Chapter 18 · Ghost Signal - Chapter 18: Dead Men Bid Too

The back entrance to Old Yuan's place smells like burnt plastic and old cooking oil. I'm three meters down a maintenance shaft, and my ribs are screaming from the drop. Zero-Seven's already mapped the heat signatures inside. Four bodies. One of them's sitting too still.

"He knows you're coming," Zero-Seven says in my ear. Her voice is tight. "Lin, turn around."

I don't.

My face is on every screen in the network. TERMINATE ON SIGHT. That gives me maybe six hours before someone with a working gun finds me. Old Yuan's got the only door out of this sector that isn't crawling with checkpoint drones. I need that door.

Even if he's the one who put my face up there.

"Lin."

"I heard you the first time."

I pull myself through the shaft. The metal's cold enough that it burns through my gloves. My neural interface itches where Zero-Seven's code is threaded too deep to pull out. Three seconds. That's what I gave her in the firefight. Long enough to reroute two drones and save my neck. Long enough for her to dig in like a tick.

She hasn't left since.

The shaft opens into a storage room.