That night, Jet dreams of the room again.

Same as always.

It's small. Round. Wrong.

The kind of wrong your body knows before your brain can catch up. 

No corners. 

The walls curve inward like they're leaning closer, like they know her name. 

The floor hums—not loud, but constant. 

A mechanical breath underfoot, steady and slow, like something asleep beneath the tiles.

In the center: a chair.

Padded. Bolted. Familiar in the way nightmares always are. Like she's seen it a thousand times but never from the outside. She never sits in it. She's always standing.

Always barefoot.

The walls are pale—too pale. Like they've been stripped of color and memory. Sometimes there are markings on them. Not words. Not symbols. Just... streaks. Blue. Red. Black. Like chalk left out in the rain. She doesn't know what they mean, but every time she stares too long, her temples throb and the colors start to move. Like they're trying to get away from her. Or worse—toward her.

There's always a sound.

A drip. Not quite water. Too dry, too precise. It doesn't echo. It doesn't stop. It's not wet enough to be water. Not warm enough to be blood. Just something that exists to remind her time is moving.

And somewhere in this hollow place, there's a door.

She finds it every time. Seamless. Smooth. Hidden unless you know where to press. She always knows. But it never opens.

Behind it—there's something. Footsteps. Whispers. A voice speaking in a language she knows only while dreaming. Something that curls in her ear like smoke and vanishes as soon as she wakes.

Sometimes, there's humming. Soft. Off-key. The kind of lullaby someone might sing to keep something quiet—not safe.

And that's when it starts.

The hum of the floor gets louder. The walls throb in time with it. A pulse, slow and deep and wrong. Her own breath starts missing the beat. She tries to match it, but she can't. Her lungs stagger. She gasps for air that doesn't come. Like she's drowning in her own chest.

She screams.

No sound.

Then, like clockwork, the ceiling flickers.

She looks up.

It's not a light.

It's a camera.

Blinking.

Watching.

Then she wakes up—same way every time. Curled up. Hands clenched. Sweat soaking the sheets. Breath short, like the room followed her out of the dream.

She doesn't tell anyone about it.

Doesn't know how.

Doesn't know what it means.

But it's always the same.

And that's what scares her.

JET 

I bolt upright, breath already running, chest heaving like I sprinted through fire.

The cot creaks beneath me. 

Damp. 

My hoodie's stuck to my spine like it's trying to fuse with me.

Zeal's still passed out on the floor, limbs splayed like he lost a fight with the blanket. 

One boot on, the other on the sink. His curls are flattened on one side and he's lightly snoring. 

It'd be funny if my heart wasn't still trying to break out of my ribcage.

I sit there a minute. 

Hands gripping my knees. 

Trying to remember where I am—where I end.

My breath won't settle. Not yet.

There's a moment—just a flicker—where I almost reach out. 

Zeal's fingers are right there. Open. Real. A lifeline.

But I don't.

I stand instead. 

Barefoot. 

Again.

My feet hit the cracked tile. 

The cold sobers me more than it should. 

I slip out the door, hoodie zipped, rig gloves still clipped to my belt. 

The hallway's quiet. 

Smells like mildew and old soup. 

Somewhere below, I hear someone crying through the pipes. 

Probably a neighbor watching the Exodus Day replays.

Zeal wakes up shortly after. 

I hear the thump of a boot being put on and the familiar grunt he makes when his spine cracks.

We don't say much. 

Just pack our bags and get moving.

Downstairs, the scary owner–Sharq eyes us from behind the counter, slurping something thick and steaming. 

Bone broth, maybe. 

Or maybe just pot grease.

He doesn't ask questions. 

Just gives us each a bowl with a grunt and a nod like that's all the goodbye he can afford to give.

I slurp mine standing.

"Third floor rats," he mutters, not unkindly.

Zeal raises a hand in salute. "Best sleep I've had in weeks."

Sharq just snorts. Doesn't smile, but doesn't need to. 

I smile anyway. 

Because it's true. 

Even this busted place is better than anything we had back in Akagane.

I ask where the girl, Tessa went. He just shrugs.

"She's not the type to stay put."

I can respect that. 

We leave before the neon lights buzz back to life, boots hitting cracked concrete in rhythm.

Someone down the block yells "Happy Exodus Day" half-heartedly through a haze of smoke and cheap firecrackers.

Zeal flips a lazy two-finger salute without turning around.

I don't.

We hit Akagane just after dawn. 

Smog-colored sky. 

Rust-breathed wind. 

Everything's red—bricks, lights, rust stains—hence the name. 

The Red Metal District. 

Locals just call it The 'Gan.

Even the light feels secondhand. 

Filtered through too many power lines, cracked neon signs, broken-glass windows patched with film posters and static ads that don't know when to shut up.

A drone drifts overhead—low, slow, too quiet. 

Not sanitation. 

Surveillance, probably. 

Or worse: scavenger.

I know I'm home when I can taste the air. 

Sharp with battery acid and old soy oil—burnt noodles, hot grease, and that ghost-trail of zephyr clinging to exo-rig backfires.

Zeal's ahead of me, hood up, duffel over one arm. 

He doesn't say much. 

He never does, when we cross into Redline. 

Maybe it's the memories. 

Or maybe it's the eyes watching from the alleys, the rooftops, the shadow of his father's old debts still crawling along the walls.

"Home sweet home" I mutter.

Zeal just grunts.

"Smells worse than I remember." 

His jaw's tight. That same tightness he wore at his father's funeral.

We squeeze into the Strip through a sideways alley entrance, ducking past a dumpling cart and a kid peddling off-brand Jolt out of a cooler. 

The vendor gives me a nod. 

I nod back. 

That's how it works here. 

You don't need names. Just history.

And Akagane? She's full of it.

Layered like peeling paint—one war, one riot, one black-market sale at a time.

They say this district used to be a factory zone before the civil split. 

Now it's just heat and bodies stacked in concrete coffins. 

No sunlight. 

No fire escapes. 

No escape, period. 

Buildings lean in on you like they're waiting for you to collapse first.

It's beautiful in that ugly, stubborn way.

Rust on steel. 

Laundry strung between towers like surrender flags. 

Kids running barefoot with bootleg VR visors over their eyes, laughing like they've still got a future to waste.

We pass an old fight spot—Kaji Mina. 

The arena's gone now, bulldozed by the Scanners a year ago. 

But the legend remains.

"They say it started right here," I tell Zeal. "One girl in scrap armor, one scanner checkpoint and a whole lot of blood."

Zeal smirks. "Romantic."

"Hey, don't knock it. That's history."

He doesn't argue.

History's sticky here. 

Lingers in the alley grime. 

In the beat-up tin-can shrines nailed to walls, still burning incense for fighters who never got a proper send-off.

We cut through the tightest part of the city, where walls brush your shoulders and the ceiling's made of woven fire escapes, water pipes, and frayed solar panels barely hanging on.

This is where the Hēi Lóng run everything—from food stalls to Tech-Fighting rings to black-market rig mods. 

You can smell their influence in the incense and gunpowder, see it in the dragon sigils etched into stone and tattooed barcodes onto the necks of men watching the street with mirrored eyes.

Zeal doesn't flinch when we pass them. 

Doesn't blink when one of the enforcers nods at him.

He nods back.

"They still remember your dad," I say under my breath.

"They never forget blood debts," he replies. "Especially not ones with interest."

I don't press. 

I already know. 

His old man was deep in the Hēi Lóng back when Akagane was a battlefield and not just a neighborhood. 

Zeal used to wear it like a shackle. Now he wears it like armor.

We keep walking.

No destination. 

Not yet. 

Just instinct. 

The sound of drills, steam vents hissing like they've got something to say. 

Somewhere, a woman screams. 

Somewhere else, someone's blasting old synthpop like it's a holy rite.

Akagane doesn't care if you're lost or found. 

She just watches.

We cut through an alley that smells like coolant and stale bread, follow the train line two blocks down, and take a left past the rusted signage shaped like a wrench and a gun.

Kenzo Tech Repair.

The sign flickers like it's apologizing for still existing.

The shop itself is wedged between a noodle stand and a defunct drone laundry service, housed in what used to be a scrapyard garage, its front bay wide open to the street. 

Metal limbs dangle from the rafters like wind chimes. 

A busted mech torso sits on a dolly near the curb, half-cannibalized, wires spilling like entrails.

Zeal pauses, adjusts the strap on his duffel, then grins—wide and mischievous. 

He switches to a falsetto.

"Honey, I'm home~"

Inside, a mountain of muscle grunts from behind a half-gutted motorbike. Ace.

He doesn't look up. 

Just flicks his ash into a nearby oil pan and mutters, 

"Took you long enough."

He's crouched low, socket wrench in one hand, grease smeared across the tattoos down his arms—dragons, circuit boards, a barcode tattoo on the side of his neck. 

His shirt's off. 

It's always off. 

And the way the sweat gleams down his spine, I half-expect the bike to fall in love with him.

"Aw, c'mon, Ace," Zeal purrs, voice still comically high. "Don't be like that, baby. I missed you."

Ace finally glances up.

His cybernetic eye glitches once—a quick stutter of red behind the lens—and he squints at us like we're bad news and background noise.

Then: "You brought the goblin."

"Hi," I say flatly.

Ace smirks. That's about as friendly as it gets.

"Uncle Kenzo around?" Zeal asks, dropping his bag by the counter.

"Went up to Ridge. Said something about trading parts for sugar." Ace leans back, wipes his hands on a rag that might've been white three decades ago. 

"He'll be back when the glucose implant starts screaming."

I nod. 

That tracks. 

Kenzo's the kind of guy who'd let all ten toes rot off if it meant he could barter for powdered jelly donuts. 

I still don't know why he bothered sewing a glucose monitor into his neck if he's just gonna ignore it like one of those street prophets in The 'Gan—you know, the kind that yells about sun ghosts and stabs you if you make eye contact.

The inside of the shop looks like a bomb went off in a vending machine graveyard. 

Stacks of rig chassis, old power cells, drone wings, and CRT monitors balanced in organized chaos. 

The wall behind the counter still has the faded newspaper clipping—Kenzo in his prime, grinning wide in front of a mech built out of scrap and bad attitude. 

The caption reads: "AKAGANE'S IRON GENERAL WINS AGAIN."

Zeal runs a hand along a rack of modded servo joints. He does it every time.

"This place still smells like engine oil and ass," I mutter.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Your nose is broken."

Ace lights another cigarette. "You sticking around or just here to smell things and flirt with me?"

Zeal spreads his arms. "Can't it be both?"

Ace doesn't laugh. 

But he doesn't throw a wrench either. 

So, y'know. 

Progress.

I glance around. "Kenzo leave anything new?"

"Maybe. He's been hoarding heat sinks and military-grade coolant like there's a war coming."

"There probably is," Zeal mutters. "You hear about that hit in Rokunan?"

"Don't care," Ace says. "Not our turf."

"Still close," I say.

Ace shrugs. "So's the edge of the world."

The three of us fall into silence. The kind that only happens when you've all been through enough shit together that talking feels optional. Or exhausting.

I pick up a drone leg with a busted rotator joint. Spin it. Inspect the welds.

"This yours?" I ask Ace.

He nods. "Kid from Kogen dropped it off. Said it kicked itself to death mid-delivery."

"Must've had one of your mods."

Zeal snorts. 

Peels a few bills from his cut and flicks them across the workbench. 

"Here's your share, sweetheart."

Ace catches the wad mid-air. Doesn't count it. Just thumbs the edge like he's checking for blood. 

Qin doesn't need counting. 

Unlike creds, it's untraceable. 

Dirty by design.

"Thanks," he mutters—then flicks me a look. Not cold. Not warm. Just... assessing. "Lotta money for your first fight."

I meet his stare.

"I'm built different."

He doesn't answer. 

Just tosses the bills into a drawer already packed with old ammo casings and a candy bar that's probably older than me.

We don't stay long.

Some places—you don't linger. Not because you're not welcome. But because you are.