7:57 A.M. – Sector 23 Ruins
Dawn painted the wreckage in sickly gold.
Lucent picked his way through the skeletal remains of Sector 23, his boots crunching on glass and twisted metal.
Daylight revealed the full extent of the devastation—entire blocks reduced to smoldering husks, the air still thick with the acrid sting of burnt insulation and melted steel.
What unsettled him more than the destruction was the silence.
No survivors picking through rubble.
No stray dogs nosing through debris.
Even the ever-present glow-rats had vanished.
The sector wasn't just damaged—it had been emptied.
His gaze flicked to the obsidian monoliths rising untouched amid the ruins.
Aethernet nodes.
Their smooth surfaces drank the morning light like black holes.
The nearest one pulsed faintly, sending a dull ache through Lucent's molars—a sensation he'd long learned to ignore, but never quite shake.
He gave the node a wide berth.
Not today.
His hideout loomed ahead, its reinforced door blown clean off its hinges.
The blast radius told a story—concentrated detonation, likely a shaped charge placed with surgical precision.
Professional work.
Lucent's jaw tightened.
He'd barely settled into this location.
Now it was just another corpse in the Scorchers' graveyard.
Heat still radiated from the doorway.
He activated Rank 1—Thermal Sync, the glyph flaring blue across his palms as it siphoned ambient warmth into his conduit.
The air cooled around him in visible waves as he stepped inside.
The interior was a warzone.
Shelves lay toppled, their contents reduced to slag.
The false wall hiding his armory had been peeled open like a tin can, the weapons inside warped from heat.
Only the floor safe remained intact—its biometric locks fried, but its reinforced casing stubbornly whole.
Lucent knelt, pressing his palm to the cold steel.
One advantage of corporate paranoia—they build safes to withstand hellfire.
The mechanism clicked open, revealing three conduits nestled in shock-absorbent foam.
Backup units, each loaded with the same glyph arrays.
He pocketed two, the third already humming to life in his grip.
The weight of the spare conduits in his jacket was both reassuring and damning.
Lucent had prepared for this contingency—planned for it, even—but he hadn't expected to need them this soon.
Now, with three fully charged conduits secured, he had options.
A backup in case his primary failed.
A failsafe if his glyphwork burned too hot.
A way to fight without holding back.
A shadow moved at the edge of his vision.
And this time, he wouldn't be fighting with one hand tied behind his back.
Lucent spun, conduit raised—
—only to freeze as a stray cat darted from the wreckage.
The animal's fur stood on end, its yellow eyes wide with terror.
Not at Lucent.
At something behind him.
The aethernet node's hum shifted pitch, cycling into its hourly calibration.
The cat screamed—a sound Lucent had never heard from an animal—and bolted, its claws scrabbling on broken tile as it fled the building.
Lucent didn't turn to look at the node.
He knew what he'd see: the obsidian surface writhing momentarily, glyph-like patterns flickering across its face before vanishing.
He exhaled through his nose and moved toward the exit.
The Scorchers weren't the only predators in this city.
And some things, he knew better than to stare at directly.
***
8:29 A.M. – Steel Talons Base
The room smelled of gun oil and stale sweat.
Kai sat cross-legged on the thin mattress, his fingers moving with mechanical precision as he disassembled the pistol for the seventh time.
The slide came off with a soft click, the recoil spring coiling loose like a dead snake.
He didn't need to look—every notch, every groove was memorized by touch.
Disassemble.
Reassemble.
Repeat.
A pointless exercise, but it kept his hands busy.
His mind too, if only barely.
The door creaked open.
Kai didn't glance up until Lucent's shadow fell across the bed.
The man looked like hell—smudges of soot still clinging to his jacket, the scent of smoke lingering in his clothes.
Fresh conduits hung at his belt, their casings gleaming under the flickering lumen light.
Kai returned to the gun. "Did you get what you needed from the hideout?"
Lucent dropped onto the opposite bed, the springs groaning under his weight. "Yeah."
"And they're still functional? Even after—" Kai gestured vaguely, the barrel of the pistol catching the light as he turned it over, "—all that?"
A dry snort.
"You think I'd bother hauling back scrap?" Lucent leaned against the wall, arms crossed. His eyes, sharp as ever, tracked Kai's hands. "You're getting faster."
Kai didn't answer.
The magazine slid home with a snick.
A beat of silence.
Then—
"Kai." Lucent's voice was quieter now. "Aren't you worried about the kids?"
The recoil spring slipped from Kai's fingers, bouncing off the mattress and onto the floor.
He stared at it for a moment too long before bending to retrieve it.
"…I am." The words came out stiff, like they'd been dragged over gravel.
"But what the hell am I supposed to do? Charge in there alone?" He snapped the spring back into place, harder than necessary. "I'd just get myself killed. And them too."
Lucent said nothing.
The silence stretched, thick with everything Kai wasn't saying—the way his hands shook when he thought of Jessa's cracked conduit, the way Tink's laughter echoed in his skull, tinny and distant like a bad comm signal.
He didn't expect Lucent to understand.
The man was a glacier—unyielding, impersonal.
Emotions were just variables to be factored into survival calculus.
But when Kai finally looked up, Lucent's expression gave him pause.
Not pity.
Not even sympathy.
Recognition.
It was the same look he'd given Karen in the labs.
The same one he wore when staring down the aether-corrupted ruins.
The look of a man who knew helplessness like an old enemy.
Kai's throat tightened. He busied himself with the pistol's final assembly, if only to avoid holding that gaze any longer.
Lucent exhaled through his nose and stood. "Get some rest," he said, turning toward the door. "We move at dusk."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Kai stared down at the reassembled gun in his hands.
It felt heavier than it should have.
Kai stared down at the assembled pistol, his thumb tracing the worn grip where Jack's fingers had polished the steel smooth over decades. The knock at the door barely registered until it swung open, revealing Cale leaning against the frame with his usual lazy grin.
"Kai!" Cale raised a hand in greeting. "You free?"
Kai didn't look up. "As you can see, I'm just here playing with this." He tilted the gun, letting light glint off the barrel.
Cale's grin faltered. "What? Don't play with guns, kid. You might shoot your damn foot off."
"Not that kind of play." Kai ejected the magazine with a practiced flick. "Disassembling. Reassembling. It's—"
"—weird as hell," Cale finished, stepping inside and kicking the door shut behind him. His eyes locked onto the weapon. "Where'd you even get that? Didn't see you packing heat yesterday."
"Jack."
Cale's eyebrows shot up. "Jack? The same Jack who charges extra just to look at his pre-Aether collection?" He whistled low. "How the hell'd you manage that?"
Kai shrugged, sliding the barrel back into place. "Didn't. He's just letting me borrow it until the mission's over." A pause. "Said if I take care of it, he might let me keep it."
"Bullshit." Cale crossed his arms, disbelief etching lines into his scarred face. "That old miser wouldn't give you the sweat off his brow if you were dying of thirst. What are you, his long-lost grandson?"
Kai's fingers stilled.
The question echoed in the silence—why had Jack trusted him?
No contracts, no collateral.
Just a handshake and a warning: "Kid, you better keep your promise."
And beneath that, unspoken: Someone taught you how to hold iron. Someone I might've known.
"Let's change the topic," Kai muttered, locking the slide into place with a sharp click. "Why're you looking for me?"
Cale's grin returned, sharp as a knife. "Right. That Leap glyph you used yesterday—the one that saved our asses from becoming barbecue. I want it."
Kai's spine stiffened.
Lucent's voice hissed in his memory: Nothing's free in this world. Not here. Not ever.
He met Cale's gaze. "Trade for it."
"Wow." Cale barked a laugh. "Already learning how things work down here, Spire boy. Fine."
He tapped his conduit, scrolling through his stored glyphs. "Got a Rank 1—Razor. Useless to me—Pen shoved it on me after a card game. But it'll slice through steel if you've got the aim for it."
Kai tested the pistol's weight in his palm. "Leap's Rank 2. Throw in another Rank 1 and we're even."
Cale's eye twitched. "You drive a hard bargain for someone who got his gun for free."
But he was already scrolling again. "Fine. Take this Piece Mind too. Lets you see through thin walls for three seconds. Useless in a fight, but great for cheating at cards."
The glyphs transferred with a pulse of light.
Kai's conduit chimed as the new programs settled into its memory banks.
Cale stretched, already heading for the door. "Try not to Leap into a wall your first time. Vey's still laughing about the last rookie who did that."
The door slammed shut behind him.
Kai stared at the pistol in his hands.
Nothing's free.
So why did Jack give him the gun?
The silence pressed in, leaving Kai alone with his thoughts—and the weight of a favor he didn't yet understand.
***
9:41 A.M. – Steel Talons Base
The air inside the base crackled with tension. Everywhere Kai looked, Talons moved with grim efficiency—loading crates of ammunition, checking weapons, strapping on armor with sharp, practiced motions.
Faces were set in hard lines, voices clipped and urgent.
Even the rookies moved with a seriousness that bordered on fear.
Near the armory, Karen barked orders at a group of veterans, her prosthetic hand gesturing sharply toward a map of Sector 20.
Behind her, Rook loomed over a cluster of recruits, his hydraulic arms whirring as he demonstrated the proper way to brace against recoil.
The man's voice was a low, steady rumble, but his words carried the weight of experience—this wasn't a drill.
Karen turned on her heel and stalked back into the storage room, where Lucent sat cross-legged in the corner, surrounded by a spread of conduits and data chips.
His fingers moved with mechanical precision, slotting glyph cartridges into each device with the same detached focus he applied to everything.
Karen's boot scuffed against the concrete floor. "What the hell are you doing?"
Lucent didn't look up. "Preparing."
"In the middle of the damn storage room?" Karen crossed her arms. "You got a problem with your own quarters?"
Silence.
Lucent continued loading chips, his expression unreadable.
Karen exhaled through her nose. "Did you and Kai have a fight?"
That got his attention. Lucent's head snapped up, his sharp gaze cutting into her like he was trying to decipher whether she was joking.
"No," he said flatly. "It's nothing like that."
Karen didn't back down. "Then what? You've been off since you got back."
Lucent's fingers stilled over the conduits.
For a moment, his usual mask of indifference flickered—something darker, heavier passing beneath the surface.
His jaw worked silently, as if weighing words he wasn't used to saying aloud.
Karen watched him closely. "…Something's eating at you."
Lucent's gaze dropped back to the conduits. "…There's something Kai needs to know. I planned to tell him after we dealt with Blaze."
Karen's brow furrowed. "What news?"
Lucent's voice lowered, barely above a murmur. "Not here."
The unspoken warning hung between them—walls have ears.
Karen studied him for a long moment before nodding once. "Later, then."
She turned to leave, then paused. "Just don't wait too long. Secrets have a way of biting you when you least expect it."
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Lucent alone with his thoughts—and the weight of a truth he wasn't sure how to deliver.
Karen walked briskly through the base's crowded corridors, past murmured conversations and the clatter of boots on metal flooring.
The door hissed shut behind Karen as she entered her private quarters.
The hum of the base's activity faded into a dull murmur, replaced by the familiar scent of gun oil and solvent.
She exhaled, rolling her shoulders to release the tension that had settled there.
Lucent's words lingered in her mind like an unfinished equation.
Something Kai needs to know.
What could be so important that Lucent—who treated information like currency—was hesitating to share it?
It wasn't like him to dance around a subject.
She shook her head.
Whatever it was, it could wait.
Right now, she had work to do.
Nex's pulse rifle lay disassembled across the workbench, its components gleaming under the harsh lumen lights.
It dominated the space, its reinforced plating gleaming under the workshop's harsh lumen lights.
The weapon was monstrous—built for a man twice her size, with cooling vents the width of her thumb and an aether core that pulsed faintly even in standby.
But it was almost ready.
Lucent had done good work on the weight reduction glyph.
The Rank 1—Featherbyte modification wasn't perfect—it still drained the aether core faster than she'd like—but it was stable.
The glyphwork shimmered under her touch, its delicate runes woven into the alloy like veins of blue light.
Standard Featherbyte protocols reduced weight by 90%, but Lucent had recalibrated it—40% reduction, semi-permanent.
A compromise between usability and not burning out her augment's power core within five shots.
Karen flexed her left arm, the prosthetic's servos whining softly as she tested the range of motion.
The attachment port at her shoulder gleamed, freshly calibrated for the rifle's interface.
She picked up the mounting bracket, turning it over in her hands.
The metal was cool against her fingers, the edges smoothed down from years of use.
Nex had never been one for refinements—his modifications were always brute-force solutions.
Functional, not pretty.
Karen's lips twitched.
Some things never changed.
She aligned the bracket with her shoulder port, the connectors clicking into place with a satisfying snap.
The rifle's weight settled against her arm, the Featherbyte glyph activating automatically to offset the load.
A faint blue glow pulsed along the seams where metal met flesh.
Not perfect.
But it would do.
Karen rolled her shoulder, testing the balance.
The movement was smoother than she'd expected—Lucent's tweaks had done their job.
Outside, the base's preparations continued, the occasional shout or clatter of equipment filtering through the walls.
But for now, in this quiet corner of the storm, Karen allowed herself a moment to simply breathe.
One problem at a time.