The neon sign above Labz Inc. flickered in the heat haze—“WEAVE THE FUTURE,” half-lit,
half-lying. Below it, TyeRome exhaled slow, curling smoke from his nostrils like an old war
machine cooling down.
His eel-fist glove sat in his jacket pocket. Still warm. Still twitching.
"You ever think about how many calories this shit burns?" he muttered, tapping the Bronze-tier
Customer Service Bracer on his wrist. It beeped twice, reminding him to maintain a “courteous
vocal cadence.”
"Two granola bars just to say ‘please hold’ for eight hours," he added, mostly to himself.
Beside him, Cuh snorted. The man stood six-foot-two and wore his Gold-tier shark-skin vest
like it was grown on him—gills fluttering subtly, pulsing with every shift in his muscle.
"You chose desk life," Cuh said, cracking his neck. "Try patrolling with these." He flexed, and the
vest responded with a ripple of chrome-blue tension.
"Takes a whole damn shark just to chase tweakers off Labz property."
Tye smirked, but his stomach grumbled at the thought of food. He checked his bracer again. Still
behind on calories. Always behind.
Behind them, a sprawl of graffiti curved across the alley wall like a warning:
YOUR GEAR IS WATCHING.
No one claimed to know who “The Unraveled” were—but they tagged that phrase on every Labz
facility from Eclipse Hide to Iron Fang. People said it wasn’t art. It was prophecy.
Tye turned away from the wall and lowered his voice.
"Got something weird last night," he said. "No postmark. Just… a glove."
Cuh’s laugh died fast. "Labz don’t ship in unmarked boxes."
Tye pulled it out just enough for the chrome-black fabric to twitch in the sunlight. The eel-fist
glove flexed once, like it had its own pulse.
"It’s not on the registry," Tye said quietly. "Feels like it’s… learning me."
Cuh’s vest flares—its gills widened, pulsing like they’d just sniffed something rotten. He took a
step back, eyes narrowing.
"The hell is that thing?"
Before Tye could answer, the shrill hiss of a kick can clatter through the alley.
"Y’all still smoking that Labz poison?" said Wavi, strolling up with the swagger only a
nineteen-year-old black belt could carry. He tossed a protein bar underhand. Tye caught it
one-handed.
"Eat, man. You look like a plucked chicken."
Wavi was clean—clean DNA, no implants, no GEAR. The family’s golden child. Strong, fast,
natural. It made Tye proud and jealous in equal parts.
But before he could reply, a noise shattered the moment.
The high-pitched shriek of an alarm.
Overhead, the Labz sign cut out entirely.
SECURITY LOCKDOWN
UNAUTHORIZED GEAR ACTIVATION DETECTED
Doors slammed. Windows auto-tinted. Floodlights cut on like they were prepping for dissection.
Inside the lobby, two figures walked calmly past the scanners.
Falconer Suits. Platinum-tier. No exposed skin, no names. Just reflective helmets and silent
authority.
“Employee records. Now,” one of them barked. Not loud, but loud enough.
Tye’s terminal blinked awake. His employee file was already on-screen.
And the glove in his pocket began to vibrate.
He didn’t touch it, didn’t move, but the static curled up his spine. And just then, from inside his
apartment, something shifted.
Back at his place, on his desk—the child’s drawing from the mysterious package. The rabbit
with stitched whiskers. It burned slowly to ash, revealing numbers underneath. Coordinates.
Outside the lab, Wavi stretched lazily, preparing to head to the dojo. The alarm barely fazed
him. But Tye winced—hard—as the glove sent a spike of pain straight through his arm, his
nerves lighting up like a crash wire.
Through the glass, they watched as agents began clamping wrist scanners on employees.
Not checking for weapons.
Scanning for unregistered GEAR.
Cuh cursed under his breath. “They’re hunting rogue threads,” he muttered. “That glove’s
pinging their system like a damn flare.”
Tye glanced down as the glove flared red-hot against his skin.
CALORIC DEFICIT: 558 / 4,000
He stumbled, dizzy. His heart raced—trying to power a machine his body hadn’t evolved to
wear.
Cuh grabbed him by the collar. “We gotta move. Now. If they scan you, that glove’s scrap—and
so are you.”
—
They ducked into the service hallways, then deeper—into the maintenance tunnels. Cuh’s vest
flared as he activated sonar. The walls pulsed in his vision. Gold-tier tech, meant for aquatic
recon, but hell, it worked underground too.
Tye's glove sparked, lighting up corridor lights one by one, frying circuits as they passed. Every
step made his vision blur, his sugar crashing faster than his body could replace it.
But then something odd happened.
The glove jerked his arm left—toward a ventilation duct. Not violently. Just enough to pull. Like
it was chasing a scent only it could smell.
Cuh noticed. “What’s it doing?”
“I think it’s… following power,” Tye gasped. “Electricity. It wants it.”
Before Cuh could answer, they both froze.
Something was waiting at the end of the tunnel.
It wasn’t a guard.
It was a lab tech—or what was left of one. His limbs bent wrong, joints twitching like someone
had rewired them on the fly. His skin shimmered with iridescent scales, his spine arched under
pressure from something fusing to it.
Overweave. Stage 2.
He’d tried on a Platinum-tier Anaconda Suit. And failed.
The suit hadn’t let go.
Cuh’s vest hissed—its gills snapping wide in a threat posture. Every muscle in his body shifted
into fight mode.
Tye stepped back.
“Oh, hell no,” Cuh breathed.
And the thing at the tunnel’s end moved