Lyra hunched over the salvaged dispy screen, her fingers dancing across makeshift controls. The small underground room in Sector 17 hummed with the sound of cooling fans keeping the cobbled-together system from overheating.

  "You shouldn't be doing this," Tel said from the doorway, her voice low. "If they trace the signal..."

  "They won't," Lyra replied, not looking up. "I'm bouncing it through three different rey points. Besides, they don't care what happens in Sector 17. We're just rats to them."

  At seventeen, Lyra had already mastered network infiltration techniques that even corporate specialists would envy. Tonight, she'd managed something previously thought impossible—tapping into restricted Game footage that only Architect-css families were supposed to access.

  The screen flickered, showing a massive forest environment. Two pyers moved cautiously through dense underbrush, their interfaces dispying health metrics and quota counters.

  "Floor 4," Lyra murmured, recognizing the environment from descriptions she'd heard. "Green Realm."

  She watched as one pyer suddenly turned on the other, a bde fshing in the dappled light. The attacked pyer fought back desperately but cked the training of his opponent. Within minutes, he y still on the forest floor. A notification appeared on the killer's interface: Weekly Quota: 1/10 Complete.

  Tel winced and looked away. "Turn it off, Lyra."

  "I need to understand it," Lyra insisted, her golden-flecked eyes reflecting the screen's glow. "Next year, that could be me. That could be any of us."

  The footage shifted to another area—a massive cavern with bioluminescent fungi providing eerie blue light. A group of pyers had formed an alliance, sharing resources and standing watch while others slept. Lyra leaned closer, studying their techniques.

  "See how they're working together? The Game doesn't force pyers to kill each other—it's the quota that does it. The system is designed to turn us against each other."

  She switched to another feed, this one showing a mountain of bodies being processed in a clinical facility. Neural interfaces were carefully removed from the deceased and sterilized while the bodies themselves were efficiently broken down for resource recmation.

  "But what happens after..." Tel began.

  "Is worse," Lyra finished, pulling up another restricted file. This one showed row upon row of preservation units—thousands of them stretching into the distance of a massive facility. Each held the extracted consciousness of a defeated pyer.

  "They say it's death, but it's not," Lyra said quietly. "They're keeping them... using them somehow."

  "For what?" Tel asked, finally stepping into the room.

  "I don't know. Not yet." Lyra's fingers flew across the controls, downloading encrypted data for ter analysis. "But whatever it is, it's the real reason behind the Game. Popution control is just a side benefit."

  A warning fshed on her screen—security protocols activating somewhere in the network. Lyra quickly severed the connection and wiped all traces of her infiltration.

  "That's enough for tonight," she said, standing and stretching. "But now we know what we're up against."

  Tel pced a hand on her shoulder. "Knowledge is power, but it won't stop a ProtectoCorp capture team."

  Lyra's expression hardened. "No, but it might help us stay alive a little longer once we're inside. And maybe—" she gnced at the neural signature masking device she was developing in the corner of the room, "—maybe some of us won't have to go in at all."

  As she shut down the system, the images of preserved consciousnesses stayed with her. Something about them felt important—a piece of a puzzle she couldn't yet see in full.