The dawn broke like rust over the skyline, sickly orange behind thick smog and surveillance haze. Kade stood on the roof of the bunker, scanning the city's shifting outline with his optic lens. In the quiet, he could feel the tension of the system humming beneath his skin, like a caged current. It had been silent all night, which worried him more than its cryptic warnings.
Inside, Marei had been working without pause. The retro tablet was now modified—connected to the last trace of a satellite uplink she'd patched from an old UmbraTech protocol. She was thinner than she looked, pale from years in stasis, but her mind hadn't slowed a beat. She spoke as she worked, fingers dancing over holographic keys.
"I found it," she said. "Not the exact location, but a signal. Deep layer. Obfuscated under old mining data. Hidden in a dead grid sector. Sector G7—north of the ravines. Wasteland territory."
Kade exhaled. "Figures. Catalyst wouldn't store its seed code somewhere convenient."
"This was their failsafe," she said. "If anything went wrong, they could collapse the system, wipe the servers, and start over."
"You think it's still active?"
"I don't know. But if the signal's still pinging, that means power's still running. And if there's power—"
"There's data," Kade finished. "And probably defense protocols."
She nodded. "Automated drones. Old war AI. Possibly spectrals."
He grimaced. "I hate spectrals."
"I know."
They geared up quickly. Kade selected a silent rifle, twin blades, and a portable disruption grid. Marei took lighter armor and a compression pistol. The system offered a map overlay, showing the potential access routes through the ruined outer districts, most of which were controlled by rogue guilds and scavenger kings.
They didn't have time for diplomacy.
They took the skimmer out by mid-morning, traveling through abandoned rail lines and broken bridges. As the city fell behind them, the landscape changed—gray concrete giving way to red-baked earth and twisted steel skeletons of failed expansion projects. The Wastes were once meant to be colonies. Now they were little more than graves for machines and ideals.
A drone buzzed overhead. Kade's system jammed its signal before it could relay. They passed through an empty dome town—domestic units rusted on porches, homes half-buried in sand. Vexin looked away as they rode.
"I remember this," she whispered. "They built communities here. Promised families the future. Then Catalyst flagged them as 'instability zones' and wiped the grid."
"You were part of it?"
"I built the code. I didn't know what they were using it for."
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Guilt hung thick in the skimmer's silence.
By afternoon, the grid signal narrowed. The system highlighted a cratered hill, half-buried under collapsed solar towers. Static crawled across their interface as they approached.
"This is it," Marei said.
Kade dismounted, pulling his rifle into ready position. The entrance was barely visible—a steel hatch hidden beneath scorched concrete.
"System, open it."
Manual override required. Codeblock signature outdated.
Marei stepped forward. "Let me try."
She placed her palm on the sensor. The panel hissed, flashed red, then green. Slowly, with the scream of old hydraulics, the hatch opened inward, releasing stale air that smelled of chemicals and dust.
They descended.
The stairwell was long, curved like a spiral cut through bedrock. Lights flickered to life as they moved, motion-triggered systems waking from years of dormancy.
At the bottom was a corridor—clean, metallic, humming with a faint pulse of energy. The design was older than Catalyst. This was UmbraTech's core aesthetic—brutal, cold, efficient.
Kade moved ahead, weapon raised.
"Heat signature—dead ahead."
They reached a chamber filled with monitors, half-broken, some looping corrupted visual data. In the center was a pedestal—and on it, a flickering cube suspended in a containment field.
"That's it," Marei breathed. "The Heartline node."
She moved toward it. Kade stayed back, watching the shadows.
She accessed a console, fingers moving fast.
"I can't decrypt it here," she said. "But I can extract the memory strings. With these, we could dismantle Catalyst from the outside."
The cube pulsed, reacting to her touch. The room darkened slightly.
Then the system screamed.
WARNING: Level 5 Security Engagement triggered.
Defense units activating.
A hatch opened behind them.
From it crawled two sentinel drones, each eight feet tall, spider-legged, covered in burnished plates. One flashed red. The other screamed a mechanical shriek.
Kade opened fire.
The first drone took two shots to the core before it recoiled. The second lunged—blade-arms slashing. Kade ducked, rolled, and sliced upward with one of his electrified blades. Sparks flew. He vaulted onto its back, stabbed downward, disabling its left-side servos.
Marei shouted, "I've almost got it!"
Kade kicked the machine aside, spun, and launched a pulse mine at the other. It exploded, temporarily shorting its circuits.
"Done!" she yelled.
She yanked the cube free. The pedestal sparked. The power dimmed.
"Move!"
They ran.
Alarms blared. The hallway lights shattered as they sprinted up the stairwell. Above them, the hatch was already closing.
"System, hold the door!"
Manual override in place. Holding… five seconds.
Kade shoved Marei through the gap, then rolled under as the hatch slammed shut behind him. Dust exploded in their wake.
Silence.
Then breath. Then laughter—tired, relieved.
He looked at her.
"You got it?"
She nodded, holding the cube like it weighed the world.
"We have the key," she said. "Now we just need to survive long enough to use it."