The Span woke Arden early, humming through concrete and bone.
Sound came first: the low mechanical respiration of the tower, the whisper-click of security lenses irising open, the distant snarl of transport lines dragging sins to market. Then the collar: a soft, possessive pulse at the base of his skull, syncing his heartbeat to an invisible metronome.
"Asset Ø7-∆-AR," a neutral voice murmured inside his head. "Stand."
He opened his eyes on the boxed geometry of his new cell. No bars. Just a bed that pretended to be soft, a sink shaped like an afterthought, a Veil-slab recessed in the wall, grey and waiting. The door scribed with his designation instead of his name.
He lay there one extra beat, testing the system.
Nothing.
He thought, with deliberate clarity: I could walk.
The collar hummed approvingly, as if to say, Yes. Within parameters.
He thought: I could break.
Heat flared sharp and surgical along his spine. Not agony; the prelude to it.
"Tier One feedback," the same voice said. "Remain constructive."
"Morning to you, too," Arden muttered.
He swung his legs off the bunk. Bare feet, cold floor. The city's breath in the walls. They had tried to bleach him into neutral, but the feeling in his chest—small, stubborn, feral—refused.
The door hissed.
"Asset Ø7-∆-AR," came a human voice this time, filtered through the speaker. "Unit assembly. Follow the arrows. Do not digress."
The floor panels lit a path in thin white lines. He followed.
As he walked, feeds blinked open at the edges of his vision: CAD orientation modules, contracts, clause citations. He dismissed them with practiced disinterest. If they wanted worship, they had chained the wrong throat.
The corridor emptied him into a hangar carved into the tower's ribs.
Here, the air tasted different—machine oil, ozone, recycled gunpowder perfume. Armored vans and slick enforcement bikes slept in orderly rows. Above them, walkways laced the space like steel spiderweb, lined with silhouettes of Enforcers who looked down as if observing hazardous equipment.
At the center of the hangar, four collars glowed.
Unit Ø7.
Darius Kell stood with his arms folded, bulk in dark gear, scars making maps the Span pretended not to read. His collar's light was a banked ember against his throat.
Seraphine Vega sat on a crate like it was a throne someone had misplaced. Slim, lethal, boots swinging lazily. Her collar gleamed delicate, almost ornamental—a lie Arden's eyes refused to buy.
Kai Drayven leaned against a pillar of cabling, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket, eyes lit with the pale circuitry of someone whose skull held more routers than mercy. Threads of data spidered from his temple ports into a hovering console-drone at his shoulder.
Lyra Halden stood a little apart, as if the air around her had been told to think. Silver hair, mismatched eyes—one human, one lens that drank in the hangar's dull light and returned it as a quiet question. Her collar was not an accessory on top of her; it was woven through her.
Arden's pulse spiked. The collar noticed, muttered a diagnostic, then let him keep the feeling.
Silex waited near them, hands behind his back, matte-black armor swallowing the fluorescents. Handler. Warden. Whatever title they dressed his job in.
"Reik," Silex said. No "Arden," not here. "Front and center."
Arden moved to join them, the floor arrows ending at Ø7 like the last step of an execution line. He stopped between Darius and Seraphine, close enough to feel their heat, far enough not to touch.
"Unit Ø7," Silex said, voice leveled for intercoms. "This is your new Dog. Asset Ø7-∆-AR. Former Forty-One, former Vultures, currently breathing because the machine sees a use-case."
"Adorable," Seraphine murmured. "We getting punch cards for converts now?"
Darius grunted, something like a warning or a laugh.
"Sit," Kai said, without looking up. "Your vitals are cluttering my HUD."
"I'm standing," Arden replied.
"Marginally impressive," Kai said. "Still loud."
Lyra's gaze on him felt like static turning thoughtful.
"His pattern's sharp," she said softly. "Edges in the wrong places. That can be…redirected."
Silex's mouth ticked. "You'll all help with the redirect. Today we introduce you properly. Tomorrow we see if you can keep each other alive."
"Alive is a flexible metric," Seraphine said.
"Breathing and functional," Silex amended. "Sarcasm optional but tolerated."
He gestured to a nearby rack.
"Gear first."
The span of metal held five sets of equipment: armor, underlays, boots, harnesses. Four were already marked with Ø7 sigils. The fifth—still clean, still smelling like factory breath—in Arden's size bore his new designation in white.
Arden stepped to it.
The armor was leaner than Marshal plate, built for movement instead of display. Matte charcoal with pale circuitry veins that would light when the collar synced. Gloves with fiberknuckles. A jacket with hidden anchors for tether-lines and shock-links. No helmet yet.
Every piece came with an invisible price tag: Obey.
He started suiting up.
"Strip show on the first day," Seraphine mused. "Generous."
"You narrating everything you see, or is this just my welcome package?" Arden said.
"Both," she said, eyes bright. "Turn around. Let me see how bad they lied on your file photo."
He finished buckling the chest rig and faced her.
She took him in head to toe with an appraiser's gaze.
"Huh," Seraphine said. "Less pathetic than advertised. Still too much martyr around the eyes."
Darius stepped in, efficient, large hands adjusting a strap at Arden's shoulder so it lay flat.
"Loose gear gets you killed," Darius said.
"That and bullets," Arden said.
"Bullets are honest," Darius replied. "Leashes aren't."
Lyra moved closer, careful, like she was trying not to startle him.
"May I?" she asked.
He hesitated, then nodded.
Her fingers found the edge of his collar, checking the connection to the suit's spine port. Her touch was cool, clinical, but not unkind.
"Link integrity's stable," Lyra murmured. "They did a clean install on you. That's rare."
"How comforting," Arden said.
"It isn't," she answered.
Kai's console chimed; his gaze flicked to some internal display.
"CAD uplink recognizes you as provisional," Kai said. "They've put a monitor flag on your leash. 'Behavioral volatility: high potential; high risk.'"
"I feel seen," Arden said.
Silex cut across them. "Eyes here."
The small talk snapped off like a cut feed.
"What are we?" Silex asked.
"Property," Kai said.
"Liabilities," Seraphine added, sweet as poison.
"Tools," Darius rumbled.
Lyra's voice came last. "Evidence."
Silex nodded once. "All correct. You are the mechanism we use when we cannot show our hands. You execute sanctioned violence in unsanctioned spaces. You are the gap between law and optics. You are—"
"—maintenance," Arden said quietly.
Silex studied him for a long second.
"Say that again," Silex said.
"You're not gods," Arden said. "You're janitors with better branding. We're the mops."
Tier One heat bit the back of his neck, sudden and bright, but Silex lifted a hand; it died.
"Remember that," Silex said. "It's the closest thing to humility you're getting."
He keyed a command on his wrist. The hangar dimmed. A Veil-slab flared to life on the far wall, showing a stylized map of The Span: tiers and arteries, glowing districts under the dome.
"Division Ø7 is assigned to Substrate and Midline operations," Silex said. "You go where the footage looks ugly and we need it to look worse. You break syndicate plays, corporate quiet wars, and rogue Cells before they hit the public feeds. You do it clean enough that the Bureau can frame it as mercy."
The map zoomed on a district Arden knew too well: Forty-One. Rust corridors. Reactor stacks like jagged teeth.
His jaw tightened.
"Today is not a field day," Silex went on. "Today is leash familiarization. Team integration. Simulated breach. We find out if you're going to be an asset or a cautionary clip."
Seraphine's grin sharpened. "Field trip, but make it torture."
Kai rolled his shoulders. "Boot code's ready. Spinning up the sandbox."
Lyra's eyes unfocused for a heartbeat, as if something whispered into her private channel.
Arden felt his collar vibrate. A line of text crawled across his vision.
[Ø7 TRAINING SIM: ONLINE. LINKS ENGAGED.]
The hangar dissolved.
No, he corrected an instant later—the hangar stayed. But Veil projectors stitched new skin over its bones. Walls became stacked tenements weeping neon. The clean floor flickered into rain-slick pavement, reflecting false constellations of adlight. Overhead, the dome's storm was rendered at closer range, a projected bruise.
Arden smelled gutter rain, vendor spice, wet rust. The Veil had decided to be kind with detail.
"Welcome to the sandbox," Kai said, voice now ghosted from somewhere above them. His body stayed where it was, wired into the console-drone. "Objectives are simple: clear the block, neutralize targets, obey protocol, don't die. Remember, anything that looks like a civilian is being tracked. Collateral will be noted."
"And by noted he means punished," Seraphine said lightly, spinning a baton that had not been in her hand a second before the sim skinned over her fingers.
Darius checked his rifle with methodical economy. In the sim it was a familiar old beast: matte barrel, worn grip.
Lyra blinked; a translucent interface unfolded in front of one eye, scrolling feeds of occupant metrics.
Arden looked down. A sidearm hung at his hip, heavy and inevitable.
"Scenario," Silex said. "Rogue Vultures splinter-cell took a Judiciary transport. Hostages, stolen assets. We want them silent. This is a model, not a mission, but treat it like the real thing."
Forty-One. Vultures.
Someone in programming had a sense of humor.
"Questions?" Silex asked.
"Rules of engagement?" Darius said.
"Standard Chain Dog protocol," Silex said. "Confirm hostile; disable with prejudice. Minimize bystander casualties. No friendly fire."
"Define 'minimize,'" Seraphine said.
"Try," Silex answered.
The collar at Arden's neck thrummed, aligning him to four other pulses. For the first time he felt the network properly: four signatures brushing against his, distinct and layered. Darius like a slow drum. Seraphine bright and jagged. Kai a staccato flurry. Lyra a smooth, eerie waveform that never quite resolved.
"Neural link at ten percent," Kai said. "Just enough for pings. Don't think too loudly. Looking at you, martyr."
"Stop reading my—" Arden began.
Feedback sizzled; Kai made a tsk sound.
"Thought volume," Kai said. "You spike like you're trying to set off alarms."
"Move," Darius broke in, voice cutting clean through.
They moved.
Arden slipped into motion beside him because that was what his body remembered from a hundred ugly jobs in narrower streets: fall in with the one who looks like he knows where the exits are.
Seraphine ghosted ahead, a flash of dark leather and pale grin, using crates and flickering holo-signs as stepping stones, tracing the high line.
Lyra drifted at their rear flank, fingers skimming the air, pulling data from invisible seams. Her voice came quiet over the link.
"Heat signatures: twelve upstairs, three armed at windows, two on the stairwell," she said. "No civilians in immediate line of fire."
"Good," Darius said. "Kai?"
"I've got their comms," Kai said. "It's cute. Scrambler's a generation old and held together with prayer. Feeding their own lies back at them."
"Arden," Darius said, "on me."
Two words, and somehow they weighed like a choice.
Arden took the breacher position without arguing. The door ahead was a rusted sheet of code and memory. Once, the Vultures had painted their sigil there in burning copper. The sim echoed that history; his chest clenched.
"You're shaking," Seraphine observed from above, upside down on a balcony rail. "Sentimental?"
"They're using my dead gang as a tutorial," Arden said. "Hard not to feel flattered."
Darius's hand clamped his shoulder, grounding.
"This is a sim," Darius said. "But lessons land. Focus on the pattern, not the ghosts."
Lyra's gaze brushed him, sympathy like a flicker of cooler light.
"Remember," she murmured, "if you don't act, the collars will. Better you write this."
He exhaled once, deep.
"Door," Darius said.
Arden booted it in.
The room beyond was full of projected men with familiar ink and cheap guns. They turned, shouted. Time compressed.
Arden moved.
Training older than the leash rose like a bruise. He dropped to a knee, sights up, fired. One, two, three targets caught in center mass. Their bodies glitch-fell, dissolving in fragments of pale code.
No collateral.
Darius's rifle thundered over him, precise. Seraphine dropped from above into another cluster, baton cracking skulls into pixelated halos. She flowed between barrels with vicious grace, non-lethal where she could be, cruel where she chose.
Lyra's voice guided them, a calm metronome. "Left corner. Behind crate. Stairwell now. Duck."
Kai murmured numbers and packet traces, turning the room's electronics against its occupants. Lights strobed, speakers screamed, guns misfired.
It should have felt good.
Instead, with every trigger squeeze, Arden felt the phantom rope on his neck.
"Clear," Darius called.
"Clear-ish," Seraphine corrected, wiping virtual blood from her cheek with theatrical disdain.
A child flickered into existence at the edge of Arden's vision.
Small, barefoot, wearing a Vultures jacket two sizes too big.
The sim had not mentioned a child.
Arden's gun snapped toward the movement, then froze.
"What the fuck is that," Kai said. Not a question; an error code.
"Unscheduled variable," Lyra whispered.
The boy looked up at Arden with rendered dark eyes.
"I'm still uploading," the child said. "Don't delete me."
Arden's finger convulsed on the trigger. The collar seared his spine: Tier One biting close to Tier Two.
[HOSTAGE FLAGGED – DO NOT TERMINATE.]
"Stand down," Silex's voice cracked over the channel, harder now. "That's a fail-state marker. You shoot, we count it."
Arden's breath sawed.
Seraphine's gaze knifed between him and the boy. Darius shifted closer, heavy presence at his shoulder.
"Relax," Seraphine murmured. "Simulation, remember?"
The boy flickered, half-glitch.
"I didn't do it," he said. "You said I was just maintenance."
Arden lowered the gun.
"I'm not pulling that trigger," he said.
"Correct call," Lyra said quietly.
"Log it," Kai muttered. "Asset Ø7-∆-AR demonstrates minimum viable conscience."
"Noted," Silex said.
The child dissolved.
The room brightened; the Veil-skin peeled back. They were in the hangar again. Drones. Vans. Lights. No blood. Just five collars humming in the same key.
"You passed," Silex said.
"Felt like failing," Arden replied.
"Good," Silex said. "If it ever feels clean, that's when I worry."
Seraphine hopped down from the crate, rolling her shoulders.
"For a baby leash, you didn't completely embarrass us," she said. "High praise, Reik."
Darius clapped Arden once between the shoulder blades. It was like being acknowledged by a building.
"You listened," Darius said. "That's the hardest part for men who think they're already dead."
Kai unplugged from his console, blinking himself back into his body with a small grimace.
"I still don't like him," Kai said. "But his chaos indices correlate interestingly with ours."
"That mean we match?" Arden asked.
"That means if we all go off-script at once," Kai said, "the system won't see it coming."
Lyra stepped into Arden's space just enough that he had to notice.
"When the child said 'I'm still uploading'," she asked, "what did you think?"
"That they're sick," Arden said. "Whoever coded that choice."
"Good," Lyra said. "Keep thinking that."
Silex scanned them, something like pride buried deep under protocols.
"Unit Ø7 is active as of now," he said. "You sleep when the tower lets you. You eat when the schedule pings. You move when I say move. First live deployment comes soon."
"How soon?" Arden asked.
The collar ticked hot: impertinent.
Silex's gaze met his. "Soon enough that if you're not ready, you die."
Seraphine smirked. "Optimistic."
Lyra's fingers brushed her own leash.
Darius just nodded, as if he'd been expecting that answer since his first breath.
Arden felt the four of them around him—the monument, the smoke, the wire, the ghost—and the weight of the collar finally shifted from anchor to orbit.
A pack, he thought, and the collar cooled as if, for one dangerous second, it agreed.
"They call us Dogs," he said under his breath.
"And?" Seraphine prompted.
"We bite," Arden said. "But we pick the throat."
The hangar lights brightened. The Span's vast lungs exhaled.
Somewhere above, beyond concrete and doctrine, thunder walked the dome again.
The machine had its Dogs.
They had each other.
For now.