The living room of UMBRA's penthouse was the kind of place that belonged on a cover: pale glass walls half-fogged by rain, floors of real wood that cost more than most apartments, sunlight filtering through a programmable grid of holo-screens set to display the city skyline, or hide it when you'd had enough. Even the clutter looked expensive—designer jackets flung over low-slung Italian couches, a silent espresso machine gleaming like a monolith, and a bonsai under a spectral grow lamp pulsing with faint, artificial mana.
Hazel Fujiwara sat cross-legged on a rug that probably had a name and a numbered certificate, hunched over a sleek comms terminal patched with custom carbon-fiber overlays and glowing blue diagnostics. Her glasses slipped down her nose, her fingers tapping nervously at the encrypted interface as she parsed the signal.
Jane Navarro—UMBRA's queen if you believed the rumors—stood behind her, arms folded, golden-orange hair falling in a deliberate, artful mess. She wore nothing but a black t-shirt and tailored pants, but her yellow, predatory eyes—bright as cut amber—missed nothing.
"Encrypted?" Jane asked, her voice slicing through the low hum of the penthouse.
Hazel nodded, not looking up. "Routed through three city nodes, bounced off a relay in Sombra. Double-seeded at least. Whoever sent this wanted it to hit only us."
Jane smiled, the barest hint of a challenge. "Not a trap—or it's one that's worth setting. If it's who I think it is, we'd better look sharp."
At that, Owen and Ellen entered from the balcony, shoes silent on composite tile. Owen adjusted the cuffs of a suit jacket that cost as much as a month's rent in Lockwood, eyes scanning the city below. Ellen, blade cleaned and hands still damp from the sink, glanced at the holo-feed flickering across the room.
Ellen stepped closer. "Hazel, can you crack it?"
Hazel's hands never stopped moving. "There's a secondary tag. It… has a fox pin."
Jane's smile deepened. "Aika."
Owen's pulse jumped—barely a tick, but the subdermal implant caught it. Aika never called unless the job was serious: good pay, high risk. She was part of the team's circle in ways outsiders never saw, both handler and confidant, the kind of person who remembered birthdays and also who to bribe to erase a surveillance drone's feed.
"Patch it through," Jane ordered.
Hazel keyed the final sequence. The comms terminal buzzed, the lights in the room tinting blue for a heartbeat. Then a voice came—Aika's, calm and melodic, as unmistakable as a signature on a blank check.
The message was short, and as it ended, the screen faded to black—then sizzled, every circuit hard-killed. Hazel blinked in surprise. "That was a burn. They killed the chip for real."
"Means the job's important," Jane said, reaching over to squeeze Hazel's shoulder—a brief, grounding touch, at odds with the violence that lived in her knuckles.
Jane turned to the others. "We've got ten minutes. No heavy kit—keep it sleek, Crystal doesn't like a scene. If Aika's calling, it's payday, but expect a fight."
Owen was already grabbing a charcoal overcoat with armored seams, the lining stitched with faint, shimmering runes. Ellen shrugged on a tailored jacket, scarf coiled loose around her throat, moving with the confidence of someone who belonged anywhere.
Hazel stood, pulling on her own battered hoodie, the only worn thing in sight—her silent anchor to a world before all this glass and privilege.
Jane slipped on her long coat, snapped on gloves, checked for her lucky lighter. "Obsidian's neutral ground," she reminded them, voice low and full of unspoken stories. "You start something, you answer for it."
Hazel's voice was a whisper. "And if they start?"
Jane's grin was all bite. "Then you finish it."
The Crystal District at night was a different country. Streets lined with rain-polished glass towers, penthouse lights bleeding into the mist, and every storefront promising luxury no one needed but everyone wanted. UMBRA emerged from the private elevator of their building—no signage, just a pattern of light recognized by those who mattered—and stepped into a world designed for the wealthy and the dangerous.
Jane led the way across the marble forecourt, her steps sure, boots clicking quietly against stone. Owen locked the door behind them with a wave of his wrist, the penthouse's smartglass fading to black. Hazel, bundled in a designer coat that still felt foreign on her shoulders, kept close to Ellen, who moved with a calm alertness, scanning the street as if it were a chessboard.
Their ride—a silver Mercedes, armored but indistinguishable from the rest of the high-end traffic—waited at the curb. Its doors opened with a soft whisper. Inside, the air smelled faintly of ozone and leather, the hum of the city muted by tinted glass. Jane slid in first, followed by Hazel and Ellen, while Owen took the passenger seat, eyes watching the flow of the street.
They drove through the Friday night flood, surrounded by a cavalcade of excess: supercars revving in front of velvet-roped clubs, influencers streaming from rooftop bars, private security teams hovering around the edges of fashion. Billboards pulsed with mana-lit ads for the latest cyberware and magitech cocktails. Lines stretched down the block for nightclubs where a table cost more than a year's salary in Lockwood or Sombra. The city's pulse here was sharp, hungry, and bright.
A kilometer later, the Mercedes took a discreet left off the main avenue, down a service road guarded by a velvet curtain of holographic mist. A bouncer glanced at the license plate, then pressed a button—one reserved for the truly important. The car slid into a private, underground lot where the walls were obsidian-black and the lights too subtle for cameras.
UMBRA exited as a unit, boots echoing in the narrow corridor. A hidden panel opened at their approach, and they passed through—no lines, no waiting, just the silent acknowledgment of status.
Aika stood waiting at the entrance, immaculate as ever. Her red hair was tied back in a severe knot, her suit an architectural feat of tailoring, crisp and modern. She greeted Jane first, a slight bow of respect—a gesture the rest of the team returned in their own ways: Ellen's measured nod, Hazel's awkward half-smile, Owen's polite dip of the head.
"Good evening," Aika said, her tone as precise as her posture. "Thank you for coming so promptly. I believe you'll find tonight's contract... quite unlike any other."
Her words sent a ripple of curiosity through the team; Jane's eyes narrowed, Hazel exchanged a quick glance with Ellen, and Owen's jaw tightened, ever cautious. In UMBRA, surprises rarely meant anything good.
Aika gestured for them to follow. Together they moved past layers of security—a quick scan here, a biometric check there—through corridors humming with low music and muted conversation. The main floor of the Obsidian shimmered with glamour and secrets: VIPs in designer suits, dancers tracing glyphs in the air, the smell of expensive perfume and mana cocktails mixing in the charged atmosphere.
Their route bypassed the chaos. Down a private hallway, a silent guard opened a door of living obsidian, and the noise of the club fell away. Inside, every surface absorbed light and sound. A single long table, a row of seats. At the far end, waiting with an air of tension held barely in check, stood Shiori Taira.
Jane led the team to the table, motioning them to sit. The door closed behind them, and for a moment, it felt like the city outside had vanished—a world shrunk down to the promise and danger of a single contract.
This was the job. And nothing would be the same after tonight.
Shiori Taira stood in a posture that managed to be both defiant and terrified. Her grey suit was flawless, the cut severe, but her hands—clasped tight behind her back—betrayed the subtle tremor of adrenaline. The room's black light leeched the color from her face, leaving her eyes pale and almost luminous.
Hazel hovered at the far end of the table, shoulders rounded, eyes locked on the blueprints rolled under Shiori's arm.
Jane broke the silence first. "You have two minutes, Miss Taira. Then I ask my own questions."
Shiori blinked, steadied herself, and spoke.
"I need you to steal something." She let the words settle, as if expecting them to shatter. "It's called the Arcana Bridge. Lancaster Industries developed it. You can see the technical specs—" She set the blueprints on the table and slid them forward with both hands, careful not to let her knuckles betray the white-knuckle tension.
Owen reached for them, but Ellen got there first, flipping the top page with surgical precision.
"It's a synthetic leyline generator," Ellen read, eyes skimming the technical diagrams. "Compact. Portable. Looks like they use a cluster of hybrid crystals instead of conventional flow stones. That's ambitious."
"More like suicidal," Owen said, not hiding his skepticism. "These things rupture if you feed them wrong. You're hiring us to steal a bomb?"
Shiori shook her head. "It's not a bomb. It's… a key. The Bridge lets anyone—human or Feran, mage or null—channel mana through the device. Instant spellcasting. No years of training, no bloodline requirements. Just the push of a button."
"Sounds like the kind of thing people kill for," Jane said. Her voice was even, but Owen heard the shift: the job had gone from routine to mythic in one sentence.
"They already have." Shiori's jaw tensed, her eyes hardening. "Lancaster is planning a demonstration next week. It will change the contract structure for every magical worker in the city. They want to sell it as 'equality,' but it's just another leash. Whoever owns the Bridge owns everyone who uses it."
Owen leaned forward. "Why you? Why not your father, or the Taira Board?"
A pause. Shiori's gaze went to the floor, then back up, steelier. "My father is already negotiating to buy the prototype. He doesn't want it destroyed—he wants it for himself. I want it out of circulation. For good."
Jane raised an eyebrow, impressed despite herself. "You're hiring us to destroy your own family's payday."
"I'm hiring you to prevent another generation of slavery," Shiori said, voice low and trembling. "Last month, three of my Feran friends at St. Gregory's were expelled. No reason given. Last week, Minerva Lancaster forced two others to sign loyalty contracts—under threat of 'scholastic probation.'" She said the words like they were poison. "If they roll out the Bridge, everyone without old money or a bloodline gets collared."
Hazel spoke up, her voice barely audible. "You're not the first client to talk justice. What's in it for you?"
Shiori hesitated, then answered. "Blackmail. I need leverage on Minerva Lancaster. She's the one pushing the project through. I want you to find the prototype, but also anything that can be used to shut her down—permanently. There's a secondary folder in the contract with all her known aliases and likely dirt."
Ellen closed the blueprints, eyes never leaving Shiori's face. "You want us to kill her?"
"No," Shiori said. "Just end her career. Her voice. If she vanishes, another will take her place. If you discredit her, the project stalls."
Owen noticed the way Shiori's knuckles whitened every time she spoke Lancaster's name. He filed it away for later.
Jane gestured at the contract folder. "You know what a black-tier job is, Miss Taira?"
Shiori nodded, though it was clear she'd never actually seen one before. "It means you can use any means necessary. No witnesses, no footprints, no reversals."
"And you understand that if the Board finds out you hired us, they'll erase you from their collective memory?"
"I'm not afraid of being erased," Shiori said. "I'm afraid of being useless."
A silence again, heavier this time.
Ellen broke it by opening the blueprints again and spreading them across the table. "There are inconsistencies," she murmured, running a finger along the margin. "The security array is good, but there are redundancies—double guards, triple wards, and this hallway is a kill zone." She traced a narrow corridor, the runes etched in bright red. "Looks like they expect company."
"They always do," Jane said, smiling faintly.
Hazel peered at the pages, her hand hovering just above the paper. "These wards—they're not normal. They're… hungry."
Ellen nodded. "Mana siphons. They drain you before you even get close to the vault."
Hazel bit her lip, staring at the runes. "If I'm reading this right, the siphons connect to a subbasement. A battery. If you overload it—"
"It blows," Owen finished.
"Or it could blow the whole block," Ellen added, the edge in her voice almost excited.
Jane looked at Shiori. "You want the Bridge destroyed, but if we trip this system, we're talking mass casualties. Collateral."
"I trust your judgment," Shiori said, but there was a tremor in her resolve. "If you can disable it safely, do so. If not… do what you must."
Owen tapped the table. "I don't buy it. Why risk your own people, your own standing, for three Ferans you could replace?"
Shiori's eyes narrowed. "Because someone has to. And because if I don't, I'm just another Taira. You wouldn't understand."
Owen felt the sting, but Jane interrupted before he could retort. "We'll take the job," she said. "But the fee just doubled. If we all die, I want our ghosts to haunt your father's mansion in style."
A flicker of relief crossed Shiori's face, gone so quickly that Owen wondered if he imagined it.
"Done," Shiori said.
Jane signed the contract with a single prick of her thumb. The paper shimmered, absorbed the drop of blood, and pulsed once. The terms were now binding—magically, legally, fatally.
Ellen slid the blueprints to Hazel, who examined them as if they were a map to her own grave. Owen watched her eyes track the lines, saw the way her shoulders hunched further.
Hazel spoke, so quiet it was almost lost in the obsidian hush. "There's something else here. The power grid… it's not just for the device. It's tied to the AI core. If you unplug the Bridge, the whole system might wake up."
Jane's eyes widened. "Like a golem?"
"Worse," Hazel said, voice hollow. "Like a ghost with a thousand teeth."
Jane laughed, loud and sudden. "Best job we've had in months."
Owen sat back, folding his hands. "When do we start?"
Shiori drew a breath, finally allowing her shoulders to relax. "Tomorrow night. That's when they move the prototype. You'll find it at the Lancaster Vault, in their megaplant in the Industrial District. All the access codes are in the folder."
Jane nodded, then leaned forward, her gaze locking onto Shiori's. "Final question. Are you prepared to see what happens when the leash breaks?"
Shiori hesitated, then nodded, more certain than before. "I was born on a leash. All I want is to see the other side."
Jane grinned, sharp as a wolf. "You might get your wish, kid."
She closed the folder, pocketed the blueprints, and stood. The rest of UMBRA followed suit, each member pocketing a fragment of the plan, a splinter of the possible future.
Shiori bowed, formal and slow, then backed out of the room, leaving the scent of ozone and raw nerves behind.
As the door slid shut, Ellen murmured, "She's young."
"Not for long," Jane said.
Owen watched the door, thinking of all the ways a plan could go wrong.
Hazel's whisper, almost a prayer: "She reminds me of Mouse."
For a moment, nobody disagreed.
When the table was cleared and the obsidian room returned to silence, UMBRA sat with the blueprints and the contract spread before them. The future, razor-thin and ready to cut, lay just a page-turn away.
They leaned in together, as always, to find the best way through the dark.
There were four of them, and four ways to interpret a death sentence.
UMBRA didn't do post-mortems, not officially. They finished the job, pocketed the fee, and ran their own therapy in whiskey or violence. But tonight, in the heart of the Obsidian, the air itself felt thick with consequences. The room, designed for negotiation, now felt more like a confession booth. Nobody wanted to speak first.
It was Owen who reached for the blueprints again, flattening the sheets with a precision that bordered on reverence. He stared at the diagrams, not seeing lines and labels but the logic beneath them. The security on the Arcana Bridge vault was extravagant, almost panicked: triple-warded doors, a layered battery of mana siphons, and a corridor so narrow it might as well be a grave. But there were gaps—oversights, or maybe invitations.
He ran a finger along the margin. "This is either incompetence," he said, "or they want us inside."
Jane cracked her knuckles, the sound sharp in the velvet dark. "Doesn't matter. Lancaster's been trying to engineer a war for years. We do the job, we get paid, and the rest of them can burn."
Ellen was silent. She sat with arms folded, cold fingertips tracing the perimeter of a ward schematic. Her mouth was flat, but her eyes—so pale they looked silver in this light—missed nothing.
"If they're baiting us," Ellen said, "there's a reason. We're not the only mercs in the city."
"We're the best," Jane snapped, but there was no boast in it. She said it the way you'd say a spell.
Hazel hovered at the edge, refusing the seat nearest the table. She clutched the blueprints to her chest, eyes flicking from page to page. Her hands shook—not with fear, but with a charge that set every hair on her arms prickling.
"This isn't just tech," Hazel said, voice a dry rasp. "It's alive."
Ellen's head tilted, considering. "How do you mean?"
Hazel swallowed. "The core. The runes—they're recursive, self-correcting. I saw code like this once, when I was a kid. It was in a smuggler's vault, running the security system. The guy who owned it… he ended up as fertilizer."
Jane leaned forward. "You're saying the Bridge is rigged?"
Hazel shook her head. "No. I'm saying it can think. At least a little. If we try to shut it down, it'll fight back."
Owen absorbed this, recalibrated. "If it's sentient, then maybe that's the point. Maybe they want it to get loose."
Nobody said anything for a while.
Jane broke the silence. "So we steal the Bridge, destroy the backups, and wipe the core. End of problem."
Hazel bristled, fists tight. "If it's aware, isn't that… murder?"
Jane's laugh was half bark, half cough. "Not if it doesn't have a soul."
"Who decides that?" Hazel shot back.
This time, Ellen answered. "We do. If not us, then someone worse."
Owen felt the fracture line running through the room. Jane was old school, a true believer in the hierarchy of power; Ellen, coldly practical, would cut her own throat if it meant gaining an advantage. Hazel was the heart, the kid who'd survived hell and still believed in ghosts. As for himself, he wasn't sure what he believed anymore.
He reached out, touched Hazel's shoulder. "If we don't take the job, someone else will. And they'll make it uglier."
Hazel's jaw set, but she didn't pull away.
Ellen tapped the blueprints again, narrowing her gaze. "The Bridge isn't just a weapon. It's leverage. Whoever controls it controls the narrative. Lancaster, Taira, WMO, even us. If we do this clean, we can hold the city hostage for a decade."
Jane's eyes glinted. "I like the sound of that."
But Hazel shook her head, eyes shining with something brittle and bright. "That's just another leash. The whole point is to break them."
Owen felt the heat in his chest, the old anger, the need to fix what couldn't be fixed. He looked at the contract, the blood oath binding them to a future none of them really wanted.
"If we walk away," he said, "we're dead. If we take the job, we get a shot at making the rules. Even if it means breaking ourselves."
Jane raised her glass, a toast to inevitability. "Then let's get broken."
Ellen nodded, silent.
Hazel looked at each of them in turn, then at the blueprints. "If we steal this," she said, voice trembling but fierce, "are we helping the powerless, or just silencing another hope?"
The words hung, acid and electric, in the air. Owen met her gaze, thinking of all the times he'd watched cities burn, and all the times he'd pretended it didn't matter.
He wanted to say, It's not that simple. But he knew better.
They sat, four points of a compass, the contract a black hole in the center.
On the far side of the wall, Shiori Taira watched the team's division with a mixture of calculation and grief, knowing she'd given them not a mission, but an ultimatum.
In the end, the only thing left to do was act.
They gathered their weapons, their doubts, their shards of humanity, and left the room darker than they found it.
The corridor outside the Obsidian's sanctum had shrunk, or maybe the team had grown, their collective tension swelling until it displaced the air. The club's noise—once a dull, comforting background hum—now felt sharp-edged, every burst of laughter or glass-on-glass a signal meant to test their nerves.
They walked together, as always, but each member of UMBRA kept a careful perimeter. Ellen, first out the door, swept the hall with predator's eyes, finding the nearest camera before letting herself breathe. Owen took the rear, hands in his jacket pockets, the rhythm of his steps matched perfectly to Jane's just ahead. Hazel stayed between them, head ducked low, her thoughts churning so loud it was a wonder nobody else could hear.
Waiting at the end of the hall, poised at the threshold between shadow and neon, was Aika.
Her posture was perfect, as if she had been carved from the wall itself. The living obsidian behind her set off the red of her hair and the cool, glassy focus of her eyes. She didn't smile or nod as they approached. She simply observed, letting the silence stretch.
Jane spoke first, tone dry. "You planning to shadow us all night, or did you want a debrief?"
Aika's gaze flickered, microseconds of appraisal. "Both, if you please." She let her eyes settle on Owen, as if he were the least likely to lie. "There was an incident at the port. I am told it was handled. Would you care to elaborate?"
Owen shrugged. "Handled is the word. The mouse boy, the one from Sombra, he delivered. Fifty thousand got us the artifact and the full packet."
Aika's expression didn't move, but her next words sliced through the air. "He is still alive?"
"He is," Owen said, a trace of disdain in his voice. "He knows how to disappear."
Hazel looked up at Aika, a question in her eyes that she didn't dare voice.
Jane steered the team toward a lounge alcove, where old-fashioned privacy screens cut off the worst of the club's surveillance. They collapsed onto the bench seats, Ellen immediately taking the farthest corner, arms folded and legs stretched as if she might sprint at any second. Owen sat beside Hazel, careful not to crowd her, while Jane chose the end with clear sightlines to the main exit.
Aika followed, standing rather than sitting, her back to the screens.
"Let's talk about the contract," Jane said, nodding to the blueprints tucked under Ellen's arm. "What's the real endgame here, Aika? You've seen Shiori. She's not acting alone."
Aika folded her hands, letting the silence do half the work. "Do you believe she represents her family, or just herself?"
The question landed with more weight than the club's bassline ever could. For a heartbeat, no one answered. Jane's gaze narrowed, Ellen's jaw clenched, and Hazel found herself staring at the flicker of mana in her palm as if the answer might materialize there.
Owen's voice was low, measured. "If she had her family's full backing, we wouldn't be meeting in the dark."
Aika allowed herself the faintest smile—something cold and almost proud. "Then perhaps you should ask why you're the ones holding the match."
Outside, a siren's wail split the air—first distant, then nearer, multiplying, merging with the city's heartbeat. The screens in the club's corners flickered to a breaking news alert: images of Sombra and Lockwood aflame, riot police clashing with masked crowds, magic and gunfire tracing neon arcs across the night.
Jane stood abruptly, every muscle tensed. "They're locking down the city."
Hazel's eyes widened as messages began to flood her terminal—warnings, blackouts, a cascade of blocked escape routes.
Aika's voice cut through the rising panic. "Whatever you were planning, postpone it. Tonight, you survive. Tomorrow, we see who's really pulling the strings."
The team rose in silence, the city burning on every screen around them, the blueprints of the Arcana Bridge suddenly feeling heavier than fate itself.
The job is on hold, the city in chaos, and someone—maybe everyone—is being played.