A dull hum filled the air—low and constant, like the hangar itself was holding its breath. Rows of ships rested in silence, flickering with diagnostic scans. Beneath one of the smaller deployment cruisers, Adrien Avendano, sat on a worn metal bench, hunched over with his combat boot half-on, half-wrestled.
He grit his teeth and yanked. Nothing. The boot didn't budge.
"This isn't symbolic of anything," he muttered to himself, twisting the heel again.
Beside him, a narrow-shouldered Mechon unit hovered at waist height—its chassis sleek and retrofitted with polished chrome plating. A row of blinking teal "eyes" ran across its screen-face, all staring with artificial patience.
"Would you like me to deploy the hydraulic clamp, Lieutenant Flashpoint?" KREED asked, voice warm but slightly tinny. "Many find surrendering to superior grip mechanics helps preserve pride."
Adrien exhaled slowly. "If you so much as look at that boot with a clamp, I'm reprogramming your sarcasm filter."
"Already locked," KREED replied, cheerfully. "Standard protocol for all Suppressor support AI—especially around you, Mr. Avendano!"
Before Adrien could respond, a blur of black and gray dropped from a scaffold overhead and landed with a soft metallic click behind him. Iyato, who's currently barefoot, his eyepatch catching a glint of overhead light, leaned casually against a crate, arms crossed.
"The great Flashpoint," Iyato drawled, his voice lazy and razor-edged, "can redirect kinetic shells in mid-air but can't even put his boots on without divine intervention."
Adrien didn't look up. "I'll take divine intervention over your commentary."
Iyato raised an eyebrow. "Must be a tactical delay, right? Stretching out the moment before glory. Pre-battle drama. Legendary."
Adrien yanked again. The boot slipped on with a muted snap, nearly taking his fingers with it.
He stood, brushing off his coat. "Legendary's a stretch. Functional will do."
Behind him, KREED gave a single satisfied chime.
The distant hiss of a bulkhead sliding open echoed through the hangar's chamber. A gust of cold, recycled air drifted in with Daihatsu Ren, already fully suited—combat plating polished, resonance seals flickering faintly along the seams of his cobalt-and-gold armor. Ice crystal residue traced the side of his left boot, contrasting the faint static buzzing around his right shoulder. He carried himself with that familiar mix of quiet focus and quiet dread.
He approached the group slowly, gaze scanning the hangar like it might shift under him.
"I think I'm losing sleep," he said, mostly to the air. "They said Dead Air anomalies in the city would plateau after Sector Six. That was TWO months ago! We've had six new disturbances this week alone!"
Adrien turned toward him, brow furrowed. "You're suited up early."
"Didn't feel like waiting." Daihatsu stopped just short of the bench and crossed his arms. "Woke up to another internal ping from the south ward. Static distortion again. One of the Mechon patrols walked directly into a substation grid—didn't even flinch as it overloaded."
Iyato leaned back on the crate, watching Daihatsu like he was dissecting a new frequency.
"You're saying it's adapting?" he asked.
"I'm saying it's multiplying," Daihatsu replied flatly. "Whatever resonance filters they've been feeding into the civilian zones—they aren't holding. We suppressed the Junction Street collapse last week, and that one took five teams to seal. Three months ago? That would've been classified as high-tier fiction."
Adrien rested a hand on the hilt of his blade, not threatening—just grounding himself.
"The Spire team confirmed auditory mirroring, didn't they?" he asked. "Victims hearing their own voices seconds before impact?"
Daihatsu nodded. "And the ones who survived couldn't remember speaking. Or thinking."
The silence that followed wasn't heavy—it was focused, like the moment before a match is struck.
"So what," Iyato said, voice quiet but edged, "you getting cold feet now, Stormglass?"
Daihatsu exhaled, his breath briefly visible in the ambient cold of his suit. "Not cold. Just... wondering if I'm the wrong frequency for this line of work."
"We all are," Adrien said after a moment. "That's why it works."
Iyato gave the faintest smirk, gaze shifting toward the hangar ceiling. "No one's ever cut out for resonance warfare. If they are, they're lying or already gone."
KREED hovered back into the conversation silently, recording the emotional register of the room with a subtle sound blip—neutral tone.
"Suppression units active," the Mechon said softly. "Mission parameters syncing. Would you like me to calculate a likely casualty projection based on prior anomalies?"
Adrien snapped his fingers. "Mute the math, Kreed."
A dull click resounded overhead, followed by the sterile buzz of an intercom clearing its throat.
"Team Bloodhound—report to Captain Margrave's office. Priority Level Two. Immediate dispatch preparation."
The voice echoed down the steel-paneled hallways like a note struck in an empty auditorium—firm, clinical, and impossible to ignore.
Adrien exhaled, finally sliding his boot into place. It clicked this time, clean and flush.
"Finally," he muttered, rising and tightening the seal on his utility belt. "Let's move before something else malfunctions."
Iyato dropped lightly off the crate and walked ahead without waiting, hands in his coat pockets, his stride loose and silent. Daihatsu followed, quiet and composed, the soft crackle of static bouncing between his boots.
The three walked side-by-side through the broad corridor toward the central lift hub, heads turning as they passed.
A pair of junior analysts near the mezzanine froze mid-conversation as they spotted them. One nudged the other sharply, mouthing "That's Flashpoint."
"You think Captain Margrave's putting them on the Outlier Case?" one whispered.
"Bloodhound doesn't get scraps. If they're moving, something's already wrong."
Two passing engineers in blue-trim jumpsuits nodded respectfully as they moved out of the way. Overhead, a massive screen played a muted recap of Bloodhound's prior mission at the Junction Square. The footage, edited for public morale, showed Adrien deflecting flaming debris with a wave of his hand while Iyato blurred past in a streak of light.
"Better them than the Northern Division," a technician mumbled nearby.
"Northern crew couldn't suppress a broken vending machine."
One floor up, on a viewing platform, a pair of cadets leaned over the railing just to catch a glimpse. "That's Stormglass, right? The guy who iced the Karrow Facility breach? Heh, I thought he was taller!"
As the trio neared the central lift, a loud, mechanical voice cut through the corridor:
"—YOUR CLEANING RADIUS HAS EXCEEDED THE DESIGNATED TACTICAL ZONE. RETURN TO GRID!"
A squat Mechon janitor, fitted with twin rotating brushes, loomed over a human custodian—a tired man in a utility jacket holding a mop like a baton.
"I've been mopping this stretch for twelve damn years," the custodian snapped. "You think a tin can's gonna draw a better edge on a drain than a man with knees?"
The Mechon beeped in rebuttal. "TURBO SCRUBBERS OUTPERFORM KNEE-CAPACITATED HUMANS BY 67% IN TILE DIRT REMOVAL!"
Before the argument escalated further, Adrien stepped forward and raised a hand.
"Override code: Flashpoint-One-Three-Seven," he said calmly. "Reassign the Mechon to corridor E12. Let the man clean."
The Mechon's lights dimmed briefly in acknowledgment. "Affirmative. Recalibrating grid."
The custodian looked at Adrien, blinking. "Thank you, Lieutenant. Damn things don't know a human rhythm if it danced past 'em..."
Adrien gave a half-nod. "Sometimes it's just about respect."
He turned and caught up to Iyato and Daihatsu, who had paused just ahead at the lift doors. Iyato didn't look back but spoke dryly.
"Commanding presence, even in mop diplomacy."
Adrien smirked faintly. "Better that than a pile of soapy scrap..."
The lift hissed open, its interior gleaming with polished chrome and faint resonance flickers. They stepped inside.
"Let's see what Margrave wants," Daihatsu murmured, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Something loud," Adrien said, eyes locked forward. "It always is."
The doors slid shut behind them with a soft chime before the lift began its ascent.
–––—
The doors to the Captain's office hissed open with a quiet click, revealing a tall, angular room of matte steel and dark navy walls. One side of the office was entirely glass—a floor-to-ceiling window that displayed the vast skyline of Capella City. The view was stunning, even on a cloudy day.
Distant lights danced through haze. Buildings stretched like jagged pillars into the sky. But the air outside shimmered faintly.
Inside, Gail Rosenbaum stood at perfect posture near the desk—hands folded behind her back, visor deactivated and clipped neatly at her side and her dirty blonde hair draped over her shoulders. She turned only her head when the others entered, her gaze sharp but even.
"Gentlemen," she greeted, tone crisp and composed as always. "Nice of you to arrive with your boots on."
Iyato didn't reply, his eye half-lidded as he stood beside Adrien and leaned slightly to one side. Daihatsu gave Gail a faint nod, already reading the energy in the room.
Across the office, Captain Margrave stood with his back to the group, facing the window. His black uniform was wrinkled at the shoulders and his gray hair looked recently tugged. He was arguing—more accurately, growling—at a floating Mechon aide hovering near his desk, its screen displaying scrolling mission data.
"No, you absolute circuit-tangled birdbath," Margrave barked. "I don't care what the regression matrix says, we are not deploying the Northlight drones again. The last batch shot their own shadows and declared the hallway secured!"
The Mechon gave a low, mechanical chime. "Request for sarcasm clarification: was that humor or concern?"
Margrave sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Override sarcasm filter. Permanently."
The Mechon blinked out of the conversation, retreating toward the wall in quiet defeat. With another groan, Margrave turned away from the window and toward his operatives.
He looked at them all in a long sweep—Adrien's cool stare, Iyato's unreadable calm, Daihatsu's storm-hardened focus, and Gail's perpetual readiness.
"Bloodhound," he said, voice low and gravel-edged. "Glad to see you're all alive. No fatalities on the way here, I assume?"
Adrien gave the slightest nod. "Not yet, sir."
Margrave smirked under tired eyes and stepped closer, arms crossed.
"Good. Because I'm about to put you in a place where that might change."
He gestured toward the display pad embedded in his desk, which flickered to life with a red, spiraling diagram and encrypted coordinates.
"We've got a new flare. South of the Narrows. Real quiet."
His tone lowered.
"And it's breathing."
Margrave tapped a control on his desk and the holo-display expanded into a slow-turning projection of Capella City's southern Narrows, rendered in flickering red and orange overlays. The surrounding wards appeared stable—routine surveillance pings, standard patrol vectors—but one particular block pulsed in an unnatural rhythm. Like it was blinking. Or... breathing.
"Started three hours ago," Margrave said, arms crossed. "Rhythmic distortion detected by a low-tier Mechon sweep. They lost signal halfway through the second pass."
The hologram zoomed in closer, revealing the structure itself—an abandoned subway substation buried under one of the city's forgotten transfer loops. It was crumbling, weathered, and supposedly inactive for years. Until now.
"No power lines connected or any recorded motion inside. But something down there keeps generating harmonic spikes."
Gail stepped forward, studying the readings.
"Are we expecting another resonance breach? Dead Air, maybe?"
Margrave nodded, reluctantly. "Possibly. Might be a bleed-over, like the Junction Street case. Or it might be a failed lockdown. Or even something new."
"If it is Dead Air," Daihatsu murmured, "why wait until now to flare?"
Margrave didn't answer right away. Instead, he tapped the desk again and a brief, silent video played—frame after frame of flickering static and dust shifting across a cracked floor. At the end of the footage, a single pair of boots—clearly human—walked into frame... and then abruptly froze, as if suspended mid-stride. The image held on that moment before cutting out.
"Whatever's in there didn't set off alarms because it never moved... until now."
Adrien's jaw tightened. "Not even a prior heat signature?"
"Nope. Zilch." Margrave turned toward him. "Which is why I'm sending you. The four of you are better than any algorithm I've got. And I'm not trusting this to the Northern Division unless I want the place frozen and detonated 'by accident'."
Iyato finally spoke, his voice soft but sharp.
"And if it isn't Dead Air?"
"Then it's still worse than what we know," Margrave replied.
The room went quiet for a beat. A low rumble of thunder echoed outside the window, distant but perfectly timed.
"Your cruiser is prepped on Pad Twelve. Mission clearance is locked. Contain it, map it, erase it if you have to. But don't let it spread."
He looked at Adrien directly.
"If this thing can fake stillness... it's already smarter than half the infected we've seen."
Adrien turned to his squad—Gail already moving to reattach her visor, Daihatsu's eyes flicking with a quiet spark, and Iyato adjusting his collar like it was a countdown to motion.
"Understood," Adrien said. "We'll keep it contained."
Margrave nodded once, then leaned back against his desk.
"Dismissed, Bloodhound. And for the record... I don't care if you're the best squad in Capella or in this damn country for that matter. If this... thing makes you hesitate—run. I'll take backlash over body bags."
———
The walls of the prep room were steel, the lighting warm and soft-edged, and the lockers built into the walls gleamed with barely-touched polish. There were four of them, side-by-side. Each one marked with a codename etched in alloy:
[FLASHPOINT] – [REDSHIFT] – [SIGHTLINE] – [STORMGLASS]
A distant vent rattled. There were no alarms nor tension. Not yet, anyway.
Gail stood by her locker, sliding each arrow into place inside her custom quiver with methodical rhythm—click, pause, click. Her visor rested on the bench beside her, flickering faintly as it synced with her HUD. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, but her sharp eyes scanned everyone in the room.
"If anyone steps in front of my shots again," she said flatly, "I'll let the resonance backlash hit your nervous system next time."
"Wouldn't be the worst sensation I've had," Iyato said from the corner, sprawled across the bench like he owned it. He had one boot on, the other dangling from his fingers like an afterthought. His eyepatch was off for now, revealing a sealed shut right eye scarred. He blinked once at her, slowly.
Gail didn't respond with words. Just slid the final arrow into place with a bit more force than necessary.
Across from them, Daihatsu was double-checking the magnetic seals on his gauntlets. His suit was already fully locked down—light-blue mist drifted from the cooling coils on his left shoulder, while his right bracer sparked gently with lightning pulses.
"Are we going to talk about the readings, or are we pretending this is a minor sweep?" he asked, tone neutral.
"We're pretending it's a picnic until it proves otherwise," Adrien replied, standing by the mission console near the far wall. He was adjusting the sheath of his sword, syncing the blade's motion with his glove telemetry. He was... a little too quiet.
Daihatsu looked up. "That's an unusual level of optimism coming from you."
"It's not optimism," Adrien said, turning toward them. "It's efficiency."
Iyato huffed out a soft chuckle, finally pulling on his other boot.
"You always were poetic with your pessimism, Captain."
"Captain?" Adrien raised a brow.
"What, can't I be respectful before we dive into the jaws of entropy?"
"You're wearing your gloves backward."
Iyato looked down. Paused. Swapped them without a word.
Gail sighed as she slung her quiver over her back and clipped her visor into place.
"We done pretending to be civilians yet?"
Daihatsu straightened, face composed. "Fully suited. Heart not. That count?"
"Close enough," Adrien said, voice steady.
The room dimmed briefly. A soft tone pulsed through the floor, and the automated voice spoke above them:
"Mission window approaching. Shuttle pad doors opening. Bloodhound squad report to launch gate."
The four gathered without fanfare, moving together like a unit pulled by the same thread.
As the bulkhead ahead hissed open to reveal the ramp toward the shuttle—its nose lit with amber light and Capella's silhouette bleeding into the dark horizon—they paused for a heartbeat. Just long enough for the silence to matter.
"Fun's over," Adrien murmured.
"Didn't know it started," Gail replied.
"Give it twenty minutes," Iyato added. "Something always screams."
"Hopefully not us..." Daihatsu muttered.
And with that, Team Bloodhound stepped aboard the cruiser.