"Calculations keep us alive," Zhaevrik said, his voice flat and unyielding as he withdrew his glowing fingers from the sparking power-core. The red data-threads retracting into his wrist hissed like cooling steam. "Emotions got half the shanties killed last winter when the municipal valves froze. If you want sentiment, Kael, you can stay here and freeze with the corpses in the slag heaps. I’m going up."Kael stared at him, his face twisting with a mixture of bitter grief and absolute finality. He reached down, grabbed his battered canvas pack from the floor, and slung it over one shoulder with a harsh jerk. "Go then. Climb right up into your precious circuits, Zhav. But don't expect me to follow you into the dark."Without another word, Kael turned on his heel and stormed out of the workshop, his heavy boots echoing sharply against the iron plating of the corridor until the sound faded completely into the ambient hum of the slums.Zhaevrik watched the empty doorway for three seconds,

"State your business, scrap-hauler. The gate closes in ten seconds, and the shredder doesn't care if your cargo is metal or bone."The voice crackled through a battered intercom box bolted to the side of a towering cooling tower that belched thick, neon-tinted steam into the choked atmosphere of the mid-levels. Zhaevrik hung from a heavy-duty maintenance bracket thirty feet above the greasy street, his synthetic fingers locked securely into the exterior framing. His crimson HUD pulsed across his visual cortex, rapidly parsing the digital signature of the intercom's security protocol."I don't haul junk," Zhaevrik replied, his voice carrying the distinct, mechanical undertone that always accompanied his speech now. "I bring high-yield architecture. Tell the floor boss that the red-eyed anomaly from the lower districts is here to talk shop."A harsh burst of static hissed from the speaker box, followed by the sound of heavy pneumatic seals shifting behind the iron-plated door. The slot

The air inside the cramped hab-unit smelled of cheap synthetic tobacco, stale nutrient paste, and burnt copper. The single overhead fluorescent light flickered with a rhythmic, maddening buzz, casting long, fractured shadows across the peeling plastic wallpaper. Zhaevrik stood just inside the threshold, his heavy boots leaving grease-stained tracks on the warped floorboards. His crimson HUD pulsed quietly across his visual cortex, analyzing the room’s structural vulnerabilities, the air pressure, and the precise heart rate of the man sitting rigidly on the edge of the narrow cot.Kael didn’t look up immediately. He sat with his elbows braced on his knees, staring down at his calloused, grime-stained hands as if he were trying to scrub away something invisible. His shoulders were hunched, the worn fabric of his work-jacket stretched tight across his back."You're tracking me," Kael said, his voice flat, drained of any surprise or anger. "How long have you been standing out in that corr

"You're not going to steal them?" Kael repeated, his voice rising in incredulous disbelief as he pushed himself up from the narrow cot. The cheap metal frame groaned under the sudden shift in weight, clattering against the peeling plastic wallpaper. "Zhaevrik, what else do you call breaking into a restricted corporate design bureau, overriding their master mainframes, and walking out with classified manufacturing schematics? A localized community outreach program?""I call it acquiring necessary operational intelligence," Zhaevrik replied smoothly, not a single muscle in his synthetic frame twitching. His crimson HUD cast a faint, bloody reflection against the grease-stained walls of the hab-unit. "The waste-feeder units that hunted us in the lower sectors weren't random anomalies. Their central processing logic originates from an archive sub-level beneath this very district. If we want to understand how to dismantle the mid-tier supply chain permanently, we need the original blueprin

"And how do you propose we even access a restricted auction without corporate credits or a verified identity?" Kael hissed, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper as he gripped the edge of the rusted table. "They don't take scrap metal, Zhaevrik. They don't take slum tokens, and they certainly don't let guys with glowing red eyes walk past the door unless they're being hauled away by internal security."Zhaevrik didn’t blink. His crimson HUD pulsed once, casting a sharp ruby glare against the peeling plastic wallpaper of the cramped hab-unit. "We don't need a verified identity. We need a proxy, and we need capital. Specifically, high-grade military-surplus microchips acquired from the corporate design bureau's lower loading bay."Kael let out a harsh, dry laugh, shaking his head as he stepped back. "Microchips. Right. Just casually lift military-grade hardware from the most heavily guarded facility in the mid-tiers. Why not just ask the CEO for his personal credit slate while you're at