Chapter 19 — The Zenith Run
They moved like one body breaking into place.
Night had swallowed the city in oil and neon. The Zenith Power Hub crouched on the river's edge like a sleeping god—monolithic concrete ribs, servo-guard towers rimmed with searchlights, and walls wrapped in sensor webbing that shimmered faintly with active patrol echoes. In the holo above the training floor the night had seemed tidy: routes, windows, blindspots. Tonight, the map was wet and dangerous.
Drift parked two blocks out as planned. The engine was a low prayer. Kyra cracked her neck, fingers flexing against the grip of the cyber-hammer strapped to her back—an ugly, beautiful thing of alloy and actuators that thudded softly when she moved. Kane moved like a shadow, corralling their recruits into silent positions. Altacora's wings folded close; Crow checked lenses; Eve's spider-arms retracted and hummed. Kai looked at Spencer with the same quiet intensity he gave orders: no sentiment, only weight.
"Remember the beat," Kai said. "Eve opens the throat. Spencer keeps it pulsing. Altacora and I get the module. Twins and Crow hold the exits. Drift gets us gone. No heroics."
Spencer's hands tried to steady themselves around the slate. He felt the pressure like a second heartbeat. He'd run jitter worms on training nodes, but nothing readied him for the real hum of the hub, for metal walls that seemed to listen.
Eve's fingers sliced the night—metallic whispers of code fed into the Hub's perimeter routines. For a breath, the world dimmed: external cams glitched, thermal footprints smeared into static. A narrow lane opened like a mouth.
They moved.
The perimeter was still warm with sentry heat. Crow's scope found moving feet on catwalks, Altacora's fan sang a soft warning. Kyra and Kane melted down service stairs, muscles coiled to spring. Spencer trailed Eve, his slate reflecting a cascade of packets—feeds, mirrors, echoes—each waiting for his input like a timid animal. He planted his jitter worm at 01:37:32, fingers shaking at first, then steady as he watched the echo fold the Hub's mesh into their loop. Fifteen seconds. Twenty. He held the rhythm.
"Clear," Eve breathed. "Move."
They slipped through a maintenance flap and into the hub's belly—an engine room of black conduits, cryotanks, and humming coil arrays. The Mark-V cage was deeper, in a vault of soundproofed steel. But the Hub didn't leave them unchallenged.
A comm light winked into life across the corridor. Servo-guards—sleek black drones with needle-beaks—spat from console ports. Security strobes snapped on. From the shadows came a metallic war-chorus: the Oblivion hounds.
Three of them dropped like tide-breakers into the engine room, optics burning a cold, surgical blue. They moved as packs, jaws snapping fiber-voices that translated threat into death. Eve hissed and shoved a pulse into the local mesh—static bloomed in the dogs' vision. They compensated, their processors whirring, heads tilting faster than human necks could.
"Engage!" shouted Crow. The training floor became battlefield.
Kyra was a cyclone. Her cyber-hammer swung with the force of a wrecking ball; each impact sent ringwaves across metal and circuitry. She smashed a dog's flank and the creature staggered, but its armor ate the blow like granite. The second dog leapt at her shoulder; she ducked and drove the hammer through its flank, micro-actuators grinding into weakened servos. Sparks erupted. The beast howled like steel dragged across glass.
Spencer darted to a maintenance ladder to access a secondary terminal—protocol; Eve needed a mirror node. But a dog—faster than the others—spun and pinned him against a generator. Its jaws closed like a vise, teeth clamping the cloth of his jacket and biting down on fear.
He felt the cold of motor-breath, the grinding thinness of fiber-plates near his face. The dog's jaw tightened, a mechanical pressure that made his ears ring. He hit the slate with a panicked command—an abort—and the terminal flickered, refusing his code. The dog's servos chewed another inch.
"Spence!" Kyra's voice cut the world. She was a blur of movement, a missile with human skin. She swung the cyber-hammer not to pierce but to slam—catching the dog's neck hinge with the hammer head and wrenching as if it were a twig. Metal squealed. The dog's jaw unclamped with a spark of circuitry and it rolled, stunned. Kyra didn't give it time. She smashed again—a solid, clean blow—hydraulics leaking and sparks bursting like scattered stars. The dog twitched once, then went still.
Spencer gasped, reeling, the taste of adrenaline and canal water in his mouth. Kyra's grin was wild, feral.
"You alright, kid?" she barked, offering a gauntleted hand.
He took it like a lifeline and hoisted himself up. He met her eyes and for the first time felt the oddity of belonging: a kid who had almost been made another rusted detail on the Hub's floor, pulled back by a hammer and a stranger's reckless strength.
Eve snatched the mirror-node and slammed it into the relay. "I've got comms for fifteen," she said. "Spencer, jitter hold! Keep it alive—don't let the echo lock."
Spencer's fingers danced, bone memory in a new rhythm. He fed micro-jitters and watched the packet echo wobble like a candle flame. The dogs recovered, hulking back to their feet, sensors burning indignation, but the loop held—thirteen seconds, twelve.
Altacora and Kai sprinted forward; the vault bulkhead gleamed like a tooth. Altacora's fan snapped open; blades bit wedges into lock gears. Kai's shadow-tech sang as he forced the latch. The door screamed and gave.
Inside the cage, the Mark-V module sat like a black heart in a cradle. Eve's hands were surgical—wires clamped, neural drains tethered. She wore spider-arms at her back now too, but quieter—tiny jacks that fed code into the site. There were warnings in her eyes: the module was guarded by active anti-surge links. One wrong move and the core would trip a failsafe that would roast anyone nearby.
"Got it," Eve whispered, voice tight.
They lifted the module, secured it into the satchel. Sparks bloomed like fireworks as an alarm screamed. The Hub's brain had finally detected an anomaly and woke fully.
"Move!" Kai barked.
---
The egress was a gauntlet. The dogs recovered faster than they'd expected; one charged as Kyra turned. She vaulted, hammered slamming the dog's flank, but a hydraulic arm ripped into her side—metal teeth biting flesh and alloy. She staggered but roared, and with the hammer's last swing the dog's thorax ruptured, collapsing into a shower of sparks. Her breath came ragged; she spat a curse and pushed through.
Kane's recruits formed a human wedge; Crow's rounds were cold and final, picking servos apart as if she were unsewing them. Altacora's whip flashed, arcs of blue making the air smell like ozone. Drift's engine screamed as the car peeled out to their extraction point.
Spencer ran, lungs burning, satchel heavy against Eve's chest as she hovered with four spider-arms anchoring their retreat. Kyra—blood dark on her hand—took the rear, smashing anything that lunged at them into pulp. She moved like an earthquake; the corridor trembled.
They burst into the alley where Drift waited, a living grin across his face. He gunned the engine and they dove into neon, tires howling like a chorus. Behind them the Hub's alarms tried to translate panic into pursuit; Oblivion hounds yowled from behind and then fell silent as the city swallowed sound.
Inside the car Spencer finally let himself breathe. Eve's spider-arms folded and she exhaled, hands trembling slightly as she set the Mark-V module into the cradle between them. Kyra sat back, hammer across her knees, eyes bright with an animal calm.
"You did good," Kai told Spencer, voice low and real. "You kept the beat."
Kyra snorted a laugh. "Kid almost became dog-food. I don't babysit often—don't get used to it."
Spencer's grin was shaky but real. He felt something settle into his chest—less fear, more a stubborn thread of something else. He had danced with machines tonight and not been crushed.
Eve's face was tight. She tapped into the module and pulled a string of diagnostics, fingers moving with a surgeon's speed. "We have the module," she said. "That translator will let us tune the Mark-V pulse when we get our hands on a core. But we've pinged more than we wanted. That signature… Oblivion will trace it. Federal dogs will be hunting a scent."
Altacora clicked her fan. "Then we make sure we vanish better than their memory. Drift—route."
Drift pushed the car into the neon river. The city ran past in streaks. Behind them, a hulking shadow rose at the hub—something keened with servo wails and receded into the night, but alt-echoes crawled through the net: a report, a code-string, a federal ping. Oblivion did not forget. They only catalogued.
Spencer looked at the team—Kyra's wild grin, Kane's composed scan, Eve's tired ferocity, Crow's silent watch, Altacora's ice calm, Kai's steady presence. He felt small and huge at once. They had stolen the translator. They had beaten dogs and left with living breaths. They had a tool they could use to fight monsters.
Outside, the city pulsed like a wound. In the distance, something metal and patient stirred.
The war for the shadows had just escalated.