03:06 P.M. – Sector 20, Red Dog's Base, Garage Room
The door groaned shut, sealing Ember and Ash inside the repurposed space that hummed with two distinct energies: the low, unstable thrum of Blaze's core and the sharp, irritated crackle of Cinder's soldering iron.
Blaze, who had been leaning against a support beam, immediately pushed off, throwing his arms out in a theatrical gesture of grievance.
"You're late!" he shouted, his voice a mix of mock outrage and genuine manic energy.
A wide, unnerving grin split his face. "Minus points! Big, fat minus points for both of you! Your performance review is looking grim."
Ember didn't break stride, her boots clicking on the concrete as she walked past him.
She shot him a look of pure, unamused exhaustion.
"Are we in class? Should I have brought an apple for the teacher?" Her tone was drier than the dust motes dancing in the air.
Ash, slinking in behind her, offered a placating, slimy smile.
"So sorry, boss. The message just completely slipped my mind." He waved a dismissive hand, his eyes already scanning the room as if looking for something more interesting.
Neither of them paid any mind to Cinder.
Hunched over a workbench in the corner, she was utterly absorbed in the gutted carcass of a drone.
One of its repulsor fins was bent at a sickening angle.
A string of muted curses streamed from her lips as she yanked a damaged component free with a violent twist.
The arrival of her teammates registered as less than nothing; the only thing that existed in her world was the broken tech in her hands and the seething frustration in her chest.
The meeting could have caught fire itself and she wouldn't have looked up from her work.
Blaze brought his hands together in a sharp, loud clap that cut through the garage's discordant hums and mutters.
"Change of plans," he announced, his voice dropping its amused tone for a note of chilling finality.
The shift in his tone was enough to snag everyone's attention.
Ember's head snapped toward him, her brow furrowed in deep suspicion.
A plan implied forethought and structure. "What do you mean, 'change of plans'?" she asked, her voice tight. "Was there even a plan to begin with?"
From her workbench, the hiss of Cinder's soldering iron ceased abruptly.
The sharp scent of aether faded as she slowly lowered the tool.
Her eyes, previously blazing with frustration at the broken drone, now glinted with a different kind of fire—curiosity.
She didn't look up, but her entire posture was now listening.
"Oh?" she purred, the sound a low, dangerous vibration. "Anything interesting?"
A slow, appreciative whistle slithered through the sudden quiet. Ash, leaning against the wall with a lazy grin, seemed to be the only one genuinely enjoying the sudden shift.
He said nothing yet, but the sound was a clear endorsement of the impending chaos.
***
The brief, absurd tension of Cale and Lily's scuffle had been smothered by Vey's growled threat and Karen's long-suffering sigh.
The room settled back into its heavy silence, the grim specter of Vector Atheron once again claiming the space.
Vey broke the quiet, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the scarred metal table.
He turned his head, his good eye fixing on Lucent, who stood like a statue before the glowing schematic. "So. That Vector guy. You dig anything else up?"
Lucent didn't turn.
His gaze was lost in the blur of lines and sector markers on the wall.
"Nothing of value," he said flatly. "Without a proper rig, I'm just scratching the surface. Public records, old corporate newsfeeds. It's all sanitized. All I found was a confirmation of what Jack already told us."
He finally turned from the map, his eyes sweeping over the group.
They were shadowed, the pale light from the screen carving out the sharp angles of his face.
"V-Tech Industries. Founder and CEO, Vector Atheron. A 'visionary' in robotics and biomechanical integration. A recluse for the last seven years." Lucent's lip curled in a faint, disdainful twist. "The official story is he retreated from public life to focus on 'pioneering research.'"
He let the words hang, the corporate euphemism sounding hollow and sinister in the grim context of their cafeteria.
From his chair, Cale let out a soft, derisive snort. "'Pioneering research.' Is that what they're calling it when you turn a man into a puppet with a bug arm?"
Lucent's gaze flicked to him, then away, a silent acknowledgment. "The point is, the trail ends there. Whatever he's been doing for seven years, he didn't want it on the public record. And whatever it is, it led to Flick's augment. And Flick's death."
His eyes drifted back to Jack, a silent, pointed weight.
The old armorer remained in the corner, a fortress of stony silence, but his jaw was tight.
The answers weren't in the public records.
They were buried with the old man's ghosts.
Lucent's mind was a closed loop, a piece of corrupted code endlessly cycling back to the same, critical error: Why?
Why target a ragged militia in a forgotten sector?
Why use a disposable pawn like Flick?
Why leave a signature so blatant it felt less like a taunt and more like a declaration of war?
Each question branched into a dozen more, a fractal tree of paranoia with no answers, only more shadows.
He was wasting time.
They all were.
Staring at maps and schematics wouldn't help when the key was standing right there, locked behind a wall of old scars and older regrets.
He turned from the glowing projection, the light dying in his eyes as he fixed his gaze on the corner.
The others felt the shift, the room's atmosphere tightening another notch.
"Jack," Lucent said, his voice low but clear, cutting through the electronic hum.
It wasn't a request.
It was a plea, stripped bare. "Please. Tell us what you're still holding back."
All eyes moved to the old armorer.
Jack's head was bowed, as if the weight of their collective stare was a physical thing.
The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
When he finally looked up, his face was a landscape of grim resignation.
"...Telling you more won't put more bullets in your guns," he began, his voice rough, like stones grinding together. "It won't reinforce the walls."
He let out a short, weary breath. "I didn't want to doom this place by putting a corporate target on its back. But it seems that choice was made for us."
He met Lucent's stare, his own eyes haunted. "We're practically standing against a corporation now. A real one, with private armies and tech that makes our best gear look like scrap. So what good does it do to dig up my past? What changes if I tell you a story that will just... hang over this place like a death sentence?"
The air in the room shifted, heavy and sharp.
The fragile tension that had flickered between them, like lightning in a distant storm, finally broke.
What comes after was the thunder of their reality, rolling back in full force.
Vey broke the silence, his voice low. "Mags confronted Cinder. She was equipped with what looks like the latest model of drones. Not scavenged parts. Not black-market junk."
He leaned forward, his augmented knuckles pressing into the scarred tabletop. "That tech reeks of corporate business."
Kai, who had been staring at the map of the sector 20, lifted his head.
The earlier pallor was gone, replaced by a look of intense concentration. "So the chance that the Scorchers are being backed by a corporation is high," he said, working through the logic aloud. "But can we say for sure that V-Tech Industries is the one backing them? A name from Jack's past is one thing. Hard evidence is another."
His eyes flickered toward Jack, who stood like a stone sentinel in the corner, his face unreadable.
The old man offered no confirmation nor denial.
It was Karen who answered, her voice flat and definitive. "We can."
All eyes turned to her. She tapped a single finger on the table. "Pen reported it. During the engagement. Cinder called the drones 'V-Tech Mosquitoes'."
The name hung in the air, simple and damning.
It was one thing to have a suspicion, a ghost from an old armorer's past.
It was another to have the enemy boastfully naming their suppliers on the battlefield.
This wasn't a clue; it was a signature.
Across the table, Lucent, who had been silently turning a small, polished component over in his hand, finally went still.
His gaze was fixed on the schematic of Sector 20, but he wasn't seeing it.
He was cross-referencing databases in his mind, the pieces clicking into a terrifying new configuration.
Cale, who had been lounging with a carefully constructed air of boredom, let his chair legs hit the floor with a soft thump.
The casual act drew everyone's attention.
He didn't smirk.
For once, his expression was sharp, serious.
"Well," he said, the single word cutting through the heavy silence. "That changes everything, doesn't it? We're not just fighting psychos with flamethrowers anymore. We're picking a fight with a goddamn corporate army."
The reality of it settled over the room, cold and suffocating.
They were no longer just a gang in the Junkyard.
They were a speck of dust about to be swept away by a machine of unimaginable scale and power.
Lucent's fingers stilled, the polished component finally clenched tight in his palm.
He looked up from the table, his gaze sweeping over the schematic before landing on the others, sharp and clear.
"But right now," he said, his voice low and deliberate, "the urgent thing we need to deal with are the Scorchers."
He let the statement hang, ensuring everyone was anchored to the immediate, tangible threat. "It doesn't matter if the true enemy pulling the strings is a corporation sitting in a spire. If we don't deal with the fire at our door, there will be no one left to fight the man who lit the match."
He then turned his head, his eyes locking onto the silent figure in the corner.
This wasn't just a statement; it was a deliberate provocation, a hook meant to pull the old man out of his shell of haunted memories and back into the present crisis.
"Don't you agree, Jack?" Lucent asked, the question pointed and direct.
All eyes shifted to the armorer again.
The room held its breath.
For a long moment, Jack didn't move, his gaze fixed on some distant point in the past.
Then, slowly, he dragged himself back into the present.
He gave a single, heavy nod, the motion seeming to cost him effort.
"…Eventually, we will need to face them," he conceded, his voice a dry rasp. "But not today."
He paused, his jaw working as if chewing on a bitter taste. "Guess we need to survive today… in order to worry about tomorrow."
The words were simple, but they landed with the weight of a lifetime lived in the Junkyard.
It was more than a tactic; it was a philosophy beaten into him by decades of survival.
You didn't stare at the coming storm so long that you missed the knife coming at your throat.
The admission seemed to drain him, a silent acknowledgment that the ghosts of his past were now their shared, living nightmare.
But for now, the immediate fire demanded their attention.
The grim weight of Jack's words still hung in the air when a small, clear voice sliced through it.
"Yeah," Lily announced, her small face pinched in a scowl directed at Jack. "I don't like it when Gramps mopes around like that. It's weird."
The blunt, childish proclamation was so utterly out of place that it seemed to reset the room's atmosphere.
Kai winced, bracing for the old man's irritation.
But instead of a scowl, a faint, weary smile touched Jack's lips.
He could see past the impertinence to the clumsy concern beneath it.
The kid was trying to pull him out of the dark, in her own, uniquely Lily way.
He let out a slow breath, the tension in his shoulders easing a fraction. "…I apologize for worrying you like that," he said, his voice softer than it had been all day.
Lily, sensing an opening with the instincts of a seasoned negotiator, immediately pounced.
Her scowl vanished, replaced by a look of pure, calculated opportunism.
"If you really meant it," she said, her tone shifting to one of sweet reasonableness, "then get me one of these." She held up Kai's conduit, waving it like a prize. "A real one. Not just letting me borrow it."
She looked from the device in her hand to Jack's face, her eyes wide and full of manufactured hope, proving that even in the face of corporate conspiracies and imminent annihilation, the economy of a child's bargain waited for no one.
Vey let out a sharp grunt, the sound like grinding metal. "Quit it, kid. That thing you're waving around isn't a toy."
He gestured with his chin toward the conduit in Lily's hand. "It's been modified, stripped of all the corporate locks and safety protocols. A stock model would just be a shiny brick in your hands. Or worse."
Cale, leaning back with a knowing glint in his eye, picked up the thread. "He's not wrong," he drawled. "An unmodified conduit is a prison. It's all rules and restrictions. Even if you managed to get a spell app, the system is rigged."
He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "One slight delay in your subscription payment? Not enough credits? The app just... stops. And the interest on that debt? They own you after that."
Kai, his own experiences with the dangers of glyphs still fresh, added a quieter, more serious layer.
He looked at Lily, his expression earnest. "It's not just about money, Lily. The glyphs on a public network... they're unstable. They can be corrupted. If you use an outdated one, or if the connection flickers for just a second..."
He shook his head, the memory of seared flesh and screaming code in his mind. "It doesn't just fail. It can turn on you. It could injure you. Badly."
The combined warnings painted a stark picture: the device she coveted was not just a tool, but a key to a dangerous and predatory system.
Lily, thoroughly unimpressed by the chorus of warnings, let out a dramatic huff and turned her back on the adults, her small shoulders hunched in a pout.
She retreated into the glowing screen of Kai's conduit, her fingers tracing the complex glyph coding as if trying to decipher its secrets through sheer force of will.
The conversation about corporate traps and bodily harm was boring; the magic in her hands was real.
Seeing the discussion about to spiral into a debate on conduit ethics, Karen stepped in, her voice cutting through with the sharp tone of a commander reclaiming control.
"Enough," she stated, not harshly, but with a finality that drew all attention back to her. "We will focus, for now, on how we will deal with the Scorchers."
She let the directive settle, her gaze sweeping across the room to ensure everyone was locked on target. "We have advantages. We managed to capture Vega, one of their best scout leaders. Their primary supply cache is ash."
She listed the points like she was checking an inventory, her voice flat and factual.
"But," she continued, the word landing heavily, "that doesn't mean we can just ignore the Red Dogs entirely."
She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly as she considered the messy reality. "They're wounded, but a wounded animal is unpredictable. And Gideon… he's prideful. He won't take this lying down. He might do something stupid, or desperate. And desperate men can sometimes be more dangerous than calculated ones."
The problem was clear: the Scorchers were the fire, but the Red Dogs were the loose, smoldering embers at their backs.
Ignoring them could be just as fatal.
But the strategic discussion, the weighing of wounded animals and prideful leaders, was severed in an instant.
A sharp, insistent beep-beep-beep cut through the room.
All eyes snapped to Karen's hand.
Her comm unit was lit a violent, pulsating red—the color reserved for a base-under-siege or a squad being overrun.
The professional calm on Karen's face solidified.
She tapped the device, and before she could even speak, Pen's voice erupted from the speaker, stripped of its usual sharp-edged humor, frayed with static and raw urgency.
"Karen! The rally point—they're here! The Scorchers are attacking!"
The words were a live wire thrown into the room.
In that single, fractured transmission, the theoretical threat in Sector 20 became a roaring fire at their doorstep.
The fate of Vega, the decision about the Red Dogs, the shadow of Vector Atheron—all of it was violently shoved aside by the screaming present.