A figure appeared in the alley below, massive, masked, faceless. Matte black. Breath fogging against the dead air.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. Just raised a can of paint and marked the lens in slow, deliberate circles, like sealing a coffin lid.
One of the lookouts flinched. “Shit. You see that?”
“That’s gotta be the Fracture Boys,” another muttered. “Trying to scare us off our corners.”
The third one stood fast, Eclipse still twitching in his jaw. “I don’t care who it is. Go tell Rez. Get the boys downstairs. He ain’t here to buy.”
The screen blinked. Then black.
Cassian Rhoke crouched at the edge of the lot, shoulder pressed to the wall. Two fingers raised in a silent hold signal.
“Cal, alley. Tight sweep. Don’t let ’em circle.”
Cal moved like the hammer had already fallen. His knives were drawn but low, tight to the leg.
They moved quick. Corner to corner. Soundless.
Two gangers spilled out from the doorway. Knives in hand. Death on their minds.
“You chose the wrong party to crash,” one said, twitchy and snarling. “Now we gotta teach you something permanent.”
Cassian was already behind them.
One blade, reversed.
He drove it into the base of the first man’s neck. Quick and clean. The body crumpled.
The second turned, just in time for Cal to clamp a hand over his mouth and drive a blade up beneath the ribs. A twist. A grunt. Nothing else.
A third saw the bodies and ran. Cassian let him.
High above, Ezren crouched behind a ventilation stack, Cypher hovering beside him like a silent omen. The skull’s lens flicked red as it scanned the side entrance locks.
“Ezren, door’s ready. On your mark,” Yara crackled in over comms. “Patch me into their relay as soon as you’re in. If they’ve got central records on distro, I can kill five more dens by sundown.”
Ezren nodded once, jaw tight. His hand flexed again inside the glove.
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Cypher drifted forward, a low click echoing from deep within its shell.
Inside the building’s lower level, Cal and Cassian slipped through the corridor. The first floor reeked of Eclipse residue, ammonia, and stale piss. More than workers here, there were users too. Slumped against walls, eyes eclipsed black, twitching in silence as if watching something only they could see.
Yara’s voice returned, sharp now. “Drug room’s live. Five civvies sorting doses. Three on overwatch. Back hall’s pulsing weird, altar proximity.”
“Ezren, keep your eyes on the grid,” Cassian muttered into his mic. “Let us be loud. You stay ready.”
“Altar room’s blank. Feeds are giving me dropouts. Scratches I don’t like.”
Cassian scowled. “Cypher, confirm scan.”
The skull hummed, lights pulsing dim behind its ocular slits. When it answered, its voice came dry and static-threaded, like corrupted archive tape.
“Eight viable bio-signs. Heart rates within stress parameters. Two elevated spikes near the altar node. No anomalies. All clear.”
There was a slight hitch, half a second too long before the last part.
Cassian narrowed his eyes. “Good copy.”
Cypher drifted back. Its gaze lingered, then flickered, as if something inside it hesitated. A subroutine caught mid-breath.
On the first floor, the drug room pulsed with movement, workers hunched over packing crates, Eclipse vapor swirling low along the floor. One flinched when Cassian’s boot hit the tile.
Rez stood in the corner, bigger than the rest, red-eyed and jittering. He barked something sharp, and moved.
His hand dipped toward a holdout in his waistband. The flash came fast, a pop of muzzle light through Eclipse haze.
Cassian moved faster. He twisted the gun arm down and drove his elbow into Rez’s throat. The shot went wide, burying itself in the wall.
Rez hit the floor hard, twitching. Cal moved before the others could think, blade into shoulder, spin, elbow to the jaw. Clean. Silent.
The third ganger didn’t move. He dropped his weapon and raised both hands.
“Room clear,” Cal muttered.
Cassian turned his head. “Sweep the back. Don’t touch the workers.”
Ezren, still on overwatch, traced Cypher’s output as Yara piggybacked the signal.
“Root access cracked. Pulling files now. They’ve got Threshold phrases encoded in the stash logs. This wasn’t just a street den.”
Ezren didn’t answer. His focus was already moving.
The altar squatted near the upper floor, tucked beneath the eaves of the derelict stairwell, like a cyst embedded in brick. The bone lattice pulsed with bioluminescent coolant, veins of the building’s electrical system grafted into dried marrow.
He crossed the chalk ring.
His arm pulsed, hot, dense. A rhythm he didn’t recognize, but somewhere, something was echoing back. It slid into the marrow like a borrowed breath.
Something slithered in his bones.
Yara’s voice cut in, tight and low. "Okay, no. Something's wrong."
Her relay feed stuttered, an unnatural glitch, like the signal itself recoiled. A flicker of data swam across her HUD, warped at the edges, resisting decryption. > “Got a Vault ID ping. Encrypted. Not ours.”
Then the sound. Boots. Steel and silk.
Cassian turned. The breath left him, not fast, just enough to feel.
Varik unfolded from the dark like a scripture no one should’ve read. Robes stitched in firewall mesh. Scars across his face like sermon punctuation. His eyes: broken marble shards set in flesh. Two bound batteries stood behind him, collared and swaying.
He didn’t raise his voice.
He raised one hand.
The batteries made no human sound, just the shriek of overloading capacitors given mouths.
Geometry came apart. The flame didn’t burn, it unfolded, each tongue of fire a perfect recursive pattern that hurt to watch. Candles bent toward the heat like worshippers. The floor vibrated, pulse-like.
Cassian shouted. “Scatter!”
[To be continued…]