Erica's boots scraped against the corroded metal walkway. The acrid stench of synthetic oil mingled with the sour tang of decaying circuit boards flooded her nostrils. Fifteen meters below, the black market compound pulsed with shadows. Six mech enforcers patrolled in precise intervals, their hydraulic joints hissing like vipers in the damp air. On a rain-soaked night three years ago, they'd dragged her brother away—she still remembered the wristwatch embedded in the warehouse floor, its shattered face caked with congealed blood.
The ventilation grate crumpled like paper beneath her grip.
The fall tore through the silence.
She landed in a combat roll, her boots crushing obsolete data chips beneath her. The nearest mech snapped toward her, crimson visor locking onto its target. "Unauthorized entity," the synthetic voice declared. "Eradication protocol activated."
The searing heat of a plasma bolt grazed her ear.
Erica launched herself off the wall, her elbow slamming into the mech's chestplate. The alloy dented with a metallic groan. Before the second enforcer could charge its rotary cannon, she seized its mechanical arm and twisted. Servos screamed. The severed limb sparked as she swung it like a club, crushing the third mech's sensor array.
A mix of organic fluid and coolant splattered her face.
Logan Kael leaned against a collapsed server rack, retinal projections dissecting the battlefield data. The woman fought like a system glitch—unpredictable, unenhanced, pure kinetic fury. When he zoomed in, blood from her split knuckles spattered the lens as she shattered a mech's jawline.
His codebreaker implant vibrated.
<
A spectral scan revealed microscopic data strands swirling in her bloodstream.
Codeblood.
The fourth mech pinned her against a shipping container. Hydraulic pincers clamped her throat. Memories surged—her brother's wristwatch gears grinding in blood, his choked "Run!" cut short. Blue-white static erupted from her pores.
The mech's core data unfurled in her mind: reactor passcode 7F9A-02C, self-destruct protocols glowing like harp strings. She plucked them.
The explosion hurled her seven meters. Shrapnel quivered in the walls like metallic feathers.
Applause cut through the smoke. "Violence rating: B- for technique, A+ for style." Logan stepped over debris, unfazed by the knife at his throat. "Let's deal. I stabilize your glitching DNA. You help me burn this data hell to its root directory."
The hologram from his chip bloomed—a winged serpent emblem stamped on a mech's core, identical to the enforcers she'd just slaughtered. Acid rain began eating at the concrete as Erica clutched a yellowed news clipping: philanthropist Silas Vorne smiled beside blurred mech wreckage bearing the same serpent sigil.
Dawn stained the skyline ulcer-red. Back in her slum den, Erica scrubbed engine fluid from her hands. The faucet spat rust-colored water. Static crawled under her skin. Electrified blue light snaked up her wrist as coordinates condensed on the cracked mirror:
> NEON HIVE // DOCK 7 // 23:00
When her fist shattered the glass, a buried server deep underground hummed to life. Silas Vorne's hologram opened its eyes within a gilded cage.