Chapter 91: The Safehouse Apartment"None of us are walking out of here rich, Dorian, so stop acting like you're special," Seraphine interjected, her boots clicking with military precision against the concrete floor while she kept one hand casually resting over the concealed grip of her suppressed sidearm beneath her work vest. "And if you don't shut your mouth about bounties in the middle of a public transit concourse, you won't even live long enough to find out how much your head is actually worth on the open net."Dorian snapped his jaw shut, his pale face flushing a mottled shade of red beneath the fluorescent glare of the overhead bulkhead lights as they stepped past a row of silent, unblinking surveillance domes. "I'm just saying the margin for error is razor-thin, Seraphine. One corrupted sector on these forged chits and we're breathing vacuum.""The margin was zero three miles deep in the bedrock tunnel, and you managed to crawl out of it," Kenji muttered, shoving the heavy sa

Chapter 93: Reconnaissance on the Concourse"If you spend any more time inspecting the hardware, you're going to weld your fingers to the casing, Dorian, and then we won't even need corporate security to execute us," Seraphine snapped, her hand falling away from the concealed grip of her sidearm as she paced the narrow, damp perimeter of the safehouse room. "The diagnostic lights are green. The data-deck is breathing. Now stop treating the terminal like it's a fragile glass ornament and pull up the structural schematics for the upper concourse bridge before the local relays update their security sweeps."Dorian glared up from the glowing amber screen of his spliced terminal, his knuckles gray where he gripped the cracked plastic housing. "I'm not treating it like glass, Seraphine. I'm treating it like a live anti-personnel mine that happens to have my face stored in its active cache. One bad ping to the regional grid, and every automated defense drone between here and the executive to

Chapter 95: The Frequency of Survival"Keep coughing on my open channel, Jago, and you won't have to worry about buyers at all," Seraphine murmured, her voice dropping into that cold, level register that always made Kenji check the safety on his sidearm. "You said forty-eight hours. Is that a real window or are corporate cleaners already moving down the secondary utility line?""It’s forty-eight hours if you stay off the main public nodes," Jago’s voice crackled through the feedback, thin and greasy with simulated calm. "The internal affairs automated sweep caught the biometric mismatch on the transit chits because some lazy clerk in Sector 4 didn't clear the backlog before shift change. They aren't sending a massive strike team yet—they're trying to keep the leak quiet so the board doesn't panic. They want you bagged and dropped into an incinerator before the morning bell.""Quiet suits us fine," Kenji said, stepping away from the rusted waste cart and kicking a loose floorboard back

Chapter 97: The Approach"Let them try to sterilize Sector 4. The ventilation shafts are rusted through, and the structural supports are half-rotted. Any gas they drop will vent straight into the lower maintenance rings and choke them out instead," Seraphine said, her voice completely devoid of panic as she pulled the bolt back on her rifle with a sharp clack.Kenji checked the mag-release on his sidearm for the fourth time in five minutes, his eyes darting toward the heavy steel door of the safehouse. "Gas is the least of my worries if Jago’s timeline is even half an hour off. You sure his network isn't already compromised?""Jago loves money more than he loves the corporate board, and the board doesn't pay a bounty on corpses buried under three tons of concrete," Dorian muttered, not looking up from his makeshift terminal as he slammed the data-deck into his coat pocket. "The real problem isn't Jago. It's getting past the secondary security checkpoint at the base of the regional tow

Chapter 99: The Jammer Drop"This is the regional administrative tower. The guards up here have retinal implants tied directly to the central executive mainframe," Dorian hissed, his eyes wide as the service elevator's digital floor indicator blinked 208 in searing amber light. "If they run a secondary scan on these badges, we aren't getting arrested. We're getting vaporized before the doors even slide open."Seraphine didn't blink, her thumb resting casually against the safety switch of her concealed carbine beneath her oversized security coat. "Then don't let them run a scan. Keep your head down, let Kenji flash the credentials, and if anyone asks a question, you pretend to be a mute systems tech with a hangover.""A hangover?" Dorian whispered, his voice cracking slightly as the elevator shuddered and began to decelerate with a deep, hydraulic groan. "I look like a walking panic attack wrapped in cheap polyester.""Exactly. It fits the profile of a mid-tier technician," Kenji mutte