Cain didn't return to the Guttercrew pit right away. He didn't pocket the burner like it didn't matter either. He kept it in hand, walking until the sounds of Sector C-9 faded behind steel doors and stale wind. The burner was cold now, blank screen holding just enough residual warmth to tell him one thing—it hadn't finished wiping when he picked it up. That meant failure in the protocol. That meant something was left behind.
He entered one of the side corridors snaking beneath the old freight hub. Most of Ashgate's tech didn't extend this deep. These lanes had been sealed off when the southern underlines collapsed five years back. Now the tunnel lights stuttered like old film, and water seeped down the walls from rusted coolant pipes overhead.
Cain crouched by an old access hatch and pried the panel open with his blade. The burner in his hand buzzed once, the screen flickering—not a message, but static. Beneath the static was something else. The kind of trace that meant the command layer wasn't wiped, only masked.
He pulled a cracked adapter cord from his inner coat. Plugged one end into the burner's edge, the other into a relay port built into the wall—probably dead, but worth trying. The port sparked once. Then again. The burner's screen blinked. No logo. No ping. Just a slow, sliding string of text:
"Protocol Acknowledged. Response Node: Sector 4K – Hold Position."
The message stayed visible for three seconds. Then the screen darkened. A faint click snapped inside the casing, and Cain pulled the plug. The internal battery was fried. No reboot. He stared at the blank screen. Not long. Then slid it into the drainage gap below the relay box and walked on.
Sector 4K. He knew the area. High elevation. No direct crew territory. Mostly scavvers and off-grid freelancers who didn't want to pay tax to anyone. Which made it the perfect drop zone for second-tier jobs. Official ones didn't land there. But unofficial jobs? Ones you didn't want logged? They did.
He took the northeast drain path, walking under old signal towers, through a half-collapsed tunnel marked with flickering hazard glyphs. The higher he climbed, the thinner the air felt. Dust from the broken upper decks hadn't settled in months. The ground here was always dry. Cracked concrete layered in broken glass and bent rebar. By the time he reached the lower rim of 4K, the sun had dipped under the haze line. No real daylight. Just a dull red glow bleeding through the fog where the rooftops met the city shell.
4K's main depot sat in a ravine between two metal spines of collapsed mag-rail scaffolding. A few broken hangars were still standing. Most were stripped for scrap, roofless and wind-blown. But one—Hangar Eight—still had a door. He circled once, scanned for movement, and didn't see anyone. But that didn't mean he was alone. It never did.
Cain pulled the door open slow. Hinges groaned. The inside was colder. Echoed in the wrong spots. Thin light from the sun cut through a skylight shattered in three places, landing in strips across the hangar floor. Someone was already down. A man. Older. Lying back-first against the support beam. Blood dry around the head. One clean shot. Left temple. Execution-style. No signs of struggle. Cain stepped in, boots silent against the dust, and knelt beside the body. No ID. No Guttercrew ink. No weapons. Probably a handler.
He stood. On the table near the back wall sat a burner. Still active. Blinking slow. Cain crossed the space and picked it up. The screen lit once.
"Too slow. Keep moving."
Then it darkened. A soft click sounded from the casing. Self-erasure. Cain held it for another second, then let it rest against the table. It didn't matter. Whoever killed the man didn't stay. Whoever left the message knew someone would come. But the timing was too clean. They expected someone like Cain to follow.
He didn't find that interesting. What interested him was the burner's ID tag—it matched Feld's. Not the serials, but the coding pattern. Same frequency class. Same core loop. That meant this wasn't random.
He turned back to the body. Still no movement. Still alone. Then he glanced once more at the table, left the burner there, and stepped out into the cold.
This wasn't his contract. Not officially. Not yet.
And he didn't take jobs off the grid without clearing the last one properly.
Cain moved fast. Back down the ridge. Through the broken lines. Into the underground walkways behind the incinerator pit. The Guttercrew district still pulsed like a live wire—loud from the outside, but quiet at the bone. He made his way straight to the logistics wing, past the rusted scaffolds and cracked panels, toward the door where finished jobs were handed in and new ones waited.
The logistics wing smelled like ozone and diesel. Pipes hissed overhead and the walls pulsed faintly from the buried generators humming deeper in the subfloor. Cain entered through the low hatch, bootsteps muted on the rubber mesh walkway, and nodded once to the shift clerk posted behind reinforced glass. The man didn't greet him—just gestured at the tray.
Cain slid the sealed burner into the deposit port. The screen beside the clerk blinked green. Logged. Cleared. No flag.
As Cain turned to leave, a side panel to the clerk's left opened with a hiss. Someone stepped out—shoulders broad, coat torn at the collar. Marrow. He didn't look surprised.
"Ghost Rat," Marrow said. "Didn't expect you back this quick."
Cain said nothing. Marrow held out a sealed steel case, slimmer than usual. "They sent this through backdoor clearance. Optional job. They want your touch on it. Said your name moved up two tiers after last week."
Cain didn't reach for it immediately.
Marrow smirked. "You earned it. No skips, no blowback. They like that."
Cain finally took the case and opened it. Inside sat a burner—matte black, reinforced casing, tiered emitter node at the base. It was real. Clean. And high-tier.
He powered it on. The screen pulsed blue, then faded into the job packet.
[NEW JOB: Tier B Clearance. Optional Acceptance / Priority Flag: Efficiency.]
Cain scanned the name. Then stopped.
He didn't recognize the face. But the name triggered something. Not in his head—deeper. Like a nerve catching fire beneath old scar tissue. The kind of memory that didn't belong to him.
He shut the screen and stood still.
Marrow tilted his head. "Something wrong?"
"No." Cain slipped the burner into his coat. "Just a name I didn't expect to see again."
"You've seen it before?"
Cain didn't respond.
Marrow leaned closer. "Ghost Rat. You good?"
Cain nodded once. "Better than I should be."
He stepped out into the hallway again. The door slid shut behind him. The air felt tighter now, like the pipes had narrowed without moving. He took two turns and stopped in a storage alcove near the stairs.
He pulled the burner back out. Opened it again. The name pulsed on the screen.
Eli's voice cracked in his skull—distant but sharp.
"I know that name. I don't want to remember why."
Cain stared.
"They were there. The night I died."