The System Hunter

Chapter 3: The Sister on the List

“That isn’t possible,” Elias said.

Tessa tilted the tag so the corridor camera could record it. “It is possible. I’m trying to determine whether it’s legal.”

The distinction made him want to strike the wall. Mara had spent her evening repairing hospital monitors. She had not stolen anyone’s hours. Yet the seal on the retrieval order was genuine, and its deadline matched the four-hour reward that had just saved Elias’s life. Someone was arranging his choices in advance.

Hollen struggled against the cable tie. “You don’t understand who she is.”

“She’s my sister.”

“She touched a ledger she shouldn’t have.”

Elias crouched. “What ledger?”

Hollen glanced at Tessa. “The kind that never enters public records.”

A siren sounded from the lower platform. Two armored response drones rolled through the service gate, their lenses sweeping the floor. Elias had seen identical units at collapsed-building sites; those machines mapped heat signatures, released smoke, and could fire restraint darts. The System had once called them rescue equipment. Their software was now controlled by whatever authority had issued the bounty.

Tessa closed the order. “We cannot let them scan him. They’ll take custody of the prisoner and every device on his body. The evidence will vanish.”

“Can you stop the pickup?”

“For ninety seconds, if the old maintenance credentials still work.”

She keyed a command on the tablet. A status tile turned yellow. SYSTEM INSPECTION PENDING. Both drones paused, processing a false obstruction notice.

Elias looked at Hollen. “You’ll come with us. You speak to the judge who supposedly signed my time away.”

“That judge has been dead for six months,” Tessa said quietly.

The words changed the shape of the entire chase.

They hauled Hollen through a utility corridor into a municipal laundromat whose back room held emergency filters. The city outside was lit by hundreds of floating red numbers, each one a stranger’s remaining life. Through the front glass, Elias watched a man on a bicycle stop beneath a streetlamp, stare at his timer, and begin to cry. On the advertisement screen above him, a smiling presenter announced that the Protocol Shift was a temporary measure to stabilize emergency services.

The presenter’s counter read 281:14:09.

“Why does he have weeks?” Elias asked.

“Priority allocation,” Tessa said. “Or friends.”

Hollen coughed a bitter laugh. “Same thing.”

A clinic message arrived on Elias’s interface. MARA VENN—LOCATION CONFIRMED: NORTH WARD HOSPITAL. SECURITY TRANSFER SCHEDULED. She was three kilometers away. His balance showed 03:42:17. Long enough to reach her. Not long enough to survive many mistakes.

Tessa tapped the command line. “I can spoof a routine maintenance audit. It will delay collection, but only if we enter from a registered Hunter terminal.”

“You said you were former Compliance.”

“I am. That means my credentials are dead, not my knowledge.”

“Why are you helping me?”

She hesitated, and that was more informative than the answer. “Because your sister found the one record I failed to protect.”

Before he could ask what she meant, Hollen slipped one hand free. Elias caught the movement too late. The courier pressed his thumb against a contact hidden in his belt buckle.

The laundromat’s display blinked. CONTRABAND DETECTED.

Tessa hurled her tablet toward the fuse panel. The screens died, but the alarm kept sounding from speakers outside. On Elias’s interface a fresh contract appeared.

INTERCEPTION CONTRACT: TERMINATE ESCAPING TARGET.

SUBJECT: JAREK HOLLEN.

REWARD: +06:00:00.

OPTIONAL: FOREGO REWARD TO PRESERVE WITNESS.

TIME LIMIT: 00:00:45.

Elias seized Hollen’s freed arm before the man could run. The courier was trembling. “If I survive the next minute, the person who issued your warrant will kill my daughter.”

“That’s a reason to talk,” Elias said.

Hollen shook his head. “No. That’s why I pressed it.”

A small charge clicked inside the buckle. Tessa saw the red indicator first. “Everybody down!”

Elias shoved Hollen behind the reinforced washer bank. The blast broke the room’s windows and filled the air with powdered detergent. Elias hit the floor with a burning slash across his shoulder.

When he looked up, the contract still hung before him. Forty seconds remained. Hollen was alive, crying and half deaf. Outside, the response drones began forcing the doors.

Then the emergency channel came alive with Mara’s voice.

“Elias, don’t come to the hospital,” she said. “They’ve already replaced me.”