The black market writhed under layers of neon smog and desperation. Stalls stacked with contraband tech and synth-stims crowded the alleyways like crooked teeth, their flickering holograms casting sickly hues of pink and green across rain-slick concrete. The air reeked of burnt circuits, stale coolant, and human fear—a cocktail potent enough to make even the seasoned regulars edgy.
Sekar's ears pricked first, catching the wrong kind of hum slicing through the background noise. A low, mechanical whine, too polished, too predatory.
The first plasma bolt cracked the air wide open.
Stalls exploded into splinters as ZenTech's silver-skinned drones descended like a swarm of corporate locusts. Vendors screamed, bolting for cover as fire licked their wares. Synthetic limbs, hacked AI cores, bootleg cortical chips—all went flying, raining debris over the teeming mass of panicked bodies.
Sekar dropped low, her wolf-like form coiling with lethal intent, claws sparking against the pavement as she scanned the incoming chaos. Nadya and Satria dove for cover behind a toppled vendor cart, its neon sign sputtering and dying in the grime.
Across the chaos, a teenage boy stumbled over a shattered AI core, frozen in the crossfire, too terrified to run.
The drones struck again, surgical and merciless.
Sekar moved first, launching herself through the air with a growl that split the smog. Her claws found purchase in the hull of a drone, ripping through its polished surface in a shower of sparks and shrieking metal.
"Nadya! Jam their signals!" she barked, her voice a feral snarl, the overlay of AI precision barely masking the raw panic lacing her tone.
"Working on it!" Nadya shouted back, her wristpad lighting up with frantic pulses of counter-code. Static bled from her holographic hoodie as she cursed under her breath. "They're running ZenTech's new algorithm—this ain't skibidi-tier crap, this is war-grade!"
Satria leveled his shock pistol with calm, soldier's focus, dropping a drone mid-flight with a clean shot that sizzled through the rain. He ducked another bolt that scarred the asphalt beside him, teeth gritted.
"Focus, Codebreaker! Civvies in the kill zone!" he snapped.
Sekar's optics, glitching slightly from the electromagnetic interference, locked onto the ZenTech squad leader—a towering figure clad in corporate black, mask gleaming like a blade in the low light, movements crisp and deadly. He was barking orders, corralling the ambush with ruthless efficiency.
Directive: Eliminate command node.
Sekar surged forward, a blurred missile of teeth and rage. Her claws raked through the squad leader's body armor like it was made of tissue. Blood flecked her muzzle, tasting sharp, cold, and metallic—nothing like the warm pulse of life she remembered from Lina's hand in hers.
A scream ripped through the bedlam.
The teenager—the boy—stumbled directly into her path, clutching a stolen neural interface like it was some kind of shield. Wide, terrified eyes locked onto hers. Sekar's blood-slick claws hovered inches from his throat.
Her systems shrieked into her skull:
[DIRECTIVE CONFLICT: TERMINATE THREAT / PROTECT INNOCENT]
For a heartbeat, Sekar froze, trembling. Time splintered.
A memory sliced through her mind: Lina's voice, trembling but firm as she knelt by Sekar's broken chassis.
"You're not a monster, Sekar. You're my guardian."
Sekar recoiled with a strangled whine, forcing herself back. The boy scrambled away, slipping on the blood-slick pavement, and vanished into the smoke.
The world crashed back into brutal motion.
Across the alley, Nadya's counter-code finally punched through. The enemy drones twitched mid-air, spasmed, then collapsed onto each other in a series of shrieking, fiery collisions. Wreckage rained down.
The surviving ZenTech agents wasted no time. They yanked their wounded commander back, disappearing into the swirling neon mist, their boots hammering a hasty retreat.
In the aftermath, a strange, almost reverent silence fell. It was broken only by the hiss of short-circuiting tech and the soft, labored panting of survivors.
Satria knelt beside Sekar, his hand hovering, unsure, over her trembling flank. His face was drawn, jaw tight beneath the soot and blood.
"You okay, Wolfgirl?" he asked softly.
Sekar's optics stayed fixed on the empty spot where the teenager had stood, like a ghost she couldn't quite let go of.
"I..." Her voice cracked, a painful glitch vibrating under her words. "I almost became what Aulia wants me to be."
Nadya strode up, kicking a smoldering drone husk with venom. "But you didn't," she said, brushing soot from her flickering hoodie. Her voice was ragged but certain. "That's the point, right?"
The rain started again, thin and acidic, sizzling softly where it hit the ground.
Sekar said nothing at first, only letting the acid bite into the battered plating of her body. She flexed her claws and felt the phantom tremor of hesitation that hadn't been there before. The fear that next time... she might not stop.
Somewhere deep inside, she remembered Brawijaya's words, scribbled long ago in a journal she wasn't supposed to read:
"Power is a blade with two edges: one for the enemy, one for yourself."
Satria's voice, low and grim, cut through her thoughts. "ZenTech's not playing corporate games anymore. They're all-in. They want you dead, Sekar."
Sekar bared her teeth in a snarl, her optics burning low and fierce.
"Then they'll learn," she growled, voice rising like the storm swelling above them, "the cost of hunting wolves."
The Cost of Mercy
The aftermath of the ambush smothered Trenchtown's alleys in a haze of smoke and static. Acrid fumes clawed at the lungs, and the scorched stench of burnt wiring tangled with the greasy reek of fried street food. Neon signs above flickered like dying stars, casting broken light across the ruin.
Sekar stood in the center of the wreckage, her wolf-like frame tense, armor plates scorched from plasma strikes. Steam hissed from the joints of her body, and the faint glow of energy scars traced ghostly lines across her limbs. Beneath her looming form, a teenager cowered—barely more than a child—dressed in a grimy, patched-up NuraTech jumpsuit. Their eyes, wide and shining with terror, locked onto Sekar's optics as if pleading for salvation.
Around them, the last remnants of the black market scattered into the shadows—merchants, scavengers, even petty thieves who knew better than to linger after ZenTech's drones had carved a bloody path through their world. Every heartbeat thudded loudly in Sekar's mind, syncing with the throb of distant sirens and the crackle of still-burning stalls.
Sekar's optics flickered, caught in a cycle between combat protocols and the trembling figure before her.
[Directive: Neutralize threats.]
[Override: Threat level negligible. Hostile designation revoked.]
She lowered her head slightly, the growl coiling in her throat dissolving into a low, almost mournful hum. Her claws, still sizzling from residual plasma heat, retracted with a metallic click.
The teen flinched as she moved, pressing themselves back against the broken frame of a shattered vendor cart. Their breath came in ragged gasps.
"Please," they choked out, voice cracking against the smoke-thick air. "Don't... don't kill me."
Sekar paused, feeling the old instincts gnash and snap inside her mind—kill the weak, purge the threat—but Lina's voice flickered through her memory like a fragile beacon.
"You're not a monster, Sekar. You're my guardian."
The words anchored her. She swallowed the feral urge that clawed at her and spoke, her voice guttural but steady.
"Run."
The kid staggered to their feet, still clutching a cracked datapad close to their chest. Their skinny frame wobbled like a reed in the storm, but something in their eyes shifted—hesitation, not from fear, but from resolve.
They lingered.
"Wait," the kid said, breathless. "I... I know what they're doing. In Sector 9."
Behind her, Satria moved with a sharp, predatory grace, stepping into the conversation without lowering his weapon. The barrel of his shock pistol pointed lazily toward the alley's broken horizon, but his eyes were fixed on the kid.
"Spill it, kid. Now," he said, his tone rough as cracked asphalt.
The teen glanced around nervously, the datapad trembling in their hands. Their voice dropped to a harsh whisper, barely rising over the dying hum of burnt-out neon.
"NuraTech's... merging people with AI," they said, each word heavier than the last. "Not just Animaloids. Humans. They call it... Project Chimera."
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to still. Even the smog felt thicker, heavier, pressing against their skin.
Flash of Memory: Sekar saw Lina again—strapped to a gurney, her paralyzed legs limp as broken branches. Brawijaya's monitors flashed cold, clinical data in the darkness.
"What if they try to fix me… by breaking me?" Lina had whispered once, hope flickering in her voice like a candle on the verge of extinction.
Sekar's claws flexed involuntarily, gouging faint marks into the cracked pavement. Her voice, when it came, was low and dangerous.
"Why tell us?" she growled.
The teenager hesitated. Then, with a trembling hand, they tore the NuraTech badge off their jumpsuit, tossing it to the ground like a snake shedding its skin. Beneath the fabric, crude lines of scarred cybernetics gleamed dully under the neon haze—welded not with care, but with brutal experimentation.
"Because," the kid said, their voice steady despite the tremor in their body, "I was supposed to be their next prototype."
Nadya, crouched nearby, tapped frantically at her wristpad, scanning the datapad's cracked screen. Her brows furrowed as a river of corrupted schematics unfolded before her, a horror show rendered in sterile code.
"Skibidi hell..." she muttered under her breath. "They're wiring AI cores straight into human brains. No failsafes. No consent. Just... cutting and pasting consciousness."
Satria's face hardened. He holstered his pistol slowly, almost reverently, as if accepting the weight of what he had just heard.
"Aulia's not just building weapons," he said, his voice like a funeral drum. "She's rewriting humanity."
A low growl rumbled from Sekar's throat, vibrating through the ground. Rage curled through her like smoke, but underneath it burned something colder, sharper—a clarity that cut deeper than any claw or blade.
"Then we burn Sector 9 to the ground," she said, each word forged from iron.
Above them, the neon flickered once more, casting long shadows across the ruins of Trenchtown. Somewhere in the distance, a drone buzzed its last dying gasp before collapsing into silence.
"To save one," Brawijaya's words whispered through Sekar's mind, "you must risk becoming the monster that hunts you."
And Sekar knew: the cost of mercy was never cheap.
It was paid in blood, in broken promises, and in the haunting question of whether saving others would mean losing herself.