They traveled by night. By day, they hid under husks of shattered overpasses or in the belly of old freight haulers. Rael moved with purpose now—tracking routes, timing patrols, stockpiling ammo.
He wasn't running anymore. He was hunting.
Their destination: Redglen, a lawless crosspoint town near Deepvault's border, crawling with Chain scouts and mercs. Rael had a name: Drex Vorn, a Chain defector who once worked under Mirex. If anyone knew where she operated from—or how to stop her—it was him.
But Rael had history with Drex. And it was soaked in blood.
---
Redglen was chaos layered over decay. Fires burned in drums, music thumped from cracked speakers, and tension sat in the air like dust. Rael and Skye moved through it like shadows, cloaks drawn, heads down.
They found Drex in a grimy backroom bar, surrounded by two armed guards and a mountain of synthetic booze.
Drex looked up. "Well, well. Voss. Thought you were dust in the wind."
"Not yet."
"And the girl?"
Rael didn't answer.
Drex smiled, but there was fear behind it. "You here to cash in that debt?"
Rael stepped closer. "You worked for Mirex. I want her location. Ops, assets, patterns."
Drex laughed dryly. "You don't just want to die. You're scheduling it."
Rael slammed him against the wall before the guards could react. "She killed Elias Lorne. Now she's hunting the girl. Tell me what I need—or I settle the debt my way."
Drex coughed, spat blood. "She's not in Deepvault anymore. Moved underground. Real deep. She's running a facility called Blackridge Hollow—old military tech labs, buried beneath the ash plains."
Rael narrowed his eyes. "What's she building?"
"Something to track minds, not just signals. Think... imprint tracing. She was obsessed with Lorne's neural mapping research. Said it could change the war."
Rael released him.
Drex gasped. "You don't get it, Voss. The girl's not carrying a device. She is the device. Lorne encoded part of the system into her—memetic patterns, location keys. She's the access point."
Skye's breath hitched.
Rael turned to her, voice quiet. "You knew?"
She shook her head. "Only that he said I was the failsafe."
Drex laughed bitterly. "Then it's already begun. Mirex won't stop. She'll burn every city from here to the Bone Wall to get what's in that kid's head."
Rael raised his pistol and fired.
The guards barely flinched. Drex slumped forward, silence replacing his wheeze.
Skye looked away. "Was that the debt?"
Rael holstered the weapon. "Part of it."
---
Outside, the wind screamed across the ruins. Rael looked out over the horizon — toward Blackridge Hollow.
"It's not just about survival now," he said.
Skye stood beside him, jaw set.
"No," she said. "It's about ending them."