The neon signs above the Steel Talons base flickered like dying stars, their purple and green glow painting the courtyard in sickly hues.
The air smelled of aether and sweat, thick with the tension of the regrouped survivors.
Vey clapped Nail on the back hard enough to make him stumble. "Real MVP here is Nail for bringing the car. We made it back without walking."
Nail rubbed his shoulder, eyeing Vey warily. "I don't know if that was sarcasm or not."
Cale delivered another slap, grinning. "No, no. Your timing was so perfect, I'm half-convinced you planned it."
Nail winced. "Was that sarcasm?"
Pen strolled past and smacked him too, her voice flat. "You're just overthinking it."
Nail groaned, massaging his battered back. "Why does everyone keep—? You know what, never mind."
Vey and Cale's laughter echo as they enter inside.
Near the rusted weapons rack, Karen's new prosthetic hand clenched and unclenched.
Her voice was low, rough with guilt. "I should've stayed with the kids. Thought they'd be safer running. Didn't expect…" She trailed off, jaw tight.
Lucent held up Jessa's conduit—a cracked, jury-rigged mess of wires and desperation.
It was still warm from the street, its stabilization runes half-scorched away.
"Found this lying in the road." His thumb brushed the jagged edge where the casing had split. "My bad premonitions kicked in."
Kai's voice cut through the silence like a blade. "Blaze said they'd be at the Red Dogs' base in Sector 20." A heavy pause. "Deadline's midnight tomorrow."
The unspoken or else hung in the air, thicker than the smog.
Lucent still staring at the conduit, his shadow stretching long under the neon.
Kai's eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me you're actually considering leaving them."
"Statistically? Best course of action." Lucent's tone was clinical, detached.
Sel scoffed, kicking the crumpled fender of her ruined car. "Didn't take you for the heartless type."
Mags said nothing. Just watched him, her dark eyes unreadable.
Lucent exhaled sharply. "I'm not abandoning them. They're my responsibility—got dragged into this because of me."
His fingers tightened around the broken conduit. "Problem is, I still don't know why. Why the Scorchers want me. Why they'd torch a sector just to flush me out."
A lie.
Or not quite.
Deep down, a suspicion gnawed at him about Raker's information about someone snooping around and looking for them.
But speculation was worthless here.
The kids were real.
The clock was real.
And Sector 20 was a death trap.
Karen rolled her shoulders, the motion making her augments click. "We're all running on fumes. Let's regroup at 7 AM—no arguments."
Her gaze lingered on Lucent. "Get some rest. Or at least pretend to."
Mags turned without a word and vanished into the base's shadowed halls, her footsteps silent.
Karen jerked her chin toward the barracks. "You two—extra beds in the west wing. Try not to kill each other before sunrise."
Sel gave a lazy wave. "'Kay~ Gnite, try not to dream about fire."
***
The extra room in the west wing smelled of stale disinfectant and old gun oil. A single flickering bulb buzzed overhead, casting long shadows across the two narrow bed.
Kai pointed at the bed near the window—its thin mattress sagging in the middle—and collapsed onto it without ceremony. "That one's mine."
Lucent exhaled through his nose and took the other bed, its rusted frame groaning under his weight.
The wall beside it was pockmarked with old bullet holes, the plaster cracked like dried riverbeds.
Silence settled between them, thick and uneasy.
Kai shut his eyes, but sleep refused to come.
His mind churned—two weeks.
Just two weeks since the lab, since the Abomination and Zero, since his life had unraveled into this mess of fire and blood.
The Scorchers, Blaze's unnatural resilience, Jessa and Tink's abduction—it was too much, too fast.
Like the universe had decided to dump every possible nightmare onto him at once.
"Hey," Kai said, staring at the water-stained ceiling. "You still awake?"
No answer.
"I know you are," Kai pressed. "Probably running through a hundred different ways this could go wrong tomorrow."
A beat.
Then, Lucent's voice, rough with exhaustion: "What do you want?"
Kai turned his head, studying Lucent's profile in the dim light—the sharp angle of his jaw, the scars along his temple catching the faint glow. "You know why they're after you. Don't pretend you don't."
Lucent didn't move. "...Remember the lab?"
Kai's stomach dropped. "Yeah. Don't tell me it's Myriad."
A pause.
Then, quietly: "...Yeah."
Lucent sat up, the spring creaking under him.
He thumbed his Conduit to life, its cracked screen casting a sickly blue glow across his face.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent a file to Kai's device.
The video was grainy, distorted by static, but unmistakable: security footage from Sub-Level 7 of the Old Myriad Labs.
Three figures—Lucent, Kai and Karen—walking through the ruined corridors, their faces partially obscured by the low light.
"Raker tipped me off," Lucent muttered. "Someone's been digging. Asking questions. Tracing our steps."
Kai's throat tightened. "The Scorchers?"
"Doubt it." Lucent's thumb hovered over the screen, zooming in on a shadowy figure lurking at the edge of the frame. "They're just the hired muscle. This? This is corporate."
The realization settled between them, cold and heavy.
Kai swallowed hard. "So what now?"
Lucent was silent for a long moment.
The dim light from the corridor outside seeped under the door, cutting a thin yellow line across the floor.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than Kai had ever heard it.
"...Actually, don't know." A pause.
The admission hung in the air like smoke. "Even if we survive tomorrow, they'll just send another. And another. They want me alive for some reason—so that's an advantage, I guess."
Kai stared at him.
This wasn't the Lucent he knew.
The Lucent who always had a plan, even if it was just survive now, figure out the rest later.
This was something else—something frayed at the edges.
He needed to shift the mood before the weight of it crushed them both.
"I told you about Blaze's barrier, right?" Kai said, forcing his tone lighter. "The way he just... no—solid bullets deflecting like they were nothing?"
Lucent grunted, rolling onto his side to face him. "Yeah. You said it wasn't standard rawcasting. No aether corruption, no conduit strain."
Kai nodded, grateful for the distraction. "It's like he's not even pulling energy from the environment. It's just there."
He mimed a flickering shield with his hands. "No glyphwork, no buildup—just bam, bullets go bye-bye."
Lucent's eyes narrowed slightly. "You think it's linked to those tattoos?"
"Has to be, right?" Kai tapped his forearm where Blaze's ember-orange markings would be. "Nothing else explains it. Unless he's got some next-gen corpo tech sewn under his skin."
Lucent exhaled through his nose. "Either way, we're screwed if we can't get past it."
Kai flopped back onto the thin pillow. "Yeah. Super screwed."
A beat of silence. Then, quieter:
"...We'll figure it out."
It wasn't much.
But for now, it was enough.
***
Mags' room was a tomb of old violence.
One of the walls were bare except for a single rack where the anti-materiel rifle hung—its barrel long and cold, its stock worn smooth from years of use.
Dust motes drifted through the pale light of a flickering lumen-strip as she reached up and took it down.
The weight was familiar.
She laid it across her workbench with the care of a mortician preparing a body.
The steel gleamed dully under the light as she ran her fingers along its length, checking each bolt, each seam.
Her fingers paused at the serial number, long since filed away.
A memory surfaced—sharp, unbidden.
Nex leaning against this same bench, his breath smelling of cheap whiskey and gun oil. His voice, rough with amusement:
"Corporate job. Easy credits."
He'd tossed her a dossier.
Inside, a single photo: a young woman in a white dress, standing on a balcony overlooking the Spire's glittering skyline.
"Daughter of some Aetherion Core subsidiary CEO. Rising star, apparently."
Mags had said nothing.
Nex had grinned. "They want it messy. Make it hurt."
She remembered the way the rifle had felt that night—the kick of it against her shoulder, the way the girl's head had—
Mags blinked.
The memory dissolved like smoke.
Now, the rifle lay before her, silent and waiting.
She reached for the ammunition case.
Nex's room was a shrine to violence frozen in time.
Dust coated the workbenches where half-disassembled firearms lay in precise rows.
The air smelled of gun oil and stale whiskey, the lingering ghost of a man who'd never return.
Both of them had turned this place upside down days ago searching for traitors, but some things remained sacred—untouched.
Mags moved to the far wall where a faded poster of the Spire skyline hung crookedly.
Her fingers found the hidden seam beneath it, pressing until the panel clicked open.
Karen whistled as a narrow compartment hissed open, revealing a hidden armory. "You really knew all his secrets, huh?"
Mags allowed herself a small, proud smirk.
Inside the hidden room, augmented limbs hung from the ceiling like grotesque wind chimes—prototype arms and legs suspended by thin cables, their joints stiff with disuse.
Mags ignored them, instead retrieving a dented metal briefcase from the corner and setting it heavily on Nex's main workbench.
Karen popped the latches.
Inside, nestled in custom foam, lay a matched set of pulse rifles—left and right arm mounts, their aether cores still glowing faintly.
The weapons were massive, built for Nex's frame, with reinforced plating and cooling vents the size of Karen's thumb.
"Damn," Karen breathed, running her fingers along the barrel. "These were his personal toys."
Mags nodded, her expression unreadable.
Karen flexed her prosthetic, comparing it to the behemoth before her. "Think I can make one of these work by morning?"
Mags tilted her head—maybe.
Then her eyes flicked to the door.
Somewhere beyond these walls, midnight ticked closer.
A memory surfaced—sharp, unbidden.
Nex standing in a cratered stretch of the Junkyard, backlit by the glow of burning tires.
Both arms transformed into monstrous pulse cannons, their aether cores whining as they charged.
The air smelled of aether and scorched metal.
"Fuck yeah!" His laughter boomed across the wasteland as he fired—twin beams of blue-white energy tearing through derelict cargo containers like paper.
The recoil sent him skidding backward, his boots carving trenches in the dirt.
Mags watched from the shadows as he shook out his arms, grinning like a kid with new toys.
"Only problem?" He flexed his shoulders with a wince. "Feels like my fucking arms are trying to divorce my body."
When he pulled off his jacket later, the skin around his augment ports was raw and bleeding, the muscle beneath visibly strained.
The pulse rifles weren't just powerful—they were self-destructive.
Mags had said nothing then.
Just handed him a stim and watched as he slapped it against his neck without hesitation.
Now, in the present, Karen turned the left pulse rifle over in her hands, assessing its weight.
Mags tapped her shoulder.
"Recoil," she said—a single word, heavy with warning.
Karen's eyes flicked to her, then down to the weapon's massive vents.
She flexed her prosthetic fingers, testing the grip. "Yeah. I can see why Nex was the only one crazy enough to dual-wield these."
Mags nodded.
The unspoken truth hung between them:
These weren't just weapons.
They were suicide in steel form.
The words echoed in Mags' skull as she returned to her room.
The dim glow of lumen-strips buzzed overhead, casting jagged shadows across her arsenal.
She laid out each weapon with ritual precision:
Nex's tanto, its edge still flecked with old blood she'd never quite cleaned away
The anti-materiel rifle, its barrel cold and heavy in her hands
Twin pistols, their grips worn smooth from years of use
Methodically, she began disassembling them.
Oil and solvent filled the air—sharp, medicinal—as she scrubbed away carbon buildup from the rifle's chamber.
Every click of metal on metal was measured, deliberate.
Somewhere beyond the thin walls, she could hear Karen cursing as she worked—the screech of a torque wrench, the clatter of discarded components hitting the floor.
Karen exhaled through her teeth, sweat beading along her temple as she stripped another plate from the pulse rifle's housing.
The damn thing was heavier than she'd anticipated—even with her augmented strength, her left arm trembled under its weight.
She tossed another bolt into the growing pile of discarded parts.
"Fucking Nex," she muttered, wiping grease across her cheek. "Only you'd think shoulder-mounted artillery counts as 'sidearms.'"
The aether core pulsed faintly in its housing, casting eerie blue light across the workbench.
Karen eyed it warily.
Too much power in too small a frame.
No wonder it had torn Nex apart.
She reached for the plasma cutter.
The night burned away in sparks and silence.
***
Lucent stared out the window.
The sky was still choked with night, the smog turning the horizon into a sickly bruise of purples and blacks.
No sun.
Not yet.
His Conduit's cracked screen read:
5:34 A.M.
Too fucking early.
He shut his eyes, but sleep refused to come.
The weight of the past few hours pressed against his ribs like a boot.
With a quiet exhale, he sat up.
Across the room, Kai was sprawled in a tangle of limbs, his face slack with exhaustion.
For a moment, Lucent envied him—the ability to collapse into oblivion, even now.
But the envy curdled into something heavier as he watched the steady rise and fall of Kai's chest.
How do you tell a man his father's dead when he's already drowning in fire?
The information had come from Raker days ago.
Just a footnote in the chaos:
>> Kai's father bought it last night. Corporate hit, clean and quiet.
This message was five days ago.
Lucent had buried it.
There'd been no time—not with the Scorchers hunting them, not with Jessa and Tink's lives on the line.
Now, the truth sat like a stone in his gut.
Kai had lost his family, his home, any semblance of safety—all in the span of weeks.
And here he was, sleeping like the dead in a Talon bunkroom, unaware that the last tether to his old life had already snapped.
Lucent's fingers twitched toward his Conduit.
He could pull up Raker's message.
Show Kai the proof.
But what then?
Grief was a luxury they couldn't afford.
Not with dawn creeping closer.
Not with Blaze's ultimatum ticking down.
He let his hand fall.
Later.
If they survived tomorrow, he'd tell him.
And if they didn't—well.
The dead didn't need closure.
He slipped out without a sound.
The Steel Talons base was quiet, the kind of quiet that came before storms.
Lucent found Vey and Cale in a dimly lit rest area, their boots propped up on a rusted table.
Vey nursed a beer, the bottle slick with condensation.
Cale was halfway through his own, his gaze fixed on nothing.
Vey didn't look up as Lucent approached. "Can't sleep?"
Lucent didn't answer.
Just kept walking.
Then—
"You know," Vey called after him, voice rough with alcohol and something darker, "those Scorcher fucks don't give a shit about us Talons right now. You're their prize."
Lucent stopped.
Turned.
Vey took a slow swig, his scarred face unreadable in the low light. "What I'm saying is—we could just hand you over. Let them finish their business. Walk away clean."
The words hung in the air like a challenge.
Lucent studied him—the way Vey's fingers tightened around the bottle, the way Cale had gone very still.
"And you think," Lucent said softly, "that after they get what they want, they'll just leave? The Steel Talons? The people who helped Nex put a shotgun blast through Blaze's ribs?"
A beat.
Vey's smile was all teeth. "Yeah. Didn't think so."
He tipped the bottle toward Lucent in a mock toast. "Just checking where your head's at."
Cale finally moved, rolling his shoulders. "Fuck's sake, Vey. We're not bargaining with those walking fire hazards."
Vey shrugged. "Had to ask."
Lucent didn't react.
But the truth settled between them, cold and certain:
No one walks away from this.
***
Lucent moved through the Steel Talons base like a ghost, his boots silent against the worn metal floors.
It was strange—he never imagined he'd walk these halls as anything but an enemy.
The thought almost made him laugh.
Him, the Spire exile turned lab rat, now relying on gangsters and killers.
The universe had a fucked-up sense of humor.
A rhythmic hiss-whir of machinery pulled him from his thoughts.
He followed the sound down a dim corridor, the glow of welding torches painting the walls in flickering orange.
The door to the armory stood ajar. Inside, Karen hunched over a workbench, her prosthetic fingers deftly dismantling something massive—an augment far too large for her frame.
The sheer bulk of it made her look like a child tinkering with a cannon.
The floor creaked under Lucent's weight.
Karen spun, wrench raised like a weapon, before recognition flashed across her face.
She lowered the tool, exhaling sharply. "The hell, Lucent. Make some noise next time."
Lucent eyed the disassembled weapon—the familiar aether core, the reinforced plating.
Nex's pulse rifle. "What are you doing?"
Karen wiped grease from her brow with the back of her hand. "Retrofitting Nex's little surprise to my augment."
She tapped the oversized housing. "Figured we could use the firepower."
The implications hit him at once.
"That thing would probably rip you apart," Lucent said flatly.
Karen grinned, all teeth. "Good thing I'm not as reckless as he was."
A lie. They both knew it.
Lucent leaned against the workbench, watching Karen wrestle with the pulse rifle's overloaded aether regulator. "Want some help?"
Karen didn't look up, her organic hand tightening around a plasma wrench. "...You want something in exchange, don't you?"
"Do I look like someone who doesn't help?"
Her laugh was short, sharp. "From what I've known you for two weeks? Yeah, you do."
Silence settled between them, broken only by the hiss of coolant vents.
Then—
"Remember Sector 12's tunnels?" Karen's voice was deceptively light as she adjusted the rifle's firing pin. "Weren't you about to abandon me there?"
Lucent's jaw tightened.
"Half-joking," she added, though her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Realistically? I was down an arm, my augments were fried, and I was bleeding out. Leaving me was the smart play."
"Yeah." Lucent's gaze flicked to the door—where Kai slept, oblivious. "And Kai insisted on helping you. This is your petty revenge, isn't it?"
Karen chuckled, wiping grease onto her pants. "So. What do you really need?"
A beat. Then:
"Glow." Lucent's voice dropped. "Can be a substitute for Q-Serin. In case I need to rawcast."
Karen stilled.
The wrench slipped from her fingers, clattering against the steel table.
"So?" Lucent pressed. "What's the price?"
For a long moment, Karen just studied him.
Then, with a sigh, she reached into a hidden compartment beneath her workbench.
The vial she pulled out glowed an eerie blue, the liquid inside sloshing thickly.
Lucent's breath caught. "Q-Serin? How? The nurse bot said that required Level-7 clearance—"
Karen pressed a finger to her lips, her smirk all teeth. "Secret~"