{Memory core 28/???}

  ~~~~~{Memory Core 28 Start}~~~~~

  It all dissolved into shimmering, golden static. Then the world snapped back into focus, sharp and smelling of ozone, cheap noodles, and the damp chill of the lower districts after rain.

  Peckolin’s workshop. Cramped didn’t begin to cover it. Tools bled into arcane components, wires tangled with charged crystals, empty noodle cartons sat precariously balanced on stacks of forbidden texts. Rain lashed the single grimy window overlooking the alley, each drop tracing crooked paths through years of filth. A faint, silvery haze—Peckolin’s cleansing spell—finished evaporating near the door with a final pop that made me jump.

  “Done.” Peckolin’s voice was rough, strained, but a fierce, almost feral grin split his soot-stained face. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a hand already dark with grime and something that sparked faintly. At eighteen, he seemed ancient to me, powerful. A real mage, not just some street-corner charlatan. “Signal flare lit up half the sky over Valerius’s manor. Burned right through his precious archives tower. They’ll know.”

  I clutched the small, still-warm pouch in my pocket – the timer component I’d placed near the generator shed for the diversion. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. Beside me, Candar vibrated with secondhand adrenaline, his eyes—so like his brother’s but softer, younger—fixed on Peckolin with pure adoration. He worried a loose thread on his thin, perpetually damp jacket. We were thirteen. We’d just helped firebomb a Lord’s house.

  “He thinks his walls are high enough?” Peckolin spat the words, pacing the tiny clear space in the room like a caged storm-cat. “Thinks he can pump poison downstream into our water supply while he sips filtered glacier-melt? Thinks we won’t notice when his factory guards make people disappear?” He stopped, his gaze burning. “We showed him. We showed everyone you can hit back.” He reached out, ruffled Candar’s already messy hair, then gave me a sharp nod. “You boys did good. Quick distraction. Quiet exit. Exactly as planned.”

  Candar puffed up, trying to look taller. I just nodded, my throat tight. It wasn’t about killing, Peckolin had drilled that into us. It was about the message. Destroying the records Valerius used to indenture families, the proof he used to steal land. Striking back where it hurt his coin purse and his pride.

  As Peckolin turned back to a cracked datapad, its screen flickering erratically, my gaze drifted to the window. Down in the alley, caught for a second in the lurid pink glow spilling from the tavern sign downstairs, a man trudged through the downpour. Broad shoulders slumped under a cheap poncho, face etched with the kind of bone-deep weariness you only saw in the lower districts after a twelve-hour shift doing something soul-crushing. He carried a stained canvas satchel. Jax. Just some guy heading home. I barely registered him, another ghost in the rainy city night.

  The initial high began to curdle. The adrenaline ebbed, leaving behind a hollow space filled with the drumming rain and the distant, circling cry of Enforcer sirens. They sounded closer this time.

  Peckolin swore under his breath, tapping aggressively at the datapad. “Response was too fast. Way too fast. And the energy flare when the main charge went… Shit. He might have had secondary wards I didn’t read.” The confidence in his voice had frayed. “We need to vanish. Now.”

  Candar’s eyes widened. “Did… did anyone see us, Peck? Near the manor?”

  “I thought I saw someone,” I mumbled, the image flickering – a shadow detaching itself from a deeper shadow in a side alley as we ran. “Just for a second.”

  “Nerves,” Peckolin snapped, maybe a little too quickly. “Shadows playing tricks. You were clear.” But his hands weren’t steady as he started shoving components into a hidden floor cache. “Doesn’t matter. Can’t stay here. They’ll sweep known associates.” He pressed a few chipped cred-coins into my hand, then Candar’s. “Old routes. Separate. Meet at the marker, three days. Keep your heads down.”

  He killed the main overhead light, plunging the workshop into near darkness, lit only by the angry pink glow from the tavern sign bleeding through the window. We slipped out the back, into the alley. The air was thick with the stench of stale grease, wet rot, and desperation. Rain plastered our hair to our foreheads, cold rivulets tracing paths down our necks.

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  We edged towards the street, towards the relative anonymity of the crowds. Then a shape solidified from the deepest shadows by the alley mouth. Tall, broad, the unmistakable silhouette of a City Guard helmet cutting off the rain. The flat, bored voice sent ice down my spine.

  “Hold it. Curfew patrol.”

  It was Guard Captain Marius. You knew him by the way he stood, like he owned the ground beneath his boots, and the barely concealed cruelty in the set of his jaw, even shadowed by the helmet.

  Just as he stepped fully into the alley, blocking our path, another figure stumbled out from a narrow side passage further down. Tripped on a loose brick, swore loudly, then froze as he saw us and the Guard.

  It was Jax. The dockworker from the window. He looked startled, then wary, his eyes darting between us and Marius, clearly wanting nothing more than to melt back into the shadows he’d emerged from.

  Marius’s head snapped towards Jax. I saw the calculation happen behind his visor, cold and fast. Three suspicious figures – one pulsing faintly with residual magic, two jittery kids – appearing right after a major incident. And a lone, rough-looking worker stumbling onto the scene. An easy collar. A quick result.

  He pointed his stun-baton – thick, scarred, humming faintly – directly at Jax. “You! Stop there. I recognize you. Saw you skulking around the Valerius estate perimeter less than an hour ago. Looking shifty.”

  Jax stared, mouth falling open. “What? No! I just clocked off! Sector Gamma docks! Ask Foreman Boril! I was hauling synth-crates all night, you slag!” He held up his empty, calloused hands, fumbling for the worn ID clipped to his belt.

  Peckolin took half a step forward, voice dangerously low and even. “Officer, there’s clearly been a mistake—”

  “Stay out of it, mage.” Marius didn’t even turn his head. The baton shifted slightly, implicitly including us in its threat radius. “Unless you three want to explain what you’re doing out here, smelling like ozone and desperation, right after someone tried to burn down a Lord’s house?”

  The trap snapped shut. Defend Jax, implicate ourselves. Peckolin froze, his face a mask of fury and frustration. I saw the silent message pass between him and Candar – don’t move, don’t speak. Candar was trembling beside me, trying to make himself smaller.

  My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest. He’s innocent, screamed a voice inside my head. We saw him. He didn’t do anything. I looked at Peckolin, a desperate, silent plea. He met my eyes for a fraction of a second. Agony warred with grim necessity. He gave a minuscule, almost imperceptible shake of his head. We can’t.

  Marius turned his full attention back to Jax, stepping closer, forcing the bigger man back against the slimy brick wall. “Resisting identification? consorting with potential terrorists?”

  “I told you! I just got off shift!” Jax protested, voice rising in panic. He tried to push past, desperate to get away. “Let me go!”

  “Resisting arrest,” Marius droned, almost bored. And then it happened, fast, brutal, and sickeningly casual. No stun-baton. A thin, wickedly curved vibro-knife appeared in his hand, its edge blurring with a faint, high-pitched hum. A single, efficient thrust into Jax’s gut.

  Jax made a sound—a wet, choked gasp—his eyes going wide with shocked disbelief. He staggered back against the wall, hands clutching at the impossibly deep wound, then slid down, leaving a glistening smear of rainwater and dark blood on the bricks. The light in his eyes flickered, then went out.

  I saw it all. The knife’s deadly shimmer under the flickering pink light. The way Jax’s knees buckled. The dark stain blooming across his rough-spun tunic, swallowing the fabric. Marius wiped the blade clean on Jax’s trousers with the practiced air of someone swatting a fly.

  He turned back to us, the three statues frozen in the rain. He jerked his helmeted head towards Jax’s crumpled form. “Public service. Taking out the trash.” His gaze swept over us, cold, dismissive, utterly devoid of humanity. “Now scatter. Before I decide you were his accomplices.”

  Peckolin reacted first, grabbing my arm and Candar’s with bruising force. “Move! Now!”

  We stumbled, then broke into a ragged run, splashing through ankle-deep puddles, the alley walls seeming to press in on us. I risked one glance back. Jax, slumped bonelessly at the base of the wall, rain washing the blood down into the grime. The image burned itself behind my eyes, sharp and indelible. Our footsteps echoed too loudly, drowned only by the ragged sound of our own panicked breaths.

  The memory fractured. Jax’s slumped form bled into Kingsley’s broken one beneath the cage. The cold indifference in Marius’s shadowed eyes mirrored the last dying flicker in Kingsley’s. The golden light receded with sickening speed, snapping me back to the dripping dark, the stench of rot and sludge, the crushing weight of the tunnel.

  {Memory core 28/???}

  ~~~~~{Memory Core 28 end}~~~~~

  I was on my knees in the muck, gasping, the phantom chill of the rain clinging to me colder than the water soaking through my gear.