Trapped and Rescued
Sura's breath caught when the twisted support strut pinned her arm. She felt bone snap as fear drenched her thoughts. The alloy was unforgiving—cold, hard, unyielding—but it wasn't the pain that startled her. It was the realization that her role as observer had placed her squarely in real danger.
Her eyes darted across Central C-D, noting subtle tremors in the platforms and flexing beams she hadn't noticed while so completely focused on Jackie.
The gray sliding path had betrayed her. One misstep—one unnoticed micro-failure—and she had ended up wedged between two unstable sections. Hydraulic pipes hissed under strain, pistons groaned, and somewhere above her, the faint hum of energy conduits pulsed in rapid succession. Every vibration sent shivers through her frame.
She tried to shift, to relieve the pressure on her arm, but the support strut pressed tighter. Her cybernetic legs couldn't find purchase. The pain flared sharply, and as her hand began to go numb, panic set in. She slammed her metal feet into the strut and the platform below, forgetting she could have fallen even deeper into the depths of the city plate.
Frustration turned quickly to anger. She had been reckless—too focused on analyzing Jackie's movements to watch her own footing. Then came bitterness: why hadn't Jackie warned her? Sura had seen how the girl calculated everything; surely she must have known the area was unstable.
That thought froze when she felt a faint vibration through her cybernetic spine—measured, deliberate. Metal scraped against metal somewhere in the distance.
"Are you okay?" The voice cut through the hum—clear, confident, almost unnervingly calm.
Sura's heart skipped. Her gaze followed the shimmer of blue light through the dim industrial haze. A figure emerged, movements exact, mechanical perfection wrapped in fluid grace.
Jackie Cannon.
Sura's mind stuttered. She had watched Jackie from afar, analyzed her performance logs, but up close the effect was staggering. Blue plating glinted in the half-light, micro-actuators flexing as energy coursed visibly along her limbs. She was more than efficient—she was alive in motion.
"Hold still," Jackie said, voice low but certain.
Sura obeyed, steadying her breathing. The scent of heated alloy filled the air, mingling with the metallic tang of the city's interior. The path beneath them shuddered as Jackie redistributed strain through the hydraulic grid. The vibrations thrummed through Sura's spinal column, her neural processor mapping the sound to meaning.
She couldn't see what Jackie did next—only felt the pain spike, then vanish. Her arm was free.
Rolling to her feet, she stared in disbelief. Jackie was already scanning her injuries, every movement clean, contained, efficient.
"You okay?" Jackie asked, though Sura suspected she already knew.
Sura nodded mutely. They moved again, Jackie's stride precise, Sura pushing to keep up.
Now Sura sat high above the sector in a relative pocket of safety, watching Jackie work again—only this time, her focus never wavered from her surroundings.
Jackie's blue plating shimmered under stress, small wisps of smoke curling from overheating actuators, yet she never slowed. The sheer speed and precision of her micro-repairs left Sura breathless.
Words would have failed anyway. Instead, she ran her own calculations, her processor struggling to keep pace—not close to Jackie's or Lyra's speed, but well above average. The hum of the city's plate resonated through her boots.
A deep groan echoed from the far side of Central C-D as another section began to buckle. Sura watched Jackie's left eye narrow, her right one whirring softly into focus.
Jackie pivoted, hydraulic systems engaging with flawless timing. Sura flinched back into the niche but couldn't look away. Every movement was purpose, every reaction a perfect prediction.
Her neural interface buzzed—her sensors detecting the torrent of data Jackie was processing. Structural mapping, stress vectors, predictive modeling—all of it happening faster than most systems could track.
And for the first time, Sura understood. Jackie wasn't merely enhanced—she was integrated, a seamless extension of the city itself.
"Sector stabilized," Jackie announced at last, voice calm as ever.
Sura exhaled shakily. "I… I don't even know how to describe that," she murmured.
Jackie glanced back, unreadable. "Follow instructions next time," she said—almost teasing, though her tone stayed flat. "Observation is fine. Just don't get trapped."
Sura managed a weak smile. "Noted."
She watched silently, internalizing every detail. Jackie wasn't just powerful; she was precise, terrifyingly controlled. Even now, Sura saw the minute tightening of her jaw, the subtle shift in ocular focus—Jackie's mind already calculating the next risk before this one had finished resolving.
This wasn't just observation anymore. This was evolution in motion.
Finally, with a soft hum, Jackie deactivated the emergency hydraulics. The plate stabilized. Her overlays dimmed. She flexed her fingers, dispersing heat through glowing micro-coils.
Sura let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "You really are something else," she whispered.
Jackie turned, eyes catching hers. "Stay there. We're not done yet." She was already scanning the next junction.
Sura nodded, humbled. Jackie wasn't a simple operative anymore—she was a living system, fusing human cognition with machine precision.
And somewhere deep in Central C-D, data streams pulsed as Tally observed and Lyra reported—the island alive with computation.
But for Sura, the image of Jackie's blue armor under stress, the precision of her every adjustment, would never fade.
---
Above them, in the dim lattice of the upper block, a figure watched.
He stood over six feet tall, his form almost entirely cybernetic. The dull black plating of his frame drank the light, revealing the faint sheen of carbon mesh across his shoulders. Only his head remained human—light brown eyes, bare scalp lined with connector ports, the metallic spine merging into the base of his skull.
He reached into a slot in his hip joint and drew out a cable, plugging it into a port on his torso. Another linked to his neck, then a third to his temple. Each connection locked with a faint click.
The encryption link went deep—off-grid, untraceable.
"Anomaly: Jackie Cannon located," he said, voice low and digitized. "Over one hundred unclassified actions recorded. Recommendation: terminate."
He waited as the message fragmented, recoded, and vanished into the data stream.
His name was Orion—a Nexus Directive operative of few words, a cyborg of vast capability. Once human. Once classified as an anomaly himself. Now, he was the one watching from the dark, assigned to observe… and, if necessary, to erase.
Jackie Cannon was no longer just another operative. She was becoming something else entirely.
And the factions were beginning to notice.