01:33 P.M. – Southern Part of Sector 20
The grating slid shut with a final, rusty shriek, sealing the sewer's stench and shadows below.
For a moment, the only sounds on the surface were ragged breathing and the distant, ever-present hum of Aether Nodes.
Nail stood braced, his boots planted firmly on the cracked asphalt, his grip tight on Rook's forearm.
With a final, grunting heave, he hauled the larger man up and out.
Rook's weight was substantial, a solid mass of muscle and armor, and the strain sent a fresh, hot throb through Nail's already bruised knuckles.
He ignored it.
Rook landed with a heavy scuff of boots, his chest rising and falling in deep, measured draws of the open air.
The smell down there—stagnant water, blood, and fear—clung to his gear.
He gave Nail a short, wordless nod.
It wasn't thanks, not in so many words.
It was an acknowledgment between men.
A dozen paces away, the scene was one of grim triage.
Carlos and Pen moved between the wounded Talons who had made it out, their hands steady as they applied pressure to a bleeding gash on one rookie's arm, his voice a low, calming murmur to another who was shaking from shock or adrenaline.
Mags leaned back against the wall, watching the others work.
The metallic tang of med-gel and coppery blood cut through the dust-filled air.
Echo watched it all for a three-count, her augmented eye whirring softly as it scanned the perimeter.
Then she moved, her steps silent, to where Pen and Mags stood slightly apart.
Her gaze was a physical weight, taking in the soot smeared on Pen's face, the way Mags held her left arm just a little too stiffly, the general air of exhausted defiance they carried.
She didn't ask if they were okay.
The question was useless.
"What's the situation?" Echo's voice was flat, stripped of all but necessity.
Before Pen could form a reply, the ground seemed to vibrate with the heavy, deliberate tread of Rook's approach.
He stopped beside Echo, his presence like a storm cloud settling.
His armor was scorched in places, one pauldron dented from a near-miss.
He looked from Echo to the ragged survivors, his jaw a hard line.
His voice, when it came, was the sound of gravel grinding under tank treads. "We got ambushed. A full Scorcher drone swarm."
He paused, the name hanging in the air like a curse. "She was playing with us. Those damn corpo drones."
Rook's gaze swept over the gathered wounded, and for the first time, Echo's eyes followed his, truly registering the new additions.
Among the familiar Talon uniforms were four figures in the scorched leather and crude insignias of the Red Dogs.
Vega, his face a mask of grime and defiance despite his burns, met her stare without flinching.
Behind him, three of his scouts lay or slumped against the rubble, their conditions severe.
The sight was dissonant, a wrong note in the grim harmony of the aftermath.
"Mags blew a corpse rigged with incendiaries," Rook repeated, the words blunt and heavy. "Bought us a window. Only way out was down."
He fell silent for a long moment, the pause filled with the moan of the wind and a wounded Talon's shallow cough.
Then he added, the gravel in his voice grinding lower, "...I was surprised when Pen reported they'd caught Vega and some of his Dogs."
He jerked his head toward the sewer grate, a gesture of finality. "The rest you can probably guess."
Echo didn't respond immediately.
Her mind was replaying the staticky report she'd received from Pen minutes earlier.
The words had been just as jarring then: "We have Vega. He's in no shape to fight. There are three others with him, all critical."
It had been a statement of fact, not a request for orders.
Now, seeing the reality of it—the sheer, inconvenient burden of these broken enemies—the tactical problem took its shape.
A shift in the air beside her, a whisper so faint it was almost stolen by the breeze.
Liz had melted closer, her sniper's stillness making her presence nearly imperceptible.
"What should we do about them?" Liz murmured, her voice barely audible.
Her eyes, however, were fixed on the Red Dogs, calculating, cold.
The question wasn't about medical care.
It was about disposal.
A quiet, permanent solution to a complicated problem.
Echo's own silence stretched, her augmented eye whirring almost inaudibly as she assessed the variables: their own depleted numbers, their wounded, the drones still hunting them, and now these prisoners who were more a liability than an asset.
Vega watched her, waiting for the verdict, his jaw a hard line of tension beneath the grime and dried blood.
Every shallow breath seemed to cost him, a flicker of pain tightening the skin around his eyes, but he refused to look away.
He knew the math as well as she did.
In the Junkyard, wounded prisoners were dead weight.
A drain on resources, a risk, a complication.
He was a liability, and he had no cards left to play.
Relaxation was a luxury for those who held the guns, not for those staring down their barrels.
Echo's gaze broke from his.
With a subtle tilt of her head, she urged Rook to step away from the group, moving just far enough for their words to be swallowed by the wind and the low moans of the injured.
The moment they had a sliver of privacy, Echo's voice was low and hard, a blade seeking a familiar sheath.
"In my opinion, we cut the loose ends. Right here, right now." Her eyes locked onto him. "They are a problem we do not need. A danger now, and a greater one later."
But to her surprise, Rook did not immediately grunt his agreement.
He was silent, his massive frame a still mountain as he looked past her, back toward the huddled Red Dogs.
The silence stretched, filled with the weight of the decision.
When he finally spoke, his voice was a low rumble, thoughtful. "I know. They're a problem. Now and later."
He shifted his weight, the armor on his shoulders creaking. "But Vega's been in their command structure. He knows things. The state of their base, their supply caches… their dealings with the Scorchers."
He met her gaze again, his own weathered and tired. "The only way we get that intel is if we offer him something. Something real."
He didn't need to finish the sentence.
The word hung, unspoken but deafening, in the air between them.
Safety.
Echo's lip curled, a flicker of cold impatience in her eyes.
She clicked her tongue, a sound of pure dismissal. "If we had the time, I could always... ask him nicely."
Rook's jaw tightened.
He knew exactly what Echo meant.
The words were a veneer of professionalism.
It was an open secret, never discussed in the light of day but understood in the shadows where Echo's squad operated.
Their methods of interrogation were not a matter of asking questions.
They were a process of systematic dismantling, a transaction where information was purchased with whatever currency of pain and fear was necessary.
"Nicely" was a euphemism for the kind of work that left no visible marks but hollowed a person out from the inside.
He saw the calculation in her stance—the efficient, brutal logic that saw Vega not as a man, but as a container of data to be cracked open and discarded.
A cold knot tightened in Rook's gut.
This was the part of Echo's squad that always unnerved him.
They moved through the Talons like ghosts, their victories quiet, their methods leaving no witnesses.
He had seen the aftermath of their "conversations"—not the bloody mess of a gunfight, but a deeper, more chilling stillness in the prisoners who survived.
He sometimes found himself watching them in the base, these quiet, efficient operatives, and a silent prayer would form in his mind: Let them never turn those skills on us.
But he always buried the thought as soon as it surfaced.
However unsettling their methods, their results were undeniable.
When you needed a fortress breached without an alarm, a patrol to vanish without a trace, or a secret carved from a mind, Echo's squad was the one you called.
They were the sharp, clean blade you used in the dark, and you tried not to think about what kept its edge so keen.
In comparison, his own squad was the sledgehammer.
They were the anvil upon which enemy charges broke, the front line that met force with greater force.
Their work was loud, brutal, and honest.
You saw the enemy, you raised your weapon, and you fought.
The cost was measured in blood and broken body, a price paid openly.
He looked back at Vega, at the raw defiance in the man's pained eyes, and then at Echo's impassive face.
However much it sat wrong with him, Rook understood.
Fights weren't just won with sledgehammers.
Sometimes, you needed a scalpel.
And a scalpel, by its very nature, had to be cold and sharp to be of any use.
A sliver of something uncomfortable like pity wormed its way into Rook's chest as he looked at Vega—a seasoned fighter brought low, bargaining for the lives of his broken men.
It was a fleeting, dangerous sentiment.
He crushed it instantly, the habit as ingrained as cleaning his rifle.
In this city, pity for an enemy was a luxury that got you and your people killed.
They were Red Dogs.
They had chosen their side.
The moment of deliberation was over.
With a final, grim nod to Echo, the decision was made.
The prisoners would come with them, for now.
After a short, tense break just long enough to ensure the most critically wounded wouldn't die on the move, the group began their slow, painstaking trek.
They moved like ghosts through the skeletal ruins, a ragged column of Talons and their unexpected captives.
The journey was a study in silent tension.
Every shadow seemed to hold the hum of a repulsor, every distant echo a bootstep.
But the expected patrols were thinner.
The drones they did spot seemed listless, holding static positions or moving in predictable, lazy patterns, as if the will guiding them had been distracted.
It was a small mercy, but right now, you took every mercy you could get, no matter how strange its wrapping is.
***
The air in the conference room was thick and still, heavy with the weight of a single, spoken truth.
Jack's story hung in the silence, a specter now given shape and a name.
"I know where it came from—"
After the old armorer had delivered his grim revelation, a silent understanding had passed between them.
The cafeteria, with its prying ears and the metallic blood in the air, was no place for this.
They had moved here, to a room whose scarred metal table was usually reserved for planning offensives and dissecting failures.
Now, it felt like a chasm.
Lucent stood with his back to the others, a solitary figure before a sprawling schematic of Sector 20 projected on the wall.
His eyes were unseeing, the map just a blur of lines and colors.
His mind was a whirlwind, cross-referencing Jack's halting, reluctant description with every piece of corrupted code, every signature of corporate design philosophy he'd ever torn apart in his workshop.
Cale had claimed a seat, lounging in it with a deceptive, almost insolent casualness, his legs kicked up onto the table.
But the performance was thin.
His fingers tapped a restless, silent rhythm against his thigh, and his sharp, predator's eyes missed nothing, tracking the tension in Lucent's shoulders, and the paleness of Kai's face.
Kai sat rigidly, his hands clamped around the ceramic cup Jack had given him.
The tea was long cold, the heat bled away just like the color from his face.
He stared at the table's scarred surface as if he could still see the twitching, insectoid limb from Flick's augment reflected in the scratched metal.
On the seat beside him, Lily fidgeted with Kai's borrowed conduit, her small fingers tracing the glyphs.
Her earlier pestering had been a lifetime ago, the room's heavy mood finally quieting her.
She sensed the shift, the way the adults had become locked in a silent, terrible puzzle.
Vey and Karen had slipped out moments after Jack finished his short, brutal story, summoned by an update from the Talons still in the field.
Their absence was its own kind of statement, leaving the others to grapple with the bomb Jack had detonated in their midst.
The old armorer himself was a statue in the corner, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze fixed on a point on the far wall.
He had given them the key—a name, a place.
He had dragged up ghosts he'd long since buried, and the cost of it was etched into the new lines on his face.
His stony silence said the rest—he still wasn't ready to tell it all.
The only sounds were the low, electric hum of the projector and the faint, rhythmic click… click… click of a small, polished component that Lucent turned over and over in his hand, a physical anchor for his racing thoughts.
"—Vector Atheron."
The name, uttered by the old man, seemed to hang in the air, its syllables sharp and unfamiliar to Lucent at first.
It was a name from the edge of his mind, something heard in passing on a corporate news feed years ago, holding no personal weight.
Then Jack had grunted the rest, the crucial context: "...CEO and founder of V-Tech Industries."
And suddenly, it clicked.
A lock opening in a vague part of his memory.
The image that surfaced wasn't clear—a decade of dust and other, more pressing horrors had blurred it.
But the core of it remained, unsettling in its precision.
He didn't remember the man's face, or any grand speeches.
What he remembered were the products.
The demonstrations.
A flood of half-formed memories: promotional holos showcasing sleek, terrifyingly efficient robots.
But not the hulking security bots common in the Spire sectors.
These were different.
Smaller.
More... organic.
The clearest memory that fought its way to the front was the most disturbing: a swarm of robotic constructs, no larger than his hand, moving with a skittering, jerky gait that was strikingly, unnervingly similar to real insects.
He remembered watching the footage, a cold knot in his stomach, less impressed by the engineering and more revolted by the perfect, soulless mimicry of life.
It wasn't just machinery; it was a perversion of nature's design.
And now, that same signature—that same obsession with the insectoid—was etched into the twitching, segmented limb of Flick's augment.
The connection was no longer theoretical.
It was a direct line from a corporate genius's twisted vision to a traitor's corpse in their cafeteria.
But the question remained, a silent scream in the humming quiet of the room.
Why?
Why target the Steel Talons?
They were a speck of dust to a corporate titan, a localized nuisance in a single ruined sector.
Was it a test? A diversion? Or something more personal?
Why choose Flick?
The man had been a loudmouth, a grunt, utterly insignificant.
He wasn't a high-value officer like Karen, nor a technical asset like Lucent.
He was... convenient.
Expendable.
Was that the only reason?
Or was there something else, some weakness in Flick that Vector's people had sniffed out like carrion birds?
And why not just target Jack directly?
The old man clearly had history with Vector.
Sending a puppet to kill him in their cafeteria was a statement, yes, but it was a messy, indirect one.
If Vector wanted Jack dead, there were cleaner, quieter ways.
This felt different.
This felt like a performance.
What is the message?
The Myriad logo, left in plain sight.
The insectoid design, a signature.
Flick's public execution.
It was all too obvious, too deliberate.
It wasn't just an assassination; it was a broadcast.
But for whose eyes?
Lucent's gaze shifted to Jack, still standing like a weathered monument in the corner.
The old man's face was a closed door, but his eyes... his eyes held a deep, simmering confusion that mirrored their own.
He had given them the name, but the man's motivations seemed as much a mystery to him as they were to them.
Pushing him for more answers would be like shouting at a locked vault.
He had given them the key, but the contents of the box were a shock to him, too.
The answers weren't here.
They were out there, tangled in the ruins of Sector 20, hidden behind the corporate facade of V-Tech Industries.
And the thought of digging for them felt like poking a stick into a nest of those same mechanical insects.
The thick, heavy silence in the room was suddenly cut by the scrape of a chair leg against the floor.
Cale, with a predator's lazy grace, shifted his weight and slid his chair an inch closer to Lily.
The girl, without even glancing in his direction, hunched her shoulders and pushed her own seat away with a quiet squeak.
A slow, mischievous grin spread across Cale's face.
He wasn't one to be deterred so easily.
He shifted again, closing the new distance she had created.
Lily let out a tiny, frustrated huff and shuffled her chair further still, inching closer to Kai.
It became a silent, absurd ballet—a series of small, grating scrapes and shuffles punctuating the tense quiet.
Cale, the persistent shark, and Lily, the evasive minnow, circling each other in the confined space around the table.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Kai's lips as he watched the two of them.
The grim weight of Vector Atheron's name momentarily lifted by the sheer, childish absurdity of the scene.
The game of musical chairs continued until Lily's back was nearly to the wall.
Cale made one final, decisive slide, effectively cornering her.
She finally whipped her head around to glare at him, her small face pinched in indignation.
"You little shit, why do you keep moving away!" Cale said, his voice a low, teasing growl.
"Because you keep getting closer!" Lily shot back, her voice sharp and defensive, like a cornered kitten hissing.
The conference room door creaked open, cutting through the childish standoff.
Vey and Karen stepped inside, their faces grim from the field report.
The weight of the outside world returned in the set of their shoulders and the cold focus in their eyes.
That weight seemed to double as their gazes landed on the scene before them.
Cale was leaned far back in his chair again, a picture of smug victory, while Lily was pressed against the wall, glaring daggers at him from her cornered position.
The atmosphere in the room was no longer one of grim revelation, but of baffling, juvenile tension.
Vey's scarred face twisted into a scowl of pure, a deeper, more genuine expression of annoyance than his usual resting grimace.
"The hell is this?" he grumbled, his augmented hand flexing as if he was considering knocking both their heads together.
Karen didn't speak.
She just pinched the bridge of her nose, a long, slow exhale escaping her.
It was the sound of a leader realizing that some battles, even against corporate boogeymen, were somehow less exhausting than managing the chaos within her own base.