"He’s not a corporate lapdog, Elora," Darian said, his voice dropping an octave as his golden HUD pulsed with a sudden, sharp amber flare. "If Jax wanted us dead, we wouldn't have made it out of the port district. He saved Caelan’s life. That buys him a conversation.""A conversation is one thing, Darian," Caelan growled, stepping into the center of the halogen light, his hand still resting heavily against his sidearm. "Handing him a blank check to scrub his criminal record from the central municipal mainframe is another entirely. The man’s a ghost. You don't hand the ghost the keys to the city's locks.""We don't have a choice," Tavia interjected, her fingers flying across her mechanical keyboard with frantic speed, dragging windows of green and red code across the pale blue monitor. "Look at the telemetry. If we try to punch through that perimeter without Jax’s access codes, Raka’s automated sentry drones will turn us into minced meat before we even cross the drainage ditch. The rot

"Then we don't trip the alarms," Darian muttered, stepping forward into the chill of the subterranean intake chamber, his boots making barely a whisper against the damp concrete. Beside him, Jax slipped through the shadows with an eerie, practiced grace, a suppressed carbine cradled against his chest.The air grew colder as they descended deeper into the subterranean belly of the old municipal water treatment plant, a place supposedly abandoned by the city council years ago but now humming with the unmistakable, high-frequency resonance of illegal server racks. Every step brought them closer to the central processing unit, the digital heart of Vasantari Logistics' black-site operations."The firewall is just ahead," Jax whispered, his voice dry and raspy, a byproduct of too many years breathing chemical smoke in the lower spans. He paused before a massive blast door marked with a faded, peeling hazard stencil. "According to the schematics I pulled before our mutual friend Elias decide

"I'm on it," Tavia’s voice crackled through the earpiece, strained and sharp. "Injecting the worm now. Darian, you have four minutes of air-gapped sync time before the secondary diagnostic kicks in and isolates the entire node. Get to the master terminal and hold that connection. If the link drops, the whole thing wipes.""Copy that," Darian replied. He sprinted across the metal grating, his movements efficient, almost mechanical."Targeting data coming through," Jax called out, his carbine leveled at the flickering shadows at the far end of the server aisle. "Three hostiles, heavy plating. They aren't local security, Darian. These are Vasantari 'Cleaners'. They don't take prisoners.""I don't need prisoners," Darian grunted. He reached the master console and slammed a physical shunt into the terminal port. The golden interface of his HUD flared, static washing over his vision as he forcibly tethered his own neural link to the server's core.Syncing... 12%... 15%...Pain—white-hot and

"Jax, cover me! 44%!" Darian roared, his voice sounding like grinding metal.The server room was a cacophony of lethal intent. A fresh volley of gunfire raked the aisle, the slugs tearing through the cooling fins of the server racks. A mist of blue, pressurized coolant erupted, turning the room into a freezing, fog-choked hellscape. Jax was already moving, sliding across the slick metal grating to return fire. The rhythmic thump-thump of his carbine was the only thing keeping the Cleaners pinned behind the far wall of server towers."I’m trying, kid, but they’re not running out of ammo!" Jax barked, ducking as a heavy-caliber round obliterated the server rack right next to his ear. "And they aren't here for the gear. They're here for your head! How much longer?""48%," Darian gasped, his back arching as the neural link pulled tighter, dragging his consciousness into the machine. The data was a torrential flood, a violent, swirling vortex of Vasantari’s crimes. He saw the warehouse fir

"I’m working as fast as I can, Elora! The lockdown protocol is hardcoded into the municipal grid!" Tavia’s voice crackled through the secure headset, high-pitched and frantic. "They’re cutting external comms sector by sector. If you don't clear that server well in thirty seconds, I'm going to lose your signal entirely!""Sixty-eight percent," Darian ground out, his knuckles turning stark white as he gripped the interface console. Every fiber of his being felt like it was being pulled through a needle's eye. The golden HUD in his eyes flickered violently, casting erratic, strobe-like light across his sweat-streaked face. "Keep them off us, Jax. Just thirty more seconds.""Easy to say when you're not the one taking incoming fire from a small army!" Jax barked, pivoting around the shattered corner of a server rack. He raised his rifle, squeezing off a rapid three-round burst that forced a pair of advancing Vasantari enforcers to dive headfirst behind a smoking hydraulic pillar. "Hey, tec