Previous chapter: Kaelen Vance found Aira-9 dying in a slum corridor and smuggled her away from Soma forces after the cyborg projected a recording of Mira, Kaelen's long-missing daughter. At the edge of the Under-Grid, Aira admitted that she had died before in the facility where Mira disappeared.
Kaelen didn't trust people who said they had died.
He trusted people even less when they said it with the face of a child who had only just learned fear.
The Under-Grid swallowed them through a shoulder-wide service opening. Kaelen went down first, his boots striking wet grating, then pulled Aira in before drone light swept across the door above. The corridor was narrow, low, and built from the bones of the old city: water pipes, neural-fiber cables, heat vents. The air smelled of copper, mold, and plastic that had burned for too long.
Above their heads, Soma sirens wailed.
The sound came through the metal as a dull vibration. Aira pressed her back to the wall. The white light in her eyes went out, but the blue pattern on her neck still moved like a pulse that couldn't find a rhythm.
“Can you walk?” Kaelen asked.
“Yes.”
“That isn't the question. The question is whether you'll fall before we find somewhere safe.”
Aira tried to take a step. Her knee buckled.
Kaelen caught her with his right arm. His left prosthetic whined as he grabbed Aira around the waist to hold her weight. The whine rose half a tone. A heat warning appeared at the edge of his vision.
Actuator temperature: 71 degrees. Load: 118 percent. System recommendation: release object.
“My computer recommends that I leave you behind,” Kaelen said.
“Are you going to listen?”
“My computer once recommended that I not get married. At least once, it was right.”
Aira looked at him, serious. “Were you ever married?”
“No.”
“Then it never had a chance to prove itself.”
Kaelen stared at her for a moment. Then he walked.
They moved through darkness that was never truly dark. The Under-Grid had its own light: sickly green marker lamps, obsolete screens displaying twenty-year-old ads, transparent cables carrying data pulses like trapped fireflies. In between them, people lived in alcoves once used for maintenance machinery. An old woman hugged an oxygen tank in front of a doorway. Two children crouched on a cooling crate, watching Kaelen and Aira without blinking.
No one asked who they were.
In the Under-Grid, questions were a form of currency too expensive to spend.
Kaelen stopped at a three-way intersection. The city map in his head had been useless for seven years, ever since Soma closed half the lower routes and renamed every sector. He recognized the faded symbol on the pipe to the left: a circle with three descending lines.
Ivo's Clinic.
He pressed his right palm against an old scanner embedded in the wall. The device rasped, then displayed a message: NO SERVICE FOR EXPOSED IDENTITIES.
“He's still using the same system,” Kaelen said.
“Is that bad?”
“If the system's still the same, Ivo hasn't learned anything.”
Kaelen knocked twice, paused, then knocked once. Something shifted behind the wall. The steel panel opened a few inches, and a pair of eyes looked out at them.
“Patient?” a voice asked from behind the door.
“Problem.”
“Problems don't come in without money.”
Kaelen pulled a credit chip from his pocket. “I have enough to make you regret it.”
The door opened.
Ivo Renn stood behind it in a medical apron that had once been white. His hair had gone gray at the temples, and a magnifying lens covered his right eye. He looked at Kaelen, then Aira, then the blood flowing from the gaps between the stitches in Aira's neck.
“Bring her in,” he said.
“No haggling?”
“I'm haggling with time.”
Ivo pulled Aira inside. Kaelen followed, closing the door just as the sound of metal footsteps came from the outer corridor.
The clinic was smaller than Kaelen remembered. Two beds, one operating table, shelves filled with generic medicine, and a ventilation fan that sounded like an old man chewing bones. On the wall, a Soma poster about lung health covered a large crack. Its model smiled while breathing clean air that had never been sold on this floor.
Ivo pointed to a bed.
Aira sat down but didn't lie back.
“I don't like places with only one way out,” she said.
“This place has three,” Ivo replied.
“Two of them lead to the waste channel.”
Ivo stopped. “You can read the layout through the walls?”
“I can hear air pressure.”
“Good. I hate patients who bring nothing but problems.”
“She isn't an ordinary patient,” Kaelen said.
“There are no ordinary patients who arrive with a former investigator and Soma forces.”
Kaelen closed the operating-room door. “You know what she is?”
Ivo turned on the examination light. Yellow illumination fell across Aira's face, revealing synthetic skin that was too perfect and pores designed to resemble a human's. “I know what I mustn't ask if I want to stay alive.”
“Then don't ask. Examine her.”
“Kaelen.”
“Now.”
Ivo saw something in his face. Not a threat. Kaelen had never been good at threatening people who already knew him. It was a request disguised as an order, and they both knew how rarely he asked for anything.
Ivo sighed. “Lie down.”
Aira obeyed.
Ivo cut away the clothing at her side. Beneath her collarbone, dark organic tissue pulsed around an empty socket—the place where the crystal Aira had removed earlier should have been. Three red lines spread from the wound toward her ribs.
“The crystal?” Ivo asked.
“Still with me.”
“Put it on the table.”
Aira looked at Kaelen.
“Put it down,” Kaelen said.
She pulled the shard of crystal from her jacket pocket. It was cold, smooth, and pulsing with pale light. When she set it on the table, the clinic lights flickered.
Ivo didn't touch it.
“This isn't ordinary data storage,” he said.
“I figured.”
“No. It's a resonance module.”
Kaelen looked at him. “In human language.”
“This device doesn't store files. It stores patterns.”
“What kind of patterns?”
Ivo aimed the lens over his eye at the crystal. “Electrical pulses in the brain. Hormonal responses. Fragments of memory. The way someone recognizes their mother's voice, for example. Or the way they fear a particular door. Everything compressed into resonance.”
“Consciousness.”
“Pieces of consciousness.”
Aira rose halfway. “They took it from living people?”
Ivo didn't answer immediately.
Kaelen looked at him. “Ivo.”
“Not always.”
“That's a bad answer.”
“It's the correct one.” Ivo opened his instrument case. “Most sources are comatose. Legally, they're considered unconscious. Biologically, their bodies are still resisting.”
Aira stared at the crystal. “Am I carrying people inside my body?”
“Not like carrying passengers.”
“Then how?”
Ivo looked at her through the magnifying lens. “Like carrying echoes.”
Kaelen felt the clinic closing in around him. Mira's recording still played behind his eyes: hair tied in two braids, digital snow, the small voice calling him Dad. He had spent seven years forcing himself to believe that memory belonged to the past. Now the past was on the table, pulsing between tweezers and bottles of antiseptic.
“Check for a tracker,” he said.
Ivo turned. “What?”
“In her body. Soma doesn't chase something they can afford to lose.”
“I already saw it. There's an implant near her heart.”
“Not near her heart. In the organic tissue.”
Ivo studied Aira longer. “How do you know?”
“Because the drone found us too quickly.”
“There are cameras, rain sensors, and air scanners outside.”
“In the corridor where we met, there was no active network. I checked.”
Aira lifted her head. “I didn't sense anything either.”
“The tracker doesn't transmit continuously,” Kaelen said. “It waits for your pulse.”
Ivo picked up a handheld scanner. “If you're right, removing it could stop her heart.”
“If we don't remove it, Soma's forces will find us.”
“There is a third option.”
“There isn't.”
“There is always a third option. It's usually more expensive.”
Kaelen looked at him. “What's tonight's price?”
Ivo glanced at Kaelen's trembling prosthetic arm. “For you? More than the money you brought.”
Aira held out her hand. “Do it.”
Kaelen turned to her. “You don't know what will happen.”
“I know they'll come if we don't.”
“Maybe we can—”
“You brought me here because you want me to stay alive.”
“I brought you here because I haven't decided whether to turn you in.”
Aira studied his face. “Is that not the same reason?”
Kaelen had no answer that wouldn't sound like a lie.
Ivo prepared the table. “We have to shut down two layers of your system. The outer layer will fight back. The inner layer may think we're killing you.”
“I've died before,” Aira said.
“Not helpful.”
“Was it supposed to be?”
Ivo pointed at Kaelen. “Hold her shoulders.”
Kaelen did. Aira's skin felt warm, but beneath it was a faint vibration, like a machine working too hard. Ivo injected a nerve suppressant into her neck. Aira tensed.
“How long?” Kaelen asked.
“Twelve minutes before the protection system fully wakes up.”
“And after that?”
“If I'm not finished, it'll cut off my hand.”
Kaelen nodded. “Then don't be slow.”
Ivo made a small incision beneath Aira's ribs. Her blood wasn't entirely red. A silvery sheen flowed with the dark fluid, like oil learning to imitate blood.
Aira bit her lip.
“You can scream,” Ivo said.
“Would that help?”
“No. But it makes the doctor feel supported.”
Kaelen pressed Aira's shoulder down harder when the instrument went in. Aira turned toward him, her pupils narrowing.
“Kaelen.”
“I'm here.”
“Why?”
The question was sharper than the needle.
“Because you haven't paid me yet.”
“For what?”
“For saving you.”
“How much does it cost?”
“Don't know yet.”
Aira held her breath. “Everyone who helps me asks for something.”
“That's the city's economy.”
“What if you ask for my memories?”
Kaelen saw Mira's face again. “I'll ask for answers.”
“And if there are none?”
“Then I'll ask for something else.”
“Like what?”
Kaelen met her eyes. “You staying alive long enough to give it to me.”
Ivo grunted. “Stop talking. Her pulse is rising.”
The clinic lights went out.
In the darkness, something made a sound from inside Aira's body.
Not an alarm. Not a machine. More like fingernails scraping glass from the other side.
Ivo switched on the red emergency lights. “The tracker is active.”
Kaelen heard a faint hum from the table. The resonance crystal pulsed faster.
“How far?”
“Don't know.”
“Can it be blocked?”
“If I had a military transmitter, yes.”
“And if not?”
“If not, we pull it out before they arrive.”
Ivo pushed the forceps deeper. Aira screamed.
The sound reminded Kaelen of Mira on her last night. Not her face, but the small sound of her breathing behind her bedroom door—the fear he had dismissed as a nightmare because he had been busy reading a report. By morning, Mira was gone. Three hours later, Soma sent officers to take every recording from the house.
He had never played that breathing recording again.
“Kaelen,” Aira said.
He returned to the clinic.
Aira's eyes were glowing white. Her fingers gripped the edge of the operating table until the steel bent.
“Hold her,” Ivo ordered.
“I am holding her.”
“Not like that.”
Kaelen forced Aira's shoulders down against the bed.
Aira turned with unnatural speed. Thin blades emerged from beneath her fingernails and stopped an inch from Kaelen's throat.
“Don't fight it,” Kaelen said.
“I'm not the one fighting.”
“Then tell whoever's controlling you to wait.”
“They don't listen.”
The blades moved forward.
Kaelen didn't move. He had faced armed men, hunter drones, and superiors who preferred statistics to witnesses. None of them had ever looked at him the way Aira did now—the face of someone begging her body not to do something.
“Aira.”
“I can't stop it.”
“Look at me.”
The white eyes trembled.
“Look at me,” Kaelen repeated. “Not the lights. Not the voice in your head. Me.”
For one second, the light dimmed.
Ivo pulled something from beneath Aira's ribs. A black shard no thicker than a strand of hair was caught between his instruments. It kicked like an insect.
The blades in Aira's hand vanished.
Her body went limp.
Kaelen caught her head before it struck the table.
Ivo dropped the shard into an isolation container. “Primary tracker.”
“Primary?”
“Don't ask until I finish closing the wound.”
“How many?”
Ivo didn't answer.
That was answer enough.
Outside the clinic, a mechanical voice announced through a hidden loudspeaker.
“Residents of Sector Fourteen. A dangerous biosynthetic subject has entered the lower network. Any individual providing shelter will lose medical access and air credentials.”
Vektor Vane's voice wasn't part of the announcement. It didn't need to be. Soma had thousands of voices to threaten the poor.
Ivo finished stitching. “The tracker is dead, but its last signal went out.”
“How long until they find this address?”
“If they're only using official routes, ten minutes. If they're using the local network—”
Three knocks sounded at the door.
Kaelen reached for his pistol.
Ivo killed the lights.
A second knock came. Two quick, one slow.
Ivo looked at Kaelen. “An old patient.”
“Old patients bring armies?”
“In this city, sometimes patients bring family.”
He opened a small panel beneath the table and pulled out a compact weapon. It looked like an industrial drill fitted with a barrel.
“If they come in?” Kaelen asked.
“Don't shoot near the oxygen tanks.”
“Good medical advice.”
The door opened.
A thin man entered carrying a plastic umbrella and the smell of acid rain. He wore a network worker's coat, but the Soma emblem on his shoulder had been crossed out with black paint. His face was covered in tiny burn marks.
“Routine inspection,” he said.
Ivo raised the weapon. “You're late with your payment.”
The man smiled. “I'm here to collect.”
The hum of a drone came from the corridor.
Kaelen raised his pistol. “You brought them.”
“I brought a warning.”
“Warnings usually don't wear ballistic armor.”
The man glanced at the unconscious Aira. “They won't stop at the clinic. Every door in this sector has already been locked from above.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who hasn't sold you yet.”
“How much longer?”
“I should have been given time to negotiate.”
Ivo shot him.
The drill bullet struck the man's chest, punched through his coat, and hurled him against the wall. His body fell without a sound.
Kaelen stared at Ivo.
“He was carrying a transmitter,” Ivo said. “Look at his belt.”
Beneath the coat, a small red light blinked.
The drone's hum stopped.
Too quickly.
Kaelen knew that pattern. Not because the threat had vanished. Because the threat had obtained what it needed.
“A signal got out,” he said.
Ivo looked at the transmitter. “Impossible. It was disconnected from the network.”
“Not from him.”
Kaelen looked at Aira.
Blue light spilled from the wound beneath her ribs.
A thin line spread from the stitches toward her neck. The primary tracker had indeed been removed. What remained might have been residue. Or something older and deeper.
“She became a transmitter,” Kaelen said.
Ivo swore.
Aira opened her eyes. “They're coming.”
“How many?”
“That's not the right question.”
“Don't start.”
“They aren't coming to capture me.” Aira looked toward the wall, as if she could see through the steel. “They're coming to empty the clinic.”
In an instant, every light in the Under-Grid went out.
This wasn't an ordinary blackout. The city's network kept a little light even when the main power failed. This time, every screen, every cable, every directional marker lost its color at once.
Outside, people began to scream.
Ivo pulled Aira off the bed. “Waste channel.”
Kaelen took the resonance crystal from the table. It pulsed in his palm. Warm as skin.
“Why do they want to empty the clinic?”
“Because Soma can't search a place full of patients without making them ask questions.”
“What kind of city are we in?”
“One that stopped asking a long time ago.”
The front wall of the clinic exploded.
Steel buckled inward. White smoke filled the room. Something pushed through it—a low spider-shaped drone with cutting legs. Its sensor lights glowed red.
Aira moved faster than Kaelen. She lunged at the first drone, drove her hand into its metal shell, and tore it open. Coolant sprayed across her face.
Two more drones came in.
Kaelen shot the left sensor. The first bullet missed because his hand was shaking. The second destroyed the drone's eye.
“Your prosthetic is malfunctioning,” Aira said.
“Another bad observation.”
His left arm locked.
It wasn't merely jammed. Every joint stopped halfway raised. Its motor's hum turned into a thin whine. Kaelen slammed the side of the arm with his pistol grip.
“Wake up.”
The system didn't answer.
The third drone leaped at him.
Ivo fired his drill weapon. It spat a spinning bolt that struck the drone's leg but didn't stop it. Kaelen dropped flat. The cutting leg swept through the air above his head.
Aira caught the drone from behind. Her face went blank again.
She twisted the machine's body until something snapped.
“Don't kill anything unnecessary,” Kaelen said.
Aira looked at him. “It's not alive.”
“That's not what I meant.”
Something exploded outside. The clinic shook. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Ivo opened the door to the waste channel. The smell of ammonia and foul water rushed in.
“Now!”
Aira helped Kaelen along. She carried both her own weight and his without complaint. Kaelen hated the fact that he needed her. Worse, he hated that Aira didn't use his weakness as a reason to pull away.
They entered the channel.
Ivo went last. Before closing the door, he looked at the man's body near the clinic, then took an identity card from his coat pocket.
Kaelen saw him. “You know him?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Ivo closed the door. “Later.”
They walked through ankle-deep water. The channel walls trembled with the vehicles and machinery of the city above. Aira led with one hand touching a pipe, reading the pressure currents. Kaelen relied on the thermal vision from his cheap right-eye implant.
Behind them, metal cut through the clinic door.
“How many exits?” Kaelen asked.
“Three,” Ivo replied.
“And how many are safe?”
“Two.”
Aira stopped. “One.”
Ivo looked at her. “I built this channel.”
“The pressure in the channel to the right just changed. There are troops at the end.”
“How do you know?”
“Their footsteps are changing the air.”
Kaelen heard the phrase and felt the crystal in his pocket tap back.
Pulse.
Heart. Machine. Footsteps. Memory.
The city had built itself from the pulses of its people, then called it progress.
“Left,” Kaelen said.
“Left leads to the pump room,” Ivo replied. “Water up to our necks.”
“Better than troops.”
They turned.
The channel narrowed. The water rose from their ankles to their knees. The chemical smell grew sharper. Kaelen felt his prosthetic begin to pulse erratically as the liquid touched the lower joints.
“If that arm dies,” Ivo said, “you won't be able to move it until it's repaired.”
“If you keep talking, I'll repair your mouth first.”
Aira turned. “Is that a threat?”
“Advice.”
“What is the difference?”
“A threat makes people afraid. Advice keeps them alive.”
“Then why does your voice always sound like a threat?”
Kaelen didn't answer.
Ahead, yellow light appeared through the mist. The pump room.
Ivo examined the panel. “The door is locked.”
Kaelen looked at his prosthetic.
“Don't,” Ivo said.
“I didn't say anything.”
“You're looking at the door like it's an ex-lover.”
“This door never asked me to change.”
He pressed his metal palm to the panel. The prosthetic joint resisted. A short circuit jumped all the way to Kaelen's shoulder. He clenched his teeth.
Warning: distal component unstable. Risk of permanent damage: 43 percent.
He forced the current through.
The panel opened.
At the same time, his prosthetic palm gave a sharp crack.
Kaelen pulled his hand away. Two metal fingers hung without power.
Ivo stared at him. “You damaged it.”
“Not all of it.”
“If that's your only hope of opening the next door—”
“I'll find a door that doesn't recognize me.”
They entered the pump room. Inside, the machines drowned out everything else. Huge pipes shifted like steel intestines. Water churned beneath the grating. An emergency ladder climbed to a maintenance platform.
Aira suddenly grabbed her head.
Kaelen saw the change before she said anything. Her shoulders went rigid. Her breath stopped. White light returned to her eyes, this time flickering with red images visible only in brief flashes across her skin.
“Don't touch me,” she said.
Kaelen stopped.
“What do you see?”
“A room.”
“What room?”
“White walls. Antiseptic. An old woman.”
Ivo tensed.
Aira turned toward them. “She's singing a song.”
“What song?” Kaelen asked.
Aira opened her mouth, but the voice that came out wasn't hers.
A child's voice.
“Go to sleep, Mira. Don't look at the lights.”
Kaelen took a step back.
Water churned below them. The pump machinery beat like a gigantic heart.
Aira clutched her throat. “That wasn't me.”
“Whose voice was it?”
“I don't know.”
“Don't say that.”
“I don't know!”
Her voice cracked. For the first time, Aira didn't look like a weapon learning to be human. She looked like someone waking inside a burning house, unable to tell which room belonged to her.
Kaelen wanted to ask about Mira. He wanted to force an answer from Aira's throat, even if all that came out was a fragment. But an alarm sounded above them.
Soma had found another route.
“Up,” Ivo said.
Aira didn't move.
Kaelen took her hand. “Aira.”
“Don't call me that.”
“Why?”
“Because that's the name they gave me.”
“Then pick a new one after we're not being chased.”
She looked at Kaelen. “Are you promising that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't promise things I can't control.”
Aira nodded slowly, as if that answer was more trustworthy than a promise.
They climbed.
The upper platform led them to a maintenance door opening onto a market corridor. Ivo broke the lock with a mechanical tool. Kaelen stood behind him, pistol in his right hand, his left arm hanging like dead weight.
The door opened.
The Under-Grid welcomed them again with fading neon light.
The night market was closing. Vendors rolled down their shutters, hiding identity chips and synthetic organs. The smells of spices, burnt cable, and acid rain mingled in the air. People saw Aira. Then they saw Kaelen. Then they looked away.
On one small screen, Kaelen's face appeared.
PHOTO OF FORMER INVESTIGATOR LINKED TO BIOSYNTHETIC TERRORISM.
Beneath it, another line read:
REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO CAPTURE.
Kaelen stopped.
Ivo cursed softly. “They've already broadcast your face.”
“They've always had my face.”
“Not with a price attached.”
Kaelen looked at the reward amount. Enough to buy medicine for a child for ten years. Enough to make a good person reconsider their morals.
Aira followed his gaze. “They'll turn you in because of me.”
“Don't overestimate yourself.”
“That's a lot of money.”
“Numbers don't know people.”
“People know numbers.”
Kaelen turned. Aira was already reading another screen displaying a Soma clinic ad: TREAT NOW, PAY WITH LOYALTY.
“Don't stare too long,” Ivo said. “The city will think you're interested.”
“Maybe I am.”
“In what?”
“Why people are willing to sell other people.”
Kaelen looked at her. Something small had changed in Aira's face. Not innocence lost, but innocence that had just found a direction.
From the far end of the market came the sound of armored footsteps.
Ivo pulled them behind a synthetic-eye vendor's stall. The stall owner stared at them with a pale face. Kaelen took out a credit chip and placed it on the counter.
“Five minutes,” he said.
The owner looked at the chip's value, then at Kaelen's face. His hand moved toward an alarm beneath the counter.
Aira caught his wrist.
Not hard. She didn't need to. Her fingers simply blocked the path to the button.
“Five minutes,” Aira repeated.
The owner nodded.
They hid among racks of artificial eyes. Dozens of synthetic irises reflected blue, green, and gold light. Kaelen could see himself fractured in every lens: one face a wanted man, one a father, one a man who still hadn't decided whether Aira was evidence or a human being.
Soma forces passed through the market.
Four soldiers. Two drones. A technician carrying a network scanner.
“The tracker went dead in this sector,” the technician said.
“Check every stall.”
The owner lowered his head.
Aira shifted slightly, placing herself in front of Kaelen.
Kaelen whispered, “Don't.”
“What?”
“Don't protect me.”
“Why?”
“Because that's my job.”
“Your arm is damaged.”
“A job doesn't depend on how many arms you have.”
“Then why did you check my arm when I was hurt?”
Kaelen said nothing.
The Soma technician approached. His scanner hissed. One of the irises on the rack lit red.
Aira held her breath.
Kaelen felt the resonance crystal pulsing in his jacket pocket. The pulse answered the scanner's signal. He slowly drew it out with his right hand, slipped it beneath the rack, and pressed the crystal against an exposed electrical cable.
Every light in the stall exploded.
The technician screamed. The drone fired blindly. Synthetic eyes shattered like a small rain of glass.
Kaelen pulled Aira down. Bullets tore through the curtain.
Ivo kicked open a floor panel. A narrow hole appeared.
“Get in!”
They dropped into the storage room beneath the stall. Kaelen landed on his right shoulder. Pain shot through his teeth. Aira landed without a sound. Ivo groaned as boxes of spare parts fell onto his leg.
“Still alive?” Kaelen asked.
“Unfortunately.”
Above them, a soldier kicked the stall floor.
Aira looked at the crystal in Kaelen's hand. “You used it to scramble the scanner.”
“Some of its power.”
“Did that damage its memories?”
“Maybe.”
“Whose memories?”
“That's the answer I'm trying to find.”
“What if the crystal is damaged?”
“Then the answer is damaged with it.”
Aira looked at the object with an unreadable expression. “Then don't use me as a tool again.”
Kaelen put the crystal in his pocket. “I don't know if you can tell the difference between a tool and yourself.”
“Neither do I.”
A cracking sound came from above. They had found the hole in the floor.
Ivo pointed to a narrow tunnel behind the boxes. “That way leads to the old maintenance station.”
“And after that?”
“The Shadowless Market.”
“You still know the way there?”
Ivo looked at him. “I used to move something through that route.”
“Medicine?”
“No.”
Before Kaelen could ask, the storage-room floor gave way. Flashlight beams pierced the gap.
They crawled into the tunnel.
The space was too narrow to stand. Kaelen moved forward on his elbows and knees, his prosthetic scraping across the wet floor. Every movement made the damaged joint click. Behind him, Aira moved without a sound. Ivo swore every few yards.
“Don't turn on the light,” Kaelen whispered.
“I haven't turned anything on.”
“Not you.”
Ahead, blue light appeared through a grating. Beyond it, the lower city pulsed.
The Shadowless Market.
The name wasn't a metaphor. The market had been built beneath a light-shielding layer, where official cameras couldn't see and Soma's network lost access privileges. The lights were installed beneath the floor, making every face appear without a shadow. People traded dead identities, unnamed organs, and information that hadn't yet been determined true or false.
Ivo opened the grating.
They emerged one by one.
Kaelen struggled to stand. His left arm hung uselessly. Dirty water dripped from his jacket. Before them, hundreds of small lights moved beneath artificial fog, forming a market that looked like an upside-down city.
Aira looked over the crowd. “Is it safe here?”
“No,” Kaelen said. “But danger here has a price.”
Ivo looked toward a corridor marked by yellow lights. “We need to find Nix.”
“She still works here?”
“If she didn't, we'd be dead before we got inside.”
Kaelen felt the tracker residue in Aira's body. Weak, but present. In the distance, the market's network pulsed like a heart pretending to sleep.
Aira looked at him. “We have to go farther.”
“Yes.”
“Because they'll find us.”
“Yes.”
“And you're still taking me with you.”
Kaelen looked at the crystal in his pocket. Then at Aira's face. Then at the Soma advertisement screen glowing above the market, showing Vektor Vane smiling in clean white.
“Don't misunderstand,” he said. “I might still turn you in.”
Aira nodded.
“But?”
Kaelen holstered his pistol.
“But before that, I want to know why my daughter is still pulsing inside your body.”
They walked toward the yellow corridor.
Behind them, in the abandoned clinic, the tracker shard Ivo had removed began to glow again. Its signal no longer pointed to Aira.
It pointed to someone who had helped them escape.
And on one of the dead screens above the Under-Grid, Vektor Vane's face appeared without sound. His eyes opened when no camera should have been working.
“Find the pulse,” he said to the empty room. “Don't kill the vessel.”
Then the screen went dark, leaving the city in a darkness that never truly hid anything.