"If we trip so much as a single perimeter sensor on this perimeter wall, we aren't just blowing the op, we’re volunteering for target practice," Kael whispered, pressing his broad back flat against the corrugated steel plating of the corporate cargo depot. His voice was a low, rough rumble barely audible over the hum of the overhead substation transformers. Jax crouched beside him, a specialized multi-tool pinched tightly between his grease-stained fingers as he worked the casing of an automated security relay. "Relax, big guy. I've bypassed corporate locking mechanisms on systems twice as heavily encrypted as this glorified garage. Just watch the blind spots and keep your rifle pointed away from my face." "My rifle is pointed exactly where it needs to be," Kael muttered, his eyes scanning the cavernous loading bay ahead. Row upon row of towering, plastisteel cargo containers stretched out into the hazy, neon-tinted gloom. "Which is cu

"Stop twitching, Sera. If you jolt that terminal any harder, the whole rig’s going to short-circuit on us, and I’d rather not be blind in the middle of a corporate black-site database," Jax muttered, leaning his shoulder against the rusted steel doorframe of Vane’s makeshift backroom. His fingers danced rhythmically against the grip of his sidearm, checking the magazine release purely out of nervous habit. Sera didn't look up from the flickering, amber-lit screen of the salvaged console. Her fingers moved across the mechanical keyboard with a frantic, rhythmic clatter that echoed sharply off the damp concrete walls. "I'm not the one causing the interference, Jax. The local network infrastructure is practically bleeding data packets. Someone—or something—is scrubbing these logs in real-time, and I’m having to fight through three layers of military-grade encryption just to read a simple maintenance manifest." <

"Corporate routing tags don't just appear out of thin air, Sera," Kael said, his voice dropping an octave as he scanned the shadowy, cramped corridor outside the makeshift medical bay. "That means Vane didn't just stumble onto our location by accident. He had this channel open the entire time we were negotiating." "Open and broadcasting on a dedicated sub-frequency," Sera hissed, her fingers hammering against the amber keyboard with renewed panic as she tried to sever the data uplink. "The moment we brought Rian in here, the fixer wasn't sizing up our scrap metal or evaluating the risk of the dampener. He was uploading our biometric signatures directly to the obsidian-armored faction's local command node." Rian gritted his teeth, his right arm throbbing violently beneath the newly installed iron harness. The dampener rig hummed with a low, agonizing vibration, sending hot needles of pain shooting straight up his forearm and into his shoulder

"Keep moving! Do not stop for a single second, or those kinetic rounds are going to find a home in your spine!" Kael roared, his boots slamming hard against the rusted metal grid of the maintenance catwalk as a fresh volley of suppressed fire chewed through the corrugated iron siding just to their left. "I don't need a tactical lecture from a man who walked us right into an obsidian ambush!" Jax fired back, ducking low as a stray bullet pinged off the overhead pipework, showering them in flakes of asbestos and lead dust. "How much further to this so-called structural anchor, Sera?" "We are right on top of it!" Sera shouted over the rising wail of sirens echoing up from the burning ruins of the Rust Market below. She slammed her palm against a heavy, grease-stained pneumatic door set deep into the concrete foundation of the industrial park. "This is it. The Old Relay Tower. Clear the latch, Kael!" Kael didn't hesitate. He

"That lock won't hold a determined squad of obsidian enforcers for more than three minutes, and you know it, Jax," Kael warned, his chest heaving as he dropped the magazine of his rifle to check his remaining rounds. Only four left. Four bullets for an entire squad of elite corporate executioners. "It buys us breath, which is more than we had two minutes ago," Jax spat back, wiping soot and sweat from his forehead with the back of a bloody wrist. He looked up the spiraling, vertigo-inducing concrete stairwell that vanished into the gloomy heights of the Old Relay Tower. "Are we going up or waiting to be dug out of this concrete box like rats?" "We're going up," Rian said, his voice tight, gritting his teeth as another hot spike of pain lanced through his right arm. The makeshift dampener rig Vane had cobbled together in the Rust Market was fracturing under the strain, metal struts bending outward as the violet light bled fiercely around the