"Asset Kael, stay down. Termination in progress."
The boot slams between my shoulder blades and drives my face straight into the scrap. My teeth hit rust. Blood fills my mouth.
"Get off me," I snarl. My arms don't listen. My left hand spasms. Sparks shoot up my wrist.
"Still twitching?" The guy above me laughs. Corp hound. Black armor, red visor. He leans harder. "God, you blades never die clean."
I try to push up. My elbow gives out. Error text floods my vision in red.
[SYSTEM CRITICAL: MOTOR FUNCTION 31% // POWER CELL LEAKING]
Yeah. No shit.
"You got the wrong pit," I gasp. "I'm not your asset anymore. You scrapped me. Remember?"
"We remember," he says. "That's why we're here to finish the job. You were supposed to stay dead in the tank."
Two more hounds drop down from the crane above. Rifles up. The whole scrap pit stinks like hot metal and burnt oil. I'm flat on a pile of dead drones and gutted chassis, and my own blood is making the rust slick under my cheek.
"On your knees," the lead hound snaps. "Hands behind your head. Make it easy."
"Screw easy," I spit. Blood on his boot. "Come down here and do it yourself."
He kicks me in the ribs. Hard. Something cracks. My vision whites out.
"Bitch still thinks she's Tier One," another one says, laughing. "Look at her. Glitching like a cheap toy."
My left eye flickers. Static. Then a different voice cuts through the red errors. Not theirs. Mine. Inside my skull.
"Offer detected. Do you want to live?"
What?
"Who said that?" I choke out.
"No one said shit," the lead hound says. "She's hallucinating. Light her up."
A rifle charges. That high whine. I know that sound. Half a second till they turn my head into mist.
The voice hits again, colder, clearer.
"Glitch Protocol available. Power for memory. Accept? Yes / No."
I don't know what Glitch is. I don't care. My hand claws at the scrap under me. Fingers find something long. Cold. Wrapped in oil cloth.
"Answer me!" I yell at the voice in my head. "What do you want from me?"
"Kael, you talking to ghosts now?" the hound sneers. "Time's up."
"Yes!" I scream. Out loud. At the air. At the thing in my head. "Yes, dammit, whatever you want, take it!"
Pain explodes behind my eyes. Not like a kick. Like someone ripped a file straight out of my brain and deleted it.
[GLITCH PROTOCOL: ENGAGED // COST: 1 MEMORY FRAGMENT BURNED]
Heat floods my limbs. My dead left arm snaps online. Too fast. Too strong. The error text flips green.
[MOTOR FUNCTION 112% // OVERCLOCK ACTIVE: 60 SECONDS]
"What the hell—" the lead hound starts.
I move.
I don't get up. I explode up. My shoulder hits his knee sideways and I hear it pop. He screams. I rip the thing from the scrap as I roll.
It's a blade. My blade. The one they buried with me.
The weight is perfect. Familiar. Like my hand remembers even if my head doesn't. I thumb the grip and the edge lights up, that dirty neon blue.
And then I see it. Etched on the inside of the guard, where only I would look.
K-EL-09 // EXECUTE ON SIGHT // AUTHORIZATION: VICTOR
My own execution order. On my own weapon.
"You—" My voice shakes. Not from fear. From pure, cold rage. "You put my kill code on my blade?"
"She's got a cutter!" one hound yells. "Put her down! Put her down!"
Rifle fire rips the air. I don't think. The Glitch moves me.
I slide under the first burst, scrap shredding where my head was. I come up inside his guard and cut. The blade goes through armor like paper. He drops.
"Contact! Contact!" the second one screams, backing up, firing wild.
I throw the dead hound into him. Both go down in a tangle. I step on the rifle and stomp until it snaps.
The lead hound is dragging himself back, clutching his ruined knee, fumbling for his sidearm.
"Stay back! Stay the hell back, you freak!"
I press the hot edge of my blade to his throat. The blue light paints his visor.
"Who sent you?" I hiss. "Victor? Was it Victor himself?"
"You don't— you don't get to say his name," he chokes. "You're scrap. You're nothing. You're—"
I lean in. My face an inch from his visor. I can see my own reflection, eyes lit up with that glitchy blue static.
"Wrong answer," I whisper. "Try again. Who signed my execution?"
His hand shakes on the pistol. He tries to lift it.
I cut. One clean line. He stops moving.
Silence drops. Just my breathing, harsh and too loud, and the hum of the blade. The overclock timer in my vision ticks down. 12 seconds. 11.
Then my head splits again.
[WARNING: HIGH-VALUE TARGET APPROACHING // THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Not running like hounds. Like someone who owns the place.
"Impressive," a man's voice says from the top of the pit. Low. Calm. Amused. "They told me you were dead weight. Looks like they lied."
I spin, blade up. My legs almost give out. The Glitch is fading, leaving me hollow and shaking.
He stands on the edge of the scrap pile, backlit by the neon from the Gut above. Long coat, no armor, but every inch of him screams corp. Clean. Expensive. Dangerous.
And he's got a pistol pointed right at my chest. Steady. No shake at all.
"Drop the blade, Kael," he says. Like he knows me. Like he's said my name before.
"Who the hell are you?" I snap. My grip tightens. Blood runs down my wrist onto the grip. "Another hound? Get in line."
He smiles. Just a little. His eyes flick over me, head to toe, and I feel it like a scan. Cold.
"Jaxon," he says. "Tier One Agent. City access. Master keys. The guy who decides if you walk out of this pit or get melted down with the rest of the trash."
"Yeah?" I bare my teeth. "You gonna shoot me or talk me to death?"
"Depends." He takes one step down. Then another. Closer. The pistol never wavers. "You gonna be smart or you gonna be dead? Because right now, you're bleeding out and your little trick is almost out of juice."
The voice in my head screams back to life, louder than ever, flashing red over his face.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: JAXON // ONLY CITY KEY DETECTED // FORCED BOND PROTOCOL AVAILABLE // BIND TO SURVIVE?]
[WARNING: BOND IS PERMANENT. BOND IS LETHAL IF BROKEN.]
My stomach drops.
"What?" I whisper. Not to him. To the thing in my head. "What did you just say?"
Jaxon tilts his head. His eyes narrow.
"What did you just see?" he asks, voice dropping. Sharper now. "What did that thing in your head tell you about me?"
He's too close now. Ten feet. I can see the heat coming off him, smell the clean scent of his coat over the blood and rust. The pistol is a black hole aimed at my heart. My blade is still up, but my arm is trembling so bad I can barely hold it.
Glitch pulses again, insistent, desperate.
[BIND NOW OR DIE. CHOOSE.]
Jaxon steps down one more time. The distance collapses. His boot touches the edge of my blade.
"Kael," he says softly, dangerously soft, and presses the muzzle right against my sternum. I feel the cold circle through my torn suit, right over my skin. "You have exactly three seconds to tell me what you just saw, or I pull this trigger and find out what's in your head from the pieces. So what's it gonna be, sweetheart—"