Chapter 2 Tur #2
Unregistered convoy signatures, running cold, no transponder IDs, heat profiles flattened to near background levels. The kind of signature you only see when someone is actively trying not to be seen by municipal sensors and Alliance orbital sweeps.
They are moving through maintenance corridors that were sealed off after the last infrastructure collapse and never properly remapped into the public grid.
Of course they are.
Glimner always liked theatrics layered over competence.
I expand one of the convoy feeds, pulling its route trace into a three-dimensional city schematic.
The line glows faint red as it threads its way through power alleys, drainage tunnels, and utility service spines that only syndicates and city engineers still remember exist.
Straight toward the restaurant district.
My jaw tightens.
“Don’t,” I murmur to myself again, but the word has lost all authority.
The pressure behind my sternum tugs harder, dragging my attention forward along the glowing route line like my nervous system has suddenly acquired a leash.
I bring up a second layer.
Cargo analysis.
Encrypted manifests unfold into ghost images of stacked crates secured with magnetic clamps.
I run a spectral scan through the feed.
The terminal highlights volatile compounds in amber.
Phosphorous accelerants.
Thermobaric ignition gel.
Incendiaries.
My breath goes shallow.
“They’re not just scaring them,” I whisper.
They’re erasing them.
My fingers move faster, splitting the screen into six simultaneous feeds as I begin hunting for personnel signatures.
Heat blooms appear along the convoy’s perimeter.
Human-shaped.
Armed.
Armored.
Professional posture.
I magnify one feed and isolate a single enforcer walking alongside the lead vehicle, his gait loose and predatory, his head constantly turning in small, controlled arcs that mark him as someone trained to read ambush geometry.
He carries a compact plasma thrower slung low against his thigh.
I feel something hot and metallic rise into the back of my throat.
The pressure in my ribs spikes, a sharp lance of sensation that makes me suck in a breath through clenched teeth.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Okay.”
The terminal chirps again.
A new data packet bleeds through the lower-district net, piggybacking on emergency services bandwidth.
Sirens.
Not close.
Not yet.
But rising.
The city’s automated alert lattice has started noticing things it doesn’t understand.
I reroute that feed too, layering it into the corner of my display.
Emergency dispatch chatter scrolls past in clipped municipal shorthand.
“…power fluctuations reported near grid node seventy-three…”
“…unauthorized vehicular movement detected in service corridor delta-nine…”
“…possible incendiary device signatures…”
The sirens in the audio feed grow louder, their pitch sliding upward into urgency.
The pressure in my ribs becomes pain.
Not enough to incapacitate.
Enough to make my vision narrow and my spine arch slightly without permission.
I plant my boots flat against the floor and brace my hands on my thighs, breathing through my nose in slow, deliberate cycles.
In.
Hold.
Out.
My jaw is clenched so hard my molars ache.
This is not a bond, I tell myself.
This is not destiny.
This is not anything mystical or ancient or inevitable.
This is a stress-induced somatic hallucination layered over professional pattern recognition.
That explanation should calm me.
It does not.
Because the pull keeps pointing in exactly one direction.
Toward the restaurant district.
Toward Fierson Grill.
Toward something I still refuse to assign a face to.
I close my eyes for half a second and see nothing but that glowing route line carved into the inside of my skull.
I open them again and whisper, “I don’t believe in myths.”
The words sound thin.
Hollow.
Like a prayer offered to a god I stopped trusting a long time ago.
“I don’t believe in bonds,” I add, louder, as if volume might make it truer.
My hands are already moving.
The curtain slides back from the weapons rack with a soft, dry whisper of fabric.
I tell myself I am not arming up.
I tell myself this is contingency preparation.
I tell myself I am only mapping options.
My fingers wrap around the grip of the nearest plasma pistol anyway.
It is warm from the ambient temperature of the room, the textured polymer biting faintly into my palm in a way my body recognizes too well.
I eject the power cell, slot in a fresh one, and thumb the safety off with a movement so automatic it makes my stomach twist.
The shock baton comes next.
Then the monofilament blade.
Each piece slides into place against my body with soft, lethal clicks that sound far too much like commitment.
I don’t look at my reflection in the matte metal of the rack.
I don’t want to see what my face looks like right now.
The terminal continues scrolling intel in my peripheral vision.
The convoy is three minutes out from the restaurant district perimeter.
Two minutes from branching into the alley network.
I swipe my hand through the air, pulling the route schematic closer, and my brain begins mapping interception angles whether I authorize it or not.
Choke points.
Power alley dead zones.
Service corridor intersections where the walls are too close for heavy weapons to pivot.
My mind is doing tactical geometry like it always does when violence is imminent.
I hate it for that.
“You are not doing this,” I tell myself, out loud, sharply.
The pressure behind my sternum answers by tightening again, a hot, insistent ache that makes my breath hitch.
The sirens in the audio feed crest into full alarm now, overlapping in discordant waves.
Public emergency alerts begin flashing through lower-district networks.
The first emergency alarm hits the public channels.
A municipal tone bleats through the terminal speakers, shrill and unmistakable.
I flinch.
Something in my chest snaps.
Not breaks.
Aligns.
“Shit,” I whisper.
My feet are already carrying me across the room.
The cot blurs past my peripheral vision.
The door iris slides open with a soft pneumatic sigh that sounds obscenely calm given what my nervous system is doing.
The corridor outside smells like coolant and damp concrete.
I pause for exactly one heartbeat in the threshold, the old Alliance conditioning screaming through my skull in a dozen remembered voices.
Stay hidden.
Stay small.
Intervention equals exposure.
Exposure equals containment.
Containment equals erasure.
I think of the convoy.
Of the incendiaries.
Of the restaurant district.
Of the pressure in my ribs pointing me like a compass needle toward something I am not supposed to touch.
“I have no right to do this,” I murmur.
Then I step into the corridor anyway.
The door slides shut behind me.
By the time the second emergency alarm hits the public channels, I am running.
Fast.
Silent.
Furious.
Straight toward a danger I keep telling myself does not belong to me.