Time: 5:17 AM — Abandoned Monorail Station, Sector 8 Perimeter
The silence didn't last.
Ryoji had just popped the trunk to check supplies when the air shifted—thickened—like the static before a lightning strike. Aiko looked up. Her eyes narrowed.
"They found us."
From the shadows of the platform above, something moved.
Not a vehicle.
Not human.
It dropped in silence, landing ten feet from them. A Division Zero hunter-class Exo—sleek, obsidian armor laced with red filament veins, its head a smooth mask of mirrored glass. It didn't speak. It lunged.
Ryoji was already moving.
He shoved Aiko behind the car, drawing both knives in a flash of steel. The Exo moved faster than anything they'd faced tonight. Blades clashed. Sparks flew. Its arms split at the forearms—two razors per side.
Aiko scrambled for the disruptor.
The Exo kicked Ryoji through a concrete pillar.
"Ryoji!"
She aimed—fired—the blast caught the hunter dead-on, but it shimmered, phased—and kept coming.
5:19 AM
Aiko backed up, heart racing.
It wasn't like the others.
This one had shielding—adaptive countermeasures.
Then came the sound.
A low, rising hum.
From beneath the freeway.
A vibration. No—an approach.
Suddenly—BOOM.
The ground exploded.
A dark shape burst from beneath the concrete—a vehicle—not Division Zero's.
It was hers.
Miura.
Her assault rig roared up from the broken street, cannons already locking on. Her face was half-covered by a tactical mask, eyes cold as winter, one hand on the mounted railgun.
"Get in!" she barked.
The Exo turned—but it was too late.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Three direct hits. The hunter shattered across the station wall, twitching in the wreckage.
Miura's rig hissed to a halt.
Aiko stared. "You found us."
Miura didn't answer right away. She scanned the shadows with a matte-black rifle.
"We don't get found," she said. "We find them."
She looked at Ryoji—blood on his lip, one arm limp but still standing.
"You two look like hell."
"We've had better mornings," he muttered.
Miura tossed a small drive to Aiko. "Intel sweep. Something's spiking out of the Helix Vault. Frequencies we've never seen. It's tied to you."
Aiko caught it. "I know."
Miura's jaw tensed. "Then you know they're not just chasing you anymore. They're converging."
Aiko stepped forward, her voice iron. "Let them."
5:23 AM — En Route to Blackline Safehouse Echo-9
Inside the armored rig, Ryoji sat across from Aiko as the rig powered through destroyed streets. Miura drove, saying little.
But the tension crackled between them.
"What was that back there?" Miura asked finally.
Aiko looked down at her hands. "I asked the machines to stop."
Miura blinked. "You asked?"
"They obeyed."
Miura looked at Ryoji.
"She's changing," he said quietly.
Miura's voice dropped low. "Then we better change the plan."
She slammed a new route into the nav.
"Next stop—Edge Sector. We hit them before they hit back."
The sun still hadn't risen.
But war already had.
To be continued in Chapter 40....