By the seventh day, I'd had enough.
I stood at the workbench, loading a second mag into my sidearm, stuffing a pulse disruptor into my jacket. Gizmo chirped softly, already following at my heel.
Ghost didn't try to stop me. Just turned from his screens and spoke in that same flat, clipped tone.
"If you will step outside, you will step into their tempo."
I tugged my hood over my hair. "Then I'll change the rhythm... I left you my Syph, make it sure it will be in one peace when I return, I need to find out where Nyra could have gone."
I patted Gizmo's head, checked the charge on my pistol, and pulled my hood up before slipping out through Node Zero's steel door. The moment it clanged shut behind me, the quiet changed.
Not silence.
Just… absence.
The city didn't feel alive anymore. It felt like it was holding its breath.
Ironbound's underbelly was never truly quiet even in the dead hours, there was always a hum, a buzz, a soft argument between malfunctioning signs and hungry machines. But tonight? The noise had pulled back like the tide before a storm.
I stayed low, moving fast through the maze of alleys, ears tuned for danger, eyes reading every flicker like it might mean more than it did. Gizmo was tight at my side, his steps unusually measured. He wasn't scanning for threats, he was listening, like he could feel something moving underground.
Three blocks out, just past a collapsed tram line, I felt the air tighten.
It started with a pop.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a tiny pulse, like a fuse snapping somewhere overhead.
Then it spread.
A cascade of flickers. One streetlight. Then another. Then the signs. Holograms twisted mid-frame, froze, and died. The hum of a vent fan above me rattled, whined, then cut out completely.
The city exhaled all at once and didn't breathe back in.
I froze.
Everything went black.
Real black.
No glow, no HUDs, no backlight from the cloudline. Just the kind of darkness that feels wet, like it's pressing against your skin. Even my retinal overlay shorted, blinking once before sputtering into nothing.
Gizmo hissed, softly... His vocal processor stuttering in the dark.
Then I heard it.
Not through my ears. Through the metal.
A low-frequency hum, riding up through the concrete, vibrating through the soles of my boots. My augments twitched. My neural link hiccuped and spat error codes into my vision.
:: CONNECTION INTERRUPTED
:: INTERNAL SYNC OFFLINE
:: UNKNOWN SIGNAL DETECTED
A whisper threaded through the static.
A voice.
"...awaken... Ironbound... children of cinder..."
It was faint broken, distorted, like it had bled through a thousand filters before reaching me. And yet it found its way through. Not on any channel. Not through comms.
It bypassed everything.
Straight into the nerves.
I gasped and staggered, catching myself on a graffiti-smeared wall. Gizmo's eyes glitched between blue and red before cutting to black. His body locked. One leg jolted like it wanted to run, the rest of him frozen in place.
Across the city, alarms failed. Doors unlocked. Security drones dropped from the sky mid-hover. I couldn't see it all, but I felt it, the kind of technological death you don't mistake for coincidence.
Hive hadn't cut the power.
They'd cut the leash.
And now they were calling their dogs home.
A scream tore through the dark, not far, it was raw, human, and not alone. Then gunfire. Short bursts, scattered. Someone panicked. Or maybe someone didn't get the signal.
And still the city stayed dark.
Not a flicker. Not a flicker back.
**
I moved through the undercity like a hunted shadow. The blackout still smothered Sector 11, and without streetlights, the city felt like an abyss dotted only by muzzle flashes or bobbing headlamps. Cradling Gizmo against my side, I climbed down a twisted fire escape into a narrow alley. My boots splashed in puddles of oily water as I hit the ground.
Gizmo let out a weak trill. The mechanical cat was in bad shape: one leg sputtering, his tail bent at an awkward angle from Ash's brutal throw. I knelt behind a dumpster and gently set Gizmo down.
"Hang in there, buddy," I whispered. From a pocket in my jacket, I pulled a multitool and a vial of repair gel. With practiced hands, I snapped a dislodged circuit back into place on Gizmo's hip joint and smeared the gel over a crack in the chassis. The cat whirred, eyes flickering as his self-repair routines took over.
A distant thump reverberated through the ground, another explosion, maybe a transformer blowing. My jaw clenched. Was the whole undercity under attack? It felt coordinated. My mind replayed Nyra's distorted warning: Hive wanted people dead. Whatever this was, it was bigger than a simple riot.
I thought of heading back toward Nyra's workshop in Under Alley, but grief and logic stopped me. If Nyra survived the fall, Hive would have her. And if not... no time to mourn. The hunters were still out here.
Gizmo gave a soft beep, nudging my hand with his snout. A green status light blinked on his shoulder, repairs holding.
"Good to go?" I asked quietly. Gizmo rose on his paws, a little unsteady but operational.
A scraping noise made me freeze. Slow and heavy footsteps echoed from the alley's mouth. Not the panicked scramble of civilians or the swagger of gangers; this was a measured tread.
I killed my flashlight and pressed myself flat against the dumpster's slick metal side, Gizmo tucking in beside me. In the darkness, two silhouettes appeared at the alley entrance. My cybernetic eye adjusted, outlining them in pale green. Two figures in tactical gear, rifles in hand. They moved with professional precision, sweeping their muzzles methodically. Definitely not Ironbound police or any gang.
My muscles coiled. I silently counted their steps as they advanced. One gestured to a hovering drone above, their infrared eyebeams sweeping the alley. A terse exchange crackled on their comms, indicating they'd picked up a faint heat source. They were tracking Gizmo.
The first operative stepped closer, just a few yards from my hiding spot. Over the soldier's shoulder, I noticed the drone pivoting, infrared eyes glowing. It would sniff me out in seconds.
No time for subtlety.
I tapped a command on my wristpad. Gizmo's ears perked, and the mechanical cat scrabbled out from cover on the opposite side, metal paws clattering on pavement.
"There!" one of the operatives barked, opening fire on the darting cat. Muzzle flashes strobed the alley as bullets chewed into walls and trash.
In that split second of distraction, I rose from behind the dumpster and squeezed off two shots. The pistol's thunderous reports echoed in the narrow space. One operative dropped, a bullet finding the gap above his body armor. The second cursed and whipped his rifle toward me, sending a stream of rounds that forced me back behind cover. Concrete chips and sparks rained as the dumpster clanged under the impacts.
Gizmo lunged onto the fallen man with a snarl of servos, crunching through a blinking device on the operative's neck in a spray of sparks. The comms collar died along with whatever signal it carried.
"Feral bot's here! Target must be close," the remaining soldier snarled, voice tinny through his helmet. He reached to his belt and hurled a small object toward my cover.
A high-pitched whine... grenade.
I grabbed Gizmo by the scruff and bolted deeper down the alley. A concussive blast blew me off my feet mid-sprint. I hit the ground hard, ears ringing, vision flashing white.
Dazed, I rolled onto my back. The shockwave had hurled Gizmo further down; the cat lay sprawled out, trying feebly to right himself. Through clearing smoke, I saw the operative advancing, assault rifle raised. My pistol was gone, lost in the blast. I blinked to clear my head, tasting blood where I'd bitten my lip.
The soldier loomed over me, a featureless black mask hiding his face. The operative's voice crackled, cold and distorted: "Hive Protocol: terminate."
The man's finger tightened on the trigger.
I refused to die cowering. I glared up at my attacker... and a high-pitched screech cut through the alley. The owl-drone overhead spasmed in midair. Its lights blinked erratically. With a violent sputter, the drone veered off course and smashed straight into the operative's shoulder like a dive-bombing bird. The man cursed, caught off guard as whirring rotors and metal tangled into him.
Seizing the moment, I lunged up from the ground. I barreled into the disoriented soldier, driving us both into the opposite wall. The impact knocked the rifle loose. I followed with a hammering elbow into the side of the man's helmet, right where a neural port might be. The operative spasmed and collapsed, unconscious before hitting the ground.
Panting, I staggered back, rubbing my bruised shoulder.
"Thanks for the assist," I rasped.
"That one looked like it hurt," came a low, sarcastic drawl from above.
I snapped my gaze up. Perched on a fire escape a story overhead was a slender figure in a hooded jacket, illuminated by the faint glow of a datapad. The barrel of a compact sniper rifle poked through the railing, still aimed at where the drone had been.
The figure hopped down nimbly, landing a few feet away and pushing back his hood.
Ghost.
I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I held. "Should've guessed it was you, playing with my beast..." I said, managing a crooked grin as I retrieved my pistol from a puddle.
Ghost cocked his head, a lopsided grin tugging at his mouth. "Come on. You think I'd skip out on all this entertainment? You hand me a beauty like this Owl, I might just forget who it really belongs to."His voice was easy, almost amused but his eyes flicked to the downed operatives, cool and alert, calculating every breath in the room beneath the mask of charm.
Gizmo trotted over to my side, shaking off the blast. Ghost crouched to eye the mechanical cat.
"Glad to see Gizmo is still kicking. Little guy's tougher than he looks." He reached out, letting Gizmo sniff his hand. The cat bumped his head against his palm.
"We're all a little banged up," I replied, studying Ghost under the faint light of the smoldering dumpster. "Thanks for saving my hide."
Ghost's eyes softened slightly. "Anytime. Now, let's move before more show up."