Lina ran.
Not because she thought she could escape—she knew better.
But because the silence behind her was worse than footsteps.
Three Seraphs descended without warning. No words. No mercy. Just that clean, awful hum of power charging.
She twisted around a corner, feet slipping across cracked concrete, lungs raw with each breath. A shockblade flashed past her head, biting into a steel railing, sending molten sparks cascading into the night.
She dove behind a rusted coolant barrel, tasting blood and rust as her shoulder slammed painfully into metal.
[ SYSTEM SCAN: LIVE FEED / SECTOR NINE ]
Entity detected: Organic.
Classification: HUMAN
Threat level: negligible.
Exception: Vital pattern instability.
Lina's heart slammed against her ribs as she skidded around another corner, boots nearly losing traction on the broken pavement. She didn't dare glance back—didn't need to. She could already feel their cold, wordless presence closing the distance, the faint hum of energy blades growing louder with every step.
One hand fumbled at her collar, tapping twice on the comm node Kai had wired into her jacket, the old rebel frequency still embedded in muscle memory. "Kai, do you read?" she rasped, voice cracking. No static. No pulse. Just silence—dead air and empty sky.
The silence told her everything she needed to know. If help was coming, it wouldn't be now.
She was on her own.
If she could just get to the far alley—if the blind spot in the grid was still active—if she was faster—A flash of gold lit the corner of her eye.
She dove instinctively, and the shockblade missed her head by inches. It slammed into the wall beside her with a hiss, carving clean through rusted signage. Sparks rained. The wall steamed.
She hit the ground hard, rolled, forced herself back up.
They were gaining. No footsteps. Just that hum—clean, cold, inevitable.
She pushed forward, desperate, but they were already adjusting. One blink later, and one of them reappeared in front of her path, cutting off the alley entirely.
No way out.
Her momentum faltered. Reality slammed down.
She wasn't outrunning them.
She'd never been outrunning them.
They were just herding her.
Her eyes scanned wildly for cover—anything solid, anything real—but the plaza offered only open space and ruins. She wasn't ready to die here. Not like this.
Her fingers brushed the inside of her jacket and found the familiar grip of the sidearm. A compact plasma pistol, barely stable, the kind cobbled together in back-alley rebellion labs and smuggled through half-dead black markets. It was scratched, underpowered, and nearly obsolete—but it was still hers.
She didn't hesitate.
Turning, she raised it with both hands, bracing her stance the way she was taught—feet staggered, shoulders square—and emptied the entire clip in one fast pull, squeezing the trigger until it clicked dry.
Bolts of searing blue light lanced through the dark, slamming into the nearest Seraph's chest and shoulder. But the armor held. The machine barely flinched.
A flicker of steam rose where the impact scorched the outer plating, nothing more.
The pistol powered down with a soft whine, spent and useless.
Panic tightened around her lungs, but she moved anyway—threw the pistol aside, grabbed the nearest shard of concrete, and hurled it backward in one desperate arc with a half-choked yell.
It hit center mass.
Bounced off.
Did nothing.
But it made one of them pause—just for a second, just enough.
And that was all she needed.
She ducked behind a scorched bench frame, hand scrambling once more to the collar of her jacket, fingers jabbing at the comm node like maybe the urgency could force a signal through. "Anyone—this is ∆–092, Sector Nine," she whispered, barely breathing. "Seraphs inbound. I need backup. I need anything. Kai, if you're out there—please."
Still nothing.
No crackle. No flicker of reception.
Only her own breath, ragged and loud in the quiet.
She swallowed hard, wiped the sweat from her brow, and blinked against the sting rising in her eyes.
The fight had been anything but quiet—enough noise to wake even the deepest sleepers. Their base wasn't far. A few miles at most. Close enough that someone should've heard the blasts. Close enough that someone should've come.
So why hadn't they?
Was the base under attack too?
Or had everyone gone underground—hiding, just like they'd always trained for?
Even then, there should've been something.
The silence gnawed at her more than the danger. Lina didn't want to think it—not yet. But part of her already was.
What if something had gone wrong?
What if they were already gone?
Panic went white-hot. Her body wanted to run, but there was nowhere left. She stumbled toward a rusted pipe jutting from debris, grabbed it. Something. Anything. Even a lie of control.
The nearest Seraph tilted its head.
Then it stepped forward.
She cursed inwardly, panic flaring hot in her chest. Her breath burned in her lungs; the taste of iron and dust filled her mouth. She had no illusions—she wasn't fighting to win, just to buy time. There was no space left in her mind for anything else—no time to wonder what had gone wrong. She just had to keep moving, keep breathing, until someone came.
And she didn't dare let herself think about what it would mean if no one did.
But the machines advanced relentlessly, their pace unbroken. Mechanical, patient, inevitable. Fear settled deeper into her chest, sharper now, ice-cold beneath the adrenaline rush. She couldn't shake the certainty that she wouldn't leave this plaza alive.
Yet she ran anyway, driven by something deeper than logic or survival—pure, stubborn instinct, carved into her bones by years spent in Sector Nine. Never stop. If you stop, you die.
So she ran toward the base, clinging to the hope that someone—anyone—might still be there. And when she got there, if they were still breathing, she was damn well going to ask why no one had answered her call. Why no one had come.
She stumbled, caught herself, and kept moving, eyes flashing across the terrain. Rebar, rusted sheet metal, loose wiring—useless garbage against elite killing machines, but her desperation made everything look like a weapon. Her fingers found the jagged end of a broken pipe, grasping it so tightly her knuckles went white.
A shadow flickered to her left—too close. The nearest Seraph was already moving, blade glowing gold as it prepared for a clean, surgical strike.
Panic surged again, almost choking her. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide. Her chest tightened. She gripped the pipe tighter, turning fear into one final rush of defiance. If she had no way out, then she'd go down fighting.
Before the Seraph could strike, Lina lunged forward, shouting as she swung the pipe at its white, polished armor.
Metal clanged against alloy, a useless blow that jarred painfully up her arms. The Seraph tilted its head slightly, recalculating. Then it backhanded her with ruthless efficiency, sending her sprawling across cracked tiles, agony stabbing through her ribs as she hit the ground.
She gasped, ribs screaming as she pushed herself upright—but the Seraph was already moving, blade drawn back for the finishing strike.
Her gaze locked on its face.
The machine didn't speak nor flinch.
But its eyes glowed—sharp and narrow, burning red like predator optics mid-hunt. Like a wolf that had already chosen its kill.
No hesitation. No cruelty. Just the cold, unwavering intent to end what didn't belong.
And in that moment, Lina finally understood:
She wasn't being hunted. She'd already been marked.
They weren't supposed to be here—not now, and certainly not in Sector Nine. This district had long fallen off the system's radar, left to crumble under its own weight while those in power watched from a distance, perfectly content to let the rot spread without getting their hands dirty. Security sweeps were rare, and when they did happen, they were shallow, symbolic at best—never with force, never with precision, and never with Seraph-class units.
But tonight, three of them had arrived. High-grade, combat-optimized, and silent as judgment, they dropped from the sky in flawless formation, just as Lina happened to be alone, off-grid, and unarmed. It wasn't coincidence. The timing was too exact, the method too clean, and the absence of any public warning far too deliberate.
This wasn't a patrol. It was an execution.
She was on her feet—barely. Every breath scraped her throat raw, her legs trembled beneath her, and her vision swam at the edges, though she couldn't tell if it was from the sprint, the adrenaline crash, or the slow, burning realization that someone had sold her out.
And then—a voice crackled through the comm node at her collar, sharp and sudden, cutting clean through the static.
"Lina," the voice said—low, male, steady. Not Kai.
"You need to listen. Don't go back to the base. Kai is dead."
The Seraph loomed above her now, blade raised—golden, precise, emotionless.
"No," she whispered, the word dry and brittle.