The morning haze over Sector 9 carried an acrid, electric tang. Zai Ren stirred beneath a collapsed column, dust crusted into the creases of his borrowed jacket. Light flickered on his HUD, casting faint warnings across his vision.
[Diagnostics complete. Pulse Core stable. Damage: 72%. Suggesting minimal system strain.]
Specter's voice chimed in with its usual smug detachment.
"Glad you're chipper," Zai muttered, sitting up with a groan. His bones felt like they had spent the night wrestling a gravity field. "How's the grandma cam?"
[Still online. Capsule sealed. Heart rate normal. No sign of intrusion.]
He exhaled relief, the image of her frail body curled in the med-capsule flashing in his mind. That singular thought anchored him—even here, hunted and half-broken.
Zai pushed himself up and surveyed the shattered ruins around him. Sector 9's edge, the old monorail ruins, offered just enough cover. But something was wrong—too quiet.
Then came the hum. Low. Mechanical.
Blight Reavers.
Specter didn't need to tell him. He crouched low, pulse quickening. Two drones drifted overhead, red visors scanning.
[Initiating Stealth Kernel v0.2. Stay low. Minimal motion. Don't blink.]
Zai gritted his teeth and activated the stealth overlay. The air shimmered faintly around him, like heatwaves on concrete. One Reaver veered too close, its sensors pulsing out waves of electromagnetic pings.
He held his breath. A second passed. Then two.
The drone whirred away.
Only then did Zai slump into the shadows beneath the overpass. Sweat clung to his brow. His fingers curled into fists, knuckles white.
"Remind me to give your cloaking kernel a firmware hug."
[Please don't.]
He smirked, then sobered as Specter pinged him with a blinking overlay.
[Decoded fragment from the Vault Node. Displaying...]
A semi-transparent glyph flared across his vision. Interlocking fractals pulsed with alien logic, then zoomed into coordinates: Foundry District, Sub-Level Theta.
Zai's eyes narrowed. "That place's been locked down since the Rift Wars. You want me to break into a dead forge?"
[Not just any forge. That one.]
The image shifted to overlay an old blueprint. A pulse reactor lay dormant beneath it. Zai's fractal brand—the one seared into his palm from the Vault—glowed faintly.
Coincidence? No. Nothing about his life was accidental anymore.
Navigating the decayed urban skeleton of Sector 9 required more than stealth—it needed intuition. With Specter's new upgrade, Perceptive Threading, Zai saw the world differently.
Tiny, pulsing threads of code—residual digital signatures—lined the walls like ghost trails. He traced them to hidden caches: abandoned surveillance nodes, derelict drones, and a still-charging microblade, which he promptly pocketed.
[Not bad. You're finally using your eyes.]
"You're welcome for the epic looting."
They reached the outer gate of the Foundry District by dusk. The rusted signage read NovaTech Alloy Refinement Plant #17 in faded glyphs.
But he wasn't alone.
[Two heat signatures. Human. Armed.]
Zai dropped flat behind a mound of fused scrap and peeked over. Two Reaver scouts—not drones, but humans in makeshift armor—stood guard near the front shutter. Maddox Kreel's goons, no doubt. Word about the Vault must have spread.
He touched the hilt of his scavenged microblade.
[Options: Distraction. Infiltration. Confrontation.]
Zai smiled. "Why not all three?"
Ten seconds later, a cluster of cans exploded behind the far tower.
"What the hell?" One scout turned, rifle raised. The other stepped forward.
They didn't see the shimmer pass between shadows.
Zai ghosted behind them, microblade glinting. A swift jab to the pressure point dropped the first. The second turned just in time to meet a concussive pulse from Zai's glove, sending him sprawling.
[Efficient. Mildly impressive.]
"Don't sound so shocked," Zai whispered, stepping over them toward the massive steel doors. "Let's crack this forge."
The inside groaned like a creature exhaling after centuries of silence.
Zai stepped into a chamber the size of a stadium—vaulted ceilings, conveyor belts draped in rusted chains, and at the center, an enormous pulse reactor dormant beneath layers of carbon dust.
But it was alive.
Dim lights flickered along the reactor's spine, like a heartbeat restarting. The glyph on Zai's palm began to glow.
[Warning. Secondary Pulse Core detected nearby. Not ours.]
Zai froze.
[We're not alone.]
A sound echoed above—the hiss of a railgun charging.
Zai dove as a bolt slammed into the ground where he stood.
A silhouette stood on the upper gantry, cloaked in Reaver mesh armor, eyes glowing faint blue.
"You're late to the harvest, kid," the figure growled. "That forge is ours."
Zai raised his hands, heart hammering. "Then you better be ready to fight for it."
The reactor pulsed again, brighter this time.
Specter's voice cut in, colder than ever.
[Permission to initiate combat protocol?]
Zai's smirk returned.
"Granted."