the rooftop hideout spun in lazy, nauseating circles, smelling of ozone and burnt copper."I said move them!" Kael barked, standing over him with a heavy iron wrench raised like a club."I'm trying!" Kenji choked out, clutching his right arm to his chest. "I can't feel them! I can't feel anything!""Look at your hand, Kenji," Ares-Minus said.The entity’s voice was no longer a wispy, sandpaper whisper. It was crisp, resonant, and unnervingly solid. Kenji forced his eyes down to his right arm.He froze.From the tips of his fingernails up to the middle of his forearm, his skin was pitch-black. It didn't look bruised; it looked charred to cinder, like charcoal that had survived an industrial furnace. Pale, violent streaks of violet static skittered across the blackened flesh, pulsing in exact, rhythmic har

"Look at this, Kenji. Really look at it."Ares-Minus didn't just speak; he projected the data directly into Kenji’s augmented consciousness. A holographic display, flickering with the same erratic violet hue as Kenji’s scorched arm, bloomed in the stale air of the Sprawl hideout. It was a topographical map of the Tokyo energy grid, overlaid with pulsing veins of data stolen from the debris of the skirmish."This isn't a power grid," Kenji whispered, his eyes darting across the glowing nodes. He reached out with his blackened right hand, his fingers trembling, and pinched a node to zoom in. The sensation was electric—not painful, but intrusive, like someone else’s memories crawling up his nerves. "This is a harvesting array.""Precisely," Ares-Minus replied, his voice devoid of sympathy. He stood over the projection, his form solidifying with an unnerving, predatory grace. "The corporate suits aren't just distributing electricity. They are using the 'captives'—my kin, the shards of ess

"You are talking about performing open-heart surgery on a skyscraper while it’s running a marathon, Kenji. The complexity is astronomical," Ares-Minus muttered, his holographic silhouette flickering against the cracked concrete of their hideout.Kenji ignored him, pulling his coat tight over his blackened arm. The static burn throbbed with every heartbeat, a constant reminder of the cost of his last reckless gambit. "I don’t care about the odds. I care about the fact that if we just pull the plug, we’re no better than the people who put them there in the first place.""We are survivors, not saints," Ares-Minus countered, though he didn't move to stop Kenji from packing his gear. "The Grid Hub is a fortress. It is the most fortified piece of infrastructure in Tokyo. If we go to the Hub, we aren't just infiltrating a building; we are stepping into the throat of the beast."Kenji tossed a discarded scanner into his pack. "Then we make it choke. Let's move."The city outside was a vertica