The map on the holo‑table looked like a nervous system.
Lines of blue and white traced the city's infrastructure tunnels, grids, shield nodes. At the center, a pulsing red mark blinked where a signal had died hours earlier.
"Collar failure," the tech said. "Violent discharge, not a routine shutdown. It spiked and then flatlined."
Mara folded her arms, studying the pattern.
"Confirm the time stamp," she said.
"Thirteen minutes after the last minor ping," the tech replied. "Within the window of expected signal drift."
Mara's mouth tightened.
"So someone chose that moment," she said. "They knew how often our system checks in. They timed the overload between sweeps."
She didn't say the name that came to mind.
She didn't have to.
The room knew.
Orion's core team filled the briefing space twelve agents, all hand‑selected from different units. No insignia on their sleeves beyond the Department crest. No wasted motion.
"These are our priorities," Mara said, pulling up three glowing circles on the map. "First, confirm the collar's destruction zone. Second, predict likely escape routes. Third, cut off their options before they adapt."
An agent with close‑cropped hair Lin leaned forward.
"How far can we trust the signal data?" Lin asked. "If Lioren's involved, he might have sent a fake ping."
"He didn't tamper with the band relay during the convoy," another agent said. "He smashed it. Crude, direct. That's more his style."
Mara let the debate run for a few seconds.
Aiden's style.
Direct when it mattered. Precise when he had time.
"Focus," she said. "The collar core burned itself out. That means real energy, real damage. Even if they shielded the exact location, we can narrow to a cluster of sectors."
She highlighted a wedge of the undercity.
"Here," she said. "Dense infrastructure. Old substations, maintenance ridges, forgotten junctions. If you wanted to tear off a leash and keep most sensors blind, this is where you'd go."
Rian spoke up from the edge of the table.
"And if you knew I knew that," he said slowly, "would you still go there?"
Mara met his gaze.
"That depends," she said. "Are you the one making the plan, or the one running out of time?"
He looked down, jaw clenching.
"Deploying Orion assets," Mara continued. "Team One takes the western access tunnels. Team Two goes through the lower transit line. Team Three with me on the ridge."
She enlarged a narrow artery of tunnels on the display.
"They'll avoid main corridors after the ambush," she said. "Too many eyes. That leaves maintenance channels and spillways. Our job isn't to comb every passage. It's to think like them and get ahead."
"What about the narrative?" Lin asked. "Public channels are saying Lioren was compromised. Deviant influence. People are already speculating."
"That's not our concern," Mara said, a fraction too quickly.
She caught herself.
"It's background noise," she corrected. "Our work doesn't change. We bring them in, and Internal decides whether the story gets rewritten."
Rian shifted his weight.
"If he really is under some kind of influence…" he began.
"He isn't," Mara cut in.
The room went very still.
Rian stared at her.
"You sound sure," he said.
Mara held his gaze.
"I trained him," she said. "I've watched every evaluation, every simulation. If he were being pushed, I'd see the cracks hesitation, confusion, breaks in pattern. What we saw on the convoy footage wasn't confusion. It was choice."
"So the official line is wrong," Lin said quietly.
Mara's jaw flexed.
"The official line keeps the city calm," she said. "Our line is different. We deal in facts, not comfort."
Rian looked back at the map.
"And the fact is," he said, "he knows how we hunt."
"Exactly," Mara replied. "Which is why we don't hunt like we usually do."
She tapped a point on the map where several routes converged.
"Here," she said. "The maintenance ridge intersection. It's not the safest path, but it's the efficient one. Aiden's always chosen efficient risk over messy safety."
Lin nodded slowly.
"So we gamble he hasn't changed," Lin said.
Mara's voice cooled.
"He's changed enough to turn his weapon on us," she said. "He hasn't changed his math. We use that."
She killed the holo.
"Prep gear," she said. "We move in twenty."
The team dispersed in a quiet wave of motion.
Rian hung back.
"Mara," he said.
She didn't turn.
"Captain," she corrected.
He exhaled.
"Captain," he said. "What happens if we corner them and the Deviant Kael goes full power? No collar, no band, nothing. We've all seen what he can do in a controlled room. This won't be controlled."
"We adapt," Mara said.
"That's not a plan," Rian said.
"Neither is freezing," she replied. "Listen to me, Rian. The Department has already decided what they are. Traitor and threat. Our choices are narrower."
"That's not what I asked," he said.
She turned then, eyes hard.
"If he forces our hand," she said, "we do what we were trained to do. We protect the city. Even if that means firing on someone we used to stand beside."
Rian swallowed.
"Understood," he said.
He left without another word.
When the door hissed shut, the room felt too big.
Mara stood alone with the ghost of Aiden's file hovering on her personal display photo, stats, annotations. The word THREAT at the bottom glared like an accusation.
She remembered him at nineteen, fresh out of advanced training, trying too hard not to look for her approval after his first field op.
Did we do it right? he'd asked then, quiet.
Now, there was no "we."
She closed the file.
"Orion will bring you home," she murmured. "One way or another."
Down in the undercity, Aiden's ears rang for a different reason.
Not from explosions, not from shots but from the way the tunnels magnified every sound: Kael's uneven footsteps, the creak of old metal, Lysa's controlled breathing ahead.
"Your pace is getting better," Aiden said.
Kael snorted softly.
"Or you're just slowing down," he replied.
His voice sounded a little less raw than it had in the substation. The red line around his throat still stood out stark against his skin, but the trembling in his hands had eased to a faint, controllable shake.
"You tell me if the storm inside your head starts shouting," Lysa said without looking back. "I don't want a surprise discharge in a narrow tunnel."
"I'll send a memo," Kael said.
He paused, resting a palm against the wall.
Aiden watched as the metal beneath his hand picked up a faint glow tiny threads of lightning crawling along the surface before fading.
"You're bleeding power," Aiden said.
"Leaking," Kael corrected. "Bleeding sounds fatal."
"It could be," Aiden said. "If someone upstairs is watching for anomalies."
Kael rolled his shoulders.
"I'm working on it," he said. "I spent months being punished for every spark. Now my body thinks anything less than a full shutdown is generous."
Lysa slowed at an intersection marked with old emergency symbols.
"We're close to a crossover," she said. "One level up, there's a junction Orion will use if they come in heavy. We cut across now, we might catch a glimpse of their patterns."
Aiden's attention sharpened.
"You want to get close to them," he said. "On purpose."
"Yes," Lysa said simply. "Information is life. If we know how they move, where they're strong and where they're blind, we stop stumbling in the dark."
Kael glanced between them.
"This feels like one of those decisions where everyone either dies or gets very clever," he said.
"Welcome to the Network," Lysa replied.
She led them up a narrow service ladder.
The air grew colder near the surface of that upper tunnel, where active shield conduits hummed behind the walls. Light here wasn't from orbs or jury‑rigged bulbs, but from thin slits in the ceiling where city glow leaked through.
Lysa signaled for silence.
They pressed against the wall of a grated overlook, peering down into a broader corridor below.
A patrol moved through it with practiced precision.
Not regular agents.
Armor a shade darker, insignia stripped down, movements tighter.
Orion.
Aiden recognized Mara from the way she carried herself before he saw her face center of the formation, shield emitter at one hip, weapon at the other, eyes taking in every angle.
Kael's fingers twitched.
"That her?" he whispered, so soft Aiden barely heard it.
"Yes," Aiden said.
Mara stopped at an intersection directly beneath them, lifting her hand.
The unit froze.
"Signal failure point's within three hundred meters," she said, her voice carrying thinly through the grate. "We sweep outward from here. No solo moves. Anything Deviant‑related, you call it before you shoot. Anything Lioren‑related, you do not engage alone. Understood?"
The answering chorus was quiet and certain.
Kael exhaled through his teeth.
"They're efficient," he murmured. "I hate that."
"You're not the only one," Aiden said.
He couldn't hear everything Mara said next, but he caught fragments "ridge access," "secondary spillway," "cut them off here."
She was tracing their likely paths.
The same routes Lysa had chosen.
Lysa leaned close enough that he could feel her breath.
"Now you see why we needed to look," she whispered. "She thinks like you. If we'd kept moving straight, we would've walked into that net."
Aiden watched Mara a second longer.
She looked harder than the last time he'd seen her edges sharpened, voice stripped of everything but command.
There was no hesitation in her posture.
No doubt.
"Where do we go instead?" he asked.
Lysa pointed deeper into the maze.
"Sideways," she said. "Places the Department forgot to put on their clean maps. Old flood bypasses, collapsed segments. Messy, but less predictable."
Kael's mouth quirked.
"Messy fits us," he said.
Mara finished assigning sectors.
As Orion moved out, she glanced up at the ceiling just once, a quick sweep.
Aiden froze.
Her gaze slid over the grate where they crouched.
For an instant, he thought she'd seen him.
Then she looked away, issuing another order, and the unit disappeared into the tunnels beyond.
Aiden only realized he'd been holding his breath when his lungs burned.
"She didn't sense us," Kael said. "I'd be insulted if I wasn't busy trying not to pass out."
"She doesn't expect us to be that close," Lysa said. "Not yet. That's our advantage."
"For how long?" Aiden asked.
Lysa didn't answer.
She dropped back down the ladder.
Kael waited until Aiden started after her, then whispered, almost to himself:
"She'd have shot you if she'd seen you, right?"
Aiden didn't look back toward the corridor.
"Yes," he said. "Or given the order."
He wasn't sure which possibility hurt more.
They returned to the deeper tunnels with a new route and a heavier silence.
Lysa walked a little faster now, urgency in every step.
"We're shifting nests," she said. "Orion's pattern says they'll sweep our old sectors within the day. Anyone who stays behind will be cornered."
"You really think they'll move that fast?" Kael asked.
"I know Mara," Aiden said. "She hates loose ends."
"And what are we?" Kael asked. "Loose ends or open wounds?"
"Both," Aiden said.
Kael snorted.
"Poetic," he said. "We're evolving."
As they approached the junction leading back toward the Network's temporary base, a boy barely in his teens sprinted toward them, panting.
"Lysa," he gasped. "They're talking about you on the feeds. About all of us. They're saying the Network planned the ambush for months. That we've been infiltrating the Department for years."
"So the usual," Lysa said.
"No," the boy insisted. "They're saying—" he glanced at Aiden and Kael, eyes wide,
"—they're saying the Deviant didn't just manipulate the agent. They're saying he might have infected others. That anyone who spent time near him could be compromised."
Aiden felt the words land like cold stones.
"'Infected,'" Kael repeated, voice flat. "That's new."
Lysa's face hardened.
"It's smart," she said grimly. "Now anyone who hesitates gets questioned. Any agent who doubts the story can be written off as 'under influence.'"
"They're isolating you," Aiden said quietly. "From the inside."
"And you," Lysa said. "If they decide your old colleagues might be tainted, it makes it easier to cut them off from you violently."
Aiden thought of Rian, Jessa, the rest of Unit Alpha.
Of Mara.
"They're using you as a weapon even when you're not there," he told Kael.
Kael's laugh was short and humorless.
"I always wanted to be influential," he said. "Didn't expect epidemiology."
Lysa clapped the boy's shoulder.
"Spread the word," she said. "We move tonight. Smaller cells, deeper tunnels. No one travels alone. And nobody trusts the surface feeds for truth."
The boy nodded and vanished back into the darkness.
Kael watched him go.
"They're scared," he said softly.
"Good," Lysa replied. "Fear keeps you moving."
"Fear also makes you do stupid things," Kael said.
She glanced at Aiden.
"Then it's your job," she said to him, "to keep us from stupid."
Aiden huffed a breath.
"No pressure," he said.
Kael bumped his shoulder lightly against Aiden's as they started walking again.
"We'll figure it out," Kael said. "You bring the overthinking, I bring the explosions. Lysa makes sure we don't die of our own bad ideas."
It was such a simple division of roles that Aiden almost laughed.
Almost.
Above them, Orion fanned out through the city's veins.
Below, in the shadows the maps didn't show, Aiden, Kael, and Lysa stepped into a new phase of the game no longer just running, but starting to ask a different question:
If the Order insisted on a story where the Deviant had twisted their perfect agent…
What would it look like if that "twist" became the city's only chance to survive what was coming next?