The stolen credit chips pulsed on the workbench like a ticking bomb.
Lucent's fingers moved on muscle memory alone, inputting command sequences he hadn't used in years—Cipher's old protocols, layered with encryption so dense even Myriad's systems would choke on it.
Each keystroke felt like digging up a grave.
What the hell am I doing?
The logic was undeniable.
These gutter kids weren't his problem.
Letting them stay was inviting disaster—the tracker in those chips would lead every Reclamation Unit in Sector 23 straight to their doorstep.
He should throw them out.
Should've left them bleeding in an alley when he had the chance.
Just like he should've abandoned Kai and Karen in the lab tunnels.
The memory surfaced unbidden—the abomination's shriek echoing through crumbling corridors, Karen's face full of guilt, Kai's wide Spire-brat eyes staring at certain death.
Survival had screamed at him to run.
Yet he'd stayed.
And for what?
A debt to a ghost?
Some half-buried instinct that died with Cipher?
The terminal screen flickered as the final encryption layer fell away.
The chips' tracking signal died with a static whimper.
Across the room, Kai hovered near the kids, his hands moving in animated explanation of some basic glyph.
Jessa watched with sharp eyes, already dissecting the technique.
Tink clutched a salvaged Conduit component like a holy relic.
The stolen credit chips lay dead on the workbench, their tracking signals silenced by codes Lucent hadn't touched in years.
The familiar ache settled behind his eyes—not from the glyphwork, but from the memories each command string unearthed.
Cipher's voice whispering through static.
The smell of burning insulation in that first makeshift workshop.
The way the GhostKey forums used to glow in the dark of his old squat, his only lifeline in a city that wanted him dead.
Lucent exhaled sharply.
Luck had saved him in those labs.
Luck and Zero's twisted mercy.
And when that luck runs out?
The question coiled in his chest like a live wire.
He'd survived this long by staying mobile, unattached.
By understanding that in the Junkyard, every kindness was a potential weakness.
Every connection, a future wound.
His gaze drifted to Kai.
The kid was kneeling beside Tink, adjusting the boy's grip on a salvaged Conduit with the patience of someone who'd once had tutors for such things.
Jessa watched with sharp eyes, already dissecting the mechanics behind each movement.
They looked so damn young in the flickering light—all dirt and sharp edges and stubborn hope.
It wasn't their fault.
None of it.
Not the chips they'd stolen, not the blood on their hands, not the way they looked at Lucent like he might have answers.
They were just kids playing a game where the rules kept changing and the house always won.
Just like he'd been.
Just like Kai still was.
Lucent turned back to the workbench, his fingers tightening around a soldering iron.
The tools felt suddenly heavy in his hands.
He'd spent years building walls, convincing himself that survival meant going it alone.
That mercy was a luxury he couldn't afford.
But the truth was simpler, and more terrible: No one made it out of the Junkyard unscarred.
But some scars didn't have to be borne alone.
Lucent's fingers froze over the workbench, the soldering iron's tip glowing dull orange in the dim light.
His thoughts had been spiraling—about Cipher's old codes, about the kids' desperate eyes, about how easily these fragile connections could turn into liabilities.
The question cut through his brooding like a knife.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," Kai said, holding up his cracked Conduit.
The glyph on its screen flickered weakly, its energy pathways unstable. "But what does this stabilization sequence actually do?" He pointed to a series of interconnected runes along the edge of the spell matrix.
Lucent set down the equipment with deliberate care.
The movement gave him three extra seconds to fix his expression.
"That's a failsafe." His voice came out rougher than intended. "Prevents the glyph from eating your hand off when the regulator fails."
Jessa leaned in from Kai's other side, her grease-stained fingers hovering near the display.
"Why's it shaped like that, then?" She traced a particular jagged rune in the air. "Looks like it's meant to cut something."
A muscle jumped in Lucent's jaw.
His fingers stilled over the Conduit, the faint hum of its unstable glyph the only sound in the sudden silence.
That kind of insight—recognizing a failsafe's cutting function just by its rune structure—wasn't something a gutter kid should know.
Not without access to Spire archives or UnderNet forums buried so deep even most mercs couldn't find them.
Jessa met his gaze without flinching, her dirt-smudged face unreadable.
The flickering worklight caught the silver scar running through her left eyebrow—too straight to be accidental, too precise to be anything but professional work.
Lucent felt the old instincts rise—the ones that had kept him alive through a dozen back-alley deals and double-crosses.
He forced his shoulders to relax.
"Jessa, right?" He kept his voice casual, turning a salvaged capacitor over in his hands like he wasn't testing the weight of a potential weapon. "What made you think that?"
The girl shrugged, but her eyes stayed sharp. "Seen it before."
She tapped the jagged rune on Kai's Conduit. "Old man who ran the scrap yard I worked at had one like this. Said it was a 'survivor's glyph.'"
A beat too long.
A detail too convenient.
Lucent's thumb brushed the capacitor's contact points. "Which yard?"
"East 14th." She didn't hesitate. "Got shut down after a Reclamation raid last winter."
True enough—Lucent had heard about that raid.
But something in the way she held herself, the careful control of her breathing...
Kai, oblivious to the tension, brightened. "See? I told you she picks things up fast—"
"Quiet." Lucent didn't look away from Jessa. "Who really taught you?"
The air in the hideout went electric.
Tink edged backward, his small hands clutching the Conduit part like a talisman.
Jessa's lips pressed into a thin line.
For a moment, Lucent thought she might bolt.
Then—
"My brother." Her voice was quieter now. "Before they took him."
The words landed with the weight of truth.
Too much weight.
Lucent exhaled slowly.
He recognized that look—the one survivors got when they'd lost everything but the anger.
He'd worn it himself, years ago.
He tossed the capacitor onto the workbench. "Next lesson's tomorrow. Don't be late."
The unspoken warning hung in the air between them: And don't lie to me again.
***
Karen stared at the worn paper in her hands, the ink of Nex's list smudged from too much handling.
Two names crossed out now—Oren and Silas—but the remaining three glared back at her like accusations.
Don. Sable. Sel.
Her own people.
The thought sat heavy in her chest.
These weren't just random Talons—they were part of her squad, the network of dealers and traders who moved the gang's product across the sectors.
She'd worked alongside them for years, trusted them to handle deals while she managed the bigger picture.
And now one of them might have sold them all out.
Mags leaned in, her small finger tapping Don's name.
Of the three, he was closest—running the trade routes through Sector 19, just a few blocks from their current position.
Karen exhaled sharply through her nose. "Don first, then."
The problem was the logistics.
Her squad covered too much ground—Don in Sector 19, Sable holding down the black markets at the Neon Bazaar, Sel working the underground channels in Sector 14.
Pulling them all in for questioning would leave their entire operation exposed, and with Gristle gone, they couldn't afford any gaps in distribution.
But Nex hadn't marked these names lightly.
Karen folded the list and tucked it back into her jacket. "We'll make it quick. If Don's clean, we move to Sable by nightfall."
Mags nodded, already checking the load on Nex's shotgun.
The motion was routine, practiced—but there was a new tension in her small frame.
These weren't just suspects.
They were people she'd shared meals with, fought alongside.
People who might have watched Nex die.
Karen stepped into the corridor, the hideout's flickering lights stretching her shadow long and jagged across the rusted walls.
Sector 19 loomed ahead—a maze of crumbling infrastructure and neon-lit back alleys where Don operated his trade routes.
She pulled out her Conduit, the cracked screen casting a pale glow across her face as she tapped out a message:
>> Where are you?
The seconds ticked by in silence.
Mags hovered at her shoulder, her small frame tense as she watched the screen.
A full minute passed before the reply came through:
>> Boss? Need anything?
The response was too casual.
Too quick to play dumb.
Karen's jaw tightened as she typed her next words with deliberate precision:
>> I want to meet up. There's something I need to confirm in person.
She didn't specify what.
Didn't give him time to prepare excuses.
The best way to catch a rat was to spring the trap before they smelled the cheese.
Mags made a small noise in her throat, her fingers brushing the stock of Nex's shotgun slung across her back.
She didn't need to speak for Karen to understand the warning—this feels wrong.
Don's reply came faster this time:
>> Sure thing. Old warehouse near the 19-20 border. 30 mins?
Karen stared at the message.
That warehouse was off his usual routes.
A quiet place.
Isolated.
Perfect for an ambush.
Or a confession.
She exchanged a glance with Mags.
The girl gave a single, sharp nod.
Karen typed one final word:
>> Be there.
The Conduit screen went dark, plunging them back into the corridor's dim glow.
Somewhere in the distance, pipes rattled like bones in the wind.
Thirty minutes.
Then they'd have their answer.
***
Don emerged from behind the shipping containers with that easy smile Karen knew too well—the one he used when sweet-talking merchants into better deals.
Both his forearms gleamed in the dim light, the polished steel of his augments reflecting the dying sunset through broken warehouse windows.
"Boss." His voice carried just the right mix of respect and familiarity. "You made it."
Karen didn't return the smile.
Her eyes tracked the subtle whir of his left wrist actuator as he gestured—the same height as their suspect, the same build, but those augments changed everything.
The surveillance footage had shown bare flesh with three parallel scars, not chrome.
Mags made a small noise behind her, barely audible over the distant hum of Sector 19's power grid.
Her tiny frame had gone unnaturally still, the way she did when lining up a shot.
Karen kept her voice casual as she stepped forward, her boots crunching on discarded Myriad stim wrappers. "We need to talk about the east tunnel incident."
Don's smile didn't waver, but his right hand twitched toward his jacket pocket. "Bad intel all around on that one. Even Sable thought—"
The lie unraveled before he finished.
Sable had been off-grid for days.
Karen's fingers brushed her holster as she watched Don's augmented fingers dance across that bracelet again, the motion too quick, too nervous.
A metallic creak echoed from the rafters above.
Mags didn't look up, but the safety clicked off Nex's shotgun with a sound like a breaking bone.
The warehouse held its breath.
Don's augments whirred softly as he clenched his fists.
Karen saw the truth then—not in his face, but in the way his polished metal arms caught the light.
Too clean.
Too new.
Just like the fresh augments would have covered any identifying scars.
Mags moved before Karen could blink—Nex's shotgun snapping up to her shoulder with practiced ease.
The worn stock flared blue as the Rank 1—Recoil Brake glyph activated, its energy dampening field shimmering along the barrel.
"Liar."
The single word hung in the air for less than a heartbeat before Don turned and bolted.
His augmented legs whirred as he sprinted toward a side exit, his polished chrome arms flashing in the dim light.
The shotgun roared, its modified rounds loaded with Rank 2—Kinetic Spread.
The warehouse filled with the shriek of shredding metal as the pellets found their mark—Don's right knee joint exploded in a shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid.
He went down hard, his augmented hands scraping against concrete as he tried to crawl away.
Karen was on him in three strides, her prosthetic hand clamping around his throat and slamming him against a support beam.
Up close, she could see the truth—the augments were fresh installations, the surgical scars at his elbows still pink and healing.
"You got these to cover the marks," Karen growled, her fingers tightening. "Who paid for them? Myriad? The Red Dogs?"
Don's face twisted in pain, but his laugh came out ragged and genuine. "You're chasing ghosts, boss. These?"
He tapped his gleaming forearm. "Got these after the lab job. That acid shit ate through my original augs."
Mags crouched beside them, her small fingers probing the damaged knee joint.
With a sharp tug, she ripped open a maintenance panel—revealing the manufacturer's stamp.
Three days after the east tunnel ambush.
Karen's grip slackened.
The fight drained out of Don's augmented limbs as he slumped against the support beam, his damaged knee joint spitting intermittent sparks across the concrete.
Not their mole.
Just a scared man who'd panicked when cornered.
"Why'd you run?" Karen demanded, her voice cutting through the warehouse's heavy silence.
Don's breathing came in ragged bursts, his human eye darting between Karen's face and Mags' shotgun.
When he spoke, the words tumbled out like loose change from a broken slot machine:
"I—I thought the conversation would go towards the missing credits..."
A beat of silence.
Mags tilted her head, the movement almost avian in its precision.
Karen's jaw tightened. "What missing credits?"
Don swallowed hard, his augmented throat bobbing. "From the Neon Bazaar drops. Small amounts at first, then whole shipments after the lab job."
His fingers twitched toward his bracelet - not a tracker, Karen realized, but a ledger device. "I covered the shortages myself. Thought... thought you'd blame me when it came out."
The pieces clicked together with cold clarity.
Don hadn't betrayed them to the Red Dogs or Corpos—he'd been skimming to cover someone else's theft.
Someone higher up.
Someone who'd known exactly how to make it look like his fault.
Karen released him with a shove. "Who was supposed to collect those drops?"
Don's remaining knee joint whined as he shifted position. "Sable. Always Sable."
Above them, the rafters creaked—not from wind this time, but from sudden, hurried movement.
Mags spun toward the movement in the rafters, Nex's shotgun already tracking the fleeing shadow—but it was too late.
The figure vanished into the warehouse's skeletal infrastructure, leaving only a metallic glint on the concrete below.
Karen crouched, her fingers closing around a Red Dog emblem badge.
The enamel was chipped at the edges, the pin mechanism bent as if ripped hastily from someone's jacket.
"Red Dogs?" Karen muttered, turning the badge over in her palm. The idea was almost laughable—if it weren't so obviously staged.
Mags made a small, derisive sound in her throat, her boot nudging Don's damaged augments.
The message was clear: No Red Dog would be stupid enough to drop their colors at a spy job.
Don groaned, clutching his sparking knee joint. "I told you—I ain't working with them. That's probably some plant to—"
"Shut up," Karen snapped, her mind racing.
This wasn't just sloppy.
This was theatrical.
Someone wanted them chasing Red Dogs while the real traitor slipped away.
She pocketed the badge, her prosthetic fingers curling into a fist.
They'd been played.
And now there were only two names left on Nex's list.