Sable hacks the floor panel, overloads the lighting grid, and plunges the hallway into strobe-mode hell. I move through it like a predator in a rave, flattening two enforcers before they can blink.
She disables their weapons remotely.
I break their ribs.
Teamwork.
By the time we reach the vault corridor, my armor’s scorched, I’m trailing blood, and Sable’s hair is plastered to her face with sweat. Her eyes blaze.
We round the corner?—
And stop.
The vault door is open.
I don’t mean cracked. I meanopen. Unsealed. Wide.
Too clean.
Too deliberate.
Sable freezes beside me. “This isn’t right.”
I move past her, weapon drawn, breath tight.
The vault is empty.
Not ‘we-just-got-robbed’ empty.
Sterile.
No dust. No crates. No server racks. Not even scuff marks.
Like nothing was ever stored here at all.
Sable steps in behind me. Her boots click against the pristine floor.
She stares around.
Mouth tight.
Voice hollow.
I lean hard against the wall of the empty vault, breathing through my teeth, fingers sticky with blood.
Sable doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. Her silence screams. She’s pacing—tight, controlled, but her limbs twitch at the edges, like she’s holding back the urge to hit something. Or someone. Or me.
We shouldn’t stop moving.
We never stop moving.
But the tremble in my left arm is getting worse. The plasma shot went deeper than I thought.
And I’m leaking all over Otto’s pristine tile.
“You’re bleeding too fast,” she says suddenly, dropping to her knees in front of me, her voice rough.
“I’ve had worse.”
