The truck's interruption was a punctuation mark written in steel and fire, shocking the battle into a moment of suspended violence.
From his vantage, Rook watched the explosion bloom—a controlled, upward column of devastation that consumed the truck and the crimson armor pinned against the wall.
The precision of it, the way the force was directed through the target rather than outward, was a signature he recognized.
Vey. Finally.
Nail, caught closest to the shockwave, was thrown into a ragged roll across the frozen earth.
He came up coughing, ears ringing, but miraculously unscathed.
The blast had been shaped, sculpted—its fury funneled into the armor and the wall behind it, not wasted on the surroundings.
Vey had calculated the kill zone down to the meter.
Through the settling dust and drifting smoke, Mags saw him—Vey, emerging from the cover of a collapsed scaffold, his silhouette broad and unhurried against the haze.
He was already speaking into the comm unit at his collar, his good eye sharp, his scarred face set in a mask of grim focus.
He wasn't celebrating.
He was directing—issuing clipped, silent orders to the rest of his Demolition Crew, fanning them out to secure the perimeter, to prepare follow-up charges, to treat the downed armor not as a corpse, but as a potentially active threat.
Mags understood.
This wasn't a rescue.
It was a demolition job.
And Vey had just delivered the first blow.
Rook's voice cut through the ringing quiet, shouted from behind the shattered remains of a concrete barrier.
"What took you so damn long?"
Vey didn't look up from where he was scanning the smoldering wreckage.
A dry, ragged chuckle escaped him.
"Got traffic."
It was a joke, but not entirely untrue.
When the first signs of chaos had erupted at the rally point, the streets had flooded with the curious and the panicked—a stream of onlookers drawn by the noise, the flashes, the spectacle.
But spectacle had quickly curdled into horror.
Once the Aegis-frame's brutality became clear—once the first body was broken in full view—the crowd had scattered like ash in the wind.
Only the reckless, the detached, or the truly broken stayed to watch.
And Vey's crew had to navigate through the chaos of that human tide just to get close.
He moved toward Nail, who was still shaking dust from his hair, his knuckles scraped and glowing faintly.
Vey offered a scarred hand and hauled the younger man to his feet with a solid, steady pull.
"You okay?" Vey's voice was low, stripped of humor now.
His pale blue eye scanned Nail for serious injury, but his attention was already drifting back toward the crater and the smoking ruin of the truck.
Without waiting for a full answer, he jerked his chin toward the wreckage.
"We still need to deal with that Aegis-frame thingy."
The casual phrasing didn't match the gravity in his gaze.
He wasn't asking.
He was stating the next move.
The first charge was just the opening gambit.
The real work—containing, disabling, or burying the armor—was still ahead.
The largest piece of wreckage—a twisted panel of the truck's reinforced grill—suddenly launched into the air as if swatted aside by an invisible, angry hand.
It spun lazily against the darkening sky before crashing down meters away, kicking up a fresh plume of dust.
At the center of the devastation, the air itself seemed to pulse.
A shimmering, vibrant orange barrier glowed with such intensity that it washed the scene in a harsh, surreal light, outshining the feeble glow of the setting sun.
Within that protective sphere, untouched by flame or shrapnel, stood the crimson armor.
But inside the helmet, Ember's calm fractured for a heartbeat.
Her retinal display flashed a stark, numerical alert:
Aether reserve dropped by 23%
A cold ripple ran through her.
Twenty-three percent. From one hit.
It wasn't the force of the explosion itself—the Aegis-frame was rated for far worse.
It was the timing.
The barrier had already been active, flickering on just before impact to cushion the ram.
Sustaining it through the full duration of the shaped charge—containing that much directed concussive force—had drawn more power than any previous exchange in the fight.
She stood motionless for a second, the numbers burning in her vision.
The suit was still operational, still devastatingly powerful.
But for the first time since she'd climbed into it, she felt a limit—not in her own skill, but in the machine's finite capacity to withstand a coordinated, professional assault.
Outside, the orange glow faded slowly, leaving behind the scent of oil and scorched metal.
The armor's polished crimson plates were smudged with soot, but unbroken.
And inside, Ember's focus sharpened, colder and quieter than before.
This was no longer just a test.
This was a fight that could actually cost her something.
A real, cold-edged threat began to creep into Ember's awareness—not the hot, desperate danger of Nail's fists or Mags's shotgun, but something colder.
Calculated.
As she watched Vey move—not like a brawler, but like a foreman surveying a demolition site—she finally understood.
There was a reason the Steel Talons had reigned as the strongest gang in the Junkyard, even before Nex's influence tightened around them.
They weren't just fighters.
They were survivors who had turned survival into a system.
And she had underestimated them.
Deep down, she'd written them off as diminished.
Since their leader, Nex, was gone.
But now she saw it, even without Nex, the jaw could still bite.
Hard.
Vey's crew moved with a quiet, distributed precision.
Flanking, positioning charges, watching angles.
This wasn't a gang brawl.
This was a coordinated takedown.
Inside the helmet, Ember's mind shifted gears.
The thrill of the fight cooled into something quieter, sharper.
She began to calculate—not just punches and blocks, but efficiencies.
Threat priority.
Energy conservation.
A low, humorless sound escaped her, muffled by the helm.
"Funny," she murmured to herself, the words swallowed by the suit's internal dampeners. "Getting cornered by scrap rats."
But her tone held no amusement.
Only a grim kind of focus.
The game had changed.
The test was over.
A few more hits like that, and this million-credit suit would be scrap.
The realization settled in Ember's gut, cold and certain.
She misunderstood the Aegis-frame's design philosophy—not as a weapon of annihilation, but as a tool of subjugation.
It was built to dominate, not destroy.
To control the battlefield, not erase it.
Her internal display scrolled through the available spell apps, each one marked by corporate-safe restraint.
Restraint Bolts.
Kinetic Shackles.
Pressure Pins.
All designed to incapacitate, to immobilize, to capture.
Even the most aggressive option she had used earlier—Rank 2—Force Shockwave—was, at its core, a crowd-control measure.
It turned the air into a solid wall of pressure, stunning and disorienting everything within its effective radius.
Effective radius.
That was the problem.
She could trigger it now, flatten Vey, Nail, and Mags where they stood.
But the others—the demolition crew already fanning out along the edges of the yard, the Talons with conduits regrouping near Echo—they were outside the range.
They'd be untouched, ready to intercept her the moment the wave passed.
A sharp, hot spike of irritation burned through her focus.
She wasn't just cornered—she was being forced to fight with one hand tied by corporate policy.
This suit wasn't made for a junkyard brawl.
It was made for cleanup.
For taking down targets without messy collateral.
For bringing people in alive.
And now, against a gang that fought with shaped charges and no regard for survival, she was being pushed to use it exactly as intended: to subdue, not to kill.
To control, not to crush.
Her jaw tightened behind the mask.
Fine.
If they wanted a restrained response, she'd give them one.
But she'd make it hurt.
"Seriously?" The word left Vey's mouth low and flat, more statement than question.
He watched the crimson armor rise from the wreckage, movements steady, unhurried, as if shaking off a light shove rather than surviving a shaped aether-charge.
That particular concoction was one of his prized creations—a compact, layered charge he called Deepbore.
Its selling point wasn't raw explosive force, but piercing capability.
The aether core were tuned to resonate on impact, turning the blast into a focused, drilling lance of energy.
His clients—usually smugglers needing to crack secure vaults or rival crews looking to breach fortified walls—rated it highly.
It was supposed to punch through reinforced plating, through layered barriers, through anything short of military-grade shielding.
To see it now, brushed off by that polished corporate toy… it didn't just fail.
It felt personal.
A quiet, professional kind of insult.
His scarred jaw tightened.
The good eye—pale and sharp—narrowed as he tracked the armor's status.
No visible damage.
No falter in its stance.
Just that faint, fading orange shimmer around it, like a taunt.
Pride's a luxury, he reminded himself, the old lesson from his bombing days.
But right now, watching his best work get treated as a nuisance, luxury or not—it stung.
Aether cores rated for a Deepbore charge weren't just rare—they were ruinously expensive.
The kind of component you can't always buy in the Neon Bazaar; you traded for in whispers, with collateral that wasn't always monetary.
You couldn't just rip a battery from a standard conduit and expect the same result.
Aether was inert by itself—dark matter sleeping in a canister.
It took precise, delicate glyph-work to wake it up, to shape it into something that could pierce rather than just explode.
Vey had three left.
Three cores, each housed in a compact, matte-black casing no larger than his palm.
Three shots.
He touched the reinforced pouch at his belt, feeling the hard, familiar shapes through the fabric.
His mind was already calculating angles, timing, placement.
He couldn't waste them on shields that would just flare and absorb.
He needed a crack.
A moment of vulnerability.
A second when that orange barrier flickered—or better yet, dropped entirely.
His gaze swept the scene: Nail and Mags holding the front, his own crew securing the flanks, the Talons with conduits clustering near Echo, waiting for an opening.
Three shots.
That's all he had to turn a standing defense into a tomb.
He'd make them count.
Observation time was over.
Someone had to move first—whoever acted fastest would seize the next shred of advantage.
Vey's thumb found the comm switch at his collar.
His voice was a gravel-chip command, stripped clean of hesitation.
"First team. Fire."
On the roof of a half-collapsed warehouse overlooking the rally point, three figures moved as one.
They were riggers in scavenged plating, wielding heavy, blocky launchers of welded pipe and reinforced couplings—in-house specials, built for one job: delivery.
Three charges left their barrels with a dull, pneumatic thump.
They arced down toward the courtyard, not in a scattered spread, but in a tight, calculated triangle—aimed not at Ember, but at the ground where she stood and the escape routes to either side.
Ember's sensors picked up the launch the moment the triggers were pulled.
Threat vectors painted themselves across her display: three projectiles, chemical-aether signatures, high penetration profile.
The barrier could stop all three if they detonated in sequence around her.
But not without catastrophic energy drain.
Her body moved before the thought fully formed.
The Aegis-frame's repulsors—usually reserved for stabilizing heavy impacts or assisting leaps—kicked in with a sudden, hydraulic hiss.
She didn't jump.
She dashed, sliding laterally across the fractured concrete in a blur of crimson, just as the first charge struck the ground where she'd been standing.
The explosion was a localized implosion of force—a deep, shuddering crunch that cratered the earth and sent shockwaves through the bones of everyone nearby.
The other two detonated half a second later, shredding the space she would have dodged into.
She was clear.
But only just.
And now everyone knew she could be moved.
Vey clicked his tongue softly against his teeth—a dry, frustrated sound.
"Damn suit's not just tough. It's slippery too."
He turned, his gaze settling on Nail.
The younger man was still breathing hard, knuckles raw, eyes locked on the shifting crimson armor.
Vey reached out and tapped him once, firmly, between the shoulder blades.
"Go," he said, voice low and direct. "We need a frontliner again."
Nail's hesitation was brief but visible—a slight tightening in his shoulders, a flicker in his eyes.
He'd seen what the suit could do.
He'd felt the tremor in his own hands.
Vey saw it. He didn't soften.
"We need someone to keep her eyes forward. To distract her."
The word hung between them.
Distract.
Not fight.
Not win.
Just draw fire, draw attention, be the target so others could work.
Nail swallowed, then gave a short, sharp nod.
"Fine. But at least give me a damn signal before I get blasted to bits again."
Horrifiic smile from Vey.
And a nod of his own.
"You'll know."
Then Nail was moving—not with the roaring charge of before, but with a grim, ground-eating rush straight toward Ember.
Vey didn't watch him go.
He glanced toward Mags, caught her eye, and tilted his head once toward Nail's advancing back.
A silent order: Cover him.
Mags didn't nod.
She just shifted her stance, raised her shotgun, and followed Nail's movement with her barrel, her expression carved from frost and focus.
As Nail rushed forward, Ember didn't brace for impact.
Instead, she raised one armored arm, palm open toward him.
A glyph flickered to life above her hand—sharp, angular, and crackling with sudden energy.
There was no wind-up, no gathering of light. Just a sudden, violent release.
A bolt of lightning—thin, focused, and blindingly fast—lanced from her palm straight at Nail's chest.
He saw the glyph form a half-second too late.
Instinct screamed at him to dive, but momentum carried him forward.
Instead, he tightened his core and threw his weight sideways in a desperate, swaying dodge.
The bolt grazed his shoulder.
It wasn't a full hit, but it didn't need to be.
The sensation was a surge of searing numbness that shot down his arm like a dead weight.
His fingers went slack, the glow in his knuckles sputtering.
For a heartbeat, his entire right side felt disconnected, unresponsive.
He stumbled, catching himself with his good arm, breath hissing through clenched teeth.
His eyes lifted to the crimson armor, still standing calm, palm still glowing faintly with residual energy.
No more testing.
No more trading blows.
This wasn't a brawl anymore.
***
The quiet, derelict streets of Sector 20's southern rim were shattered by a sound like a building being dropped from the sky.
A cloud of dust and debris bloomed upward from a freshly formed crater in the cracked asphalt.
From its center, a figure rose—slowly, casually, as if standing up from a chair.
Blaze brushed the dust from his shoulders, the motion unhurried, almost elegant.
His orange barrier had already faded, but his suit remained pristine, untouched by the impact.
He glanced up, a faint, curious smile touching his lips.
Moments later, another shape descended—not a crash, but a controlled, glyph-slowed landing that stirred the dust without breaking the ground.
Lucent touched down twenty paces away, his boots settling lightly on the ruined street.
The three conduits orbiting him hummed softly, casting shifting blue light across the shattered storefronts and husks of old vehicles.
Blaze's smile widened.
His voice carried across the empty space between them, warm, almost nostalgic.
"So I finally get to see you, Lucent."
He said it like he was greeting an old friend he hadn't met in years—not like a man who had just been hurled across the district by that same friend's spell.
Lucent's gaze was fixed, sharp and wary.
He didn't lower his conduits.
The three glyph-casters continued their slow, steady orbit around him, their soft hum the only sound in the ruined street besides Blaze's unsettlingly familiar tone.
"You speak as if you already know me," Lucent said, his voice flat, stripped of warmth. "I don't recall ever giving you my name. Nor meeting you."
His mind was racing, stitching together fragments from the past week—the horror at the "abandoned" Myriad Lab in Sector 12, the abomination that learned and adapted, the mysterious, impossible figure called Zero who had stepped out of a tear in reality itself.
That wasn't a corporate cleanup.
That was something else.
Blaze's presence here, now, wearing a million-credit war suit and toying with the Talons… it couldn't be a coincidence.
But Lucent didn't have the full picture.
Only pieces of cluttered information.
"What are your real objectives?" Lucent asked, the question cutting through the dust-hazed air. "This isn't just another gang purge. You're here for something else."
He didn't mention Zero.
Didn't mention the Abomination.
But the cold certainty in his eyes said he'd already connected the unseen threads—even if he couldn't yet see the whole pattern.
"I believe," Blaze said, his smile not fading, "that it's me who wants to know what your real objectives are."
He took a slow, casual step to the side, beginning to circle Lucent like a curator examining a piece of art.
His movements were relaxed, but his eyes were sharp, tracking every micro-shift in Lucent's stance.
"'They' all saw you in that lab last week."
Lucent's mind raced.
They? Who was they? The Scorchers? Corporate observers? Someone else…?
Blaze continued pacing, his tone conversational, almost helpful.
"You seem confused. Understandable. The official report called it a containment breach in an abandoned facility. A tidy cover-up." He paused, letting the word cover-up linger. "But 'they' weren't worried about the breach. They were worried about you."
Another step.
Another quiet rotation in the dust.
"See, the lab was supposed to be empty. Sealed. Forgotten. Then you show up. And not just you—him. Zero." Blaze's voice dropped slightly, the name spoken with a mix of curiosity and cold recognition. "'They' were afraid you were connected. That you weren't just some junkyard caster in the wrong place at the wrong time. That you were part of something..."
He stopped circling, facing Lucent fully now, his expression still amiable, but his gaze like a needle.
"So I'll ask again, Lucent. What were you really doing there?"
Lucent stayed quiet.
His silence wasn't defiance—it was calculation.
He didn't know what cards Blaze was holding, what he truly knew, or what "they" had really seen.
Admitting anything now could paint a target on his back he couldn't even see yet.
Blaze held up a hand, a casual, almost dismissive gesture.
"Let me be clear—I don't even know who this Zero is. Never met him. Never want to." His tone was light, but there was an edge beneath it, something that didn't quite match the smile. "But…"
He tilted his head, studying Lucent with renewed interest.
"You see, I caught a glimpse of your fight inside that lab. The feeds were patchy. Encrypted. Corrupted in parts." He took a step closer, his voice lowering, as if sharing a secret. "But even in the fragments… I saw enough. That thing you fought. And you… you stood against it."
Blaze's smile returned, but it was different now—sharper, more appraising.
"I was amazed, Lucent. Truly. Most people would've broken. Would've run. Or died. But you… you fought. Not like a soldier following orders. Like someone who understood what was at stake."
He spread his hands slightly, a show of openness that felt anything but innocent.
"So I'll be honest—I don't care about Zero." Blaze's voice dropped, losing all pretense of pleasantry. "I care about you. Your tenacity. Your power."
He paused, his gaze locking onto Lucent's eyes, sharp and unblinking.
"I haven't seen the whole recording. But you being here, breathing, standing… it means you overpowered that thing. Or outlasted it. Or outsmarted it." A slow, hungry smile spread across his face.
The anticipation in his voice was palpable, like a collector about to see a rare artifact unveiled. "So—"
He didn't finish the sentence with words.
Instead, his hands moved—a flicker of motion almost too fast to track.
Around him, the air rippled.
Five glyphs ignited into existence simultaneously, hovering in the space between them.
They weren't simple shapes.
They were intricate, layered, blazing with contained fury—polished copies of the Inferno Lance glyph Lucent had used against the abomination in the Myriad Lab.
Orange light bathed the broken street, casting long, dancing shadows.
The heat was immediate, oppressive, warping the air.
Blaze's eyes gleamed with a fever-bright intensity.
"Show me your true power!"
And the lances fired.