Barely.
I pivot and run back the way I came, ripping open maintenance panels, scanning every junction, tearing into access tunnels with my bare hands when I have to.
Nothing.
They’re gone.
I stagger to a stop in a wider maintenance junction where three old tunnels intersect, my breath coming ragged, my hands shaking so hard I have to brace them on my knees to keep from falling over.
I feel her pain.
Distant.
Muted.
Like hearing thunder from three valleys away.
They’re interrogating her.
The bond tightens again.
I slam my palm against my implant interface and start brute-forcing triangulation off the residual psychic echo she’s bleeding into me.
Give me something.
Give me a direction.
The city answers with silence.
They takeher deeper than I expected.
I don’t know that until later.
I don’t know anything except that she is gone and the world feels wrong without her in it.
By the time I make it back to the safehouse, my clothes are torn, my knuckles are bleeding, and my control is hanging by threads so thin I can feel them cutting into me from the inside.
I tear the ops room apart.
Maps.
Feeds.
Surveillance layers.
Nothing.
They wiped their trail clean.
Whoever did this wasn’t just Nine muscle.
This was surgical.
Planned.
Infrastructure-literate.
I slam my fist into the console again.
