The stench of rain-slicked asphalt and desperation hung heavy in the neon-drenched streets of Sector Gamma. It was a familiar perfume. My world was painted in shades of grit and survival, and tonight was no different. The target was a repurposed military transport, armored and ugly, rumbling through the choked arteries of the city. Inside, a crate of anomaly tech—weaponry warped by the dimensional bleed, things that tore reality apart at the seams. My job was simple: make sure it never reached the buyer.
My methods, however, were complicated by the company I was keeping. They called themselves a team. I called them liabilities.
"Status," I grunted into my comm, my voice a low rasp. I was perched on a crumbling fire escape, the city's chaotic symphony a dull roar below.
"The stage is set, big guy," Kane's voice, smooth as polished chrome, slid into my ear. "Local gangs think they're providing security for a simple arms deal. I've seeded rumors of a triple-cross. They're jumpy. The civilian traffic is… being rerouted. A little story about a ruptured gas main does wonders for civic cooperation."
I didn't need to see him to picture it. Kane, with his shiny badge and 'charm' was a powerful tool. He was more of a con-man than detective. A liability
"Juno, eyes on me," I ordered.
"Always, Ghost," came the clipped, energetic reply. A flicker in my vision, and the world expanded. My internal HUD lit up with a dozen video feeds, a mosaic of hijacked security cameras and a repurposed news drone she'd snatched from the sky. "Truck is two blocks out. Four armed escorts in a trailing sedan. Six more inside the transport, driver and co-driver included. All hardcases. Scav-gang ink."
Juno was the ghost in the machine, her fingers dancing across a datapad, bending the city's digital nervous system to her will. Her intel was flawless. But technology could be jammed, traced, turned. Another liability.
"Nadia?"
Silence. Then, a single, sharp click over the comm. She was there. Of them all, she was the one who worried me the most. She never spoke unless necessary, her eyes holding a stillness that mirrored my own. She moved like a phantom, a blade in the dark. I'd seen her fight. It was like watching a predator. She was shadowing my position on a rooftop across the street, a silhouette against the garish glow of a noodle bar sign. Too much like me. Rivals don't make for good partners.
"Target is entering the kill-zone," Juno announced. "Kane, light it up."
Down below, Kane stepped out of an alley, waving his hands frantically. "Hey! Hey! My ride! You clipped my ride!" He gestured to a beat-up hover-courier now conveniently blocking the narrow street. The lead sedan screeched to a halt. Perfect.
"Showtime," I muttered, dropping from the fire escape into the alley below. The landing was a silent flex of muscle and sinew.
The back doors of the trailing car burst open, four thugs spilling out, armed with scavenged pulse rifles. They were focused on Kane, who was putting on a masterclass in belligerent desperation.
"Two, left alley," Juno's voice was a calm current in the storm.
I was already moving. The first thug never saw me. My combat knife, a cold extension of my will, slid between his ribs, severing his spine. I caught him before he fell, lowering him gently into the shadows. One down. I drew my suppressed pistol, a custom-built .45 caliber nail-driver. The second thug was turning, sensing something was wrong. A single thump, and a hole appeared in the center of his forehead. He crumpled.
From across the street, a flicker of movement. Nadia. She'd dropped from her perch as I had, a twin shadow in the urban gloom. The other two thugs were advancing on Kane. She took the one on the right. She didn't use a gun. A flash of steel, a choked gasp. He went down with a blade in his throat. I took the last one. A double-tap to the chest. He collapsed onto the hood of the sedan. The whole engagement took less than four seconds. Kane didn't even flinch.
"Clear," I said into the comm.
"Doors opening on the main transport," Juno warned. "They're spooked."
The heavy rear doors of the truck groaned open. Four more men, better armed, better armored, formed a defensive perimeter. I hugged the wall of the alley, Nadia melting into the shadows beside me. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. An understanding passed between us—a language of violence that needed no words.
I gave a hand signal: I go high, you go low. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
I broke cover first, a calculated risk. A burst of pulse fire stitched the wall where I'd been a moment before. I fired twice, dropping the man on the far left. His armor held the first shot, but the second found the gap at his neck.
As they focused on me, Nadia exploded from the darkness. She was a whirlwind of controlled fury. A disarm, an elbow to the jaw, a knife to the femoral artery. One down. She used his falling body as a shield, rolling behind the truck's massive tire. The remaining two were confused, their formation broken. It was all I needed.
Thump. Thump.
Headshots. Clinical. Efficient. The street fell silent, save for the hum of the truck's engine and the distant city wail.
"Interior clear," Nadia's voice, low and steady, came over the comm. She was already inside the truck. "Securing the asset."
I did a final sweep, my pistol leading the way. Kane was already calmly walking back into the alley, his manufactured panic replaced by a cool professionalism. Juno's drone buzzed overhead, a silent sentinel. The synergy was… unnerving. It was too smooth. Too clean. In my world, clean operations meant something was wrong.
I climbed into the back of the truck. The crate was there, bolted to the floor. It hummed with a low, dissonant energy, the air around it shimmering. Nadia stood beside it, her blade already wiped clean. She watched me, her gaze analytical, as if deconstructing my every move.
"Job's done," I stated, my voice flat. We got the crate back to a derelict warehouse that served as their safehouse. It was anonymous, functional. That, at least, I could appreciate.
While they worked on securing the crate, I cleaned my weapons. The ritual was grounding: the scent of solvent, the cold weight of steel, the precise click of components locking into place. I packed my gear.
"The job's done," I said, shrugging on my pack. I didn't look at them.
Kane stopped mid-sentence, turning from a conversation with Nadia. "Whoa, hold on. Just like that? You're walking?"
"I don't do teams," I said, the words tasting like gravel. It was a creed I'd lived by since my last team ended up in a ditch, courtesy of a betrayal I still carried like shrapnel in my soul. "I don't do attachments. This was a one off."
Juno scoffed from her corner, not even looking up from the holographic display radiating from her datapad. "You think this was about one crate of junk?" She swiped a hand through the air, and the display projected onto the grimy brick wall.
It was a map. A map of our shattered continent, pockmarked with glowing green nodes. A single red node pulsed weakly in our sector.
"The comms uplink you took out? The one broadcasting the anomaly frequency?" she asked, her voice sharp.
I said nothing. I remembered the fire, the screaming metal, the feeling of my ribs cracking.
"That's it," she said, pointing to the red dot. "You think you shut it down?" Her finger swept across the map, illuminating the swarm of green lights that stretched from coast to coast. "You barely dented it. You cut off one leaky faucet in a house that's already flooded. This tech, this crate… it's just a symptom. The network is the disease."
A cold stillness settled over the room. The scale of it… it was impossible. One man couldn't fight a network.
Kane stepped forward, his voice losing its usual silky edge, replaced by a hard, pragmatic urgency. "Look, Ghost. We know your reputation. We know you work alone. But that won't cut it anymore. What are you going to do? Hit one tower a month for the next fifty years? This is bigger than you. It's bigger than any one of us." He gestured to the room. "But together? Juno gets the intel. I handle the people, the logistics, the lies that keep us alive. Nadia and you… you're the scalpel."
He met my gaze. "You don't have to like us. You don't even have to trust us. But if you want results—if you actually want to win—you need us."
My gaze shifted to Nadia. She hadn't moved, hadn't spoken. She just watched me, her dark eyes unblinking. It wasn't a plea. It wasn't a threat. It was an assessment, a measurement. She was weighing me, not as a teammate, but as a force of nature. An equal. Or a rival you keep close.
The old instincts screamed at me. Run. Disappear. They'll use you. They'll betray you. That's how I'd survived this long. By being a ghost, untethered and unseen.
But I couldn't ignore the logic. The map on the wall was a testament to my own failure. I hadn't won. I'd just survived one more round. I looked at them—the talker, the tech, the shadow. A collection of liabilities. A dysfunctional, untrustworthy crew.
But they were effective.
I gave no answer. I let the silence hang, a weapon in itself. Internally, a cold calculation was being made. A recalibration of my operational parameters. Kane was wrong. I didn't need them. But they were a tool. A powerful one. And a tool is meant to be used. The trick was to be the one holding the handle, not the one being pointed at the enemy. He doesn't have to trust them. He just has to use them—before they use him.
My hand rested on the grip of my pistol. The weight was familiar, comforting. I looked from the map to the faces of my new… associates.
"Allies. Anomalies," I thought, the words a silent whisper in the confines of my own skull. "In this world, there's not much difference. Both can kill you if you look away."
I didn't leave. Not yet.