A metallic hum.
Kaelen's consciousness slowly returned, as if rising to the surface from the bottom of murky water. The first thing he felt was the taste of rust between his teeth. The second was that vibration, penetrating to his very bones. It wasn't the sound of an engine; it was the deep, bass-frequency moan of a colossal industrial fan or a turbine tearing through the atmosphere.
He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a sterile, cold blue light.
This was not a prison cell. This was a windowless, steel coffin, abandoned to the mercy of technology. The walls were covered with matte black panels, and thin, neon blue light beams seeped from every joint. The space possessed a claustrophobic perfection; neither a screw head nor a weld mark was visible.
"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."
The voice was familiar, but the intonation was wrong. Too calm.
Kaelen tried to turn his head, but the muscles in his neck were stiff. His back was pressed against the cold metal wall. His wrists and ankles were secured by magnetic clamps protruding from the wall. He couldn't move. He could only shift his eyes.
Jester hung on the panel right next to him, in the same manner. But there was no prisoner's despair in his posture. It was as if hanging on the wall was a new yoga pose for him. He had tilted his head slightly to the right, his eyes fixed on the center of the room.
Around Jester's neck, encircling his throat, was a thick, metal collar. A blue diode on the collar blinked at regular intervals. Each time this light flashed, the permanent, painted expression of sadness on Jester's face twitched for a moment, as if the muscles beneath his skin involuntarily tensed. This was a Neuro-Dampener. Kaelen knew it from his old police days; a torture device used to neuter anomalies connected to "Static," to cloud their minds.
But Jester's hazel eyes were not clouded. On the contrary, they were overheated, focused, and processing data like a computer processor.
"Where are we?" Kaelen rasped. His voice came out rough, like sandpaper.
"The Black Manta," Jester said, without taking his eyes off the center of the room for even a second. "The Consortium's high-altitude transport ship. We're probably above the cloud layer right now. The pressure difference is tickling my ears. And..."
Jester paused. His pupils contracted with a microscopic movement.
"...The collar's software update cycle is exactly 4.2 seconds. Interesting. There's a synchronization error in the firewalls."
Kaelen forced his head forward to understand what Jester was looking at.
In the very center of the room, there was a silhouette defying gravity.
Ronin.
The black-armored assassin was not touching the metal floor. He hung in the air, cross-legged, about thirty centimeters above the floor. His sword was on his lap. His hands rested on his knees, palms facing upwards. He was so still he was indistinguishable from a statue. Red light strips on his armor slowly pulsed, like a heartbeat.
"He's meditating," Kaelen said with disgust. "They packed us like cargo, and he's sitting there charging his batteries?"
"No, Detective, he's listening," Jester whispered. "That armor isn't just protection. It's an antenna. He's currently exchanging data with the ship's operating system. He is the ship, and the ship is him."
No reaction came from Ronin's helmet. However, the air pressure in the room suddenly felt as if it had changed.
Jester strained slightly forward, disregarding the collar around his neck. The metal clamps creaked.
"Hey! Tin Man!" Jester called out. His voice was cheerful, but beneath it lay a sharp, surgical coldness. "I wonder, what did the Consortium promise you? Unlimited battery life? Or did they tell you they'd make you a 'Real Boy'?"
Kaelen gritted his teeth. "Jester, shut up. Don't provoke him."
"Why?" Jester grinned. His painted lips curled upwards, but his eyes were still scanning the invisible data flow around Ronin. "Look at him, Detective. He's not a samurai. He's a modem. A loyal dog, connected by fiber optic cables, wagging its tail whenever its master says 'fetch'."
Ronin's head turned towards them with a millimeter-precise movement. The mechanical precision within that movement was inhuman.
"Order," Ronin said. His voice vibrated the blue lights in the room. It had a metallic and synthetic timbre, like a broken speaker. "Order is superior to chaos, Anomaly. You are merely an error. A stain to be erased."
Jester's eyes gleamed. This was what he was looking for. Not a philosophical debate, but a sound frequency.
The slight crackle in Ronin's voice was in perfect harmonic alignment with the ship's engine hum. Jester's mind overlaid these two sounds, matched their wavelengths, and saw the bridge between them. Ronin's vocal cords (or whatever he used) were directly connected to the ship's main navigation system.
"Data received," Jester murmured.
Then he turned his head to Kaelen. The smile had vanished from his face. He was serious. This was the "Doctor" seriousness Kaelen rarely saw.
"Detective," he whispered. "Now listen to me carefully. I'm going to die in 4 seconds."
Kaelen's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't act. Unleash that 'protective' side of you. I want you to be truly scared. If you're not convincing, the system won't buy it."
Jester took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. The veins in his neck became prominent.
The human body was just a piece of hardware for Jester. And he knew the "admin" passwords for this hardware. He turned his mind inward. He focused on the vagus nerve. He mentally placed a brick on that biological brake pedal that slowed heartbeats.
His pulse slowed.
80...
60...
40...
Jester's face began to fade. His already pale skin turned a grayish, dead marble color. His lips turned purple. He let his head fall forward.
Kaelen felt the life draining from the man next to him. This didn't look like a trick. Jester's chest remained still.
"Jester?" Kaelen's voice trembled. "Jester! Hey! Damn it, breathe!"
Ronin's attention broke from his meditation and shifted to the prisoners on the wall. His helmet's sensors were reading Jester's plummeting biometric data.
"Systemic collapse," Ronin said, without standing up. "A weak body."
"He's dying!" Kaelen shouted. He lunged forward, straining against his restraints. "His heart stopped! Get him down! Didn't you say the Architect wanted him alive, you damn bastard!"
Kaelen's panic was real. Jester's pulse had dropped to zero.
The collar activated.
A high-pitched warning sound emanated from the device on his neck: **[CRITICAL ERROR: LIFE FUNCTIONS CEASED. DEFIBRILLATION INITIATED.]**
The blue light turned red.
Jester's plan was based on a simple biological hack. If he died, the system would have to bring him back. And to bring him back, the system would need to deliver a high-voltage energy burst.
*Bzzzzzt!*
Thousands of volts of electrical shock, emanating from the collar, pierced Jester's neck. This energy, enough to fry a normal human, was pure, raw fuel for Jester.
At that exact moment, in the 4.2-second update window, Jester opened his eyes.
His eyes were not hazel. Nor were they red.
His eyes were filled with purple and white **Static**, buzzing like a broken television screen.
The electrical current spread through his body, but instead of restarting his heart, Jester absorbed this energy, transformed it, and expelled it back out through that invisible port at the nape of his neck.
He didn't scream physically.
He screamed digitally.
Like a virus, he injected a chaotic piece of code, ripped from his own consciousness, through the collar, then through Ronin's network, and finally piercing the ship's artificial intelligence to reach its main processor.
The code was simple, but devastating:
**[SYSTEM WARNING: ALTITUDE ERROR. CURRENT LOCATION: UNDERGROUND (-1 METER).]**
**[COLLISION PROTOCOL: ACTIVE.]**
The ship's artificial intelligence panicked. Sensors indicated they were in the sky, but the "reality" Jester injected caused the ship to believe it was underground.
The Black Manta shook violently in the air. The metallic moan transformed into a horrifying screech.
The red emergency lights on the ceiling began to spin. A mechanical voice announced:
**"CRITICAL COLLISION RISK. CARGO EVACUATION INITIATED."**
Before Kaelen could understand what was happening, the back wall of the room burst outwards with a massive explosion.
Freezing wind from thousands of meters up and a deafening roar filled the interior. The pressure difference began to suck everything in the room outwards, into that dark void.
"Now!" Jester shouted. His voice, powerful enough to overpower the wind, sounded like a broken megaphone.
The magnetic clamps released, as per "cargo security" protocol. Kaelen fell to the floor, beginning to slide backward with the force of the wind.
Ronin had lost his levitation. He landed with the jolt but remained fixed in place by locking his magnetic boots to the floor. His hand went to his sword. The plasma katana hissed as it slid from its sheath.
"You're not going anywhere!" Ronin's voice was no longer calm. It was an angry static roar. He lunged towards Jester, swinging his sword.
But the moment he was free, Jester slid towards Kaelen. He glided across the sloped floor with the grace of an ice skater. Ronin's sword sliced through the air, burning past Jester by mere millimeters.
Jester grabbed Kaelen by the collar. He pulled the Detective towards him with surprising strength, using only one hand.
They had reached the edge of the open cargo hatch. Below, visible through the clouds, was a colossal urban wreckage, dark, rusty, and filled with lights: Scrap City.
Kaelen looked down into the bottomless abyss. "Jester! We don't have parachutes!"
Jester adjusted his purple cloak, which was being whipped by the wind, and that famous, unsettling grin appeared on his face. The static in his eyes slowly faded, giving way to that mischievous glint.
"Oh, don't get hung up on details, Detective!" Jester shouted, waving one last time at Ronin. "Gravity is merely a suggestion!"
And he threw himself into the void. Dragging Kaelen with him.
Ronin came to the edge of the cargo door. The wind battered his armor. He looked down at the two small specks falling into the clouds. He sheathed his sword.
The hunt wasn't over. Only the field had changed.