Three days later, MedTower still read:
LISSA RANER — 9 DAYS
It was the most insulting number in the world. Safe-but-not.
Barry stared at it on Jay's slate while Gate 3's announcements scrolled.
FIELD 3 — ROUND 230SPECIAL EVENT: MEDICAL LOGISTICS TRIALSUPPLY CRATES DEPLOYED: 3EXTRACT WINDOWS: 18:10 / 18:30 / 18:50HARD CLOSE: 19:00
Special event meant bait.
Jay leaned on his cane, watching Barry gear up.
"Last chance to pretend you're smart," Jay said.
"Not my brand," Barry said.
Gear:
Pistol, two good mags, one trash.
Frag.
Two medbands, one stim.
Upgraded vest.
Noise pebble.
Audio band.
Map in his head.
"Talk to her," Jay had said yesterday. "Make sure she knows you're choosing this."
He had.
Lissa had listened, eyes tired but clear. "If it's that big, you don't go alone," she'd said. "That's the only rule I'm hanging on you."
So now, in Gate 3's tunnel, he was scanning for one person.
Lena appeared like he'd summoned her, hood low, med bag tighter, expression already annoyed.
"You're running this circus," she said.
"Trying to skim off the clowns," Barry said. "Big med crates. You in?"
"Client is very in," she said. "Terms?"
"Parallel," Barry said. "We help each other survive until one of us can't. If the crate's stupid hot, we don't die for it."
"Good," she said. "We could use eyes."
"Got some," a voice said behind them.
Barry turned.
Kade stood there.
He looked exactly how Barry remembered him from glimpses: lean, plain armor, DMR slung, unimpressed by everything. No chrome glow, no theatrics.
"I see both of you keep not dying," Kade said. "I'd like that to continue. Heard about the trial. Figured smarter together for this one."
"Not a squad," Lena said automatically.
"Overlapping selfish interests," Kade agreed.
Barry exhaled. "Okay. One Round only. Rules."
They rattled it out fast, because the gate clock was ticking:
Shared intel.
Don't shoot each other.
No forced heroics.
Crate contents: meds get first priority, split sane.
First extract: anyone can bail, no hard feelings.
"Riggs?" Kade asked.
"If he points a gun, we point back," Barry said.
"Good," Kade said. "I owe him a bullet."
Collars buzzed.
FIELD MODE: ENGAGED
Gate 3 rolled up.
They stepped over the yellow together and then spread just enough: Lena left, Kade offset right, Barry center, giving each other lanes of fire without tangling.
Field 3 greeted them with broken towers and amber light.
HUD:
T+00:01
NEXUS projections blinked briefly in their vision:
MED CRATE SIGNALS: WAREHOUSE BLOCK / PARKADE / TOWER 2F
Three boxes. Too many teams.
"Parkade first," Kade said. "Cover. Angles. Less vertical than the tower."
"Agreed," Lena said.
Barry nodded.
They moved.
Other runners flooded mid-street, already firing at shadows. Murderhobos whooped, streaming toward Tower 2. Someone yelled about "claiming" a crate like that meant anything.
Barry's audio band picked out layers: drone hums, shouts, distant spider clanks.
They cut through side alleys, past abandoned shops. At one point, a Blue-Eye biped strode by; it scanned their collars, logged the med gear, moved on.
"Warehouse is going to be a slaughterhouse," Lena muttered.
"Parkade then out," Barry said. "No victory laps."
The parkade loomed three blocks on: concrete spirals, half-collapsed, cars like rusted bones. A faint blue NEXUS ping marked a crate icon inside.
"Eyes up," Kade said. Rifle already shouldered.
They slipped in through a side entrance.
Inside was echo and shadow.
On the second level, the crate sat in the open: heavy metal case with the NEXUS caduceus symbol, beacon blinking.
And four runners already arguing over it.
"Perfect," Lena breathed.
One of the four swung their rifle toward Barry's trio on instinct.
Kade put a round in the concrete by his boot, not a kill shot, but a thesis.
"Easy," Kade called. "Too much heat on that box to start thinning each other."
"We got here first," a woman snapped.
"And you'll leave in a bag if you stand there when the show starts," Lena said, moving to a pillar. "You hear that?"
They all heard it then.
New sound.
A deeper, meaner drone hum.
Barry's audio band isolated it: rotors, heavier than the quads, with a liquid slosh and a predatory pitch.
A flyer drifted into view through the open side of the parkade: meter-wide chassis, four tilting fans, ventral turret, side pods.
Lens: bright blue. Pods: fuel lines.
"The hell is that?" Barry whispered.
"New," Kade said.
NEXUS HUD tagged it for them helpfully.
UNIT: AF-PYR // AREA DENIAL / FIRE CONTROL
"Fire control," Lena repeated. "That's cheating."
The flamethrower drone tilted, lens scanning the crate, the humans clustered near it.
It spoke in clipped Trade:
"CONGESTION DETECTED. CLEARING."
The pod under its belly irised open.
"Spread!" Kade snapped.
Everyone moved.
A sheet of burning gel jetted down where the crate crew had stood. Two weren't fast enough. One went down thrashing, screaming. The other staggered, armor smoking.
The crate itself glowed, but held. NEXUS made them durable.
Blue-Eyes at the street level didn't intervene. This wasn't protocol breach. This was protocol.
Barry ducked behind a pillar, heart roiling.
"Suggestions?" he hissed.
"Bring it down or leave," Lena said.
"We leave, someone else takes the meds," Barry said.
"Then we bring it down," Kade said calmly. "It's armor-light. Fuel-heavy. We don't let it cook us."
The flyer started another lazy circle, seeking clustered targets.
Barry slid the noise pebble from his pouch.
"Kade," he said, "if I throw fake steps, can you tag the fuel pod?"
"Yes," Kade said, like it was weather.
"Lena, you can keep whoever's left from braining us while we do it?" Barry asked.
"Try me," she murmured, gun ready.
They moved.
Barry rolled the pebble across the floor into an empty pocket of the level. It activated: three seconds of footsteps and a sharp mechanical click-clack like someone racking a rifle.
The flyer bought it.
Lens tracked, jetting flame toward the phantom sound.
Kade fired.
One clean shot into the side pod.
The drone lurched as something ruptured. Flames stuttered.
Barry popped out, pistol up, put three rounds into the same spot because panic counted too.
The unit shrieked modem rage, spinning.
"Down, down!" Lena barked.
Everyone with a brain hit concrete as the flyer belched sideways fire and then smashed into a parked car, fuel spilling. A lick of flame caught; it went up, a rolling orange bruise.
Barry's ears rang, but the drone's lens was dark now.
He felt the heat on his face.
"Still counts," Lena said.
Kade scanned. "Clear."
One of the prior crate-claimers, coughing, glared at them. "You just pissed off NEXUS."
"NEXUS sent a flamethrower into a med trial," Lena snapped. "They started it."
Barry's collar pinged a quiet log:
UNIT AF-PYR LOSS RECORDED // FLAG: CORRUPT RISK // REVIEW QUEUED
He didn't like that.
"Grab what we can and go," Kade said. "We've got maybe a minute before every idiot and their Local cousin comes to see the bonfire."
The crate's beacon flickered but still read active.
Barry cracked the latch.
Inside: organized rows of sealed med packs, lung-binders, antibiotics, clean bandages, injectors.
Lena's breath caught.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, that is actually worth it."
They moved fast, disciplined:
Lena scooped what her client list needed.
Barry grabbed lung kits, oxygen adjuncts, anything labeled RESPIRATORY.
Kade took compact, trade-heavy vials.
They didn't empty it. Couldn't. Too heavy, too slow.
"Leave some," Barry said. "Let the rest fight over the scraps."
They were already hearing it: footsteps, shouts rising from below. Murderhobos, late, smelling loot.
"Time?" Kade asked.
T+11:49
"Plenty," Lena said. "If we leave now."
They did.
Down a side ramp, smoke covering movement. The audio band caught angry voices behind them.
"Who blew it?""Crate's open!""Check the bodies!"
Riggs' drawl cut through: "Told you, events are content, boys."
Barry's jaw clenched.
"Eyes front," Lena murmured.
They pushed through back alleys toward Extract 1.
Halfway there, a shape unfolded from a blown-out storefront ahead.
Red optic. Familiar dome.
A red-eye spider. Corrupted.
Its lens swiveled between them, focus jittering.
Barry's collar buzzed hard, once.
The spider shuddered—twitched like it had slammed into an invisible wall. Its lens flickered from red to static to red again.
Then it skittered sideways, ignoring them, launching itself instead at a pair of unlucky runners trying to flank.
"What the fuck," Barry whispered.
"Don't argue," Kade said. "We go."
They ran.
Extract 1 shimmered at the mouth of a metro tunnel. A couple of shaken survivors already there.
No one stopped Barry, Lena, or Kade as they stepped in.
SYNCING…
Barry's heart tried to climb out of his throat.
SYNC COMPLETEROUND STATUS: SURVIVEDPERSONAL CREDIT: +31
White.
Stack air.
They stumbled off the pad as one, like strangers again.
Lena adjusted her bag. "We're square," she said. "Next time we might not be."
"Understood," Barry said.
Kade just nodded. "You did what you said you'd do. That's rare."
He melted into the crowd.
Barry tightened his grip on his pack, feeling the bulk of high-end meds.
Collar pinged with crate bonus.
Up in MedTower, Lissa's future just nudged forward by more than a day.
Jay was going to yell and then be annoyingly proud.
But under the glow of that win, one thing crawled:
The way the red-eye had glitched off them. The way NEXUS logged the flyer as corrupt, not them. The way its systems kept tripping around his ID like it wasn't filed right.
After they lost, teaming up to shoot down a flamethrower drone for stolen medicine was the kind of victory you celebrated.
Wondering why the corrupted machines were starting to treat you as an exception?
That was a problem for when the adrenaline wore off.