For a long moment, Kali just stood there, staring down at the body.
Gillian Meyer—once Colt, the sniper, the ghost of Medri's shadow war, now a still, broken man crumpled on the floor. Another casualty in a chain of quiet tragedies. Another soul turned into a weapon, only to be discarded when the bleeding became inconvenient.
"Fuck," Kali muttered under his breath, more acceptance than anger in the word.
He stepped over the corpse carefully, not out of reverence, but because death still carried a weight, even for someone like him. He took a slow breath and began to search the hideout.
The interior was a chaotic warren of spare parts and scorched electronics. Holographic schematics flickered on cracked displays. Shelves buckled under the weight of disassembled drones, stripped-down augments, and worn cybernetic limbs, all scavenged and repurposed with a precision that bordered on obsession. Colt hadn't just been a killer, he'd been a mechanic, a tech savant .
It wasn't long before Kali found what he was looking for.
Tucked beneath a pile of datachips and scorched wiring was a slim black communicator, identical to the one used by the Syndicate boss to contact him. Its frame bore the faint triangular etching that marked secure relay devices. This was the link. If he wanted to intercept messages, reroute false confirmations, or even spoof Colt's status, this was his key.
He slid it into his coat. Then he turned to the next item, Colt's sniper rifle. It was nearly a meter long, crafted with an elegance that belied its lethality. Matte-gray with ridged contours along the barrel, the rifle had been personalized. Kali took it anyway.
He was about to leave when something in the corner caught his eye, a large, tarp-draped shape beneath a halo of dust. There was a presence to it, even hidden. A stillness that didn't feel like decay, but sleep. He crossed the room, pulled the tarp free, and stopped.
Beneath it was a suit unlike any he'd ever seen. Its surface shimmered with an obsidian-black sheen, fractured in places like scorched glass. Its helm bore a dark, faceted visor, smooth as liquid shadow. Portions of the chassis were warped, damaged, scorched and dented, but even in ruin, it radiated menace.
Rizen's voice surged into his mind with rare emotion, like a note struck too hard on a quiet piano. "It can't be."
Kali narrowed his eyes. "You recognize it?"
Rizen responded almost immediately. "Somnic tech. Old epoch. Axiomatic class exosuit." A pause. "And from the design… this is a Widowmaker. Tailored for grief-awakened."
Kali's breath caught for a moment. His hand touched the cold surface, hesitant, as if it might burn. "Really?" he asked, doubt flickering in his voice.
Rizen answered with a low, amused hum. "I'll forgive your skepticism." Another pause. "This kind of tech… it's lightyears ahead of anything on this planet. Maybe even ahead of what's in circulation this entire age. But don't get hopeful yet. It's badly damaged. And I don't know if there's a single mechanic alive on this rock who could bring it back online."
Kali stood in silence, hand still resting on the armor. The room seemed to dim around it, as though the suit absorbed the light. It felt ancient. Heavy with intent.
"We'll find someone," he said at last.
Rizen said nothing. But in the silence that followed, Kali could feel a resonance between them.
A grief weapon for a grief bearer. The Evangelist had just found something made for him.
He didn't know where Colt had found the exosuit. And now, the only man who might've known was far too dead to answer questions. Not that it mattered. If Colt had been capable of restoring it, he would have. The man was a butcher with a rifle and a surgeon with a socket wrench, one of the finest mechanics this side of the continent.
Kali exhaled slowly. Rizen was right. The Widowmaker would have to wait until they got off-world. This planet couldn't resurrect what it didn't understand.
With a grunt, Kali dragged the sniper's corpse into the alley's maintenance hatch and dropped him into the sewage canals that coiled beneath Kirel like diseased arteries. The body disappeared with a splash and the soft churn of filth, swallowed by the city's mechanical gut. Unceremonious. But clean.
He returned to the hideout and locked it down, manually sealing the reinforced door, frying the keypad, and disabling the power relays to make sure no curious eyes would stumble across the tech inside. What lay within now belonged to silence.
Then began the long trek back.
By the time he emerged into the upper tiers, the fire had been extinguished. The glow of chemical embers had been replaced by cold floodlights, and the air was thick with the scent of scorched metal and soot.
The Armed Forces Department was already there, sweeping the area in coordinated units. Droids hovered overhead, scanning for data remnants. Recovery teams were tagging fragments of Syndicate tech, hauling scorched shells of enemy drones into containment crates. What hadn't been vaporized was being catalogued. Every bullet casing. Every blood trace. Every potential secret.
Kali walked past it all. He found Liv and John near the perimeter, posted just behind a makeshift barricade of rubble and twisted scaffold poles. They were seated on overturned crates, blood-streaked, bruised, but breathing.
John gave a tired nod when he saw him. Liv stood, her arms crossed but her eyes searching him.
"You made it," she said, voice low.
"Barely," Kali replied. "How's Thomas?"
"He's stable," John said. "Evac team got him out half an hour ago."
"And the droids?" Kali asked, glancing at the pile of scrap behind the AFD perimeter.
"Nothing salvageable," Liv replied. "Someone hardwired a failsafe into them. Self-destructed right after the fight."
Kali nodded. "Of course they did."
John studied him for a second, then asked, "Did you get Colt?"
"He got away."
A silence passed between them. Liv tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing. "What now?"
"Now we wait for the AFD to recover what they can," Kali said, his voice low, edged with fatigue. "For now go home. You've both done more than enough."
Kali didn't wait for any more conversation. He turned away, his coat stained with soot and blood, boots crunching against shattered debris as he made his way toward the edge of the response zone. Beyond it, the streets of Kirel lay dim and ruined, the artificial sky above smeared with chemical haze.
He flagged down a maglev tram and boarded without a word. It was nearly empty, save for a few exhausted workers and one sleeping man who looked halfway to death. The tram hummed along the rails, carrying him back across the urban artery that connected Kirel to Medri.
When he finally stepped into his apartment, he didn't bother with the lights. The door hissed shut behind him, the familiar click of the lock giving a faint sense of security. He dropped his coat by the entryway, his boots soon after, then crossed the living room in slow, dragging steps.
No tea. No thoughts. Just the bed.
The door to his room opened with a soft gesture. He collapsed onto the mattress still half-dressed, the tension in his muscles finally letting go as if gravity had increased tenfold. Sleep caught him almost instantly, fast, heavy, and dreamless. Not even Rizen spoke.
The silence of exhaustion claimed everything.