The sirens didn't scream all at once.
They came in waves — low, pulsing hums that rolled through the streets like pressure beneath the skin.
Every window in Echelon-5 flickered red.
Stitch pulled on his jacket, heartbeat steady, eyes scanning the thin light filtering through the blinds.
Lockdowns weren't rare here — but this sound was different.
Older.
Heavier.
Like the city had remembered a rule it was never meant to use again.
He packed fast — blade, picks, cube — then killed the lights.
Outside, the air turned viscous, dense with rain and electricity.
Drones cut through the fog in tight patterns, beams slicing over rooftops.
From below came the chorus of metal shutters slamming, vendors cursing, hydraulics locking into place.
People knew what to do: vanish.
No one ever asked why.
⸻
He dropped from the window ledge to the next roof, knees bending on impact.
From above, Tier Nine looked like a machine trying to eat itself — gates closing, signs going black, steam bursting from vents.
Whole districts sealing in minutes.
He ran along the edges, keeping to the shadows.
Every movement felt amplified — the slap of his boots, the wet hiss of air vents, the faint hum of the cube inside his jacket.
Whatever had triggered this wasn't random.
He ducked into a maintenance alley just as a security swarm passed overhead — six drones in formation, silent as bats.
Their sensors swept the ground in arcs of red.
He pressed himself flat against the wall, counting seconds.
Five… four… three… gone.
⸻
He waited until the hum faded before moving again, slipping through a service hatch into one of the Transit Veins — narrow tunnels once used for freight pods, now claimed by squatters and runners.
The air inside was warm, metallic, alive with echoes.
He followed the path by instinct.
Down here, you could feel the city breathing — fans exhaling heat, conduits murmuring with current, faint whispers of machinery turning somewhere deep below.
It felt less like infrastructure and more like a sleeping god.
He stopped at a fork where three corridors met.
One was dark.
One dripped with coolant.
One shimmered faintly blue, as if lit from within.
He chose blue.
He didn't know why.
⸻
Halfway through, the tunnel opened into an abandoned station — a circular cavern filled with cables and water.
Pipes hung like veins from the ceiling.
Someone had painted the walls with symbols: looping lines, sharp angles, almost like circuitry drawn by hand.
He crouched, tracing one with his finger.
Fresh paint.
Still wet.
A sound broke the silence — a faint click, metal on metal, from somewhere behind him.
He turned.
No one.
Just the reflection of himself in a puddle — blurred, distorted, almost like another face entirely.
He exhaled, slow.
The cube in his jacket pulsed once, twice, then dimmed again.
⸻
Through the vents above, a voice echoed — muffled, mechanical:
"Sector Nine under quarantine. Unauthorized movement will result in termination."
He listened to the words roll through the tunnels like thunder.
Termination meant live-fire clearance.
Not law enforcement.
Purge protocol.
Whatever this lockdown was, it wasn't routine.
⸻
He climbed to the surface through a ladder shaft, emerging onto a bridge slick with rain.
The skyline was gone — swallowed by fog and flickering red lights.
Giant holographic warnings flashed against the mist:
CONTAINMENT IN PROGRESS
DO NOT INTERFERE
He stood there, drenched, watching the city rearrange itself.
The power grid shifted, lights dimming block by block — a slow eclipse.
Echelon-5 wasn't shutting down.
It was isolating something.
⸻
He looked down at the cube.
It sat in his palm, silent now, but warm.
Almost alive.
In the reflection of its surface, he saw movement — five faint shapes gliding across the rooftops behind him.
Too smooth to be drones.
Too fast to be human.
He didn't turn.
Didn't breathe.
Just watched the reflection move closer until the light swallowed them whole.