The new-found strength thrumming in Nezra's veins felt hollow. The quiet respect from Umeh, the awed looks from the crew—it all curdled under the cold, heavy truth. Morgan was gone.
The den was steeped in a silence that was entirely wrong. Rin stood by the weapons locker, not cleaning, just staring. Rielle paced like a caged animal. Kara sat perfectly still, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
It was Scarlet who broke the silence, her voice cutting through the gloom from her bank of consoles. "Her comms unit last transmitted at 03:47. Sector 7-G. The old comms relay station. After that… it flatlined. No beacon, no locator ping. Nothing."
"Jammed or destroyed," Nezra said, the words feeling foreign and too-calm in his mouth. His new mind was already working, sorting data, dismissing emotion. It was a cold process, but a necessary one. "She wouldn't have turned it off. Not while looking for me."
"Which means she was led. Or forced," Rielle snapped, stopping her pacing. "We sit here doing nothing, and we're next. We need to move. Now."
"Move where?" Rin's voice was flat. "We are blind. Charging into Sector 7-G with no intel is what Morgan would call a 'suicide run.' We do not honor her by being stupid."
"She's right." All eyes turned to Nezra. He wasn't the boy asking for permission anymore. He stood at the head of their makeshift table, his silver eyes hard. "We need a plan. Morgan isn't here to make one. So we make it."
He looked at Scarlet. "Can you scrub the sector's public surveillance? Traffic cams, atmospheric sensors, anything that might have caught a signature—a vehicle, a power drain from a jammer, anything around that time?"
Scarlet's fingers were already flying across the keyboard. "On it. It'll take time. The data streams there are a mess."
"Rin, Rielle," Nezra continued, turning to them. "I and crescent are going to go around and check out her last location,if we aren't back in thirty minutes, come looking "
"Kara," Nezra said, his voice softening a fraction. "Prep the med-bay for anything. And… prep a field kit. We might need to move her."
Kara nodded, already moving to her supplies.
Nezra turned back to Scarlet. "The second you have a location, you tell me. I'm going with you."
The search took hours. Scarlet's tech carved a path through the digital rot of Sector 7-G, following ghost signals and corrupted logs. Nezra stood behind her, his new senses stretched to their limit. He could feel the faint buzz of the electronics, the flow of data like a current in the air. It was overwhelming, but he focused, using the calm stillness Umeh provided to filter out the noise.
Finally, Scarlet isolated an anomaly. "Here. A private security feed from a scrap warehouse, two blocks from the relay station. Time stamp 03:46. Look."
The grainy footage showed a figure—unmistakably Morgan's posture, her coat—moving quickly down an alley. Then, a blur from a side passage. The feed stuttered, glitched, and went to static for exactly twelve seconds. When it returned, the alley was empty.
"That's it," Scarlet whispered. "That's the hit."
They didn't wait. They left the others fortifying the den and moved out.
The alley in Sector 7-G was exactly as the feed showed: grimy, forgotten, and reeking of stagnant water and rust. There were no signs of a struggle. No scorch marks from energy weapons, no bloodstains. It was clean. Too clean.
"Whoever they were, they were professionals," Nezra murmured, his Advanced-tier senses scanning every crack in the pavement, every scuff on the wall. He could feel the lingering psychic echo of violence, a cold, metallic taste at the back of his throat, but it was faint, dispersed.
"Nothing," Scarlet said, frustration edging her voice as she swept a handheld scanner over the ground. "No energy residues, no unusual bio-signatures. It's like she vanished into thin air."
He fucused. The world shifted into a tapestry of energy. The dull grey of concrete, the fading warmth of a discarded power cell. And then, something else. A tiny, almost invisible flicker of something that didn't belong. It was tucked against the base of the wall, half-hidden in a drain grate.
He knelt, his fingers carefully brushing aside the grime. There, caught on a jagged piece of metal, was a single button. It was made of polished, dark wood, inlaid with a tiny, silver clasp. It was from the cuff of Morgan's favorite blouse. The one she wore under her coat when she meant business.
He plucked it from the grate, holding it in his palm. It was cold.
Scarlet was at his side in an instant. "Is that…?"
"Yeah," Nezra said, his voice tight. He looked up at her, his silver eyes hard. "It's hers."
He ran his thumb over the smooth wood. There was no way it tore off in a casual snag. The fabric around it would have been ripped. This was clean. A precise slice. She'd been grabbed, and in the struggle, a knife—a very sharp, precise knife—had caught her cuff and severed the button.
He stood up, closing his fist around the button. The last shred of hope that Morgan had simply gone dark on her own accord vanished.
"She didn't run," he said, the words final and absolute. "She was taken."
The two of them stood in the dank alley, the reality of it settling like a shroud. They had a clue, but it was a terrifying one. They knew she was gone. They knew it was against her will.
But by who?
The Ghost Jackals? Silas? Rourke, seeking revenge? Or someone else entirely?
They had found a single, inconspicuous button. And it made the vast, hostile city feel infinitely larger, and more dangerous.