Mercer was a machine.
Every step is calculated. Every movement echoes violence.
He moved through the fog-thick greenhouse like it was a hostile body he'd already mapped out a thousand times, glass ribs overhead, veined corridors below.
The only thing different this time…The system wasn't responding.
Comms crackled. Cameras blinked. Heat vents fired off on the wrong timer.
Something's interfering.
Not sabotage. Sabotage had fingerprints. This was something else.
Malicious coincidence.
He tapped his earpiece. "Grey. Status."
Silence.
Then: "North gate breached. Repeat. North gate"
The voice wasn't Grey's.
He stopped moving.Turned toward the east corridor.
Did a quick vector calc of angles. Sound couldn't bounce like that unless...
Fake.
A recording.
Mercer's fingers twitched over the grip of his silenced pistol.He looked up, eyes narrowing behind his matte black visor.
He's laying a trap.
Mercer had executed 512 agents in his career. He had 19 confirmed kills in "safe" missions alone.
But this? This was a setup. Amateur, yes but patient. Focused.
He admired it for a moment.
Clever little insect.
Then he stepped around the corner
And the orchid wall exploded.
Not fire.
Pressure.
A high-pressure blast of chemical mist fired sideways from an overspliced irrigation pipe, slamming into his torso like a riot cannon. Mercer stumbled two steps backward, instinctively covering his eyes as the nutrient-rich compound seared across his gloves, chest rig, and visor.
He hit the ground hard, rolled once, and aimed.
But no target.
Only fog.
Only sound.
He blinked chemical residue off his lenses and exhaled, his breath scraping through clenched teeth.
"You want to play?" he muttered. "Fine. Let's play."
Somewhere nearby, Jessy moved like a shadow between vine walls, sweat rolling down his spine in greasy streaks. His legs were jelly, heart pounding like war drums in his ears. But he kept going.
He knew Mercer wouldn't die from a pipe. The point wasn't the damage. It was the rhythm.
Set the tempo. Break his pattern. Bleed his control.
"You're used to order," Jessy whispered under his breath. "Let's see how you do in chaos."
Mercer was already adapting. He crouched low, shifting from recon sweep to kill sweep, clearing every blind corner with micro-adjustments. Two bullets for vines that moved. One knife-check for a rustle that wasn't there.
But Jessy was one down ahead.
As Mercer entered Quadrant 3, a foggy corridor twisted like the inside of a throat. Thick air. Reflected light. Hot and wrong.
He turned left
And the ground sliced him.
Just a shallow line across the top of his boot. Barely noticeable.
But it burned like acid.
His left leg buckled. Vision tilted.
Toxin.
"Son of a bitch," he hissed.
His neural override tried to compensate. Balance restored in 3.2 seconds.
Too slow.
He was lagging.
Not from an enemy with better tech. Not from overwhelming firepower.
From a boy with mud under his nails and blood on his sleeves.
Jessy circled back behind the northern vent cluster. He could hear Mercer's boots now the deliberate step-shift-drag of someone masking a limp.
Toxic thorn worked.
He crouched in the soil, hands pressed to the warm metal beneath him. Listened to the soft thrum of the dome.
Felt the moment Mercer paused again.
You're hunting a predator who doesn't know you exist yet.
Mercer's thoughts had turned razor-sharp.
He laid pressure traps. Wired chemical bursts. Used natural poison. That means he knows flora sequencing. Internal layout. Patience. That's not just observation. That's training.
He stopped moving.
Pulled his knife free.
And started to speak.
Loudly. Calmly.
"Jessy Grey. Unranked. Pit graduate. You beat Reef using a fire extinguisher. That's creative. I respect that."
"But this isn't creativity anymore. This is attempted execution."
"You think you're prey. You're not. You're a hunter pretending to hide — and the moment you believe your own act, you become predictable."
Jessy didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Mercer kept walking, slow now, dragging the knife lightly against the vines along the wall. The sound of the blade on fiber was like someone unzipping skin.
"You don't have strength. You don't have training. You have nerve. That's good. Nerve's the last thing to break."
He stopped.
Right in front of the last corridor. The trap corridor.
Come on...just a few more steps.
Jessy stared at the loose thread across the hallway, his field recorder buried beneath soil, looped again.
Mercer's foot crossed it.
The thorns burst from the side.
Not traps.
Tethers.
Jessy had used old nylon threads, coiled in vines, to lash around Mercer's foot. Not to trip him, but to pull his balance off-center just as he turned.
Mercer fell sideways. Not hard. Just enough to instinctively brace with his left hand.
Onto the glass wall.
Which shattered inward.
Jessy didn't wait.
He ran forward, chest low, feet silent, eyes locked on the silhouette of Mercer pulling himself up from the glass. Blood across his shoulder from an edge. Visor cracked.
Mercer aimed.
Too slow.
Jessy grabbed the first thing he could a broken irrigation pipe, and slammed it into Mercer's forearm.
CRACK.
The gun clattered away.
Mercer moved like a snake, elbow snapping into Jessy's ribs.
Pain shot up his spine.
He staggered, nearly blacked out.
Then...blinding white.
Mercer activated a flash-charge from his chest rig, a pulse meant to blind.
Jessy dove backward into the soil, rolled, eyes burning.
He couldn't see.
But he remembered the layout.
He felt with his feet. Heard Mercer's breath coming fast now. Uncontrolled. For the first time, angry.
Jessy grabbed the last part of the plan.
The bagged sap-thorn spear he'd made from a snapped plant stem and surgical tape.
He leapt sideways into the mist , felt Mercer's body like a wall in the heat.
And stabbed downward.
Into Mercer's calf.
Straight into the muscle.
The toxin sang.
Mercer screamed.
And dropped.
Jessy landed on top of him, choking on mist, his lungs raw.
He pressed the thorn in deeper, not to kill. To immobilize.
To make Mercer feel fear.
"Still think I'm prey?" Jessy rasped.