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The coordinates dropped Ryan in front of a shuttered pawn shop three blocks from the docks. The windows were soaped over and the security grate looked like it hadn't moved in a decade. He stood there for a solid minute before the side door cracked open.
"You coming in or you waiting for an invitation?" The voice was female, clipped, impatient.
Ryan pushed through. The shop smelled like old circuit boards and mildew. Erica Shea sat behind a counter stacked with datacubes and salvaged drives, her fingers moving across three screens at once. She didn't look up.
"Close it."
He kicked the door shut. His leg still felt half-dead from the cage fight two nights ago, and every step sent a dull ache up through his hip. The cooling protocol—whatever Natasha had shoved into his neural port—was keeping the current from frying him outright, but it didn't do shit for the aftermath.
Erica finally glanced at him. Mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back, the kind of face that didn't give anything away. She had a data broker's eyes. Flat. Calculating.
"You look like hell," she said.
"Yeah, well. I've been busy."
"I saw." She tapped one of the screens and spun it toward him. Grainy footage from the cage fight. Ryan watched himself cook the other guy alive, the discharge arcing between them like a live wire. The man's body jerked and collapsed. The crowd went quiet. Then the feed cut.
"That's making the rounds," Erica said. "Underground circuits, mostly. You're a hot commodity now. Pun intended."
Ryan's jaw tightened. "I didn't come here for commentary."
"No. You came because your port spat out my address and you don't know why." She leaned back in her chair. "That means Natasha Verner put something in your head that's smarter than you are. And that should scare the shit out of you."
It did. He just wasn't going to say it.
Erica pulled up another screen. "I've been tracking Verner's operation for eight months. She's not just running fights. She's collecting data. Biometric, neurological, full-spectrum burnout telemetry. Every fighter who steps into her cage is a test subject."
"Yeah, I figured that part out."
"Did you figure out who's buying?"
Ryan didn't answer. Erica's fingers moved again and a new file bloomed across the center screen. Contract headers. Corporate watermarks. A list of asset designations that looked like inventory logs.
"She's got a backer," Erica said. "Military-grade AI development. They need live data to train adaptive combat protocols. Burnout cases like you are perfect. High-output, unstable, expendable."
The word landed like a fist. Expendable.
Ryan stepped closer to the screen. The asset list scrolled past. Designation codes, dates, status tags. Most of them were marked DEPLETED or NONVIABLE. A few said ACTIVE.
Then he saw it.
KASH-7749R. EXTRACTED 3YR. STATUS: RECLAIMED.
His own ID.
The room tilted. He grabbed the edge of the counter and his vision went white at the edges. The cooling protocol kicked in, a cold pulse through his skull that yanked him back from the edge. His hands were shaking.
Erica was watching him. "You didn't know."
"I—" His throat closed up. He couldn't get the words out.
"Three years ago," she said. "Before your regulator fried. You were already on the list."
Ryan's mind was racing. Three years ago he'd been running corporate extractions. High-value targets, black-bag ops, the kind of work that didn't leave a paper trail. And then the job in Macau went sideways. The regulator blew. He spent two weeks in a med bay and walked out with discharge papers and a half-assed severance package.
They told him it was an equipment failure.
They told him he was lucky to be alive.
They lied.
"They didn't pull me out," he said. His voice sounded far away. "They tagged me."
Erica nodded. "And now Verner's cashing in. You're not a patient. You're inventory. You always were."
He wanted to put his fist through the screen. He wanted to walk out and find Natasha and make her explain every goddamn second of the last three years. But his legs wouldn't move. The protocol was humming in the back of his skull, a low static that felt almost alive.
"What's she putting in my head?" he asked.
Erica hesitated. That was new. Data brokers didn't hesitate.
"I don't know," she said finally. "The code's encrypted six ways from Sunday. But I can tell you what it's doing. It's learning. Every time you discharge, every time you push your limits, it's logging the data and adapting. And it's not just passive. It's rewriting your neural baseline."
"In English."
"It's teaching itself how to control you."
The static in his head spiked. Ryan staggered and caught himself against the counter. The screens blurred. For a second he could feel the protocol moving, threading through his synapses like it was looking for something.
"Shit," Erica said. She was on her feet. "Is it active?"
"I don't—" The room snapped back into focus. The static faded. Ryan sucked in a breath and his hands were still shaking. "I don't know."
"You need to get that thing out of your head."
"Yeah, no shit. You think I haven't tried?" He straightened up. His pulse was hammering. "Natasha's got the only gear that can interface with it. And she's not exactly offering refunds."
Erica was quiet for a moment. Then she pulled a datacube from the stack on the counter and held it out.
"This is everything I've got on Verner's backer. Contract records, facility locations, personnel files. You want answers, start there."
Ryan looked at the cube. It was small, unmarked, harmless-looking. But he'd been in this game long enough to know better.
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. You're already in deep. Might as well know who's holding the shovel." She set the cube on the counter between them. "But if you want me to crack that protocol, I'm going to need access to your port. Full diagnostic, no restrictions."
There it was.
Ryan stared at her. "I'm done handing strangers the keys to my head."
"Then you're done getting answers." Erica's voice didn't change. "Your call."
He should've walked. He should've taken the cube and gotten the hell out of there and figured it out on his own. But the list kept flashing in his mind. KASH-7749R. RECLAIMED. Three years of his life, three years of thinking he'd walked away clean, and it was all a lie.
He reached for the cube.
His neural port flared. Not the cooling protocol. Something else. A hard ping that rattled through his skull and lit up every nerve in his body. His hand froze halfway to the counter.
Erica's screens went black.
"What the hell—" She was already moving, fingers flying over a manual keyboard. The screens flickered. One came back online. The others stayed dark.
Ryan's port was burning. He could feel something clawing its way to the surface, something that wasn't his. The static was back, louder now, and underneath it he heard a voice.
Natasha's voice.
"Ryan." It came through his audio implant, crystal-clear. "I need you to step away from the broker."
He couldn't move. The protocol had him locked down, his muscles frozen mid-reach.
Erica was staring at him. "Ryan?"
"I'm—" He tried to force the words out. His jaw wouldn't open.
Natasha's voice again. Calm. Almost gentle. "You're fine. Just a little reminder that we have an arrangement. Now walk out of there and come back to the clinic. We need to talk."
The lock released. Ryan sucked in a breath and stumbled back from the counter. Erica had a holdout pistol in her hand. She wasn't pointing it at him yet. But she wasn't putting it down either.
"That thing in your head just hijacked you," she said.
"I know." His voice was shaking. He couldn't stop it.
"And you're still thinking about going back to her."
He didn't answer. He didn't have an answer.
Natasha cut in again. Her voice was different now. Sharper. "Thirty seconds, Ryan. Or I trigger a hard reset and you wake up in my clinic anyway. Your choice."
Erica raised the pistol. "I can fry that port from here. It'll hurt like hell, but you'll be free."
Ryan looked at her. Then at the datacube still sitting on the counter. Then at the dark screens and the shuttered windows and the only exit behind him.
Thirty seconds.
He turned and walked.
Erica didn't stop him. She just watched him go, the pistol still in her hand.
The door slammed shut behind him and the night air hit his face like cold water. His port was still burning. Natasha's voice was gone but he could feel the protocol underneath, coiled and waiting.
His comm buzzed. Not the implant. His actual handheld. He pulled it out.
Unknown number. Text only.
*Bring him back breathing. The protocol is awake.*
Ryan stared at the screen. The message wasn't from Natasha.
It was from someone giving her orders.