The rain hadn't stopped for days. In Erevos, it never really did—just swapped between mist and storm, always leaving the city slick with neon reflections. Tonight, the Shadow Net moved like predators through it.
Kai stood on the roof of an abandoned high-rise, the skyline bleeding pinks and blues below him. His cracked neural rig hummed faintly at his temples, whispering static that only he could understand. In the distance, corporate towers rose like jagged teeth, each window a cold surveillance eye.
Beside him, Crow knelt, her cybernetic rifle disassembled across her lap. She cleaned the components with religious care, every motion smooth, deadly precise. Her optics glowed faintly red, locking onto distant signals, scanning for movement.
"Target convoy will pass Sector 9 in four minutes," Eve's voice crackled through their encrypted comms. She was deep inside the Net, fingers dancing over holographic code, her grin practically audible. "They've doubled their escorts. Guess they don't like losing cargo to phantoms."
Kai smirked under his hood. "They can stack all the guards they want. It won't matter."
Crow snapped her rifle together, the click of metal echoing like a promise. "Which one's ours?"
"The data core in the lead truck," Kai replied. His eyes glowed faintly as he projected a 3D schematic of the convoy in shimmering green light. "Inside, a list of corporate defectors. People they plan to erase. We're not letting that happen."
Crow checked her scope. "Extraction or annihilation?"
"Extraction," Kai said smoothly. Then, after a pause, a darker edge slipped into his voice. "But if they get in our way, you know what to do."
Crow's lips curved into a shadow of a smile.
The plan unfolded with ruthless precision.
Eve ghosted into the convoy's digital defenses, slipping past firewalls and scrambling drones before they even knew she was there. Cameras blinked static. Alarms fell silent. The convoy was walking blind.
On the rooftops, Crow became the city's silent judgment. Her scope lit up the night, each escort's helmet painted with a crimson dot before they even realized they'd been marked. One by one, her shots fell like whispers, bodies dropping into the rain without a sound.
Kai moved through the shadows below, unseen, his cloak bending light and sound around him. To the corporate guards, he was a rumor, a flicker at the edge of vision. By the time they raised their rifles, their weapons jammed, their optics glitched, their own shadows turned against them.
"Core secured," Eve purred through the comms as Kai ripped open the lead truck and pulled the data drive from its steel cradle. "Uploading to Shadow Net now."
But then—something unexpected.
A second convoy. Bigger. Heavily armored. Its lead vehicle bore a crimson sigil: a burning serpent.
Kai froze. That wasn't corporate. That was worse.
"Eve," Kai said sharply. "Find out who they are."
Static hissed in her channel. Then her voice, uncharacteristically shaken: "That's not corp tech. That's… freelancers. Mercs. Someone paid a lot to bring them here."
Crow's rifle snapped to the new threat. "Orders?"
Kai's eyes narrowed, his mind already racing through possibilities. Someone knew their plan. Someone was feeding information to their enemies.
"Hold position," he said, voice low and cold. "Let Eve handle finding the leak." He pulled his hood lower, shadows curling tighter around him. "The Shadow Net has a traitor."
The neon city burned beneath them, alive with secrets. And for the first time, Kai felt the game shifting.
Not against corps. Not against machines.
But against someone inside his own web.