Location: QuikRig Freight Complex
Time: 02:12 AM
The depot growling with the sound of heavy machinery. Hydraulic sighs, coolant drip, fans grinding low behind corrugated walls. Halolamps dropping orange cones along the aisles where containers stacked in tight canyons.
Khaz moved through the grid in a plain courier jacket, his hood up and badge clipped low. He kept to the shadows of the forklift spines, boots kissing metal grating without sound.
He paused beside a freight hauler marked QR-97A // VAULT FEED. The manifest plate lay under a lip of riveted steel. He slid the Hunterfly from his coat—just the hilt with a breath of steel—and slipped its edge beneath the plate's seam. Two slow pries, a third with pressure and patience. The plate lifted.
Inside, was a gray tablet the size of a book, lead-lathed and bound by a simple seal glyph. Manifest Hub. One of the Vault's not-so-visible veins.
No one spoke. No one needed to.
He popped the paper seal with a thumbnail and palmed the core into an internal pocket. The plate clicked back with the sound of a lie retold well.
He turned and the lights skipped.
Not a siren. A low, bass that you felt at the joints.
"Redload alert," a ceiling speaker murmured, too soft to count as alarm. "Unauthorized pulse signature."
Khaz let out a slow breath and then moved in half the time.
He ghosted toward the service aisle, crossing a lane of yellow paint. A forklift idled with its forks down like tusks. In the reflection on its steel flank, he saw two shadows flashing across the grid from the north gate.
He kept moving. The shadows kept coming.
Two guards. Khaki exosuits. Mag-batons humming with the tired buzz of budget gear. Their visors wore the kind of polish that said "at least make it look good."
The first set his stance. "Badge."
Khaz showed his jacket front. The badge clipped there was acceptable from a distance, but now there was less of it.
"Step aside," the second said, baton angling up.
Khaz didn't bother with the next lie. He stepped forward.
The first guard jabbed.
Khaz brushed the baton's path with the back of his hand, shifted the strike into empty air, and let momentum take the guard off balance. The second swung high. Khaz dipped, turned, and rolled with a shoulder.
The baton whistled past his ear and rang the shipping rack with a dull bell tone.
The first recovered quick; this was not his first rumble. Khaz watched, saw the tell, and put his palm to the man's forearm. The baton stuttered with static.
Pulse Parry.
The guard blinked like someone had shut a window in his head.
The second came back in low. The baton cracked Khaz's ribs. Heat flashed across his side, bright and immediate, the kind of pain that would make anyone a bit sharper. His jacket smoked for half a heartbeat and an ugly welt grew under the fabric.
He didn't fret. He changed tempo.
The Hunterfly flicked open a third of its length with a jagged whisper. Khaz slid the short blade along the second guard's baton, hooked the handle, and drew it wide. The guard overcommitted. Khaz planted and pivoted, set the edge of the blade against the seam of the guard's suit, and pressed. Not a cut. A lock.
"Drop," he said.
The baton clattered.
The first guard swung anyway, his courage insulted by physics. Khaz let the strike come to him, dipped his shoulder, and brought his forearm under the man's wrist. Bone met muscle in a soft knock. The baton popped loose and danced across the grating into steam.
The second guard saw enough to freeze. The first saw enough to choose regret.
"Go," Khaz said.
Sometimes mercy cost less than cleanup. The men stumbled backward, coats scraping steel. One tried for radio; Khaz shook his head once. The man reconsidered.
He closed the Hunterfly and slipped into the service vent, the heat-soaked breath of the hub following him like a living thing. Steam skinned the air. Ozone ghosted in his wake. The Manifest Hub rode snug along his ribs, heavy and honest, bumping the new welt like a handshake that didn't care for pleasantries.
Location: Neon Verge, Maatari
Time: 04:27 AM
The sky had drained its color and left itself steel. Khaz stood in a shallow alcove beneath a dead billboard where rain collected and fell in clean sheets. The city's throb here was slower, like a heartbeat you could count with two fingers.
He set a coded crate on the ledge, palmed its latch, and slipped the Manifest Hub inside. The crate blinked once, swallowed the slab with a soft mechanical gratitude, and dimmed.
A foot scuffed behind him.
Scars leaned against rusted strutwork with the ease of a man who practiced it in mirrors. Jacket open, teeth working a WireBite chew. His grin was a cut angled up toward insolence.
"Courier chic," he said. "New look on you."
Khaz didn't turn. "Job's done."
Scars's eyes tracked the crate, then Khaz's hands. "Heard you got yourself a Musa Vial. Drev giving out silver keys now?"
Khaz set the crate's lid down smooth. "It's a case."
"Mm. Expensive case. Cleans dirty Musa without getting its hands wet." Scars tongued the chew, savoring a bitterness he didn't earn. "We don't all get gifts, ghostboy."
"Then work," Khaz said.
"I do."
"Work harder," Khaz added.
Scars's grin thinned. "Careful. Your quiet's starting to sound like a Vino Bean commercial."
Khaz finally looked at him. "You came to see a scratch?" He touched his ribs where the baton had kissed him. "Congratulations. The world touched me."
"Good," Scars said. "Means you're still here. Means you can still lose."
Khaz slid the crate deeper into the niche, locked the latch, and stepped away. "Find a better hobby."
"Mine pays."
Khaz passed him. Scars held still just long enough to prove he chose to.
"Hey," Scars called, turning his head, voice light as a joke he wanted to make heavier. "You ever think maybe you're just a tool?"
Khaz didn't stop. "You ever think that's the wrong question?"
Rain started again, the kind that committed.
Scars watched the back of him and chewed like he could solve hunger that way.
Location: The Syndicate Loft
Time: 11:46 AM
Drev stood with one hand behind his back and the other outstretched, turning the hologram with a wrist flick, flattening it, then peeling it apart again. His vest wore a soft sheen, the kind that came from money and older music.
Scars paced the length of the hall with a prowl that would've looked casual if his jaw weren't working. He kept three steps from Drev, like he could avoid being measured if he didn't share the floorboards.
"Courier boy got jammed," Scars said. "Couple rent-a-suits almost put him down. Didn't ask for help. Didn't need it. Imagine that."
Drev didn't take the bait. "He delivered."
"Yeah," Scars said. "He did."
Drev rotated the holo once more, slowed it, and let a string of counterfeit aliases settle into focus. "Good."
Scars leaned on the short rail, knuckles white. "You ever think he's not working for you?"
Drev let the hologram hang. He looked at the data, then at its reflection on the polished floor, then at Scars, as if each view clarified the others.
"You ever think you talk too much?" he said.
Scars smiled without his eyes. "Sometimes you pay to hear me."
"I pay for results," Drev said, voice a notch softer. "Not noise."
Scars straightened, the grin tightening. He tapped his back molar, as if checking the chew there, and stepped away from the rail. The room's light hummed like a thread pulled through cloth.
Drev closed his fingers in the air. The hologram obeyed. Its panes folded, strips of blue sliding into one another, glyphs whispering themselves into silence.
The hall cooled a half degree when the last panel went black.