09-11-2355 | 21:51
Harbor Quarter - Rooftops, Off-Grid Cutaway.
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Tycho clears the first gap without a sound. Cowl kills glare. Counterprint soles lie to the pressure grid. A thumb-sized belt puck throws a soft acoustic fog around each footfall. Patrol drones skate lazy figure eights one block over. Ad boards breathe color into low clouds. None of it sees him.
Second roof. He hugs a parapet, taps a fingertip reader, and gets a ghost-map in his palm: shallow vibro mesh, cheap microwave curtain, infrared trip web strung by someone who wanted to go home at 17:00. He clips a repeater under a vent lip. The lattice believes it is still yesterday.
Third roof. He slides up behind a maintenance hatch, palms a micro-wedge into the seam, hears the bolt twitch, and lifts. The dead drop is where it should be: briefcase-sized, matte, rubbered edges. He eases it out, shuts the hatch, drops to a knee, and wakes his handheld.
Wireframe blooms on the screen: relay head, tight array, printed coil that smells like money. Packet tags are scraped and rewritten in a neat, familiar hand.
"Cute," he mutters. Someone with Harbor access touched this, and not on Harbor time.
Footsteps hit the stair head on the adjacent roof. Two helmets crest the lip. Harbor Enforcement, not contractors. Gray jackets, smart optics already chewing the dark, rifles humming warm.
"Hands," the lead says. "Bag down. Now."
Tycho rolls the briefcase onto his back with a blink-fast strap, flicks a ring from his belt, and skips it across gravel. The ring blooms into a curved hard-light shield the size of a door. The first flechette burst hits and skates off into the parapet, chewing concrete. The second agent corrects, smarter, hotter. Tycho shuffles left and the field dog-walks with him.
"On your knees," the lead calls. "You're caught."
"Not tonight," Tycho says, and ghost-kicks a palm-sized puck at their boots. It pops a cold smoke that blinds thermal. The nearest drone shifts course to look. Tycho flicks a coin pulse and its feed coughs static.
A third enforcer climbs up from the blind side. Good angle, good timing. He snaps a sticky tether that blossoms into a web aimed for Tycho's chest. Tycho ducks too slow on purpose, lets the web kiss the hard-light and grab nothing. The third yanks. The field puck slides two meters and pins to the parapet instead of him.
They're not idiots. The lead swings wide, trying to flank.
Tycho moves. He sprints into the smoke, slides, chops the rifle off the second agent's centerline, knee to thigh, elbow to jaw. The man hits the gravel and forgets his name for a minute. The third swings a sidearm. Tycho slaps the slide, twists wrist, steps through, dumps the gun, clips the man behind the ear, and parks him flat.
The lead stays up. He launches a microdrone. The bug snaps from his forearm and flowers into a net with teeth. Tycho swats it midair, coin pulse popping the mesh into useless ribbon. The lead steps in smart, short punches, no wasted motion. Professional. Tycho eats one on the shoulder to feel the rhythm, gives one back to the ribs, heel to the shin. Then the lead gets mean and goes for a throat mic, calling it in.
Tycho is done being polite.
He palms for another coin and comes up empty. Fine. He reaches with the part of him he doesn't advertise. The steel bolts holding the parapet cap tremble, then leap. Six thumb-thick bolts snap free and rattle through the smoke like angry bees. The lead flinches on instinct. Tycho flicks his fingers, and the man's rifle locks to the glowing field ringed along the parapet as if the wall suddenly grew a magnet. The sidearm tries to leave its holster and almost makes it. The lead stares, shock breaking through training.
"You're a Conductor?" he breathes.
Tycho steps in and puts him down with two clean hits. He catches the man's head before it smacks the roof, lays him flat, and curses under his breath.
"Shit. That was stupid."
Now he'll be on a list. Now some analyst will flag a weird vector event on a quiet roof and staple it to a file someone shouldn't have.
He kills the field, scoops his pucks, yanks the tether anchor free, and drags the three helmets into the shadow of an HVAC spine. Zip ties around wrists, comms popped, body cams on loop. He pulls a cuff knife, shaves two seconds off the lattice tag he left for the repeater, and checks the skyline.
Drones still lazy. Ad boards still lying about happiness. The quarter glitters like nothing just happened.
He thumbs his throat mic and keeps the burst short enough to hide in background noise. "Package retrieved. Anchor located. Staying dark." He doesn't say a name.
He cuts the channel, checks the briefcase strap, and runs the roof edge like it's a rail. One handspring over a service alley to keep the silhouette thin, a drop behind a cooling stack, a slide along the dark seam no camera was paid to watch. He never looks back. He never gives a lens a face to love.
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