09-11-2355 | 11:06
HARBOR HQ - Ops Floor, Briefing Pit.
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The pit sits like a glass bowl in the middle of the ops floor, city map floating above the table in cold blue veins. Screens whisper. The air runs a degree too cool, the way command likes it when they expect bad news.
Kaito Drumm drapes himself over the rail with a jammer in his hands and a grin that belongs in trouble. "So, our new captain. Anyone meet him that wasn't via tabloid zoom? Be honest. Is the jawline union approved?"
Irie Rao checks seals on a med harness and counts patch strips under her breath. "I care if he points at the right door. He can look like a shoe if he gets us in and out."
Cole Maddox pulls at a frayed thread on his sleeve and watches the city map like it owes him money. "Hero boy took a three-month vacation after a lab turned into a blender. That's what I heard."
Sera Quin lifts her coilbow and tests a sight. "It wasn't a vacation. He was off the schedule. That press thing he did? He said he failed his team."
Kaito whistles, light. "Love a man who depresses a podium. Is he at least gorgeous in person? I need morale."
Bishop Hale shifts the grav maul to a bench and folds his arms. "I like on time."
The steps catch three sets of footsteps. Conversation dies like someone pulled a plug. Nova Han takes the last step with a clipboard that will not forgive nonsense. Morrell follows, expression built for audits. Dax Mercer comes in a half beat later. The team stands by reflex and then pretends they did not.
Kaito tilts his head, stage-whisper soft. "Answer is yes. Union approved."
Dax hears it. His mouth does not move. His eyes skim the pit and pause on the back bench where a second seat used to be claimed by a cage emitter and a crooked smile. He sets a stylus on the table very carefully, like it could become something else if he lets it.
Han keeps it brisk. "Seventh attack tonight. Northside Medical Exchange, blood wing. Building is locked on grid and cleared. One security fatal. We have a trapped heat signature in the vent spine."
Dax's shoulders check. "Same pattern as before?"
Morrell nods. "Mark Three, chest bloom. Ceiling gait matches. I am ninety-one percent comfortable saying it is the same entity."
Something passes under Dax's face that only people who know him well can read. He breathes once, slow. "We thought we held it. We didn't." The name sits in the air without being spoken. Tamsin. He presses a knuckle to the table and drags his focus back up. "We fix it."
Morrell flicks a page. "There is also a detained subject from the scene. Officers logged a 'second rendling' who dragged the guard and fled. They boxed him in a hard-light yoke."
Cole's chin goes up like a flag. "So it brought a buddy. They hide in hats, cover the ears, act human until they smell a score. People forget we all carry the code. Fate decides who flips. Some of us get lucky."
Kaito snorts. "He still uses deodorant like the rest of us."
Dax looks at Morrell. "Second subject. Did we watch the footage?"
Morrell's eyes cut toward the doorway. "We will. Right now."
"That would be nice," a voice says from the hall.
Ryn comes in with his gloves tucked into his belt, a clean damp line in his hair, and a temperature that is not the room's. He clocks Dax and pauses for a breath longer than he plans to. Dax looks back, and something in his jaw writes a whole paragraph in one clench. Neither of them read it out loud.
Ryn takes the near side of the table and folds his arms. "His name is Silas Quell. Janitor. Four months on nights. He pulled Ramon Ortiz six meters and made the thing run by hitting solvent racks with a pressure cone. He begged not to be taken. You took him anyway."
Cole scoffs. "You defending him because you glow on the same channel?"
Ryn turns his head very slowly. "I defend him because I watched the feed. You read your own summary and got brave."
Han cuts in before the tenor spikes. "We are not trying a case in the pit. Sergeant Kelso will watch the source and correct the log. Until then, unknown ally is the term. Not monster. Not second rendling. If anyone is confused, bring a dictionary."
Morrel points at Ryn's folded arms. "You certain he did not feed?"
"You know not all rendlings are the same," Ryn says. "He pushed, he dragged, he yelled at people to move. He saved a kid who got stuck in a bathroom. You hear it on the ambient. She says thank you before her mother drags her behind a post and starts pointing at his gloves."
Dax takes that in and sets it where he keeps things he will use. "Then we clear the vents and we clear our mess in the lot."
Han nods. "Good. Clean plan. Lieutenant."
Dax straightens in a way that is not theater. "K-6, listen up. Sera, ceilings and vents. Two birds up before we crack the vestibule. Heat is yellow. Human is green. You call your false positives before my head is under them."
Sera squares her stance. "Copy."
"Bishop," Dax says, sketching boxes on the floating grid, "chokes A and C. Portable cage in hand. If it pushes a field, you change the angle. You don't arm wrestle it."
"Understood," Bishop says, steady as weight.
"Irie, med corner inside the inner door. Hypo for hypovolemia. Patch strip for contact. You speak to civilians and everyone else lifts or carries."
"Music," Irie says, already sliding the harness on.
"Kaito, kill their internal network on entry. Keep our eyes loud and theirs quiet. If door logic learned a trick, make it forget. If you can peel HVAC without waking backups, give me dry air on Ryn's word." Dax adds.
Kaito winks. "I'll tuck the cams we like and sing a lullaby to the rest."
Cole shakes his head. "And golden boy?"
Ryn's tone stays easy. "I'm always second on Mercer and anchor when he calls it. You people... shoot your little weapons and I cure, and kick ass." Cole scoffs at this.
"You going to heal it with a hug?" Cole sneers.
"Only if you volunteer to model," Ryn says. "You have a very punchable aura."
"Enough," Dax says, without raising his voice. He looks at Ryn, and the look is a contract. "You say how. I say when. If you call it dirty, I end it."
"Deal," Ryn says.
Morrell taps a pin over the vent spine. "We caught a short corrupted cascade as it fled Northside. It is re-plotting movement on field geometry. Sell it a false hall and it will buy. You have a lever."
Ryn nods once. "Then I sell."
A quiet falls that is not empty; it is readiness finding shape.
Dax breaks it with the part that is not logistics. "Three months ago I watched a teammate hold a door so the rest of us could live. We say her name in here and we keep our heads out there. We do not let grief drive. We let it focus."
The room shifts around that truth. Sera's eyes go glassy for a blink and then she seals them. Bishop's jaw flexes once. Kaito's jokes sit down. Irie folds a patch strip with careful hands.
Han points to the steps. "You move in five. Stay off local. Media already has the cordon. Commander Morrel will handle the detained ally and the language around him. We bring back results, not fire."
Ryn turns for the stairs and checks himself at the last second to look at Dax again. It is not a big thing. It is enough. Dax gives the smallest nod. He feels the catch in his chest and chooses to breathe anyway.
Kaito bumps Ryn's elbow on the climb. "Second is the sexiest position. Science fact."
"And some people just have to die mad about it," Ryn says, not breaking stride.
Cole mutters as he goes by, "Hope your miracle doesn't get us killed."
Irie answers without heat. "Hope your mouth doesn't."
They file out into the colder air near the pad. The blue pin over Northside throbs like a slow heartbeat. The grid draws them a path. They take it.
09-11-2355 | 11:43
HARBOR HQ - Detention Tier, Observation Bay.
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One-way glass turns the interview room into a stage. The audio feed hums in the ceiling, clear enough to catch breath and the little pauses people make when they want to look stronger than they feel.
Silas Gavin sits at a steel table under white light. His cap is gone, the short horns are not, and his work gloves are folded beside a paper cup like he hopes manners will count for something. Mag-clamps ride his wrists and complain in a small electrical way. He tries to keep still and fails at it every few seconds.
Morrell takes the opposite chair and opens a slate. "State your name for the record."
"Si... Silas Gavin," he says. "Facilities, nights. I clean and stock and take out bio bins."
"Tell me what you did at Northside."
"I shoved air, like when the service lift sticks," he answers, words tripping then steadying. "The solvent rack popped, I pushed the vapor, it flashed hot, and the thing pulled away. I grabbed Ramon Ortiz and dragged him toward the lobby. He wasn't breathing right and I didn't want him dying on tile. Please write that part."
"It is written," Morrell says. "Why the hat and gloves during shift if your duties do not require them?"
Silas looks at the gloves. He does not touch them. "Because people stare. Kids stare because they are kids. Adults pretend not to, which hurts more. The hat keeps it quieter and the gloves help with trash runs and also with not seeing my hands in every reflection. I try to make other people's nights easier."
"Did you take blood from any person tonight," Morrell asks, dead even, "or at any prior time in this facility."
Silas's breath shivers and he shakes his head. "No. Never. I eat food. I like hot noodles and the red packet they hide behind the counter. I bring a lunch. I clock in and out. I know what this looks like and what people say under it. I'm not a monster and I didn't drink from anyone."
Morrell continues, patient and clinical. "When the enforcers challenged you, why did you run?"
"I ran because I had three rifles pointed at my chest," Silas says, voice going faster than he wants. "I said do not shoot, I said Ramon needs a patch, they shouted hands and I showed them, then the floor grabbed my shoes and a net came down. I am sorry if I moved wrong. I am not trained for that. I clean floors. Can I have water, please."
"You may," Morrell says, tipping a finger at the ceiling speaker.
In the dark on the other side of the glass, Ryn stands with his shoulder on the wall and his arms folded tight enough that the seams pull. He watches Silas fight the shakes and the habit of saying sorry for existing. The door opens without a sound. Dax steps in, glances at the glass, then at Ryn, and stops beside him.
"We are up in five," Dax says. The low light cuts his face into hard planes, and he eases them because he knows what rooms like this can do to a person.
Ryn does not look away from the table. "He pulled a guard out of a corridor, and we put him in mag-clamps like a prize. You can hear how careful he is with every answer. That is not how a predator sounds."
"It is an interview," Dax says. "We have a process."
"It feels like a verdict audition," Ryn says. "Silas did the right thing while people panicked. Hire people like him and stop pretending optics are a policy. We need rendlings who resist the code and live with it. Give them actual work and clearance. Put the ones who prove it on teams."
"HR will throw a fit," Dax says. He watches Silas accept a water bulb from a tech with two careful hands and a thank you that trips on the way out.
"Let them," Ryn says. "If Legal needs a label to feel safe, print subhuman on a handbook and argue about capitalization all year. I care that he walked the walk and we still treated him like he broke in for sport. He already flagged two vents that rattle when the air changes. That alone is value."
Dax breathes once and lets the breath go slowly. "You are not wrong."
"Good, because I am not done," Ryn says, finally turning to face him. "This code fell out of a torn sky and wrote itself into everything that breathes. It does not ask permission."
"It also turns some people into monsters who kill anything that gets in their way." Dax retorts.
"It turns some into people who look different and keep going anyway." Ryn defends. "It's the code, not a moral failure. Not a personality test. You can hate what it did to your life. You do not get to pretend that the ones it did not break are the threat."
"Plenty of bad men were bad before the sky split," Dax says. "I have put cuffs on more than a few."
"Sure," Ryn says. "And not one study ties cruelty to a Mark One cascade or any other. No science says a mean mind predicts an entity that stops weighing consequences. The code rewires behavior loops. That is software failure, not destiny. We fix code when we can. We protect people. We retire threats when we must. We do not write policy like fear is physics."
In the cell, Morrell shifts the slate. "Describe the entity's behavior from your perspective."
Silas wets his lips. "It moved like the ceiling was a floor and like the floor was a bad idea. It did not just hit. It tested the corner and the light, then it made a choice I have not seen. I know what you deal with. The ones I have seen kill and leave, or kill and try to break the room. This one went for the throat and drank. I have never seen that. I do not want to see that again."
Ryn tilts his head toward the glass, voice lower. "He just gave you the line your teams need."
Dax's gaze stays on Silas, then flicks back. "I'm listening. We also don't have time for this."
"Then change how we brief," Ryn says. "The thing in those vents is a first. We treat it like a first. We do not turn that into a reason to treat anyone with horns like a copy."
"Agreed," Dax says, and he lets that be a real word. "We will make that clear."
The tech sets the water bulb down. Silas thanks her again, this time without the stutter, then looks back at Morrell. "Please do not send me somewhere without a clock or a phone. I have a locker on B with my name on it, and a niece who likes my hat, and a neighbor who borrows my drill. I did not hurt anyone. I do not want to hurt anyone. Let me help, or let me go, but please do not make me disappear because my head makes people nervous."
Ryn's shoulders ease a fraction. "You can hear the innocence."
"I hear a man pleading to be heard," Dax says, jaw working once. "We won't disappear him."
"Pretty easy to tell yourself that," Ryn says. He tips his chin toward the glass again.
Morrell caps the slate. "Thank you, Mr. Quell. We will return shortly."
The mag-clamps stay on. Silas flinches at the lock cycle, then folds his hands as if stillness can pass for innocence.
The ops ping hits Dax's ear. He checks the time and gestures to the door. "Three minutes."
They move into the hall. Ryn glances back once. Silas looks at the glass with a hope that does not know where to land. The corridor air runs cooler toward the pad. Upstairs, the city map keeps pulsing over Northside, and the blue looks more like a warning than a comfort.
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