The industrial quarter of the lower-middle ring never really slept. It only changed shifts.
Smog hung in the air thick enough to turn the district lights into blurred halos of amber and red. Warehouses stretched block after block beneath the haze, their corrugated walls stained dark with soot and old rain. High above them, cargo haulers drifted through the murk at a crawl—massive, ugly things that looked too heavy to stay airborne, their grav-engines humming low as they ferried shipping containers from yard to yard. Chains clanked. Warning horns groaned. Somewhere in the distance, metal slammed against metal hard enough to rattle the windows.
An apartment building was wedged into the side of one of those warehouse rows, halfway up a rusted stack of live-work units built for people who needed a roof more than comfort.
Something moved across the roofline above the warehouses.
At first, it was only a shape cutting through the smog—low, fast, almost swallowed by the haze between cargo lights. It crossed the corrugated roof without a sound, reached the rusted fire escape, and descended one level at a time until it stopped outside a dark apartment window.
A gloved hand caught the frame.
The window slid open.
Only then did the shape pull itself inside.
Vire landed without a sound.
Inside, metal thrummed through the speakers, all grinding bass and machine-gun drums, making the empty bottles along the counter hum faintly. Clothes lay in uneven piles across the floor—jackets, socks, torn undershirts, armored lining stripped from older suits and left where it fell. A half-eaten tray of noodles had gone cold beside a cleaning kit full of gun oil and loose screws.
The bounty board took up most of the far wall.
Faces glowed in hard blue light. Names. Rewards. Last known locations. Some had been marked out with red slashes. Others were still waiting.
One face near the center had a knife buried through it, pinning the holo-print deep enough to crack the board beneath.
Vire passed it without looking.
Her helmet was tucked beneath one arm, visor black and scuffed from the chase. One of the rabbit ears twitched once, sparking at the joint before going still. Her right leg dragged half a beat behind the left. Not enough for anyone on the street to notice.
In here, with no one watching, it was impossible to miss.
She crossed the room and reached the closet.
At a glance, it was just more clutter. Coats hanging crooked. Laundry slumped in baskets. Boots piled in the corner. She shoved the mess aside and pressed two fingers against a dead-looking panel near the back wall.
The closet clicked.
Then opened.
The wall folded inward without a sound.
Beyond it was a room that did not belong to the apartment.
Clean. Cold. Precise.
Weapons lined the walls in measured rows—rifles mounted by length and caliber, handguns nested in foam slots, blades suspended on magnetic strips. Grenades sat in locked glass drawers beneath strips of warning light. Along the far wall, three pairs of leg augments hung from vertical harnesses like sleeping beasts: one slim and built for speed, one heavier with impact plating, one unfinished, its inner mechanisms exposed in a nest of silver wiring.
At the center stood the suit rig.
A steel harness waited with its arms open.
Beside it sat a wheelchair.
Vire stepped inside and the music dulled behind her, reduced to a muffled pounding through the wall.
She locked the helmet into place first.
The rig took it from her with a soft mechanical chirp, clamps closing around the scuffed casing. The black visor reflected her face for half a second—pale eyes, sweat at her temple, jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
She looked away.
The gauntlets came next. One release at each wrist. Pressure hissed from the seams as the metal peeled back from her forearms. She slid her hands free and flexed her fingers slowly, letting the tremor pass before she set them into their charging brackets.
The chest piece followed.
The spine lock fought her.
Vire gripped the rail beside the harness and breathed through her teeth as the first latch disengaged. A small light went red at the base of her back. Then another. Then another.
Pain climbed her spine in hot, needling bursts.
Her ears flattened.
"Come on," she muttered through gritted teeth.
The final lock snapped free.
Her shoulders dropped an inch as the suit released its hold on her torso. Sweat cooled instantly along her skin.
Then came the legs.
She waited a moment before touching the first release.
Not fear.
Calculation.
The right unit had taken damage during the chase. The outer plate was cracked where Myth's ice blade had caught the impact, and the actuator behind the knee clicked in an ugly rhythm it wasn't supposed to have.
Vire keyed the release behind her thigh.
The leg answered with a low warning tone.
She keyed it again.
This time, the locks opened.
Calf. Knee. Thigh. Hip.
Each one released with a hiss, and with each one, something of the hunter vanished from the room. The thunder. The speed. The impossible weight of her landings.
The right augment separated from her body and settled into the rig.
Her own leg remained beneath it, thin beneath the bodysuit, motionless except for the faint drag of gravity.
She did not look down.
The left unit came off cleaner. Faster. It unlocked from the hip brace and slid into its cradle with a smooth mechanical sigh.
The room went quiet except for the muffled music outside and Vire's breathing.
She gripped the overhead rail with both hands.
Her arms tightened.
One practiced shift lifted her from the harness. Another brought the wheelchair close with her knee barely brushing the frame. Her face twisted once—sharp, involuntary—before she crushed the expression flat.
She lowered herself into the chair.
Her legs followed a second later, slack and useless beneath her.
For a moment, she sat there with both hands on the wheels, head bowed, sweat dripping from her chin.
Getting out of the suit always hurt. Worse each time.
She shook it off with a deep breath, then shoved herself backward and rolled out of the arsenal room.
The closet wall sealed behind her, turning the room back into a mess of laundry and lies.
The music returned, low and grinding, filling the apartment without quite drowning it.
Vire crossed the apartment, weaving through clothes and cables, and stopped beside the bounty board. Her hand shook as she pulled open the drawer beneath it.
Inside were three things: loose ammunition, a cracked photo turned facedown, and a bottle of cheap painkillers.
She took the bottle.
The cap came off with a snap.
A handful of pills spilled into her palm. Too many. She stared at them for half a second, then threw them back dry, swallowing hard until they went down.
Her eyes shut.
She breathed in.
Held it.
Let it out slowly.
The console on her desk chimed.
Vire opened her eyes.
A new message pulsed in the corner of the screen.
PRIVATE CONTRACT UPDATE.
She rolled over and tapped the terminal.
Light bent above the desk, shaping itself into the polished figure of Rylan Voss.
Not in person. Not live. Too clean for that. A recorded projection dressed in white and gold, his face composed with the kind of anger that had never had to raise its voice to be obeyed.
"Miss Vire," he said.
Vire leaned back in her chair, eyes half-lidded.
"The highway explosion was impressive," Rylan continued. "Public, violent, memorable."
His mouth tightened.
"But insufficient."
The console flickered, displaying a frozen image beside him: a grainy capture of Mythren's face from some border scanner or rooftop feed. Bloodied. Half-turned. Still alive.
"I did not pay you to frighten him. I paid you to end the problem."
Vire's gaze stayed on Myth's face.
Rylan turned slightly, the projection shifting with him.
"I want the thief's head. I want my StarCutter located, recovered, and returned to me without further embarrassment. If he has accomplices, remove them. If he has buyers, identify them. If anyone shelters him…"
A pause.
His smile was small and empty.
"Educate them."
The console chimed again.
A deposit notification appeared beneath the projection.
The number was obscene.
Vire's eyes flicked to it despite herself.
Rylan noticed, or had recorded the message knowing she would.
"An additional payment has been transferred to your account," he said. "Consider it a gesture of continued confidence."
His gaze sharpened.
Then his voice softened in a way that was somehow worse.
"Though I would advise you not to waste it all on temporary relief."
Vire went still.
Rylan's projected eyes lowered briefly, as if glancing at the chair, though he couldn't possibly see her.
"Numbing the pain will only get you by for so long, Miss Vire. All that money spent on meds... only to not be rid of the problem. I'm sure you know that the operation is the only solution."
Her fingers tightened around the wheel.
"The procedure you need is available," he continued. "The real one. Not the back-alley maintenance keeping you functional. Finish this contract, and you may finally be able to afford a body that does not betray you."
The music thudded against the walls.
"Fuck off," she grunted, hurling the pill bottle at the projection.
It passed through Rylan's chest in a flicker of broken light and cracked against the console behind him, spilling cheap white pills across the desk.
The worst part was that he was right—and he knew exactly how much she hated hearing it from him.
Rylan's expression returned to its polished calm.
"Bring me my ship. Bring me the thief. Do this for me, and that dusty old chair becomes a thing of the past."
The hologram vanished.
Only Mythren's captured face remained on the console.
Vire sat in the glow, breathing slowly through her nose.
Then she reached forward, dragged Myth's image from the console, and threw it onto the bounty board.
His face appeared in the center.
Unmarked.
Unstabbed.
Waiting.
Vire rolled closer, pulled the knife from the cracked poster beside it, and held the blade loosely in her hand.
For a moment, she studied Mythren's face.
"I don't get it," she muttered. "All this for one measly ship booster."
She wanted to question it further, but questions didn't pay for surgery.
Jobs did.
And hers was clear.
Capture the thief. Retrieve the ship. Simple.
"Round two it is," she whispered, eyes glaring in the light of the board.
Then she drove the knife into the board beside his head.
[MEANWHILE]
Mirelock Freightworks sat along the Driftline, just outside the colony's main pressure arc, where cargo haulers crawled through smog and the official shipping routes started to blur.
Inside, the air smelled like sterilizer, coolant, and old metal.
Two figures in yellow hazard suits moved beneath buzzing white lights, their boots clicking over grated flooring. The man in front carried a clipboard under one arm and walked with the bored confidence of someone who hated this place but knew every inch of it. The one behind him—slightly smaller in stature—said nothing. The suit helped with that: heavy gloves, sealed helmet, black visor, breathing filter rasping softly with each inhale.
"First rule," the clipboard man said without looking back, "don't touch anything glowing unless somebody with a better pay grade tells you to."
The new hire nodded.
"Second rule—if it leaks, hisses, hums, whispers, sweats, bleeds, or makes your teeth hurt, you hit the nearest alarm and back your ass up."
Another nod.
The man glanced over his shoulder. "You gettin' all this?"
The new hire gave him a thumbs-up.
"Great," he muttered. "Quiet one. Those either last forever or die on the first shift."
They reached a checkpoint door. The clipboard man tapped his badge against the reader. A blue line scanned him, then the new hire. The door stayed shut.
The man sighed and leaned toward the wall mic. "Derys Cohl. Containment logistics. Got a new runner for bay handling. Taking him to station twelve."
A speaker crackled overhead. "New runner's not on my sheet."
"Yeah, because it's not updated," Derys said. "They never send the fucking updates on time, you know that. Take it up with Halden if you wanna spend the next three hours pretending this place has paperwork that works."
A camera shifted above the door, focusing on the new hire's visor. For one long second, nothing moved. Then the lock clicked, and the door opened.
Derys walked through like he'd never been worried. "See? Confidence. Sound annoyed enough, people assume you're right."
The corridor beyond widened into a glass overlook. Below them stretched the freight rotation floor. Rows of compact freighters sat suspended in cradle locks beneath slow-moving crane arms. Some were small courier vessels. Others were fat-bellied cargo haulers with hazard stripes painted along their spines. Dock crews moved between them in sealed suits, guiding loaders, checking tags, waving containers through clouds of vented steam. Overhead rails carried sealed freight pods through the chamber like coffins on a factory line.
The new hire slowed.
Derys noticed. "Fucking anxiety inducing, in'it? Everybody feels it their first day." He tapped the glass with his pen. "Everything dangerous, expensive, illegal-adjacent, or too rich to wait in normal inspection comes through here. We sort it, flag it, load it, and pray the scanners catch the bad shit before our lungs do."
They reached the next checkpoint: a booth built into the wall. Inside sat a broad-shouldered woman with tired eyes, a shaved head, and a steaming mug beside her console. She slid open the window.
"Derys."
"Maira."
"You're late."
"Gotta stay consistent."
Her eyes shifted to the new hire. "Who's this?"
"Fresh meat. Runner replacement for station twelve. I'm showing him the ropes before he realizes he made a mistake."
Maira held out her hand. Derys passed her the clipboard. She scanned it with a bored frown, then looked back at the new hire.
"Name?"
The new hire lifted his wrist tag. Maira scanned it. The console blinked red, then green. Her eyes narrowed.
Derys leaned in. "Problem?"
"No," she said slowly. "System stutter."
"System stutters every time somebody breathes near it."
She held his stare for another moment, then shoved the clipboard back. "Station twelve. Don't let him wander. If he steps past the red line, I'm flagging both of you."
Derys gave her a lazy salute. "Your faith in me keeps me young."
"You look like shit."
"Then it's working."
The gate unlocked, and Derys led the new hire down onto the freight floor.
The noise hit harder below—crane arms whining, dock clamps slamming, engines cycling low in their housings. The whole chamber moved in layers, every machine missing disaster by inches.
"Your job is simple," Derys said, raising his voice. "Not easy. Simple."
He stopped at a narrow work platform beside the handling lanes. A console blinked beside a rack of scanner wands and loader controls.
"Assignments come through the board. You check the freight tag against the manifest, guide the loader to the right vessel, lock the pod into the cradle, scan the seal twice. Not once. Twice."
The new hire nodded.
"Blue tags are standard. Orange tags are hazardous. Red tags mean call a supervisor." Derys leaned closer. "Black tags mean you didn't see shit, you didn't hear shit, and you suddenly need to take a piss somewhere else."
The new hire tilted his helmet toward him.
Derys pointed with the end of his pen. "Exactly. Don't ask."
A comm chirped on Derys's wrist. He glanced down at it, already annoyed. Then the annoyance left his body. The new hire watched him go still.
Derys brought the wrist closer to his helmet. Whatever came through the comm was too faint to make out, buried under static and the freight floor's machinery, but the cadence changed fast—short bursts, too many voices, someone shouting over someone else.
Derys's grip tightened around the clipboard. "What?" he said.
Another burst of static. His head snapped toward the ceiling. "Say that again."
The answer never came clean.
The first explosion hit somewhere above them.
The whole facility lurched. Light panels flickered. The freight floor groaned as every suspended vessel rocked in its cradle. Crane arms froze mid-swing. A container pod slammed hard against its guide rail, showering sparks across the lane below.
Then the alarms started—not the soft warning chimes of paperwork gone wrong, but real alarms. Red light washed over the chamber in violent pulses.
Workers shouted. Someone fell near bay nine. A loader unit squealed as its brakes locked too late and crushed a stack of empty canisters against the wall.
Derys caught the console to keep from falling, then turned on the new hire. "Stay here," he snapped.
The new hire nodded once.
Derys jabbed a finger at him. "I mean it. Do not move from this station. Do not touch the board. Do not improvise. If anyone asks, you don't know shit and I told you to stay put."
Another boom rolled through the facility, closer this time. Dust shook loose from the overhead beams.
Derys swore under his breath and ran, shoving through a pair of workers as he headed for the far stairwell.
The new hire stayed where he was—still, silent—for about three seconds.
Then he turned to the console.
"Myth," a voice came through his comm, low beneath the rasp of the respirator. "Talk to me."
It was Kade. Myth looked over the console with hurried eyes. "What the fuck is going on outside? It feels like this place just got hit with a bomb."
A pause. Then the voice answered, tighter now. "That's cause it did… pirates."
Myth went still. "You're fucking joking."
"Wish I were. Cinder Maw pirates, looks like. Small crew. Loud entrance. Bad timing."
"Bad timing?" Myth hissed. "That is a heroic understatement."
"Yeah, well, complain later. They're hitting the outer docks and security's peeling off to answer. You've got your opening."
"My opening?"
"Get the package and space the fuck out of there. Like now."
Myth stared across the freight floor. Chaos spread through the chamber in waves. Security teams poured toward the exits. Workers abandoned stations. Crane arms hung dead above half-loaded freighters while red light strobed across every visor, every hull, every warning stripe.
The heist was blown—or maybe it had just become possible.
"Fine," Myth muttered.
"I'll be waiting outside. Hurry."
The comm clicked quiet.
The new hire turned back to the board. Blue tags. Orange tags. Departure windows. Docking numbers. Crew IDs. Containment ratings. Nothing.
He shifted menus. The console asked for authorization. A thin wire slid from beneath his wrist seal and kissed the access port beneath the screen. The display flickered once, then again.
A dockworker ran past behind him, dragging another worker by the arm. Neither looked his way.
The console accepted the hack. New files unfolded beneath the public manifest—private transfers, restricted handling, unlisted departures.
There.
A black-tag freighter sat near the far end of the floor, half-hidden behind larger cargo haulers. Matte gray hull. No crew listed. No cargo description. No destination. Only a serial code and a departure time.
Soon.
The new hire looked up. The ship waited behind the others like it was trying not to exist.
"Found our prize," he murmured.
He left station twelve. Nobody stopped him. The freight floor had become too loud, too panicked, too busy eating itself alive. Myth moved through it in the yellow suit with his head down and his pace just shy of a run—fast enough to look useful, calm enough to look assigned.
A security officer barreled past him with a rifle in both hands. A loader screamed warning tones as its operator tried to reverse it out of a lane blocked by fallen freight. Somewhere above, another impact shuddered through the facility.
The black-tag freighter rocked gently in its cradle.
Up close, it looked uglier than the others—no polished branding, no bright company marks, just matte gray plating, heat scoring near the vents, and a heavy containment seal bolted over the cargo hatch.
Myth stopped in front of it. He checked the serial code once, twice. Match.
The voice returned in his ear. "You got eyes on the package?"
"Working on it."
The seal asked for clearance. The wire slid from his wrist again. This lock was better—meaner. The console fought him for three full seconds before the light turned green.
The cargo hatch hissed. Cold air breathed out from inside the freighter, carrying a smell that didn't belong on any manifest—sweat, fear, blood gone stale.
The new hire froze.
The hatch opened the rest of the way.
At first, just shapes in the dim hold—small, hunched forms pressed together in the dark. Then movement. Figures shifting, shrinking back from the light. And then the faces.
They were children—all Mer-lings, staring back at him with exhausted fear in their eyes.
They sat huddled together on the cargo floor in tattered clothes, wrists chained to a single central line bolted into the deck. Bruises marked their faces, their arms, the thin places where bone pressed too close to skin. One of them, a little girl with one swollen eye, pulled a smaller boy behind her as if her body could hide him.
None of them screamed.
That was worse.
Myth did not move. The respirator rasped once, then again.
His hands rose slowly to his helmet. The seals unlocked with a soft hiss. He pulled the hazmat helmet free.
Myth stared into the freighter, hair damp against his forehead, red eyes wide beneath the flashing alarm lights.
For once, there was no joke ready, no curse sharp enough, no clever little exit—only seven children chained together in a ship he had been sent to rob.
The voice crackled through his comm. "You got quiet. What's going on?"
Myth swallowed. The smallest child flinched at the sound.
"Myth," Kade said, harder now. "Talk to me."
Myth's jaw worked once before the words came.
"Kade…"
He looked at the chain, then at the children.
"We got a problem."
CHAPTER END—