My breath stutters once.
Just once.
The message resolves.
CONTAINMENT BREACH CONFIRMED
REAPER ASSET: T-1094
STATUS: UNREGISTERED ACTIVE
TRACKING LOCK: PARTIAL
CONTAINMENT RESPONSE: IMMINENT
They flagged me.
Of course they did.
The stun round, the drone footage, the biometric anomalies from the alley when my nervous system went feral for half a second too long.
I knew it was coming.
I just didn’t expect it to come this fast.
“Fuck,” I whisper hoarsely.
My hands are shaking again.
Not small shakes this time.
Big ones.
The kind you get when your entire future collapses into a singularity and takes your internal organs with it.
Containment breach imminent.
That means retrieval teams.
Black transports.
Neural inhibitors.
Memory scrubs.
Reconditioning.
It means they will tear me apart to figure out why the jalshagar triggered and how I managed to suppress it long enough to extract a bonded civilian from an active fire zone.
It means they will take her too.
Not to kill her.
To dissect her.
To map her neurochemistry.
To figure out what in her biology lit up a weapon they built three generations ago.
