Aira did not go into the lower maintenance sectors looking for strength.
She went looking for survival.
Neon Eden did not announce when it adjusted its tolerance thresholds. There were no alarms, no warnings broadcast to the lower sectors. One day the food dispensers simply dispensed less. The next, the ambient energy allowance dipped just enough that heating grids struggled during the artificial night cycle.
For most residents, that meant discomfort.
For Aira, it meant danger.
Her body was still small, still fragile, still operating at the very edge of what the city considered worth sustaining. Every reduction narrowed her margin. Every recalibration pushed her closer to being flagged as inefficient.
So she adapted.
She slipped into the spaces the city no longer watched.
The maintenance tunnels beneath Sector Thirteen were old—older than most of the current system architecture. They had been built during Neon Eden's first expansion phase, when human oversight was still required, when machines needed hands and eyes to guide them.
Now they were veins full of silence.
Aira pried open a service hatch using a strip of scavenged alloy, her fingers steady despite the tremor of hunger running through her limbs. Cold air rushed up from below, carrying the scent of metal, dust, and something sharper—residual energy that hadn't fully dissipated in years.
She dropped down lightly, bare feet barely making a sound as she landed.
"Path verification," she murmured internally.
[Mapping incomplete.]
[Surveillance coverage: Minimal.]
[Risk level: Elevated.]
"Acceptable," Aira replied.
She moved deeper, guided not by maps but by absence. She had learned to feel where the system's attention thinned, where monitoring routines overlapped poorly or simply stopped caring. The city optimized constantly, and in doing so, it abandoned inefficiencies.
Including places like this.
The hum of Neon Eden faded as she descended. Lights flickered irregularly, casting long, distorted shadows across the walls. Warning symbols etched into the metal were faded, written in an outdated system dialect few still recognized.
Aira recognized them anyway.
She slowed as the tunnel widened into a vast chamber, its ceiling disappearing into darkness above. The air here felt different—thick, charged, as if something had been breathing in the space long after it should have stopped.
Her system reacted before she consciously understood why.
[Environmental anomaly detected.]
[Residual energy readings inconsistent with current grid.]
She crouched near the entrance, heart steady, eyes sharp.
This chamber wasn't sealed.
It wasn't restricted.
It was avoided.
"Expand scan radius," Aira said quietly. "Ignore classification filters."
There was a pause.
[Warning: Directive deviation detected.]
"Override."
Another pause—longer this time.
[Override accepted.]
[Expanded scan in progress…]
The data arrived in fragments. Broken identifiers. Corrupted combat loops. Authority signatures that didn't align with modern enforcement protocols.
Then a designation surfaced.
[Enforcement Drone — Variant E-17.]
Aira exhaled slowly.
An enforcement drone did not belong here. These units were deployed during riots, territorial purges, early expansion conflicts. They were designed to suppress, to dominate, to enforce order when systems alone weren't enough.
They were not meant to be abandoned.
"How long?" she asked.
[Estimated abandonment period: 6.4 years.]
That explained the pressure she felt—the dull, persistent scrape against her awareness. Old war machines never truly powered down. Their cores degraded, logic fractured, but the directive to engage threats often lingered long after context vanished.
Aira understood that kind of persistence.
She stepped forward.
The sound of her foot brushing against loose debris echoed sharply through the chamber.
The response was immediate.
The drone's remaining optic flared bright blue.
Metal screamed.
The machine tore itself free from the wall in a violent cascade of sparks and fractured plating, landing heavily on one knee before forcing itself upright. One arm twitched erratically, hydraulics whining under strain. The other locked into a crude firing posture.
Aira felt the pressure spike like a physical blow.
[Hostile combat authority detected.]
[Threat classification: Active.]
She didn't run.
She adjusted.
"Distance," she ordered calmly.
[Effective engagement radius: Variable.]
[Primary weapon systems partially functional.]
The targeting beam flickered, stuttered, then began to stabilize.
Aira moved before it fully locked.
The plasma bolt tore through the space where her head had been a heartbeat earlier, detonating against the chamber wall in a burst of molten debris. Heat washed over her skin, sharp and punishing.
Pain bloomed.
She accepted it.
The drone fired again.
Aira dropped low, rolling across the floor as the blast scorched overhead, close enough to burn fabric and blister skin. She came up behind a collapsed support beam, breath controlled despite the hammering of her heart.
"Analyze," she commanded.
[Target exhibits degraded targeting logic.]
[Reaction delay increasing under rapid repositioning.]
"So it predicts," Aira murmured. "Poorly."
The drone advanced in uneven steps, metal grinding as damaged servos compensated for imbalance. It fired twice more, shots wide and unfocused, destroying infrastructure instead of her body.
Aira waited.
She watched.
She counted.
When the drone paused—just a fraction of a second longer than before—to recalibrate, Aira ran.
Her legs screamed instantly. Every step felt like tearing muscle from bone, but she pushed through it, zigzagging sharply to exploit the drone's delayed tracking. Sparks flew as plasma grazed the floor inches from her feet.
She grabbed a loose length of cabling mid-run and leapt.
The drone reacted too late.
Aira slammed into its torso, the impact rattling her bones painfully. She wrapped the cable around the neck joint and pulled with everything she had.
The metal resisted.
The drone slammed her into the wall once—twice—the force driving the breath from her lungs and bursting light behind her eyes.
[Structural damage imminent.]
"Hold," Aira hissed. "Measure."
The drone's weapon arm raised, core charging at point-blank range.
Aira twisted sharply, using the momentum of the last impact to wrench the cable sideways instead of backward.
Something snapped.
The drone's head tore free with a shriek of metal, clattering across the floor as its optic shattered completely. The weapon discharged uselessly into the ceiling.
The drone staggered.
Headless.
Blind.
But not finished.
Its core directives screamed for completion.
It lashed out wildly.
A blow caught Aira's side, flinging her across the chamber. She hit the floor hard, ribs screaming, vision blurring.
She did not scream.
She rolled.
She forced herself upright.
The drone charged blindly, heavy steps shaking the chamber.
"Endurance status," she demanded.
[Critical but stable.]
"Good."
She ran straight at it.
At the last moment, she dropped low and slid beneath its center of mass, slamming her shoulder into the exposed power conduit at its back. Sparks erupted violently as the unstable housing cracked further.
The drone convulsed.
Energy surged—
Then collapsed.
The machine crashed forward in a thunderous impact, its core imploding in a muted flash that left the chamber eerily silent.
Aira lay on the floor, chest heaving, every nerve screaming.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the air shifted.
The drone's shattered core emitted a low, resonant pulse—not hostile, not active, but evaluative. A remnant of its authority protocol awakened in death, scanning the aftermath of the battle.
Aira felt it pass over her.
Not as data.
As judgment.
[Combat authority transfer initiated.]
[Target evaluation in progress…]
Her system did not speak.
It waited.
The drone's core flickered once.
[Worthiness confirmed.]
[Level release authorized: Two.]
Pain surged through Aira's body as the energy integrated, pressure tightening behind her eyes, muscles screaming as they adapted.
[Level increase detected.]
[Level increase detected.]
She gritted her teeth.
"Stop," she whispered.
[Release complete. No further levels authorized.]
Silence returned.
Aira lay there for several minutes, staring at the cracked ceiling, feeling the ache settle into something manageable. Only two levels—no excess, no generosity.
Judgment, not reward.
She pushed herself up slowly, limping toward the ruined drone.
"Steel that forgot its orders," she murmured. "But not its standards."
The system processed quietly beside her.
Together, they left the chamber.
And Neon Eden remained unaware that one of its discarded weapons had chosen to acknowledge her existence.