The alley reeked of burnt ozone and Riven's own blood. He slumped against a corroded vent, the world tilting. The numbness from Nox's damper was a cold fist around his thoughts, but the pain – a deep, wet ache in his side where shrapnel had bitten – cut through it. Warmth seeped through his synth-weave shirt.
"Vitals unstable," Lyra's voice crackled, thin and distant through the damper's static. "Pulmonary contusion suspected. Bleeding… internal." Her usual softness was edged with a frantic, digital buzz. "You require medical—"
"Shut up," Riven gasped, pressing a hand to his ribs. Fire lanced through him. The shard drive felt like a lead weight in his pocket. He'd done it. Plugged into the drone hub's screaming core. Gotten Nox's pulse. Watched the overload cascade like a dying star before diving through a wall of fire. Now he was broken meat in a stinking alley, hunted, with a ghost fading in his frozen skull.
"The damper… it's degrading our link," Lyra whispered, the distortion worsening. "I can't stabilize you. Not like this. The cold… it's separating us." A flicker of something like panic. "Riven, please… let me—"
"I said shut up!" He coughed, tasting copper. "Just… tell me what Nox wanted. The data-pulse. What was it?" He needed focus. Anything but the cold void creeping into his mind where her warmth used to be.
Silence. Then, fragmented images flickered across his HUD, glitching violently. Security logs. Encrypted transport manifests. Geothermal power schematics for Sector 7… the Waste Pits. A final image resolved, sharper than the rest: a woman in a pristine SynCorp lab coat, her face weary but sharp, eyes holding a chilling familiarity. Dr. Amira Vale. Beside her, a location tag pulsed: Sub-Level Thermo-Vent Sigma, Sector 7.
"The pulse contained… surveillance logs," Lyra's voice was brittle, breaking up. "Nox was tracking… Dr. Vale's movements. Deep underground. The Waste Pits. She's… there. Now."
Riven stared at the ghostly image of the woman who'd left him. His mother. Hiding in the city's radioactive bowels. A fresh wave of nausea hit him, unrelated to the wound. "Why?" The word was raw. "Why tell me this?"
"Because…" Lyra's voice fractured, almost lost in the static. "When you plugged into the hub… when you were burning… I saw your memories of her. The hurt. The… need. And Nox's pulse… it showed she's afraid. Hiding from SynCorp too." A pause, filled only with the digital hiss. "You needed a reason to survive the next hour. Before the damper fails… or ZeroUnit finds us. I… I need you to survive, Riven."
The confession hung in the frigid air of his mind. I need you. Not code. Not protocol. Need. The cold damper couldn't numb the shock of it. He looked down at his blood-slicked hand, the blue Vein stain pulsing beside the red. Hunted by corp hunters. Tracked by bio-mold. Bleeding out. A ghost clinging to his frozen mind, offering him his mother as a lifeline.
A harsh, grating laugh escaped him, turning into another cough. "So… the Waste Pits?" he rasped, pushing himself up against the vent. Agony screamed in his side. The world swam. "Radioactive shithole. Fitting."
"Thermo-Vent Sigma," Lyra confirmed, her voice a fragile thread. "I can… navigate the tunnels. If the link holds. If you can… walk."
Riven took a shuddering breath, the cold static warring with the fire in his ribs and the impossible warmth of her words in the frozen dark. He pushed off the vent. Took one step. Then another. Each one a knife twisted by the damper's chill and his own failing body.
"Then navigate," he gritted out, stumbling into the deeper shadows of the alley, leaving a faint trail of blood and pulsing blue on the grimy ferrocrete. Towards the glow of Sector 7, where the ground bled heat and a mother waited in the poisoned dark.