Argus emerged from the drain tunnel, soaked to the elbows, boots grinding against the rusted ladder. His eyes locked on the man standing ten feet away beneath the flickering streetlamp.
Rourke.
Clean coat. No badge. One hand in his pocket. The other resting on a cigarette he hadn't lit.
Chen climbed up next, gun already drawn low. Behind her, Derrick struggled to pull himself through the opening, still limping.
No one spoke.
Argus didn't lower his weapon.
"You're a long way from Internal Affairs," he said.
"I'm not here on department business," Rourke replied. "And I'm not here to shoot you."
Chen scoffed. "That's new."
Rourke raised his free hand, showing nothing in it. "If I wanted you gone, the drain would've collapsed while you were still in it."
Argus stepped onto the wet pavement. "So talk."
"I warned you not to run," Rourke said. "Grayridge isn't a place you walk into. It's where ghosts go to be buried."
Chen circled wide, watching both sides of the street. No patrol cars. No drones. Just the steady hum of city breath and the scent of wet metal.
"You're saying Pandora runs Grayridge?" she asked.
Rourke shook his head. "I'm saying it started there. Everything that came after MANTIS, Reclaimer, host transfers it all spun out of one room, one file, and one doctor: Morain."
Argus lowered his gun. Slightly. "You work for them."
"I used to clean their floors," Rourke said. "Now I just try not to drown in what's left."
"So why warn us?" Argus asked.
"Because Grayridge doesn't have exits. You go in, you vanish. Body intact. Paper trail erased."
Argus narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"
"Simple trade." Rourke reached into his coat slow, cautious and pulled out a manila envelope. "Blueprints. You want Morain? He's not dead. He's working under an alias. This gives you the door code and two names who still walk the halls."
Chen took the file. Checked it. Real paper. Yellowed edges. Not digital.
Argus scanned the page. A correctional facility layout Grayridge. Highlighted in red: ECHO WING. No public access. Below medical. Below psychiatric. The bottom.
"You really expect me to believe this is charity?"
"No," Rourke said. "I expect you to believe that some of us want this to end differently than it began."
"What's the cost?" Argus asked.
"Don't burn the ones who didn't know better," Rourke replied. "The ones who followed orders but never saw the core. They're not saints, but they're not devils either."
Argus stared at him. "You mean your friends."
Rourke didn't flinch. "I mean the ones who still go home to kids and think they're protecting the city."
Chen looked to Argus. "Do we deal?"
Argus hesitated.
Then nodded once. "We deal."
Rourke passed the second half of the folder forward. "Alias: Dr. Ian Lusk. Real name: Levi Morain. Still using the same signature on internal logs just filtered through federal records. The escort officer who checks him in and out? Lt. Sasha Mirelli. Don't approach her cold."
"Why?"
"Because she used to run deep psych breaks for Reclaimer subjects. She's loyal. And she's dangerous."
Argus tucked the file into his coat.
He turned to leave.
"Cutter," Rourke said, voice quiet now. "You weren't the first host."
Argus froze.
"You're just the one who woke up."
The words hit different. He didn't turn back.
But Chen did.
"What does that mean?" she asked.
Rourke didn't answer.
Instead, he looked up.
So did Argus.
A thin black shape crossed the sky overhead silent, hovering.
Not a police drone. No siren. No scan light.
Smaller. Civilian design. Custom winglets.
"Eyes," Argus muttered. "Get off the street."
Rourke was already walking the opposite direction. "This part wasn't mine."
Chen followed Argus fast as they ducked behind a parked truck. The drone circled twice, then veered east no obvious target. No alert.
But Argus knew the pattern.
It wasn't sweeping.
It was marking.
As they moved toward the next alley, Chen's burner buzzed with a low-frequency ping. She pulled it from her jacket.
No message.
Just coordinates.
A location deep in Brooklyn.
One word attached:
"Theta."
Chen held the burner in her hand, thumb hovering just above the screen. Rain slid down her wrist as she stared at the text:
"Theta."
Under it, a set of coordinates deep Brooklyn, near the Redline District. Abandoned telecom zone. No NYPD presence. No precinct jurisdiction.
Argus leaned in. "Who sent it?"
"No contact. No signal history." Her voice dropped. "It came through like a backdoor push. Military format."
Derrick sat against the alley wall behind them, one arm wrapped tight around his ribs. "Theta. That what they're calling the next one?"
Argus's eyes didn't leave the screen. "No. That's what they're calling a failure."
They reached the site an hour later silent, half-lit, with the smell of rot creeping out from the cracked concrete. It looked like a relay station from the outside. Telecom logos faded. Chain-link fence sagging. One side had been welded shut, the other bent just enough for someone to slip through.
Argus didn't hesitate. He crouched, pushed in first.
Inside was pitch black.
Chen followed, flashlight sweeping over exposed conduit and shattered screens. Derrick came last, slower now, favoring his right leg.
They moved down a hallway that led to a security door half open, rusted in place. Behind it, stairs led down to a single chamber, no bigger than a storage unit.
The glow came from one monitor.
Still running.
Still humming.
Argus stepped forward and checked the feed. The interface was crude raw backend, no UI polish. But it was familiar.
Pandora's original codebase. But fragmented.
Not maintained by MANTIS. Not authorized. Just… copied.
On-screen, a single heading pulsed:
HOST INITIATIVE: THETA PROTOCOL
STATUS: Unstable
Subject Identity: Elijah Karter(Deceased – 2016)
Implanted Host: CLASSIFIED / PARTIAL CORRUPTION
"Another experiment," Chen said, reading over his shoulder.
"No," Argus said. "A rogue one."
He opened the host profile.
Logs flashed across the screen. Emotional volatility charts. Memory blackouts. Violent shifts in behavior. Delayed stabilization. The last line read:
Theta Candidate Flagged: Irreparable / Active Surveillance Terminated.
Chen tapped the next tab Subject Surveillance.
A still frame loaded.
A face.
Mid-30s. Buzzcut. Civilian clothes. Standing at a street corner near 3rd and Hamilton. Not smiling.
Argus stepped closer.
The face wasn't Elijah Karter.
But it wasn't fully someone else either.
Half-merged.
Glitches in the iris scan. Facial drift. Software couldn't decide which identity to confirm.
"He didn't stabilize," Chen whispered.
"He became both," Argus said. "The host and the intruder."
"That's why they terminated surveillance," Derrick muttered. "They couldn't track which part was still alive."
Argus clicked through the logs.
One line stood out:
Last Location Ping: Kingside Borough Precinct Detective Jonah Reyes
"Reyes," Chen muttered. "He's still active. I've seen him on precinct boards. Midtown shifts."
"Not anymore," Argus said. "This version hasn't been seen in two weeks."
He reached into the relay system and pulled the plug on the secure port. Inserted his drive. Copied the files fast host logs, identity charts, subject uploads.
"Someone's still running this," he said.
"You think it's Morain?" Chen asked.
Argus shook his head. "This isn't surgical. This is panic tech. Like someone trying to finish a broken job."
Chen walked to the far wall. Her light swept over empty monitors.
Then she froze.
"Argus."
He turned.
On the wall, scrawled in marker under the central console, a single line had been written in jagged black:
You're not the only ghost, Cutter. And not all of us stay quiet.
Argus stared at the words.
A drip echoed through the space.
The screen above them began to flicker static surging.
His drive clicked once.
Copy complete.
He pulled it, killed the terminal.
The chamber went dark.
Then the lights above clicked on one by one.
Too fast.
Automatic.
Chen turned. "We triggered something."
Argus reached for his gun.
Behind them, the stairwell filled with footsteps.
Derrick backed toward the wall. "They're not here to stop Theta," he said. "They're here to find the next one."
A voice boomed from the stairwell.
Unfiltered. No radio. Just a man's voice through an old echo chamber.
"Leave the files, Cutter. You walk out clean."
Argus raised his pistol toward the stairs, jaw set.
"Not a chance."