Consciousness came back in fragments, my head screaming, my senses swimming. I picked up on a sound, and tried to focus on it. A low mechanical rumble vibrating from below. Not the sharp grind of warehouse machinery, but smooth and rhythmic. Tires on pavement, engine hum. I was in a vehicle.

  Motion registered next. My body swayed softly, straps digging into my wrist as I bounced along with the vehicle’s motion. I could faintly feel cold distressed leather under me, the seam pressing painfully against my wounded thigh. The back seat of car, it seemed.

  I tried to move my fingers, but the response was dull and slow. My right hand felt cold and numb, especially in the forearm where the Talon was hidden. My HUD was offline, or something was blocking it from displaying, or maybe my vision was just gone, I couldn’t see a damn thing. I felt sluggish, sedated most likely. Hard to tell what was damaged and what was suppressed.

  Voices drifted through the haze, a conversation from the front. I heard someone shift in their seat.

  “She still out?”

  “Should be, you dosed her twice.”

  A hand caught my jaw and lifted my head. I wanted to fight it, but could only go limp and complacent. It felt like I wasn’t in my head as it was moved. Everything felt floaty and disconnected as I caught up to it just before they dropped me back in the seat with a thud.

  “She’s cute. Doesn’t seem that dangerous to me.”

  “Tell that to the pile of dead Cinder Rats we left back there.”

  The other guard let out a short but nervous laugh. I lost my hearing again, falling into dark solitude once more, alone with the swaying motion of the vehicle. The ride felt smooth, we couldn’t be in the main portion of the Ash. Maybe somewhere else in the city, or at least the more developed portion of the sector where the businesses operate. The motion lulled me back to sleep.

  I came to again later as the door was opened and cool night air rushed over me. I heard boots on concrete, and then hands drug me from the car onto a cold steel surface. Overhead lights blinded me as I struggled to open my eyes. Small wheels squeaked and clattered across the pavement as I felt movement again.

  “Careful with her,” a new voice chimed. “The boss wants her intact.”

  Sounds blurred again as my head lolled from side to side. Straps across my legs and chest held me in place as we rounded corners and passed into a building. We passed through at least one security threshold. I caught the soft electronic chirp of an access panel. A door hissing open, then closing with a latch behind us.

  I felt a tug at my personal access port before something slotted in and I felt a strange sensation as my struggling implants suddenly all went silent at once. I could barely feel anything, the world around me felt cold and strange, like I was floating somewhere below my own body. I think I was moved again, but it was hard to tell. I passed out again before I could adjust.

  I awoke later, a little more aware but still reeling from the absence of my tech. I wasn’t on the table anymore. Instead, I was strapped into a reclined medical chair. My arms and legs were bound at multiple points. Wide restraints cinched across my waist and chest, with a rigid brace holding my head in place so I couldn’t even turn it. A surgical light hung overhead, glaring down on me in sterile white. Somewhere behind me, machines hummed in steady, indifferent rhythms.

  The air was cool and filtered, carrying the faint bite of antiseptic. I was cold. Most of my clothing had been stripped away, leaving me in just my bra and panties. My skin prickled under the light. Every part of me hurt in quiet, layered ways, bruises blooming under the surface, ribs aching when I breathed too deep. My thigh throbbed steadily where the bullet had grazed me, a dull pulse that reminded me I was still bleeding somewhere beneath the bandages.

  I tested the restraints, but nothing gave. My muscles felt sluggish, unresponsive, like I was moving through syrup. Whatever they’d dosed me with during transport was still in my system. I flexed my fingers, barely felt the effort register.

  I listened instead. Just the drone of equipment. No voices. No footsteps. No sense of scale. I had no idea how long I’d been here, how long since Gnaw had knocked me out, or even where this place was. My mouth felt dry. I flicked my lip ring out of habit, grounding myself in the small familiar motion, trying to organize scattered thoughts into something usable. Nothing lined up.

  Time passed, though I couldn’t tell how much. Then the door hissed open. Heeled shoes clicked across tile, deliberate and unhurried, followed by the heavier cadence of boots. A third set of footsteps joined them, softer, more polished. I built the picture automatically. A woman. Two bodyguards. A man in a tailored suit.

  The room filled with quiet activity. Equipment shifting. A console chiming awake. I thought I heard another pair of footsteps join the group, but I couldn’t be sure. My depth perception felt wrong, my awareness fuzzy at the edges.

  A small metal table shrieked softly as it was dragged closer. Tools clinked against each other. Someone adjusted the light above me, angling it directly into my eyes. A shadow leaned over me, and a gloved hand gripped my forearm.

  A sharp pinch, then pressure as something cold slid into my vein. Within seconds, warmth spread through my body in slow, artificial waves. My thoughts dulled. The room softened at the edges. Whatever they’d injected wasn’t meant to knock me out, but to keep me awake and complacent.

  The chair shifted, leaning me up so I could see in front of me, though the drugs and the light made details difficult. A man stood in front of me, tailored red dress shit, pressed black business pants with subtle red neon stitches, a matching jacket slung over his shoulder. He was an older man, salt and pepper hair slicked back on his head, a matching beard perfectly tripped lining his jaw and chin. His eyes were cold and focused on mine.

  “Good.” His voice was calm and mature. “Her pupils are tracking. We’re ready.”

  He reached out, unlatching the strap on my head, and slapped me hard across the face with the back of his hand. It stung, even through the numbness. I rolled my neck, stretching the muscles slightly and then returned my gaze to his.

  His gaze drifted over the other restraints, the monitors, the IV line feeding whatever cocktail was keeping me lucid. He nodded once, more to himself than anyone else.

  “You were the last person my son met,” Marcus said. “That much we’ve confirmed.”

  I swallowed. My throat felt raw, like I’d been breathing smoke.

  “He went to a club,” Marcus continued evenly. “Private room. Fixer named Mace handled the introduction. After that, Vic vanished.”

  He folded his hands in front of him.

  “No body,” he said. “No security footage. No witnesses willing to talk.”

  A pause.

  “That doesn’t happen by accident.”

  I shifted against the restraints, testing them again out of reflex. They didn’t give.

  “People disappear in Peachveil every day,” I said. My voice sounded distant to my own ears. “Maybe your boy picked the wrong night.”

  Marcus leaned closer.

  “Maybe,” he agreed softly. “Or maybe someone decided he was inconvenient.”

  His eyes searched my face, slow and deliberate, cataloging micro-expressions, breathing patterns, whatever tells he thought I might have left him.

  “Mace is gone too,” he went on. “But you look like someone who walked away.”

  One of the bodyguards moved behind him. I heard the soft whine of a device powering up.

  Marcus straightened.

  “Here’s how this works,” he said. “You tell me what happened in that room. Who was there. Who pulled the trigger. Where my son is.”

  He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling.

  “And if you don’t, we keep going until something breaks.”

  I let out a weak laugh before I could stop myself.

  “You really think I walked in there with a hit squad?” I said. “I work alone.”

  Marcus studied me for another long second, then he nodded to the woman in heels. She stepped forward and tapped a control panel mounted beside my chair. Something inside my body shifted. Not pain at first. The woman reached over and disconnected the chip. The familiar muted pressure I’d been living inside since they’d plugged in the suppressor evaporated, like someone tearing insulation out of my nervous system.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Every ache came rushing back at once. My thigh screamed. My ribs flared white-hot. My skull throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I gasped, breath hitching as sensation slammed into me in a brutal wave. I cried out despite myself.

  Marcus watched closely as I arched against the restraints.

  “There,” he said calmly. “Now you’re present.”

  He leaned down until we were eye level.

  “Start talking.”

  “Fuck you.” I growled, spitting on him.

  A mix of my blood and saliva ran down his cheek. Marcus didn’t react to my answer right away. He simply watched me breathe through the pain he’d reintroduced to my body, cataloging the way my muscles tightened and relaxed. He glanced toward the woman at the console.

  “Run her.”

  Keys clicked. A faint chime answered from somewhere behind me. I felt it before I understood it. A subtle pressure along the base of my skull, like fingers probing at the back of my thoughts. The scan wasn’t brute force. It was surgical. Query after query moving through my implants, mapping architecture, permissions, proprietary seals.

  “Multiple augments,” the woman reported. “Combat grade. Custom firmware on at least one subsystem. Something proprietary tied into her forearm. I can’t crack the brand.”

  Marcus’s gaze drifted to my right arm.

  “That would be the one she used in the warehouse,” he said quietly.

  Another series of tones chimed from the console.

  “She’s running a closed loop. Signal dampeners on all outgoing channels. No external contact. But her pain regulators are active. Neural buffers are partially online.”

  “Good. Let’s see how honest she is.”

  He stepped closer, his expression almost thoughtful. The woman’s fingers moved again. This time there was no subtlety. Marcus nodded once.

  A spike tore through my spine, sharp and electric, as if someone had jammed a live wire directly into my nervous system. My back arched violently against the restraints. Every nerve ending lit up at once, not dull, not numbed, but amplified. The wound in my thigh felt like it had been split open again. My ribs burned as if the merc’s gauntlet had just landed.

  I screamed before I could stop myself. The overload lasted three seconds. Long enough to know it was controlled. Long enough to know they could do it again. It cut cleanly, leaving me gasping, trembling. Marcus crouched so we were eye level.

  “That was a localized signal injection,” he said calmly. “We’re not guessing. We’re targeting.”

  His eyes searched mine.

  “So let’s try this again. What happened in that room?”

  I swallowed blood and forced myself to meet his gaze.

  “Mace was there,” I said hoarsely. “He brought the money. Your son brought the docs.”

  “And then?” His jaw flexed.

  I held his eyes.

  “And then your son made a mistake.”

  The woman at the console looked up.

  “Again?”

  Marcus didn’t break eye contact with me.

  “Not yet,” he said softly. “She’s still deciding how much she values her nerve endings.”

  “We recovered fragmented footage from the club,” he said. “Multiple camera interruptions. Someone knew what they were doing.”

  Marcus didn’t look away from me.

  “The booth cameras cut first,” he said. “Fourteen minutes of static. Then the system flags the room out of order.”

  He began to circle slowly, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Before the failure, my son enters the private suite with Mace” His gaze flicked to the console. “They are visible.”

  The woman nodded.

  “Yes, sir. Two men. Identified as Vic and Mace.”

  Marcus’s eyes returned to mine.

  “No sign of you entering.”

  I said nothing.

  He tilted his head slightly.

  “However,” he continued, “there is a frame.”

  The screen rotated again, this time angled just enough that I caught a blur of color through the glare. Stairs, neon, a woman at the landing. Me. I kept the recognition from my face. Moth missed a frame.

  “You appear at the top of the stairwell,” Marcus said. “One frame. Then the feed scrubs.”

  His voice never rose.

  “Twenty minutes later, you reappear near the bottom. Leaving.”

  The woman at the console added quietly, “Outfit consistent with club performance staff. High exposure. Concealed identity.”

  Marcus stopped in front of me.

  “You dressed for the role,” he said.

  His gaze dragged deliberately down my restrained body.

  “Did you expect me to believe that was coincidence?”

  I let my eyes harden.

  “Maybe your son had a type.”

  A faint smile touched his mouth.

  “Yes. He did.”

  He leaned closer, voice lowering.

  “You looked like a whore.”

  There it was.

  “Cheap neon. Skin on display. Masked just enough to pretend it wasn’t you.” He studied me. “Mercenaries aren’t above honeypots. Seduce, distract, extract...”

  His eyes flicked briefly toward my thigh wound.

  “…Kill.”

  I forced myself not to react.

  “You think I needed to seduce him?” I asked evenly. “You think your son was that important?”

  Marcus’s jaw tightened.

  “You were in that room long enough for action,” he said. “Long enough to spread your legs.”

  He let the words hang.

  One of the guards shifted behind him, uncomfortable.

  “You expect me to believe you weren’t there for business?” Marcus continued. “That my son didn’t lower his guard because he thought he was being entertained?”

  I swallowed down the memory. The fog, the booth’s scent. Vic’s breath against my skin. The S1R3N glitching in my loins.

  “The deal was for stolen goods,” I said. “But you already knew that.”

  Marcus moved so fast the next slap snapped my head sideways. The drug dulled the edge, but it still burned.

  “So you were the one…” he said softly.

  He straightened his cuffs.

  “You walked out alive,” he continued. “My son did not.”

  His eyes sharpened.

  “Did you kill him?”

  I laughed, short and humorless.

  “You can’t prove if I did or not.”

  Marcus’s gaze flicked to the woman at the console.

  “Financial transfers show no abnormal withdrawals from Vic’s accounts,” she said. “But his private device was wiped.”

  Marcus’s attention returned to me.

  “You were in disguise,” he said. “You accessed a private room. You left during a system blackout.”

  He leaned down until we were nearly eye level.

  “You think I don’t know a professional extraction when I see one?”

  His tone shifted, colder.

  “You got the documents for Omni. Did you need to kill him?”

  I held his stare.

  “He wasn’t supposed to be there.” I replied.

  For the first time, something like approval flickered behind his anger.

  “Good,” he said quietly. “We agree on something..”

  He nodded once toward the console.

  “Again.”

  Something shifted inside me. It suddenly felt like razors running through my veins. Sensation roared with a fury I’d never felt before. My skull felt like it was splitting. I couldn’t stop the sound that tore out of me. Marcus just watched, unblinking.

  I slumped against the restraints as the shock subsided, my breath ragged. Marcus straightened slowly, rolled up his sleeves, and took a shock baton from the table. He turned back to me and smiled a sharp, eager smile. The first strike hit my ribs.

  It wasn’t calibrated like the signal injections. It was crude, physical, a blunt surge of pain and then electricity driven through muscle and bone. My back arched hard against the restraints as pain tore up my side and into my spine. I gasped, air ripping from my lungs in a sound that didn’t feel human. He watched my reaction with clinical interest.

  “So,” Marcus said quietly. “You walk into a private room. Kill my son. Then walk out like it was nothing.”

  He brought the baton down again, this time against my thigh, right over the gunshot wound. My vision went white. I screamed. My body convulsed against the straps, heels scraping uselessly against the chair. The drugs kept me conscious, forced me to stay present for every spike of sensation. Marcus waited until the tremors faded before stepping closer.

  “Then you sit here, and play coy. Tell me that he made a mistake…”

  He struck me across the shoulder with the baton’s handle, hard enough to rattle my teeth.

  “You tell me he was in the wrong place…”

  “I said he shouldn’t have been there.” I dragged in a breath that burned my throat. “He was collateral…”

  I almost choked on the word. Collateral. It echoed in my mind, corporate, cold. How many times had I heard Vera use that word in our debriefs after bodies dropped. I made the mistake of smiling at the irony of using it now.

  Marcus’s eyes flared, his mouth twitched, and then he struck me again. I felt my shoulder pop out of it’s socket. A second blow knocked it back into place and scattered my nerves. He shouted something about scanning my implants but I was fading. A moment passed and then water splashed across my face.

  “I’m not done with you yet.” He snarled.

  “Neural lattice mapped,” the woman chimed. “Combat augments confirmed. Systems partially degraded. She’s packing a lot of high end tech, some of it is fighting the scan.”

  Marcus sniffed. He rolled his eyes over my shaking body, gaze lingering in a way that made me blush. My breath quickened. He stepped forward, leaning in close as he lifted my chin to meet his eyes.

  “You think all these implants makes you special?” He growled. “Untouchable?”

  His other hand balled into a fist and slammed into my abdomen. The blow knocked the air out of me. I could feel my muscles locking and coiling beneath the straps. My legs tried to squirm, and I felt something warm between them. Fuck… not now! I thought.

  Behind him, the woman adjusted in her seat.

  “I’m seeing instability in one of her emotional response modules,” she said. “Looks like a feedback loop tied into autonomic systems. Heart rate’s climbing.”

  I felt it again. A warmth blooming low in my abdomen, wrong and disconnected from everything else. My breath hitched involuntarily. Heat crawled along my skin in a way that had nothing to do with pain. The S1R3N was waking up.

  Marcus noticed. His eyes tracked the change in my breathing. The way my back arched slightly against the chair. He tilted his head.

  “…is she reacting to this?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Some kind of… arousal feedback?” she said carefully. “Probably a corrupted affect module. Could be stress-induced.”

  Marcus stared at me, something dark flickering behind his eyes. He stepped closer again.

  “Is that what this is?” he asked softly. “You get beat, and you get wet?”

  I clenched my jaw, shame and fury tangling in my chest. One of the guards chuckled.

  “Fuck you.” I choked.

  “Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you.” Marcus sneered, eyes wandering.

  He held out the baton, angling it towards my crotch but not activating the shock. He laughed and the noise made me want to vomit. I felt the hard metal tip of the baton press against my panties and shivered. A gasp escaped me, and the men laughed again.

  “She’s really turned on by this… dumb whore.” He muttered, withdrawing the baton.

  He hit the button, charging the baton, and slammed it against my stomach. I convulsed in the chair, legs shaking as I cried out again.

  “Not after what you have taken from me.” He said coldly.

  He turned away, setting the baton on the table and rand his fingers across the other instruments. I could make out a blade, some pokers, and a torch. Seemed like a full interrogation kit, cleaned and laid ready like a tray of medical equipment. He raised the knife, blade curved and gleaming in the light. The woman let out a gasp.

  “Marcus…” she said suddenly. “There’s something else.”

  He paused and looked over to her.

  “What?”

  She frowned. “There’s a subdermal device at the base of her neck. An explosive, embedded detonator. OmniCore coding signature.”

  That landed. The room froze, realization setting into Marcus’ face.

  “Say that again.” He said, turning slowly towards the console.

  She rotated the screen, zooming in on the image to show the device welded to the base of my skull. A compact charge coil integrated into housing on the top vertebrae. Marcus turned back to me, reached out and slapped my head to the side, lifting my hair out of the way to see the brand on the back of my neck.

  “Fuck…” he exhaled sharply through his nose.

  “She’s conscripted,” the woman added. “Asset leash… She’s no hired gun, she’s OmniCore property.”

  Marcus looked back at me with something new in his eyes. Not rage but cold calculation, understanding, regret.

  “You failed to mention you were a collared dog…” He grumbled.

  “What?” I coughed. “And ruin the surprise?”

  He laughed once, short and humorless. He stepped back, rubbing a hand over his beard in thought.

  “Marcus, we can’t kill her here. They’ll get a ping from the device, they’ll know we took her.” The woman said, fear in her voice.

  “I know what it means Denise!” he shouted, slamming a fist on the table.

  He picked up the baton again. Without another word he struck me across the side of the head, and the world burst apart at the seams. Color and sound swirled in my skull as the pain and drugs took control of my mind. My head lolled and I began to fade in and out of consciousness once more.