**Somwhere above the City**
High above City's shattered streets, behind mirrored glass in my penthouse office, I reviewed the night's failures.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lay cloaked in darkness. The neon skyline of the uppercity, usually smug and radiant, had dimmed in sympathy with the undercity's blackout. All that remained was an orange halo of fire and flickering emergency lights. A reminder that even the towering elite weren't immune to system failure, ours or theirs.
The lights in the room were low, by choice. Just the soft gleam of holo-screens surrounded me, framing me in a cold glow that didn't feel like light at all. In the reflection on the glass, I saw what I had become, a tall, gaunt silhouette in a tailored suit, eyes hollowed by sleepless calculation and behind me, the broken city I intended to bring to heel.
I stood still, hands clasped behind my back, surveying a dozen video feeds suspended in the air. Most were nothing but static or darkness, thanks to the blackout but a few offered glimpses of movement, flashes of panic, burning wreckage. Data scrolled beside them: biometric readouts, intercepted comms, scattered mission reports. Fragmented, but telling.
"Field Team Echo: signal lost. Asset 443 (Nyra Lin) retrieved. Target Theta (Riven Talek) - status: escaped."
Queen's voice, emotionless and precise, came from the ceiling. She didn't need to sound frustrated. That was my job.
My jaw tensed. I didn't move. The faint scars on my temples, old neural interfaces, glimmered faintly in the screen light. Someone escaped?
A girl named Talek. Let's see... She's a beastmaker, making mechanical animals from scraps in her workshop, unusual.
The door hissed open behind me.
Dr. Ilena strode in like she had something better to do. Her lab coat was as pristine as ever. The datapad in her hand blinked with sharp angles, and the irritation in her eyes wasn't even disguised.
"I trust you got the recovery report," I said, still watching the central feed. It showed the rooftop in infrared, two figures, one of them Nyra Lin, the other Talek, just before Nyra's fall. A loop of failure, neatly packaged.
Ilena didn't bother with niceties. "Your men pulled Nyra out of the alley. She's in stasis now, what's left of her." Her tone was cutting. "You nearly turned one of our prime prototypes into street pizza."
I tightened my fist behind my back. "Asset 443 served her purpose. We assumed acceptable risk. She's alive, isn't she?"
"Barely," Ilena snapped. She flicked her fingers, opening a holo of Lin's vitals. They pulsed with erratic data. "Her neural conditioning failed under pressure. Hive Protocol took hold for a while. But then her independent will bled through. Long enough to warn the target."
I gave her a thin smile. "For all the good it did. I would not bother with Talek it's just a street rat. We have entire under city on the defensive."
Ilena raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you're calling this debacle? Echo team is MIA. And the broadcast barely triggered half the expected conversions. The Board expects results, Operative."
I didn't flinch. I hated her tone, but I needed her mind. "Phase One was a stress test. We lit a match. Saw what burned. Now we adapt. We took this girl nearly a week ago, I thin it's a success."
I gestured, pulling up a map riddled with glowing red and green signals. "We confirmed twenty-three sleeper activations across Sectors Nine through Fifteen. Twenty-three fewer threats on the street. More importantly, data. Real-time Hive integration, under live conditions."
She didn't argue the numbers. "Sixty-two percent compliance among the activated. Higher near our broadcast nodes." She narrowed her eyes. "But there were anomalies."
She expanded Sector Eleven. I already knew what was coming.
"The spike contained a trigger phrase: 'Collapse.' It should've activated any latent tech or gene-locked remnants. We built the phrase from the archives. Painstakingly." Her voice sharpened with pride. "If there are any pre-collapse relics left, we would have flushed them."
I felt it then, that familiar, cold tingle behind the eyes. Collapse. For many now it's just a word. Just a ghost.
I remembered the stories. Bedtime myths of metal knights and engineered beasts. A shadow war, fought long before Hive. I used to think they were nonsense. But the models disagreed. Queen disagreed. Something survived.
"You think this.... Talek, this girl's any threat to us?" I asked, voice neutral. "I see that she's a scavenger. She plays with scrap, but I see soldier moves."
Ilena rotated the map. "Oh please, do you know how many gang members are resisting? And yet a unique neural signature appeared near her during the signal burst. Not civilian-grade. Could be a relic. A cipher. Or something in that cat of hers."
I narrowed my eyes. The construct, yes. That thing had torn through Echo's comms like wet tissue. If it was pre-collapse... Talek didn't even realize what she had.
"Or she does," Ilena mused, gaze distant. "And she's hiding it."
"Either way," I said, "Hive Phase Two proceeds."
I dismissed the rooftop feed and brought up the power grid schematic. "Sector Thirteen's grid reboots in thirty-six hours. We ride the restart with a full signal cascade. That syncs the remaining undercity zones."
Ilena crossed her arms. "Ambitious. A citywide mind link isn't a weekend project. If it fails..."
"It won't," I said, sharper than intended. Then, more measured: "Queen is computing every variable."
The ceiling pulsed in acknowledgment. I felt her whisper at the edge of my consciousness, unshakable. Queen didn't doubt. Neither would I.
Ilena wasn't finished. "And Rivenn Talek? She knows what Hive is now, but it doesn't matter. From what I see she was a friend of the hacker Nyra Lin. She also meet with mercenary named Ghost, we are collecting data now on him."
I interfaced directly, pulse of data spooling into my retinal overlay. "Echo's last transponders confirmed Talek and Ghost made contact. We shouldn't bother with small fish."
I smiled. "When Phase Two begins, they'll be exactly where we want them. If anyone has any pre-Collapse ties, they'll show them. And if doesn't?" I shrugged. "We convert anyone. Or crush them."
Ilena stared at me. "Hive doesn't need legends rising from the ashes. Contain this."
I inclined my head. "This world before collapse died out for a reason. They were too rigid. Too human." I let the word hang in the air like ash. "The future belongs to unity. One will. One swarm."
Above us, Queen's lights shimmered.
I turned back toward the city, standing before the glass. My reflection met my gaze again, those pale eyes, gleaming with purpose. Below me, Ironbound burned.
"This punks can crawl through the ruins all they wants," I said softly. "In the end, the Hive will take everything... or reduce it to ash."
Behind me, Ilena moved toward the exit.
"I'll increase sedation on Lin," she said. "She's no good to us until reconditioning. Let's hope your next lure doesn't disappoint."
"Have some faith, Doctor," I murmured.
By this time tomorrow, the undercity would kneel.
And if anything still dared to resist?
We'd put it down.