My mouth goes dry.
I tap YES.
The vault initiates in silence. No dramatic flare. Just a cascade of mirrored pings as shards of my evidence package replicate into civilian cloud mirrors, Kaijen servers, and dead-storage nodes. Then the auto-release packet arms itself—an ugly little digital grenade.
CONFIRMED: AUTO-RELEASE ACTIVE UPON BIOMETRIC FLATLINE.
I stare at the words until my eyes sting.
“So if they kill me,” I whisper, “the truth detonates anyway.”
It should make me feel safe.
It doesn’t.
It makes me feel like I’ve just put a collar of explosives around my own neck and called it freedom.
My compad buzzes—security ping from the corridor outside. A message from one of Lonari’s people: MARKET RUN APPROVED / ESCORT IN PLACE.
I stare at it, debating.
I need components. I need a fresh encryption key chip for the vault. I need physical items that can’t be printed from paranoia alone.
And I’ve been hiding in the Nun’s walls long enough that my skin feels itchy.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Crowds. Normal people. Surely nobody will try to murder me in a crowded market district. That would be rude.”
I grab my jacket, tuck the compad inside the inner pocket where it rests against my ribs like a second heart, and head out.
Two Kaijen escorts flank me as we move into Gur’s market zone—an open-air sprawl beneath flickering neon canopies and rusted steel awnings. The district smells like spice and exhaust, like roasting meat and chemical solvents, like wet stone and sweat. Voices overlap in a chaotic symphony: vendors barking prices, kids laughing, someone swearing in a dialect I don’t recognize but understand emotionally.
My senses sharpen. Too many angles. Too many hands. Too many people who could be nothing—or could be knives.
“Keep your eyes open,” I tell my escorts automatically.
One of them grunts. “Always.”
We weave through stalls selling black-market nanite patches, counterfeit Alliance ration bars, weapon parts hidden beneath fabric bolts, jewelry that probably belonged to someone dead.
I try to look like I belong.
I do not.
The moment a human walks through a Coalition market with Kaijen muscle on either side, the air changes. People notice. Curiosity, fear, interest—like I’ve become a rumor with legs.
I reach a tech stall under a blue tarp canopy. The vendor, an older Alzhon with delicate hands and skeptical eyes, looks me up and down.
“You buyin’ or sightseeing?” she asks.
“Buying,” I say. “Encryption hardware. Clean.”
She snorts. “Clean doesn’t live here.”
“Cleaner than dead,” I say, and that makes her laugh once.
I start negotiating, because negotiating is easier than thinking about being hunted.
And then—my skin prickles.
