02:16 P.M. – Sector 20, Red Dogs Base
The smoke over the western sector was a dirty smudge against a sickly sky, a permanent stain now.
From the grimy window of his office, Arden watched it coil and writhe, a slow, ugly death for their largest supply depot.
His fingers, steepled under his chin, were perfectly still.
The rest of the base was a hive of shouted orders and frantic footsteps, but in here, the silence was thick enough to taste.
It was the quiet of a man who had already run the numbers and found them all wanting.
They had managed to stop the fire from consuming the entire district, a desperate, human effort that had cost them more manpower and morale than they could afford.
A containment, not a victory.
The warehouse was a gutted carcass, and its loss was a phantom pain, an ache in a limb that was already gone.
A hollow, breathy sound escaped Arden's lips.
It wasn't a laugh.
It was the air leaving a corpse.
"What a fucking mess," he murmured to the empty room, his voice raspy from the smoke he could still smell clinging to his clothes. "All the bad karma decided to cash in at once."
His mind, usually a sharp, calculating machine, felt like a gear stripped of its teeth, spinning uselessly.
Every path he traced earlier led to the same, grim conclusion.
Their position was untenable.
The Scorchers were a capricious wildfire, the Talons a relentless tide, and Gideon… Gideon was a quite a blockhead.
The only logical move, the only play that wasn't just waiting to be cornered, was an alliance with the Steel Talons.
A temporary, hateful truce built on a shared, bigger enemy.
He could already picture Gideon's face if he suggested it.
The way his boss's jaw would clench, the vein in his temple throbbing.
The sheer, unthinking rage at the idea of shaking hands with the people who had just burned their supplies to ash.
Gideon would sooner torch what was left of the Red Dogs himself than entertain such a notion.
For him, it wasn't tactics; it was pride.
Arden's gaze drifted from the distant smoke to the chaotic scene in the courtyard below—his people, battered and soot-stained, looking more like survivors than soldiers.
He felt the weight of their futures pressing down on him, a burden his leader refused to fully acknowledge.
The plan was there, clear and cold in his mind.
But getting Gideon to see it… that was the real battle, and he wasn't sure they had the strength left to fight it.
"Just thinking about those fucking pyromaniacs," Arden blurted out, the words sharp and sudden in the quiet room. "They come in with their laughing and their fire, and they just… mess up the plan. The one plan I've taken months to put together."
The frustration was a hot, bitter taste in his mouth.
It wasn't just the destruction; it was the disrespect for the craft, for the careful architecture of moves and countermoves he had built.
They hadn't outsmarted him; they had simply kicked over the game board.
He sank into his office chair, the motion weary and defeated.
The chair was his one vanity, a throne of plush leather and state-of-the-art ergonomics he'd bartered a small fortune for.
Its internal sensors usually hummed to life, adjusting to his posture, offering a subtle massage for tense muscles.
Today, he felt nothing.
The comfort was a lie, the technology meaningless against the hollow feeling in his chest.
He let his head fall back against the soft headrest with a dull thud, his eyes fixed on the cracked, water-stained ceiling tiles above.
The pristine chair only made the rest of the room seem more dilapidated, a perfect metaphor for his own situation.
He had built a sharp mind and a comfortable seat in the middle of a crumbling world, and now, even that was threatened by mindless, laughing fire.
A long, loud sigh escaped him, the sound swallowed by the room's oppressive silence.
Up there, in the cracks of the ceiling, he traced the lines of his failure, looking for an answer.
Arden slowly lowered down his head.
His gaze, dull with exhaustion, drifted across the cluttered desk and settled on the screen of his laptop.
The glow painted his tired features in a pale, blue light.
"At least there's a nice little miracle on top of this mountain of misfortune," he muttered to himself, the words dry and humorless.
On the screen, a map of the sector was displayed.
Most of it was a mess of alerts and static, but one marker held steady, clear and insistent.
A single red dot pulsed rhythmically, a heartbeat of data emanating from a position just beyond Sector 20's southern border.
And just above it, a name:
>>VEGA
Arden's eyes narrowed, the strategist in him pushing past the fatigue.
Vega was supposed to be in the thick of it, coordinating earlier in the warehouse defense.
His signal coming from so far away, from a location that had escaped the worst of the firestorm…but it didn't speak of a retreat.
It spoke of a capture.
He leaned forward, the fine leather of his chair creaking.
The Steel Talons had him.
They had one of his best scouts, a man who knew the layout of their bases, their supply caches, their dealings with the Scorchers.
It was a catastrophic security breach.
And yet…
A short, disbelieving laugh escaped him, sharp and brittle in the quiet room.
The absurdity of it was perfect.
In the same hour they lost everything, the enemy had handed them a key.
Vega's life was now a bargaining chip.
A terrible, dangerous one, but a chip nonetheless.
He stared at the pulsing dot, a plan beginning to form in the wreckage of his previous one.
It was a long shot.
It was probably suicide.
But it was a path forward.
There might be a chance to talk to those Steel Talons after all.
To offer a trade, an exchange, a desperate parley.
Gideon would hate it.
He would rage against it.
But for the first time today, Arden felt a flicker of something other than despair.
It was a grim, cold resolve.
Regardless of the outcome, he had to try.
Pushing himself up from the expensive chair that suddenly felt as useless as it was comfortable, Arden stood.
He needed more than a spark; he needed leverage.
And if there was any other asset left in this crumbling base that could serve as a bargaining chip, it would be underground, in Tenn's lab.
Without another word, he turned and left his office, his footsteps echoing with a new, grim purpose as he headed for the stairs down.
***
The rally point was a study in controlled urgency.
The air, thick with dust and the sharp scent of ozone from charged conduits, hummed with the quiet, efficient sounds of preparation.
There was no panic, only the grim, practiced rhythm of soldiers re-arming before the storm they knew was coming.
Mags worked with a sniper's precision, slotting fresh shells into the bandolier across her chest.
Each click was a final, definitive sound. Nearby, Pen carefully spooled fresh monofilament wire onto her launcher's reel, the near-invisible filament gleaming like a spider's thread in the dull light.
A few paces away, Nail was a study in focused silence, methodically loading magazines, his bruised knuckles a stark purple against the dull metal of the cartridges.
The tense quiet was broken as Echo and Rook approached the central comms station, having just closed a crackling channel with Karen and Vey.
The weight of the conversation was still on their shoulders.
"So," Echo said, her voice flat and stripped of any emotion.
"In the end, the decision will be entirely on us." It wasn't a question.
It was the acknowledgment of a heavy, unwanted burden passed down from command.
Rook let out a grunt that was more vibration than sound, his massive frame seeming to absorb the light around him.
"...Someone really needs to step up and replace the Boss." The statement was low, meant only for her, and carried the weariness of a conversation they'd had too many times.
Echo's lip curled, a flash of something raw and pained breaking through her usual icy composure.
"Don't get me started on that. Nex's presence... it really hit us hard, now that he's gone." She stopped abruptly, her jaw tightening.
She looked away, her gaze sharpening as she watched Pen test the tension on her wires. "Why did that idiot—"
She cut herself off, the rest of the sentence dying in her throat.
She shook her head once, a sharp, minute motion, and the moment of vulnerability was gone, sealed away behind a wall of cold focus.
The past was a luxury they couldn't afford.
There were only the rounds in the magazine, the wires on the reel, and the decision they now had to make.
"Well then, let's do Plan A for now," Rook suggested, his voice a low rumble.
Echo responded with a soft, derisive snort.
Of course it was Plan A.
It was always Plan A when the messy, precise work fell to her squad.
The suggestion was a formality; the burden was a certainty.
"I need to brief the others anyway," Rook continued, already turning his heavy frame away.
"I'm going first." He moved off, his footsteps thudding against the cracked ground, leaving her in a pocket of silence.
Echo watched him go for a moment before turning on her heel, her path set toward the makeshift holding area.
Her mind replayed the frustratingly inconclusive comms call with Karen and Vey.
They had laid out the situation: the captured Red Dog officer, his wounded men, the tactical advantage versus the moral complication.
The vote had been a perfect, useless stalemate.
Two to spare them, two to end the problem.
And in the end, command had done what command does best when divided—they deferred.
'The final call is yours on the ground,' Karen had said, the words feeling less like trust and more like a hot piece of shrapnel being passed into her hands.
As she walked, the ghost of another vote, another time, flickered in her mind.
That idiot Nex.
He was always a soft touch for a hard luck story.
If he were here, he would have looked at Vega shielding his wounded, and his vote would have been clear.
He'd spare the guy in a heartbeat, even if it may complicate the situation.
The thought was an old ache, a familiar crack in her armor.
She shoved it down, her pace quickening.
Sentiment got people killed.
Nex was proof of that.
But his absence now felt like a third, silent vote, and it was one she didn't know how to count.
Echo descended into the cool, damp air of the temporary cellar, her boots making no sound on the earthen floor.
The space was shadowy, lit by a single lumen strip, its light catching the motes of dust hanging in the still air.
Vega sat propped against the far wall, his head bowed.
The defiant posture he'd held in the sewers was gone, replaced by the sheer, heavy exhaustion of pain and defeat.
He didn't look up as she entered, didn't acknowledge her presence in any way.
It wasn't the stillness of a prisoner resigned to his fate, but the deliberate, pointed silence of a man who knew he had nothing left to lose, and refused to give his captors the satisfaction of his attention.
Echo let the silence stretch, a tactic as familiar as breathing.
She stopped a few paces away, her gaze cool and assessing.
"…It's so ironic," she began, her voice cutting through the quiet like a shard of glass. "That sparing you at the warehouse is what brought you here in the end."
The words were chosen carefully, a hook designed to snag on his pride and drag his anger to the surface.
It worked.
Vega's head snapped up, his eyes, bloodshot and shadowed, finally locking onto hers.
A raw, furious energy crackled in the space between them for a single second.
"…So it was you," he rasped, his voice rough from smoke and strain.
The realization ignited a fresh wave of anger, a hot, bitter tide that washed over his features.
"You're the one who rigged the warehouse." He let out a short, sharp breath that was almost a laugh. "What a bitch."
The insult was weak, drained of its power by his own broken state.
The anger was there, a real and potent thing, but his body was a prison.
A shudder ran through him as he tried to push himself up, a flash of white-hot pain from his burns and bound wrists forcing him back down against the wall with a defeated grunt.
The lash-out died before it could begin, leaving only the smoldering embers of his hatred in his eyes.
He was truly, completely trapped, and they both knew it.
Vega let his head fall back against the cold, rough wall with a soft thud.
The brief surge of anger had drained him, leaving behind a hollowed-out weariness.
He saw it now—Echo wasn't just here to gloat; she was probing, testing his seams like a mechanic tapping on a cracked engine, looking for weak points.
He was done giving them to her.
It didn't matter that it was her finger on the trigger, her mind that laid the charges.
In the end, she was just one blade on a gear.
He blamed the whole machine—the Steel Talons, their command, their cold, systematic way of grinding his people into dust.
His hatred was too vast to waste on a single person.
A bitter taste filled his mouth, familiar as his own heartbeat.
This was the pattern of his life, wasn't it?
Knowing when to bend so you didn't break.
He was a survivor, and survival was a series of surrenders.
You bowed to the gang that claimed your block.
You nodded along to the boss's stupid plans.
You swallowed your pride and took the scraps offered by the Scorchers because the alternative was being turned to ash.
He had always been the underdog, the man in the shadow of bigger, louder, more powerful men.
His skill wasn't in winning wars; it was in navigating the aftermath.
He knew how to read the shifting winds of power, and he knew, with a cold, certain clarity, that the wind was blowing against him now.
His gaze, now devoid of its earlier fire, met Echo's.
There was no fight left in it.
Just a flat, exhausted acknowledgment.
He knew when he was beaten.
He knew when to surrender.
A long, tired silence stretched between them, broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the cellar's depths.
Finally, Vega let out a slow breath, the fight gone out of him.
His eyes, dull with pain and resignation, lifted to meet hers.
"…So," he rasped. "What do you want?"
Echo's lips curled into a thin, humorless smile. "Wow. Can you read minds now?"
"I know you aren't just here to have a conversation with me," he said, his voice flat.
He shifted slightly, a grimace twisting his features as his injuries protested.
"The gang… it's probably getting erased from the world today anyway." He was talking about the Red Dogs, the only thing that had ever felt like a family, and he said it like he was commenting on the weather.
"Those fucking Scorchers are flaming our asses from one side, and then the oh-so-great Steel Talons swoop in like eagles to hunt the wounded dogs." He paused, letting the image hang in the damp air—a pack cornered by fire and claw.
"Isn't that great?" he added, the question dripping with a bitterness so profound it had nowhere else to go.
Scorchers flaming their asses?
The phrase echoed in Echo's mind, cutting through her planned interrogation.
It didn't sound like a complaint about a rival; it sounded like the raw grievance of a man betrayed.
The official line, the one Karen and Vey operated on, was of a tight-knit alliance between the Dogs and the Scorchers.
But the venom in Vega's voice painted a very different picture.
Her expression didn't change, but the focus of her gaze sharpened, the calculation behind her eyes shifting.
This was no longer just about a prisoner.
This was a potential crack in the enemy's foundation.
"Aren't the Red Dogs and Scorchers cooperating with one another?" she asked, keeping her tone deliberately neutral, almost dismissive, as if stating a simple, well-known fact.
Vega let out a harsh, ragged sound that was meant to be a laugh.
It caught in his throat, turning into a pained cough.
"Cooperating?" he spat, the word itself seeming to burn him. "Don't make me laugh. If anything, we're just their gophers. Their errand boys."
The bitterness broke through his exhaustion, raw and unfiltered. "They take what they want, and if we even look at them wrong… they burned some of our people alive! For fun."
The memory was a fresh wound on top of all the others.
His hands, bound in his lap, clenched into impotent fists.
The image he offered was stark and terrible, and it didn't sound like a lie.
It sounded like a man who had seen his friends turned to ash on the whims of a madman.
Echo didn't reply.
She simply stood there, a statue in the dim cellar, her face an unreadable mask.
But inside, her mind was a whirlwind, discarding old plans and assembling new ones from the sharp, broken pieces Vega had just given her.
Hatred.
It was a weapon more potent than any glyph-charge.
And it was aimed squarely at their shared enemy.
The official story of a united front was a lie.
The Red Dogs weren't allies of the Scorchers; they were their victims, their slaves.
This changed everything.
Vega's defiance wasn't just for his own pride—it was born from a deep, personal vendetta.
He hadn't just lost a warehouse; he'd lost people to the same flames.
She could use this.
How, exactly, was still a shifting puzzle.
A direct offer of alliance was out of the question; the blood between the Talons and Dogs was too fresh.
But what if they didn't need an alliance?
What if they just needed a distraction?
A nudge in the right direction.
Give a cornered, hate-filled dog a scent of the ones who truly hurt him, and point him the right way.
He wouldn't be fighting for the Talons; he'd be tearing at his captors for his own reasons.
The risks were enormous.
It was playing with a live grenade.
But the potential reward… to turn the enemy's own weapon against them…
She looked at Vega, truly looked at him, not as a prisoner, but as a tool.
A sharp, angry, and perfectly positioned tool.
After a few more questions to which Vega surprisingly answered without any qualms, she turned and walked out of the cellar, leaving him in the dark.
She had her answers.
Now, she just needed to figure out how to make the dog bite the hand that used to feed it.