10. Rhykor
RHYKOR
Two days have passed since I almost kissed her on the observation platform.
It's only been a couple of days since I said please before leaving her standing there with my hands glowing and my chest cracked open.
The memory of it sits heavy in my stomach like a coal—burning steadier the harder I try to bury it.
I channel the restlessness into a useful task.
The black-market tech routes through District Seventeen run like infected veins, tangled and sprawling, working with activity that raises alarm bells in my head.
Varrik and I have spent the better part of eighteen hours tracing a supply chain that originates in the contested zones between Sectors Six and Nine, following a trail of malicious firmware through three intermediaries and two weapons dealers, alongside a Kraaj fence operating out of a condemned Sector Six water treatment facility.
Condensation weeps from the concrete walls of the tomb-like facility, and three inches of brackish water hide the floor, while emergency lights pulse in erratic, sickly yellow-green bursts that turn the space into a fever dream.
Crates line the walls. It’s commercial hardware, mostly—signal boosters and relay components, along with civilian-grade power cells.
This is standard equipment that circulates through black markets in all occupied districts, unremarkable on its own.
However, three of the relay components carry corruption signatures identical to the ones Junia mapped across eight compromised sectors.
I turn one over in my hands, studying the modified circuitry.
Someone has spliced additional code architecture into the standard relay housing—subtle work, almost invisible unless you know what you're looking for.
This modification turns a standard communications relay into a vector for Legion infection.
"Somebody is using the black market as a distribution network," I say, setting the tainted relay on a crate with more care than I want to.
"These components get sold to maintenance crews and installed in civilian infrastructure, allowing the corruption to spread through any systems connected to the relay. "
Varrik crouches beside a second crate, his hands sorting through components with methodical precision.
"The modification work is professional. Military-grade tools with military-grade precision.
" His eyes lift to mine, and the implication hangs in the damp air—heavy and unspoken, yet fully understood.
"This goes above street-level dealers, brother. "
"I know." I photograph the infiltrated relays and document the crate markings before sealing the vault behind us.
The fence who operated out of this facility is already in custody.
Two of my crew extracted him from a bolt-hole in Sector Seven three hours ago, and he's waiting in the cargo bay for a conversation he's going to enjoy far less than I will.
We surface into the gray half-light of early morning, and I spend the walk back to the compound running the implications through my head.
Errant technology is distributed through civilian channels.
Professional modifications require military tools.
This is a distribution network sophisticated enough to reach eight sectors, completely undetected by alarms.
Someone with access and resources, driven by a clear motive, is engineering the Legion outbreaks. I’m still blind to their identity, and the unknown gnaws at me with teeth sharper than anything the machines have thrown at us.
The next morning, Cassia corners me.
"I need to treat patients." She stands in front of me with her med-pack over her shoulder and that signature tilt to her chin that signals an argument she's already decided to win.
"There are families in the outer corridors going without basic care because I'm locked inside your compound.
I can set up a station outside the eastern gate—covered and visible from your perimeter while Elias assists.
Give me a guard detail and I'll stay within visual range. "
The observation platform blazes through my memory of her back against the column and my arms caging her in, evoking the sound she made when my forehead touched hers. Shoving the image down, I focus on the operational calculus instead.
"Two guards within sprinting distance. You stay in the market corridor adjacent to the eastern gate, and if I call you back in, you come, no arguments."
"That’s a deal." She's already moving toward the door before the word finishes leaving my mouth, leaving me with the simmering awareness that this woman has turned negotiation into an art form that bypasses my defense.
I follow at a distance, positioning myself along the perimeter route that runs parallel to the market corridor.
My crew flanks the passage, leaving Cassia to establish her station behind a makeshift tarp wall.
It’s all repurposed gear—crates for a table, a wall hook for her kit—but she moves with practiced precision.
Elias stands right there with her, leaning on the ugly, welded pipe crutch Britt built, his focus absolute behind the glass of his goggles.
The line forms within minutes. Humans and Kraaj mix together, bearing injuries and illnesses ranging from infected lacerations to chemical burns and respiratory distress.
Cassia moves between them with that relentless, consuming focus.
These are the hours when she stops being Cassia, becoming an entity closer to a force of nature.
Elias hands her instruments while holding pressure where she points, his healing leg against a crate for stability.
I'm watching her work—her hands unwavering, her murmured reassurances cutting through each patient's fear—when an object on the ground catches my eye.
A supply crate sits half-buried in the shadows of a crushed market stall at the alley’s mouth; its lid is pried back like a broken jaw, spilling its contents into the dirt in a desperate, untidy heap.
The crate's stamping catches the weak overhead light at the right angle, and the markings stop me mid-stride.
I find Kraaj military designations and supply corps codes, alongside official inventory tags from a logistics chain that has no business existing within three miles of a civilian market corridor.
Six steps take me down the hall, where I crouch beside the crate to find exactly what I was looking for, a cache of signal amplification hardware and encrypted power cells.
Digging through the foam, I uncover them, revealing two compact Legion-pattern interface nodes.
I know exactly what they are from the intelligence briefings.
They’re the keys to the kingdom, engineered to inject corrupted AI directly into our power and data grids.
Plug one into a relay junction, and any machine on that network downloads subversive code within hours.
It’s military technology in a civilian outbreak zone, distributed through channels that require command-level clearance to access.
My hands heat so fast the crate's metal edges begin to discolor.
I compel myself to breathe and think, filing the serial numbers and unit codes into the part of my brain built for analysis rather than fury.
Whoever is funneling this hardware into the district is operating from inside the Kraaj military structure, high enough to access classified supply chains and careful enough to route the materials through black-market intermediaries that obscure the origin.
The pieces are connecting. The warped relays in the Sector Six vault and the professional modifications line up with these military-grade interface nodes appearing in civilian zones where Legion infections are spreading fastest.
After photographing everything, I seal the crate before comming Varrik to dispatch a recovery team. Then I return to my position along the perimeter route, watching Cassia treat her patients while the implications of what I've found burn through my thoughts like acid.
A human male near the front of the line catches my attention.
He has a lean build for his mid-thirties, with restless eyes that keep darting between Cassia's hands and the corridor exits.
He's holding a minor scrape on his forearm—barely worth bandaging—and his body language screams wrong, all of his senses wired toward the corridor exits and guard positions rather than the treatment station he's supposedly waiting for.
Pushing off the wall, I move through the space in a few strides. The man sees me coming, and his face drains of color, a white, bloodless terror that confirms my suspicions before I've said a word.
A sharp tug on his collar yanks him off his feet, and the corridor wall cracks as I slam him back against it. With his boots dangling six inches above the floor, I close the distance. Heat radiates from my skin until his eyes begin to water from the intensity.
"Who sent you?" Each word emerges measured, quiet, and tempered—the tone I use when I want someone to understand exactly how much restraint I'm exercising and how quickly it can evaporate.
"You've been watching her since you walked in.
Give me a name and an affiliation before I stop asking politely. "
"I'm just—I was simply waiting in line?—"
My hand heats. The fabric of his collar begins to smolder, thin curls of smoke rising between my fingers.
"Vaunders!" he screams. "Ren Vaunders, Sector Eight militia! We were told to surveil the medic—find out where she's operating, who's protecting her, map the guard positions?—"
"Who's paying you?"
"I never met them face to face! Everything came through an intermediary—dead drops, encrypted comms, untraceable credits. All I know is someone important wants eyes on her, and they're willing to pay more than our whole cell earns in a month for the information?—"
"Rhykor." Cassia's voice snaps through the area from behind me. "Put him down."