The vault door slammed shut behind them, alarms screaming into the night. Neon pulses from the cloned drives in Eve's pack were the only steady rhythm as the team barreled down the service tunnel.
A sound rose to meet them.
Not human. Not machine. Something worse.
The howl echoed first, then the ground shook under heavy, jointed steps. Out of the shadows came three monstrous silhouettes—black-chrome bodies plated like tanks, mouths of fiber-optic fangs, eyes replaced with swirling sensor arrays. Collars of braided cable and glowing ceramic pulsed with cold blue light.
"Oblivion units," Eve whispered, voice tight. "Federal-grade combat constructs. They don't stop."
The dogs moved as one, synchronized predators. The first lunged—faster than any loader—claws shredding concrete. Kai barely twisted aside, the beast's jaws snapping an inch from his throat. Sparks lit the dark as its claws carved steel.
"Back to the car!" Kai roared.
But Altacora was already airborne. Her wings unfolded in a blur of razored metal, slicing neon arcs through the tunnel air. Spider-arms erupted from her back, jointed and lethal, tipped with blades and interface jacks. She crashed into the nearest dog mid-leap, fanning her blades across its flank. Sparks burst. The whip cracked, discharging electricity that staggered the beast sideways.
Two more came at once, optics blazing.
Crow's sniper round pinged off armor. Eve cursed and threw a code-pulse into their sensors, but the dogs pushed through static like it was nothing.
Kai met one head-on. Shadow tech rippled through his body as plates folded over his fists. He slammed the beast into a pillar hard enough to crack stone—but it rose again, jaws opening like a guillotine.
Spencer ducked behind crates, chest pounding. He wasn't Kai, wasn't Altacora. But his eyes caught something—the collars. They pulsed in a rhythm, blue light stuttering every few beats. A cycle. A flaw.
He pulled his slate, fingers shaking, and fed in a micro-signal—just a jitter, timed to the collar's beat. Twenty lines of crude code, the kind of hack teachers would laugh at. But the collar hiccupped, its sync disrupted. The first dog stumbled, missing its step.
"Now!" Spencer yelled.
Altacora slashed low, her fan biting into the weakened collar. Sparks exploded. The beast's optics fritzed, then died. Its body collapsed with a thundering crash.
The second lunged at her, but Eve flooded the dogs' sensors with mirrored phantoms—dozens of false targets dancing across their vision. Crow's next bullet found its mark. The beast crumpled.
The last—larger, the alpha—hesitated, sensors trying to recalibrate. That pause was all Kai needed. He blurred forward, shadows coiling around his limbs, and struck with enough force to cave armor. Altacora's spider-arms pinned its legs, Crow's rifle shattered a joint, and Eve sent one final overload surging through its circuits.
The alpha convulsed, howled, and collapsed in a rain of sparks.
Silence fell. Only the alarm strobes painted the team in pulses of red.
Altacora folded her wings, spider-arms retracting with insect clicks. She glanced at Spencer, eyes glinting. "You found the corner. Clever boy."
Kai stepped forward, breathing hard, but steady. He looked at Spencer and gave the smallest nod. "You did well. Don't let it get to your head."
Eve checked the drives, her jaw tight. "We've got what we came for. But federal dogs don't get deployed lightly. Someone's watching."
Altacora's whip snapped back to her side. "Then let's run before the city remembers where we are."
They bolted for Drift's car waiting in the alley, neon swallowing them whole. But even as the engine roared to life, Spencer knew this fight had changed things. The ShadowNet had stolen from the machine—and now the machine would strike back.