The ceramic sword met the Silent's shock-baton with a sound like a cracking bone.
Sparks showered down onto the linoleum floor. Lyric's arm—the bad one—screamed in protest, but the stance held.
"Move," the Silent said, his voice flat. He pushed forward, the electric crackle of the baton buzzing inches from Lyric's face.
"Not happening," Lyric gritted out.
Lyric twisted the blade, redirecting the baton's momentum to the side, and kicked the Silent in the knee. It was like kicking a concrete pillar. The Silent didn't buckle; he just shifted his weight and swung a backhand.
Lyric ducked. The baton smashed into a booth divider, sending splinters of cheap wood and plastic flying.
"Hey! Watch it!" a customer screamed, scrambling over a table to get away.
The café was a stampede. The "junkies"—confused, angry, and withdrawing from their interrupted memories—were clogging the single exit. The second Silent was shoving his way through them, tossing people aside like ragdolls to get a clear line of sight on Valerius.
"Rook!" Lyric yelled, parrying another strike. "Stop the other one!"
"With what?" Rook shrieked from the booth. "My winning personality?"
Rook grabbed a heavy glass sugar dispenser from the table and hurled it. It sailed over Lyric's head and smashed against the second Silent's helmet.
The Silent paused, slowly turning his head to look at Rook.
"Target identified: Accomplice," the Silent droned. He raised a pistol—not a stunner, but a kinetic firearm.
"Val!" Lyric shouted.
"95%!" Valerius yelled, his voice strained. He was hunched over the exposed wires, sweat dripping onto the table. "Just a few more seconds!"
The second Silent took aim.
Lyric didn't think. There was no time to run over there.
Lyric slapped their left hand onto the booth table next to them—a heavy, formica slab bolted to the floor.
Erase.
Lyric erased the bolts anchoring the table.
Then, with a roar of effort, Lyric kicked the now-loose table. It slid across the slick floor, crashing into the second Silent's legs just as he fired.
BANG.
The shot went wide, shattering the neon Recall Lounge sign above the counter. Glass rained down on the purple-haired attendant, who shrieked and ducked behind the register.
"Processing complete," Valerius gasped.
He ripped the wires loose. "It's up! It's in the mesh!"
"Go!" Lyric yelled, swinging the sword wildly to force the first Silent back.
"We can't go out the front!" Rook yelled. "The door is blocked by the mob!"
"Back door!" Valerius shouted, shoving the laptop into his coat—Lyric's coat. "Through the kitchen!"
Lyric disengaged, jumping back. "Run! I'm right behind you!"
Rook and Valerius scrambled over the counter, ignoring the terrified attendant, and burst into the kitchen.
Lyric turned to follow, but the first Silent lunged, grabbing the back of Lyric's shirt.
"Asset detained," the Silent said.
Lyric spun around, the fabric tearing. The Silent's grip was iron. He raised the baton for a knockout blow.
Lyric looked at the baton.
Don't erase the person. Erase the threat.
Lyric dropped the sword—letting it clatter to the floor—and grabbed the baton with their bare hand.
The electricity seared Lyric's palm. The pain was blinding.
Erase.
Lyric erased the charge.
The blue electricity vanished instantly. The baton became just a stick of metal.
The Silent paused, confused for a microsecond.
That was enough.
Lyric headbutted the Silent. The mask was hard, and it hurt Lyric more than him, but it stunned him. Lyric grabbed the ceramic sword from the floor and vaulted over the counter, crashing into the kitchen just as the Silent recovered.
The kitchen smelled of old grease and panic.
"Out the back!" Rook kicked the rear delivery door open.
They spilled out into the alley. It was pouring rain. The cold water felt good on Lyric's burned hand.
"Did it work?" Lyric panted, clutching the hand. "Val, did it work?"
"Look," Valerius pointed toward the main street.
They ran to the mouth of the alley.
The street was chaotic. Cars had stopped. People were standing on the sidewalks, staring up.
Every holographic billboard, every shop window, every datapad was flickering. The smiling ads for memory vials were gone.
Instead, a video was playing.
It was shaky footage. Grainy. It showed a laboratory—the same white walls as the Vault. Men in Guild uniforms were injecting a green fluid into the water supply.
A voiceover played—Valerius's voice, recorded days ago in his own mind.
"They call it the Itch. The feeling that you're forgetting something important. They told you it was natural. They told you the only cure was to buy a memory."
The video cut to a document. A Guild financial report.
"They lied. They engineered the Itch. They poisoned the water to make your minds decay, just so they could sell you the cure. You aren't customers. You're livestock."
On the street, a woman dropped her umbrella. A man fell to his knees, staring at the screen in horror.
"The Memory Plague," Rook whispered, watching the giant screen. "They're seeing it. They're actually seeing it."
"This is it," Valerius said, his face wet with rain. "The signal is bouncing off the civilian mesh. It's replicating faster than they can scrub it. By morning, the whole continent will know."
Woooop-Woooop.
Sirens.
Not police sirens. These were low, mechanical drones—the heavy enforcement units.
"We just poked the bear," Lyric said, wincing as the burn on their hand throbbed. "We need to disappear before the shock wears off."
"Where?" Rook asked. "The subway is out. The streets are going to be a riot zone in ten minutes."
"The chaos is our cover," Lyric said. "We steal a car. We get out of the city limits."
"Steal a car?" Valerius raised an eyebrow. "I thought we were the good guys now."
"Good guys need transport," Lyric said. "There. That sedan."
Lyric pointed to a sleek, hovering vehicle parked at the curb. The driver had gotten out to watch the billboard, leaving the door open.
"Let's go," Lyric ordered.
They ran for the car. The driver, a businessman in a suit, was too distracted by the video of the Guild poisoning the water to notice three ragged fugitives jumping into his vehicle.
"I'm driving!" Rook yelled, diving into the front seat.
"Can you fly this thing?" Valerius asked, sliding into the back.
"It has an interface!" Rook punched the ignition button. "I can hotwire the nav-system!"
Lyric jumped into the passenger seat. "Go, Rook! The drones are turning the corner!"
Heavy black drones with searchlights swept onto the street.
Rook slammed the thrusters. The car lurched upward, scraping the bumper of the car in front of it, and shot forward into the rainy sky.
Rook flew low, weaving between the skyscrapers to stay out of the main traffic lanes.
Below them, the city was waking up. And it was angry.
Fires were starting. People were throwing rocks at the Guild recruitment centers. The billboards continued to loop Valerius's video, broadcasting the betrayal over and over.
"We did it," Rook said, gripping the wheel, a manic grin on his face. "We actually did it."
Lyric looked at their hand. The palm was red and blistered where they had grabbed the baton.
"We started a war," Lyric said quietly. "Valerius was right."
Valerius leaned forward from the back seat. He was watching the city burn below them.
"The Guild relies on trust," Valerius said. "We just broke that. Now, they have nothing left but force. They're going to lock this city down. No one in, no one out."
"We need to get past the perimeter wall before they seal the gates," Rook said, pushing the throttle.
"Wait," Lyric said. "Look at the nav-screen."
On the dashboard, the map of the city was blinking red.
> PERIMETER LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT.
> NO FLIGHT ZONES ACTIVE.
> ARCHITECT PROTOCOL: ISOLATION.
"Isolation," Lyric read. "That's what the Architect said in the boiler room. He's sealing the city."
Ahead of them, in the distance, a massive wall of shimmering blue light began to rise from the ground, encircling the city limits. It went up into the clouds, forming a dome.
"A force field?" Rook shouted. "Since when do they have a city-wide force field?"
"Since now," Valerius said grimly. "That's an Architect's work. He's rewriting the boundaries."
"Can we fly through it?" Lyric asked.
"If we hit that field," Valerius said, "we don't just crash. We get digitized. Scattered into static."
Rook slammed on the air-brakes. The car lurched to a halt, hovering in the air.
"So we're trapped," Rook said. " trapped in a city that's about to turn into a war zone, with the entire Guild army looking for us."
Lyric looked at the blue dome closing over the city.
"We can't leave," Lyric said. "So we hide. We find a place inside the walls where the Architect can't see us."
"We tried the Underground," Rook said. "We tried the Surface. Where else is there?"
Lyric looked down at the streets below. At the chaos.
"The Guild Headquarters," Lyric said.
Rook and Valerius both stared at Lyric.
"What?" Rook whispered.
"Think about it," Lyric said, turning to face them. "They're locking the city down to find us. They're searching the slums, the tunnels, the safe houses. The only place they won't look for three fugitives is inside their own fortress."
"That's suicide," Valerius said. But he wasn't saying no. He was calculating.
"It's the eye of the storm," Lyric said. "And Finch said the Architect keeps his blueprints in the central server. If we want to bring down that force field, we have to delete it from the source."
Rook slumped against the steering wheel. "I hate this. I hate this so much."
"Turn the car around, Rook," Lyric said softly. "Take us to the center."
Rook sighed, a long, rattling breath. He spun the wheel.
The car banked sharp left, turning away from the freedom of the perimeter and heading straight toward the massive, glowing spire in the center of the city.
The Guild Spire.