The neon haze of Lowtown swallowed Kael Vortex as he slipped through the alleys, the quantum shard a cold weight in his satchel. The rain had thickened, each drop stinging his exposed skin like a rebuke from Nexus Prime itself. He moved with purpose, his boots splashing through oily puddles, but his mind was already three steps ahead. The shard was his prize, but it was also a beacon—VynTek's trackers would be hunting its quantum signature, and Sylas, that spineless decker, was likely spilling Kael's name to anyone with a credit chip. Trust was a luxury Kael had never afforded, and tonight it had cost him nothing but time.
He ducked into a derelict hab-block, its walls scarred with graffiti and the faint glow of illegal holo-tags advertising black-market augs. The air inside was stale, thick with the scent of rust and desperation. Kael's safehouse was a single room on the third floor, hidden behind a false panel in a maintenance closet. It wasn't much— a cot, a scavenged terminal, and a stash of protein bars—but it was untraceable, a rare commodity in a city where the Lattice saw everything.
Kael locked the door and activated a signal jammer, a clunky device that hummed with enough interference to scramble any drones sniffing for his location. He pulled the shard from his satchel and set it on the terminal's desk, its iridescent surface catching the dim light. It was smaller than he'd expected, barely the size of a data drive, but its presence seemed to hum with potential, like a star compressed into crystal. He connected his dataglove to the terminal and ran a diagnostic scan, careful not to trigger the shard's quantum relays. The results flickered across the screen: Unknown architecture. Quantum entanglement detected. Security protocols: military-grade encryption.
"Not just a key," Kael muttered, leaning back in his chair. "A master key."
The Lattice was more than a network—it was the backbone of galactic civilization, a web of quantum relays that linked every planet, station, and megacorp in the Orion Arm. Data, credits, and secrets flowed through its nodes, guarded by AIs with names like Sentinel and Arbiter. A quantum shard could manipulate those flows, rerouting wealth or rewriting access privileges. In theory, it could even bypass the Lattice's core restrictions, granting control over restricted nodes that governed everything from trade routes to orbital defenses. Kael's pulse quickened at the thought. This wasn't just a ticket out of Lowtown—it was a ladder to the stars.
But ladders had costs. VynTek would already be mobilizing their Enforcers, and the megacorp didn't play subtle. They'd burn half of Lowtown to ash if it meant recovering the shard. Worse, Kael's contacts were liabilities. Sylas was the immediate problem—his cowardice made him predictable, and predictable people talked. Kael needed to move fast, but he also needed allies, or at least pawns. He opened a secure channel on his terminal, routing it through a dozen proxy nodes to mask his location.
"Lira," he said into the comm, his voice clipped. "You owe me. Time to pay up."
A pause, then a woman's voice, sharp and wary. "Kael? You're radioactive right now. Word's out—VynTek's offering a bounty with your name on it. What the hell did you do?"
"Something stupid," he said, letting a hint of amusement creep into his tone. "Meet me at the Spire in two hours. Bring your toolkit."
Lira Voss was a fixer, a broker of information and illegal tech who operated out of Midtown's gray market. She was sharp, ruthless in her own way, and—most importantly—indebted to Kael after he'd saved her from a botched deal with a Triad enforcer. She wasn't a friend, but she was useful, and Kael didn't believe in wasting resources.
"You're gonna get me killed," Lira said, but he could hear the resignation in her voice. "Fine. Two hours. Don't be late."
Kael cut the call and turned back to the shard. He needed a plan, not just to survive the night but to leverage the shard into something bigger. The Lattice's restricted nodes were controlled by the Concord, a coalition of megacorps and planetary governors who kept the galaxy's power concentrated in their hands. If Kael could access those nodes, he could disrupt their systems—siphon credits, expose secrets, or even destabilize entire markets. But that required tech he didn't have and knowledge he couldn't fake. Lira was a start, but he'd need more.
The terminal pinged, interrupting his thoughts. A message, unencrypted, from an anonymous source: Kael Vortex. You have something that belongs to us. Return it, and we'll let you walk. Cross us, and Lowtown will be your grave.
Kael's lips curled, not quite a smile. VynTek was fast, but sloppy—unencrypted messages were a rookie move, meant to intimidate. They didn't know where he was, not yet. He deleted the message and powered down the terminal. The shard went back into his satchel, tucked inside a shielded compartment to block its quantum signature. He grabbed his coat and checked his pulse pistol, a cheap model with enough charge for a dozen shots. It wasn't much, but it would do.
The Spire was a half-hour away, a towering slum of stacked hab-units and black-market stalls that straddled the border between Lowtown and Midtown. Kael moved through the rain-soaked streets, his hood up, blending into the crowds of street hawkers and aug-addicts. The Lattice Crown glowed faintly above, its arc fractured by clouds. Every few blocks, he checked his six, scanning for drones or Enforcers. VynTek's bounty would draw freelancers, too—bounty hunters who didn't care about the shard, only the payout.
He reached the Spire as the city's clocks chimed midnight, their synthetic tones echoing through the rain. Lira was waiting in a shadowed alcove, her cybernetic eye glinting red under her hood. She was tall, lean, with a face that could've been beautiful if not for the scar running from her temple to her jaw. Her toolkit—a reinforced case packed with hacking rigs and EMP charges—hung from her shoulder.
"You look like trouble," she said, eyeing his satchel. "What's in there, Kael? And don't lie. I can smell corporate heat from a mile away."
"Something that'll make us rich," he said, keeping his tone even. "Or dead, if we're careless. You in?"
Lira's eye narrowed, the red optic whirring as it scanned him. "You're insane. But yeah, I'm in. What's the play?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. He scanned the alley, his instincts prickling. A faint hum cut through the rain—the whine of a cloaked drone. He grabbed Lira's arm and pulled her into the shadows just as a pulse round scorched the wall where they'd been standing. The drone decloaked, its beetle-like form hovering above, red optic locked on them.
"Move!" Kael hissed, shoving Lira toward a side street. He fired his pulse pistol, the shot grazing the drone's armor but doing little else. VynTek wasn't playing games anymore.
The game had just gotten deadly, and Kael was running out of threads to pull.