"Stay down if you want to keep your head," Sila hissed, her hand slamming into my chest to pin me against the rusted corrugated wall.
I couldn't breathe. Not because of her palm, but because the air smelled like ozone and burnt copper. That was the scent of Capital assassins. High-end tech, low-end morals.
"They're already inside the perimeter," I wheezed, my voice sounding like gravel in a blender. "You can't fight them with scrap-rifles and hope, Sila."
She didn't flinch. She leaned closer, the leather of her tactical gear creaking against my chest. Her eyes were shards of flint, scanning the alleyway. I could feel the heat radiating off her skin, a sharp contrast to the damp chill of the Grey Zone.
"I don't need hope," she whispered, her lips barely an inch from mine. "I need you to stop shaking so I can hear them coming."
I tried to pull away, but her grip tightened. It wasn't just a hold; it was a claim. She was the general here, and I was the asset. The broken, glitchy asset who happened to have the keys to a dead world in his skull.
*CRACK.*
A high-velocity rail-slug tore through the wall three inches from my ear. Dust and rust sprayed my face. I flinched, my cybernetics spiking in a wave of static.
"Move!" Sila roared.
She didn't pull me up; she hauled me by the collar, dragging me behind a fallen shipping container. We hit the mud together, her body shielding mine for a split second. I felt the hard line of her shoulder against my ribs, the sudden, fierce pressure of her protecting something she claimed to hate.
"Why the hell are you doing this?" I gasped, my heart hammering against my ribs. "You could just hand me over. You'd get enough credits to feed your whole sector for a decade."
Sila turned her head, her gaze cutting through me. "You think I give a damn about credits? Viktor doesn't pay debts. He collects souls. If I give you to him, I'm just giving him a reason to come back for the rest of us."
"Noble," I spat, though my hand was instinctively gripping the fabric of her sleeve. "Or maybe you just like having a pet cyborg."
"Shut up," she snapped, but she didn't move her arm.
Another shot rang out. This one hit the container with a screeching metallic wail. The assassins weren't just shooting; they were herding us.
"They're using sonic trackers," I said, the Admin codes in my head flickering like a dying neon sign. "They don't see us. They see the signal coming off my neural link. I'm a lighthouse in a blackout."
Sila looked at me, her expression shifting from irritation to something colder. "Can you shut it off?"
"I don't know how!" I yelled. "It's not a switch, Sila, it's a reboot!"
"Then learn fast," she said. She reached into her belt and pulled out a jagged piece of blackened metal—a neural dampener. It looked like it had been chewed by a scavenger dog. "This is going to hurt. A lot."
"Wait, what—"
She didn't wait. She jammed the dampener into the port at the base of my neck.
White light exploded behind my eyes. I screamed, my back arching, the world dissolving into a scream of binary and blood. It felt like someone was pouring liquid nitrogen directly into my spine. I grabbed her wrist, my fingers digging into her skin, trying to pull the thing out, but she held it steady.
"Hold it," she commanded, her voice low and steady despite the chaos. "Fight the noise, Kael. Don't let it take you."
I looked up at her through the haze. Her face was blurred, but her eyes were locked on mine. For a second, the power dynamic shifted. I wasn't the prisoner, and she wasn't the captor. We were just two animals trapped in the same cage, breathing each other's air.
I felt her thumb brush against the skin of my neck, a gesture so brief I almost missed it. It wasn't a caress; it was a check for a pulse. But it sent a jolt through me that had nothing to do with the dampener.
"Still with me?" she whispered.
"Barely," I groaned. The static in my head dimmed. The lighthouse went dark.
"Good. Now run."
She shoved me toward the ventilation shafts of the lower district. We sprinted through the sludge, the sounds of the assassins' boots echoing above us like thunder. Every time I stumbled, she was there—a hand grabbing my arm, a shoulder shoving me forward.
We dove into a derelict comms hub, a place where the walls were lined with dead screens and rotting wires. Sila kicked the door shut and slammed a heavy iron bolt into place.
I collapsed against a desk, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The dampener was still humming in my neck, making my vision swim.
"We can't stay here," I said, wiping mud from my cheek. "They'll find the trail."
"They'll find us eventually," Sila replied, her voice tight. She was pacing, her boots clicking on the metal floor. "The question is what we do before they get here. You said the Admin codes can unlock the old world. What does that actually mean?"
I leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "It means I can talk to the machines. The ones that actually run this city. The ones Viktor wants to use to turn everyone into his personal puppets."
"Prove it," she challenged, stepping into my space. She leaned over the desk, her face inches from mine. I could smell the salt and gunpowder on her. "Show me something that isn't a glitch, Kael. Give me a reason not to leave you behind the next time a rail-slug comes our way."
I looked at her—really looked at her. The fierce, stubborn line of her jaw, the way her hand hovered near her weapon, the hidden flicker of desperation in her eyes. She didn't trust me, but she was betting everything on me.
I reached out, my fingers trembling, and touched a dead console on the desk.
"I need a power source," I whispered. "And I need you to keep them off my back for three minutes."
"You've got two," she said, drawing her blade with a metallic *shink*. "Make it count."
I closed my eyes and reached into the void. I didn't look for a switch; I looked for the heartbeat of the building. I felt it—a faint, pulsing current deep in the walls. I grabbed it. I pulled.
Suddenly, every screen in the room flickered to life.
It wasn't a map. It wasn't a weapon.
It was a face.
Viktor.
He wasn't a recording. He was live. His eyes were cold, sterile, and looked directly through the camera as if he could see us both. He didn't look angry; he looked bored, which was infinitely worse.
"Sila, my dear," Viktor's voice purred from a dozen different speakers, overlapping in a haunting chorus. "You've always had such a penchant for collecting strays. But this one doesn't belong to you."
Sila stiffened, her blade trembling.
"Bring me my property," Viktor said, his smile widening into something predatory. "Or I'll start deleting the sectors you're trying to protect, one block at a time."