"We didn't walk through three blocks of hostile scavengers to get stared down by a man who thinks aiming a rifle at a flagless officer makes him a tactician," Evelyn Vance said, her voice cutting through the damp chill of the subterranean fallout shelter like a razor blade. She didn't drop her gaze, even as Kael stepped another half-pace forward, his knuckle-joints whitening around the composite stock of his weapon. "You're standing in my district, Captain, wearing a uniform that spent the last five years shooting at the people I eat breakfast with," Kael shot back, his eyes narrowing to hardened slits. "Excuse me if I don't roll out the welcome mat because your corporate paymasters decided to unplug your leash and leave you for dead." "The leash is gone, and so is the master, which is precisely why I'm standing here instead of bleeding out in a gutter on Second Avenue," Vance retorted, taking a slow, deliberate step forward until she was we

"The taps went completely dry ten minutes ago, Kael. Not a drip, not a cough, just empty air hissing through the copper pipes," Sera said, her voice strained as she hurried across the crowded, soot-stained floor of the basement workshop, clutching a heavy brass wrench in her grease-stained hands. Rian pushed himself off the rusted fruit cart, his cybernetic arm emitting a low, pathetic whine before dying entirely. He caught his balance against a concrete pillar, his face pale under the flickering light of a battery-powered lantern. "That's not a localized glitch. If the secondary valves at the district hydro-plant aren't manually reset, the whole sector's primary line is going to air-lock within the hour." "An air-locked main line means zero water pressure for four thousand people," Vance said, stepping out from the shadows near the doorway. She was rolling up her sleeves, revealing forearms crisscrossed with old tactical scars. "And without

"Keep your voices down," Captain Vance hissed, her hand shooting out to grab Kael’s shoulder before he could round the rusted steel corner of the subterranean corridor. "The Syndicate didn't leave this cache unguarded just because they’re busy trying to shut down our water supply. They know damn well what’s buried under floor-level twelve." Kael shrugged her hand off with a sharp twitch, his eyes narrowing as he peered through the gloom toward the flickering amber glow of a low-wattage work light fifty yards ahead. "I didn't come down here to whisper, Vance. I came down here to take their teeth before they take ours. If those bastards have a stash of heavy armor-piercing rounds down here, we need them upstairs before the next pipeline push." "You’ll get your rounds when I say you get your rounds, old man," Vance snapped back, her voice dropping to a harsh, controlled whisper. She unholstered her sidearm—a heavy,

"Tell me you didn’t just hear that frequency bleed over the secondary band, Sera, because if my ears are finally rotting out of my skull, I’d rather know now before the shooting starts again," Kael barked, his boots crunching sharply over a scattering of empty brass shell casings as he shoved open the heavy, rusted metal door to the basement workshop. He didn't bother lowering his assault rifle, keeping the muzzle pointed low toward the shadows of the cluttered room. Sera didn't look up from her workbench, her fingers flying with frantic speed across the stripped-down chassis of a battery-powered radio transceiver. The harsh, erratic blue glow of the handheld oscilloscope illuminated the dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, casting long, jittery shadows against the damp concrete walls behind her. "It’s not your ears rotting, Kael. Unless my own mind is going completely off the deep end, that signal was bouncing straight off the upper troposph

"Nobody touch the valve!" Rian’s voice cut through the damp subterranean chill of the central distribution cistern like a jagged blade, his cybernetic optic flickering violently with an erratic amber warning loop. He lunged forward across the slick concrete floor, his right hand slamming hard into the brass-plated shutoff lever of the primary municipal feed line just as a masked figure in a torn Syndicate mechanic’s coat tried to wrench it open. "Get your hands off me, you twitching scrap-heap!" the saboteur snarled, spinning around with a heavy steel wrench raised high in a desperate, blinding arc aimed straight at Rian’s temple. Rian didn't even flinch; his failing left arm, now crudely reinforced with a tight wrapping of thick industrial cable ties and steel splints, shot up with mechanical precision to catch the descending wrench. The metal impacted the improvised brace with a deafening, hollow clang that sent a sharp s