"Heart rate elevated, cortisol spike — but he's holding," Mary replied, her tone steady through the gunfire. "For a rookie, he's not freezing. I'd call that a statistical outlier."
"Good enough," Max muttered, vaulting over a shattered console. He fired twice more, each round a surgical strike — one through a power relay on an exo's thigh, another ricocheting into a joint seam at the neck. Sparks burst; the heavy crashed down, limbs twitching as internal servos failed.
Kade ducked behind a bulkhead, gasping. The air reeked of ozone and burning polymer. "They're flanking right!" he shouted, eyes flicking to his wrist-display. "One's looping through the maintenance crawl!"
"Already saw it."
The metallic clang of boots in the crawlspace was followed by silence. Then — a single dull thud.
A heartbeat later, a Militech scout's limp body tumbled out of the ceiling hatch, neck at an impossible angle.
Kade blinked. "You— how the—"
"Don't talk," Max said, stepping past him, gun raised. "Think. You've got eyes, use them."
A sudden hiss filled the tunnel — smoke grenades, rolling and venting pale vapor. Thermal optics flared from the haze.
"They're switching to suppression mode," Mary warned. "Two heavies converging, handler's in the rear. Orders indicate a live capture priority."
Kade cursed. "They want you?"
Max smirked. "No. Us now, apparently."
He reached into his coat and tossed something toward Kade. The kid caught it clumsily — a matte disc the size of a coin, humming faintly with blue light.
"What is—"
"EMP microcharge," Max said. "Stick it on armor, not flesh. Three-second delay."
The next second, a heavy stomped through the smoke, railgun charging. Kade dove aside, heart hammering, and somehow managed to slap the disc against the trooper's side plating. The heavy turned, raising his weapon —
—and the disc went off.
A soundless pulse rippled through the tunnel. The exo froze mid-step, the faint glow of his optics sputtering before the entire suit went dead. He collapsed like a felled tree, the metal echo ringing down the corridor.
Kade stared, wide-eyed. "Holy— I actually—"
Max gave him a sidelong glance. "Congratulations, Ghost Dog. You just bricked a seventy-grand Militech suit."
Mary's voice cut through again, sharper now. "Remaining contacts falling back. Handler retreating uplink-side. They're pulling data before exfil."
Max's smile vanished. "Not happening."
He slung his pistol to his thigh holster, drew a compact blade from his wrist mount, and began walking toward the data uplink node — calm, methodical, every step echoing with intent.
"Mary, jam their signal, level five. No external sync."
"Done. But, Max— that handler's neural-linked. Cutting him off may cause feedback trauma."
Max didn't stop. "Then he should've stayed home."
Kade followed, hesitating. "Wait— feedback trauma? You mean like—"
"Like cooking his brain through his own uplink," Max said evenly, stepping through the lingering smoke.
The handler came into view — thin frame, cybernetic limbs, hands dancing across a holo-console as his team's vitals spiked red on his feed. He turned just as Max's shadow fell across him.
"Shut it down," Max said coldly.
"Y-you don't understand, Ghost—this isn't—"
Max's blade pierced the console, pinning the man's cyber-hand to the board. Sparks burst; the handler screamed.
"I understand enough."
Mary's voice softened slightly. "Link severed. Data contained."
The silence that followed was thick — the hum of failing circuitry, the faint drip of water somewhere above.
Kade stood still, chest heaving, eyes wide at the carnage around them. "You… you don't hesitate at all, do you?"
Max turned toward him, expression unreadable. "Hesitation's a luxury for people who haven't lost yet."
He pulled the blade free and flicked the blood off it mechanically.
"Mary," he said, glancing at the ceiling where faint red warning lights blinked. "Get us an exit route before Militech sends a retrieval team. And pull everything from their uplink while you're at it."
"Already done. Sending route coordinates. You'll want to move fast — reinforcements ETA: four minutes."
Max looked at Kade, who was still catching his breath. "Four minutes, rookie. Can you run?"
Kade nodded, shaky but determined. "After that? Try and stop me."
Max smirked, turning toward the maintenance tunnel Mary highlighted. "Good answer."
As they started moving, Kade glanced back at the scorched wrecks and fallen suits, awe and disbelief flickering across his face.
"Max," he said quietly. "Was this… just another night for you?"
"Welcome in my world."
Kade didn't answer. He couldn't. His heart was still hammering too hard, his brain trying to catch up with the sheer violence of what he'd just witnessed. He'd seen firefights before — gang scuffles, merc jobs gone south, the occasional panic-fueled shootout in a bad district. But this? This was different.
This wasn't chaos. It was precision.
Every move Max made felt like part of some unspoken rhythm — efficient, ruthless, surgical. He didn't fight the way a man fought. He fought the way an algorithm killed.
They moved through the maintenance corridor, boots splashing through ankle-deep runoff. The tunnel walls flickered with dying lights, the smell of ozone still clinging to them like a second skin.
"Mary," Max said, voice low but calm, "how much data did we lift?"
"Two hundred teras compressed. Full neural signature of the handler included. Partial encryption from Militech's black archive — but I can crack it once we're secure."
"Good." He glanced at Kade. "You just became a liability worth killing over."
Kade stumbled slightly. "That's… supposed to make me feel better?"
Max smirked faintly. "Didn't say it was."
A dull boom echoed from far behind — distant but unmistakable. The retrieval team had arrived, cleaning up their dead.
Kade looked back. "They'll track us, won't they?"
"They'll try," Mary replied. "But I rerouted your heat signatures through six dummy nodes. For all their satellites know, you're sprinting through half the city's sewers right now."
Max gave a short nod. "She's modest. Militech won't find us."
They reached a junction. Max crouched beside a rusted service hatch, popped it open with a metallic click, and motioned Kade through.
The passage beyond was narrow — barely wide enough for one person. Wires and conduit cables ran along the sides like veins. The hum of distant power grids vibrated through the air.
Kade crawled after him, breathing hard. "You've done this before, huh?"
"Too many times."
***
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