The safehouse was a relic of a forgotten era—a cramped, one-bedroom apartment tucked above a 24-hour laundromat in the city's greyest district. The air smelled of cheap detergent and ozone.
Adrien sat on a moth-eaten sofa, his laptop balanced precariously on his knees. His fingers were still shaking, a stark contrast to the steady hum of the rain outside. Across from him, Leon was leaning against the peeling wallpaper, seemingly unbothered, though his eyes never left the reinforced door.
"You're doing that thing again," Leon said, breaking the silence.
"What thing?" Adrien didn't look up from the screen.
"The 'I'm-calculating-our-survival-rate-and-it's-below-five-percent' thing. Relax. We're off the grid."
"We aren't off the grid, Leon. We're just in a blind spot. And blind spots get checked."
A sudden, sharp rhythmic knocking at the door made them both freeze. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
Leon's hand was on his holster in a heartbeat. He signaled Adrien to get behind the kitchen counter. Leon crept toward the door, peering through the wide-angle lens of the peephole. He blinked, then frowned.
"It's a girl with pink hair," Leon whispered. "And she's... eating?"
Before Adrien could respond, the lock hissed. The door didn't just open; it was bypassed with a digital scream. Ashley stepped in first, her tactical boots clicking on the linoleum, a suppressed pistol held in a low-ready position. Behind her, Lily skipped in, clutching a bag of sour gummies and a laptop that looked more like a sticker collection than a computer.
"Nice place," Lily chirped, peering into a box of stale cereal on the counter. "Very 'starving artist meets international fugitive.' I dig the vibe."
"Apex," Adrien hissed, standing up from behind the counter. "Ashley. I should have known you'd be the one tracking my signal."
"Don't flatter yourself, Vane," Ashley said, her eyes scanning the room for exits. She lowered her weapon, but the tension in her shoulders didn't fade. "Your signal was screaming. If we found you, the Directors' cleanup crews are ten minutes behind us."
"And why are you here?" Leon asked, stepping between Adrien and the newcomers. "Last I checked, Apex Solutions doesn't do charity work."
"We do 'mutual survival,'" Ashley countered. She threw a decrypted file onto the coffee table—a hologram flickered to life, showing the same "Protocol Zero" Adrien had seen. "They aren't just targeting your firm, Adrien. They're purging everyone who touched the Catalyst project. My parents died investigating the same chemical signatures five years ago. I'm not letting their work become a bio-weapon."
Lily hopped onto the small kitchen table, her legs swinging. She held out the bag of candy toward Adrien. "Want one? The blue ones help you think. The red ones are for when you want to scream."
Adrien stared at the bag, then at the pink-haired girl who was currently humming a pop tune while a literal death squad hunted them. "You're Lily. The one who sent the gas-mask emoji."
"Guilty!" she beamed. "I like your firewalls, by the way. Very 'old school.' Like a vintage car. Pretty, but easy to hotwire."
Adrien felt a vein throb in his temple. "Easy?"
"Anyway!" Lily interrupted, pointing at his screen. "While you two were busy having a 'who has the bigger ego' contest, I finished tracing the secondary server. The Facility isn't just a lab. It's an old chemical plant in the Sector 4 wasteland. If we go now, we might beat the storm."
"We aren't 'going' anywhere with them," Leon said, looking at Ashley.
"You have the decryption key," Ashley said to Adrien, ignoring Leon. "I have the facility blueprints and the transport. We stay separate, we die. We go together, we have a twenty percent chance of making it to the front gate."
Adrien looked at the holographic file, then at the gummy bear Lily was currently holding out like an olive branch.
"Twenty percent?" Adrien asked.
"Hey," Lily shrugged, popping the candy into her own mouth. "Better than five."
Adrien closed his laptop with a definitive click. "Leon. Get the gear. We're going to Sector 4."