Cain crossed into Sector 9 without ceremony. No gates no guards Just a windless silence and a sick blue glow leaking through the cracked pavement. The city changed here.
Buildings stood straighter. The air tasted filtered. Trash stopped appearing like it feared this zone. Not clean, just scrubbed. No tags, no scent. Every edge manicured by unseen hands.
He stepped off the gravel and into the corridor between two towers. Something clicked beneath his boot. He froze but nothing exploded.
He crouched, peeled back a thin metal plate. Beneath it, a sensor grid blinked once and went dark again. No alarm, just a log. They didn't want to stop people. They wanted to know who passed through.
Cain rose and kept walking.
This wasn't a place for civilians. He could feel the air compressing tighter with each step. Everything here was a test.
The streets ahead forked into mirrored alleys with dead ends, visually identical. Cameras were embedded into street lamps, but no red dots blinked. They weren't watching in real-time. They were recording.
Cain adjusted his jacket and took the right alley. The walls hummed faintly. Soundproofed. The tiles muted even his footsteps.
Ten paces in, his neck prickled. He looked up. A beam stretched overhead, clean and untagged. Beneath it hung a faint line of pulsing white — a sensor ring. Cain slowed his breathing. He could leave back out and try the other alley but this zone wasn't random, It was mapped. His presence here was already noted.
Backing out would flag him anyway. So he timed it. Watched the pattern of the pulse. Waited until the white flickered once then stepped. One foot. Breath in. Another foot. Heel first. Slow.
The white blinked but it didn't change color. He passed under it. The System hummed low in his skull.
[Signature Deviation: +0.2% — No Lock]
Cain exhaled through his nose. He moved on up ahead, the alley spilled into a long street where a squad of three masked men in grey armor passed from right to left. Their boots clicked in perfect rhythm.
Cain crouched behind a dumpster with scorched edges.
One of them spoke:
"Ghost registered northeast grid. Could be a test seed."
"You think it's the Tier rat?"
"Doesn't match the route pattern. No jump tech."
"Still. Protocol says if it touches 9, we engage."
Cain's jaw tightened. He wasn't the only target here. They passed.
He slid from cover, checked the path they came from, then moved the opposite way. He reached a secondary fence line which was rusted, broken at the base then slide through. The wires shocked lightly against his skin but didn't stop him.
Then he was in the sector 9's inner circle. The street signs changed language. Old military codes. Building numbers replaced with Greek characters.
No citizens. No sound.
Cain walked for five more blocks before he saw movement again. One of the masked patrols had circled back — not walking, but scanning. He held a triangular device that pulsed red with every step. Cain ducked behind a wrecked bike pod. The device passed his hiding spot.
Then a small chime rang out. The man stopped.
"Heat trace," he muttered. "Near field."
Cain didn't move. The scanner chirped again this time louder. The man stepped forward. Cain reached for the ground. Felt for gravel. Found a loose steel shard instead. He waited for chaos to strike.
As the soldier leaned forward to peer behind the bike pod, Cain slammed the shard into the scanner. The device cracked. Cain swept the man's leg and sent him sideways. The armor took the fall. He came up fast — faster than Cain expected.
Cain rolled back and ducked a baton swing. He stepped in and twisted the man's wrist — not to disarm, but to pull the scanner free. Then he smashed it against the wall. The soldier backed up, assessing. Not afraid but tactical.
"Wrong alley," the man said.
Cain didn't answer. He turned and ran. No alarms sounded. But the air pressure changed again.
The System buzzed:
[Pursuit Probability: High – Recommended Route: Below]
Cain cut left, dropped into a maintenance shaft, and kept moving.
Cain dropped into the maintenance shaft feet-first, the steel groaning under his landing. He slid down a rusted incline, caught a hanging pipe, and swung into the next corridor before his boots fully hit ground. Everything smelled like wire dust and rot.
Lights flickered above the narrow path—industrial strips half-dead, powered by a forgotten circuit. Beneath his boots, old tram tracks ran through the concrete like broken veins.
He kept moving.
The System buzzed faintly.
[Signal Noise Increasing — Local Net Access Detected]
Someone had reactivated part of the hub. Cain slowed because he heard humming. Not from machines—voices. Muffled. Two of them. He crept toward the noise, flattened behind a maintenance crate, and peeked around.
Two figures in long dustcoats stood beside an open transit locker. Their backs were turned. One typed into a terminal. The other watched the tunnel, rifle slung loose at his side.
Cain couldn't see their faces, but he could see the badge stamped on the metal locker:
Tier Test - Echo Access (Restricted).
Not civilian. Not gang.
This was an unauthorized Tier test site.
The locker pulsed with sync energy—lightblue, subtle. Whatever was inside had a signature Cain's System responded to.
[Resonance Detected – Suppressed Layer: Partial Awakening]
Cain's breath hitched and he didn't move. He couldn't not yet. The man with the rifle turned. Cain froze in shadow. The man muttered, "I still think it's a fake trail."
"Orders say leave a tether," the other replied. "Mire doesn't trust signal data anymore. Wants movement."
Cain's jaw clenched.
Mire.
He watched the one with the terminal drop something into the locker—a small drive tube. Then he sealed it and pressed a sequence into the pad. Cain read the entry.
"Rat signature. G-Class. Repeater tag: Ashvale gutter drift."
They weren't just baiting Tier operatives. They were trying to link him back to Guttercrew.
Frame him? Pin him? Or test if he'd circle back to roots?
Cain didn't wait to find out, he moved. One clean step, two.
He launched a scrap from his boot across the corridor. It hit steel. The rifleman turned, just as Cain sprinted forward. He didn't go for the kill.
He hit the locker first, yanked the terminal screen off its hinge and tossed it down the tunnel. Then he smashed the drive tube with his heel.
The rifleman shouted. The second man turned too late.
Cain elbowed him hard in the throat, drove him back into the wall. Grabbed the half-sealed locker and slammed it shut. Triggered the safety latch with a fast override from the broken terminal.
But not fast enough. Gunfire cracked, Cain dove. A bullet grazed his arm. Warm blood dripped from his arm. He gritted his teeth, rolled behind the locker frame, and kicked the wall open behind a loose panel.
Then he ran fast while limping and bleeding but he could not stop.
Behind him, one of the men shouted, "He tagged the core! Gutter signature confirmed—send it up the line!"
Cain's chest pounded. They'd flipped it. Turned his origin into a liability. He needed cover, not clean turf, not cold tech corridors either.. He needed a place where tracking tech glitched. Where data didn't matter.
Where his Guttercrew signature wouldn't be suspicious—it'd be invisible. He needed to disappear and there was only one place in Ashvale where ghosts could hide without being hunted by scanners.
Back where he started, back in the pit.
[System Ping: Damage registered. Hemorrhage stable.]
[Suggested Action: Return to Ground-level Cover. Gutter signature re-absorption optimal.]
Cain didn't need the prompt. He was already climbing the last ladder.