Caleb sat handcuffed to a steel table.
The interrogation room smelled of bleach and rusted iron. Security guards had stripped his surplus armor, leaving him in a sweat-soaked undershirt. The cold air raised goosebumps on his arms.
Vice-Captain Iris Calder walked through the door. She dropped a military datapad between his chained wrists.
"The mainframe registered a standard Tier-Four drill," Iris said. She tapped the glass screen. An image of the pulverized Class-5 brute appeared. "My engineers are currently hauling twelve tons of unauthorized wreckage out of Sector Four. Jaxson claims a scrubber with a marginal sync rate executed a Danger-Class machine."
Caleb kept his breathing even, managing the expansion of his healing ribs. "I hit the exhaust vent."
"Class-5 models do not overheat in three minutes," Iris countered. She leaned her scarred knuckles against the table. "Someone bypassed the military firewall. They locked the blast doors. They isolated my squad."
"The vent was glowing," Caleb said. "I drove the knife in. The machine died."
Iris swiped to a new image on the datapad. "A standard combat knife cannot pierce industrial casing. The telemetry shows a massive kinetic impact. Your one-point-two percent sync rate cannot generate that leverage."
"Gravity did the work," Caleb replied. "I jumped from the top of the chassis. The weight of the drop drove the blade through the grate."
Iris studied his face. She searched for a tell, cataloging the tension in his jaw and the steadiness of his gaze.
"You survive the disposal yards. You survive the urban zone. You survive this," Iris listed. She pushed off the table. "You are either a complete fluke, or you are an inside threat."
The heavy steel door unlatched.
Captain Ren Kade entered the room. He carried a separate datapad. He looked tired and visibly irritated.
"We have a political problem," Kade announced. He looked at Iris, then shifted his heavy gaze to Caleb. "The Mitsurugi Corporation flagged the kill house telemetry. Because you were wearing their surplus armor during the breach, they are officially classifying the data spike as a proprietary hardware anomaly."
Kade stopped at the edge of the table. "To protect their intellectual property, they invoked a contract clause demanding immediate oversight of your physical output. We cannot afford to lose the Mitsurugi supply chain over a technical dispute."
Caleb stared at the Captain. The corporations funded the war. The military had to comply with the billionaires who built the gear.
"Pending a full anomaly review, the corporation requires a designated asset to monitor your metrics," Kade stated. His voice carried a flat, administrative weight. "I am assigning Recruit Kikaru Mitsurugi to monitor you. This is a temporary oversight attachment. It is not open-ended babysitting. You are to comply with the corporate mandate until my engineers clear your gear."
"He is a variable," Iris warned Kade.
"He is a Defense Force asset until the data proves otherwise," Kade replied. He gestured to the hallway. "Move him to solitary holding. My engineers need time to pull the encrypted data from his helmet."
Two guards entered the room. They hauled Caleb out of the metal chair and escorted him down the sterile corridor.
Holding Cell 4 was a concrete box featuring zero windows and a solid steel door.
The guards locked him inside. Caleb sat on the edge of the rigid metal cot. His bruised right arm throbbed a steady rhythm. The severe caloric deficit drained his energy, leaving his muscles heavy and slow.
The heavy deadbolts clicked open.
A man wearing a white lab coat over a wrinkled gray uniform walked into the cell. Dark circles bruised the pale skin under his eyes. He carried a heavy diagnostic terminal under one arm and Caleb's cracked surplus helmet in the other.
"I am Chief Engineer Aris," the man said. He dropped the terminal onto the metal table and pulled up the only chair. "I run the grid."
Caleb rested his forearms on his knees.
Aris plugged a thick black cable directly into the helmet's data port. He typed rapidly on the terminal's glass screen.
"The proctors think a rogue Guild bypassed the external firewalls," Aris muttered, keeping his eyes locked on the scrolling green code. "They are wrong. The intruder piggybacked on a biometric feed right inside the kill house."
Aris tapped the glass hard. "The intruder shredded our encryption. But they made a mistake. They left the tether open."
He pointed to a red progress bar ticking across the top of the display.
"I trapped the ghost code inside this helmet's motherboard," Aris said. A fierce pride bled into his exhausted voice. "I am locking them out of the purge protocols. I am tracing the signal right back to their physical server."
The red bar hit eighty percent.
A faint crackle of static hissed from the helmet resting on the table. The cracked blue visor flickered.
Purple text bled across the shattered glass.
[Unknown User: He is too fast. I am burning the bridge.]
A high-pitched mechanical squeal erupted from the helmet's battery casing.
"Wait, no!" Aris shouted. He lunged to rip the cable out of the port.
The lithium core inside the helmet sparked violently. White smoke vented from the rubber seals. An electrical pop cracked through the small room. The power surge traveled straight up the black cable, blowing out the diagnostic terminal in a shower of sparks and dead pixels.
The cell plunged back into the dim glow of the emergency lights.
Aris stood over the smoking hardware. He breathed in the sharp stench of melted plastic. His shoulders slumped.
"She destroyed the physical drive," Aris whispered. He dragged a shaking hand down his face. "She burned her own backdoor just to stop the trace. The evidence is gone."
Grabbing the fried terminal, Aris keyed the door open and rushed out into the corridor. The heavy steel door swung shut behind him.
Caleb remained on the metal cot.
The military had successfully cornered the encrypted viewer. By forcing her to permanently sever her connection to the Defense Force grid just to save her own identity, Aris proved she could be beaten.
Ten minutes passed in complete silence.
The heavy deadbolts disengaged with a loud clack. Captain Ren Kade filled the doorway.
"Chief Engineer Aris claims a hostile entity hijacked your helmet and overloaded his terminal," Kade stated. "But the physical drive is destroyed. My engineers have zero usable data to verify his claim or tie you to the Sector Four breach."
Kade stepped aside, leaving the corridor open.
"You are officially cleared of active sabotage charges," Kade continued. "You are released back to active duty. Remember the temporary oversight condition. Step out of line once, and I will discharge you into the street."
Caleb pushed himself off the cot. He walked past the Captain and stepped out into the corridor. The military had cleared him. He remained on the payroll.
Navigating the maze of underground hallways, he headed straight for the Seventh Division locker room.
He stopped in front of his assigned rusted locker and pulled the metal handle.
A black garment bag hung inside.
Caleb stared at the bag. He unzipped the canvas. A tailored charcoal-gray suit rested inside, cut from heavy wool. A burner comms-chip sat pinned to the lapel. A thick, cream-colored card was tucked into the breast pocket.
He pulled the card out. The handwriting was precise.
[They let you out. Put the suit on. We have a dinner reservation in the Upper Sectors at eight o'clock.]