The boy was already gone.
Ren saw this as soon as he turned the corner to a dark alleyway to see a young man slumped against a graffiti covered wall. Sweat and tears were streaming down his face, pupils dilated, and his body shaking violently.
Ren quickly rushed over to the man's side and tried to speak with him.
"Hey... You still remember your name?"
No response, other than a ragged buzzing that came from deep in the man's throat.
"Shit..."
Ren closed his eyes and took the boy's hand in his. He concentrated deeply and found that the man's hand felt like that of an insect. Quivering and twitching immensely.
"Damn it..." Ren said, hoisting the young man up and slung his arm over his shoulder.
The man's head whipped back. Laughter ripped out of his throat like a broken siren—shrill, wet, and wrong.Then came the scream. It wasn't human either.Ren clamped a hand over his mouth. "Quiet," he hissed.
The boy suddenly shoved Ren with surprising force and both of them staggered back against the walls. He still giggling and shaking, threw his head back and began actually speaking.
"He is ready."
Ren's eyes narrowed. The sound that came from the boy's mouth was that of many people. Voices layered like a demented choir. It hissed like static and each word was uttered slowly and deliberately.
Without a word, Ren reached into his trench coat, drew his handgun, and leveled it at the thing pretending to be a person.
"He... is ready..." The boy spoke, cackling even more, before falling to the ground in agony, writhing and screaming.
Ren had blasted him in the foot. The blood smeared across the ground like oil.
"Let's see if the hive still thinks with a busted foot, Shall we?"
...
The screaming stopped after a minute.
What remained was a heap of flesh and blood-stained clothing—twitching, unconscious, still breathing. Barely.
Ren stared at him for a long moment, then tucked the handgun back beneath his coat. He crouched, slid his arms beneath the man's limp form, and hauled him up with practiced ease.
"Toma and Xiaoyu had better be ready..." Ren thought to himself.
Ren threw up the hood of his coat and began moving.
The city blurred past in gutters and rusted pipes. Neon signs flickered like broken eyes. He kept to the side streets and freight tunnels, a black silhouette winding through industrial entrails long forgotten by normal people.
Fifteen minutes later, he reached a rusted metal door behind an abandoned freight station. Above it, there was a small metal sign that read "Third Vein".
He tapped a rhythm with his knuckles.
Clunk. Clunk-clunk. Clunk.
The door buzzed, then creaked open.
Warm, sterile light spilled out—too clean for where it was. The scent of antiseptic and scorched metal hit him instantly. Inside was a narrow hall of concrete and wire, humming faintly with hidden machines.
A voice called from deeper in:
"You bring a corpse again or is this one still twitching?"
Ren didn't answer.
He just walked in, boots echoing, the boy's blood trailing behind him in long, sticky streaks.
...
The lab corridor opened into what looked more like a machine graveyard than a medical bay.
Rust-streaked shelves groaned under the weight of half-built drones, disassembled prosthetics, and metal limbs in various states of decay. Tools hung from nails like surgical instruments in a butcher's den. A modified medical scanner blinked red next to a toaster duct-taped to a diagnostic terminal. Sparks popped from an exposed junction box.
"—I told you not to touch it while it was charging!"
Xiaoyu's voice echoed sharply across the chaos.
"You rewired my nervous system!" Toma snapped back. "I damn near fried all my tools this morning!"
Ren stepped through the door as the shouting escalated.
Toma Ishiguro stood near the center of the mess, face tight with stress, his metal arm twitching like it had its own opinion. The forearm plating was removed, wires sticking out like nerves, a faint trail of smoke curling from one joint.
Xiaoyu Liang sat cross-legged atop an overturned toolbox, goggles pushed up into her hair, a sparking screwdriver dangling from her fingers like a cigarette.
"You're welcome," she said flatly. "That taser feature saved your ass last week, remember?"
"It also rebooted my heart."
Ren cleared his throat—loudly.
Both of them froze and turned. Saw the blood. The limp body slumped over Ren's shoulder.
The moment snapped still.
"Table," Ren ordered.
Xiaoyu jumped down, her whole demeanor shifting in an instant. Toma muttered something bitter and swept a mess of bolts and tools from the operating slab with one arm.
"Ashmouth?" Toma asked, already reaching for gloves.
Ren laid the boy down and gave a curt nod.
"Deep tremors. Hive voice. I had to blast his foot so he couldn't run."
"Shit," Toma muttered.
Xiaoyu leaned against the nearest wall of drawers, watching the boy twitch on the slab. Her smirk was gone now.
"If he's speaking with the hive already," she said softly, "we don't have long."
Ren's eyes didn't leave the boy's face.
Toma snapped on his gloves and activated a handheld neural scanner with his good hand. The device let out a high-pitched whir as he passed it over the boy's temple.
The screen flickered, crackled, then held steady.
"Burn levels… off the charts," he muttered. "Synaptic firestorm, his brain's lit up like a refinery. No baseline left to stabilize. Whatever's still human is hanging by a thread."
He turned to a rack of vials—dozens of colors and crude labels. His fingers hovered before grabbing a syringe marked N2—Neuroseal.
"I'll slow the neural burn," Toma said. "If we're lucky, this will shut the hive out long enough for him to stay himself."
He slid the needle into the boy's neck. A soft hiss escaped as the serum entered his bloodstream.
At first, nothing.
Then, a spasm. The boy's back arched—joints cracking—eyes rolling into his skull. A mechanical whine shivered through the scanner.
Ren tensed.
But then, like a dying engine, the twitching stopped.
The boy slumped back, his breathing ragged but steady. The monitor dropped into normal ranges. No clicking. No whispers.
Just sleep.
Toma exhaled and peeled off his gloves, his metal arm still trembling slightly.
"He's out," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "Neural lockdown's holding. I bought us time. An hour, maybe two."
Xiaoyu stepped in, peering at the readout.
"No hive chatter?"
"Nothing audible. But I wouldn't call it quiet, either."
Ren looked down at the unconscious boy, veins still blackened, face pale and streaked with tears.
"We'll get what we can," he said flatly. "And if he wakes up wrong… you put him back under."
Toma nodded, jaw tight.
Ren turned and walked into the back room—silent, methodical.
"Xiaoyu," he called over his shoulder."Get ready to trace. Wherever this kid got lit up… we're going next."
"O-Okay…" Xiaoyu stuttered, sliding into her chair.
She rolled over to a heavy metal desk littered with half-assembled signal boosters, tangled wires, and enough scrap tech to build a small war. Several monitors flickered to life around her, displaying overlapping blueprints, schematics, and active police and hospital line intercepts. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, fast but not steady. Her nerves still hadn't caught up with her instinct.
"I'm ready when you are," she said, her voice trying to sound firm—but the edges were thin.
"Good," Ren replied, standing behind her.
He stared at the screen with his sharp red eyes.
"If we can find where he got all this," he said, "then we're one step closer."