"What's the situation?" I asked the moment Vesper's face lit up on the tablet's screen.

The internet was down for the broader city, but Quinn had set up a wireless local intranet, using the drones as relays and communication nodes. Isia and I were currently standing on a rooftop to avoid the chaos at street level, several buildings were burning, casting an orange glow on the rising smoke, and gunshots were ringing out in every direction. The roughshod evacuation of the district had quickly ground to a stand-still, looting had spread like wildfire, and the situation was only growing worse by the minute.

"Every highway's clogged, we're trying to get air-evac, but we don't have enough AV's, and every corpo is playing hot-potato with us." Vesper answered, the camera angle shifted, showing a room with six others. Each of them was sitting on a chair or a stool, waving hands around, staring into screens only they could see.

"We need to establish order," I said.

"Fat luck with that." Isia snorted next to me, raising her rifle and looking down the scope at something way down the street. Her face twisted into a grimace. "We're a few bodies short of a full riot."

My mouth drew into a thin line. "This is an emergency situation, can we take a rescue contract?"

"What's the downpayment? Our souls? It's not like we have anything…" As soon as Isia asked the question, her face contorted with horror. "No, you can't be serious. We just earned that money!"

"The point is moot," Vesper interrupted before I could comment. "All the credits in the world won't matter if they won't answer the damn phone. Even Bear's getting ghosted."

My eyes bugged out, trying to grasp at the audacity of ignoring a meguca's call. I had to suppress the immediate urge to begin asking for more details, we didn't have the time to sit around and do nothing. "What are our orders?"

"Quinn's intranet was never designed for this communication volume, it's down more time than up. We need more router-drones." The screen changed to show a map. "There are twelve corpo warehouses with drone flotillas in our sector. We need to hijack as many of them as we can, and expand Quinn's network. The sooner the better."

"What're the resistance parameters?" I asked, referring to rules of engagement with civilians.

"The what?"

I grimaced. "What if someone tries to stop us?"

Vesper relaxed a little, giving what might have passed as a reassuring grin under different circumstances. "Priority is that you don't die on us, everything else can go suck a tailpipe."

The line cut off, the dark screen reflecting my own concerned face, I looked over the district, this early the sun hadn't even risen yet. Fingers coming through my hair, I steeled myself.

"I need to pick up the shield, then we head out."

Isia gave me a side-glance. "We're about to rob a corporation, you ok with that?

"It's not theft, this is an emergency situation," I scoffed. "We'll negotiate fair compensation once things calm down."

Her shoulders slumped and she groaned. "Of course you'd say that. Better get the streamer mask."

"Why?" I figured the mask would provide some degree of protection, but it wasn't really something I'd take to a potential scenario involving urban warfare.

"Trust me." She grumbled.

We took a quick stop at Motel 18 and had to pause as we crossed the threshold. The inside of the lobby was… calm, quiet, almost peaceful. Beyond the motel doors I could hear the chaos that was still unfolding, yet within there was nothing but the soft cool breeze of the AC and Grills standing behind the counter with a shotgun.

Maybe the shotgun explained the calmness.

"Greetings, Axel Garcia and guest." Grills' voice crackled.

"Sorry, Grills, currently in a hurry," I sprinted deeper into the motel and going up the stairs five at a time. My room was exactly as I'd left it, so finding my shield and the mask was a simple matter. Within less than a minute I was back at the lobby. "See you later."

"Have a good hunt, Axel Garcia!"

I froze mid-step, hand on the handle, whipping around to look Grills over. The chassis was the same, and the wiring and hydraulics of her interior were just as visible through the broken cover as they'd always been. Yet the typical whirr of overheating fans was gone, and the way she was waving was slightly smoother than I remembered. "You got some fixes?" I vaguely remembered sending her to get parts for herself and a loaded cred-chip.

"Have a good hunt, Axel Garcia!" She repeated, head twitching slightly.

Nodding, I pushed the door open and led the way. "Stay safe." Stepping outside, I ignored Isia's amused chuckle and put on the unga-bunga mask, gripping the folded-up shield on my left and crouching to make it easier for her to clamber on. It was an awkward fit. "Let's go."

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"Think we could get you a saddle for next time?"

"Shut up."

I dropped Isia off on a half-collapsed skybridge that overlooked the target block, she swung her rifle like a mallet, practically slamming its barrel into place against the rusted balustrade. Her silence felt out of place as she peered through the scope, fingers gripping the metal body of the auto-canon like a favored pet. "Not seeing much movement."

The warehouse squatted at the end of an alley packed with dented vending coffins and stray rebar like a jaw full of broken teeth. Quinn's map said it once belonged to a courier start‑up before a buy‑out, but the only logo still visible was a sun‑bleached paint-job promising "Last‑Meter Logistics". I tightened the plain white mask as I hopped down to street-level, boots sloshing through puddles of foamy orange fire-suppressants and half-burnt tires.

By all signs, it seemed that the trouble had come to the warehouse, but it'd been handled.

My earpiece chirped with Isia's voice. "Quinn's drone's getting an aim alert."

There were gun-turrets mounted on the warehouse's perimeter, two of them swivelling to take aim at the tiny drone flying well overhead. When I unfolded the four pieces of the shield, two of the idle turrets turned my way, two more joining in when I locked the pieces into one big tower-shield. Though I could barely feel the weight of the thing, its size was somewhat cumbersome while I was in my human form. Not that I was about to complain. The turret barrels made it easy to guess they were using calibers comparable to assault rifles, and unless they were using AP, then the shield should be enough.

Probably.

Tempting my luck was not on the list.

"Requesting emergency acquisition!" I called out, peeking at the metal gate from behind the shield, eyeing the turrets that were tracking me as I moved closer. "Civilian lives are at stake!"

A speaker crackled to life, a smooth male voice betraying the artificial nature. "You are approaching a badlands facility, there are no civilians in this area. There is no emergency."

My grip on the shield nearly faltered as I mentally scrambled to make sense of what I'd just heard. I knew the situation was bad, but nowhere had I even seen so much as a hint of the legal classification of the fourth district being straight-up "badlands". The people of the fourth district had been called "refugees" multiple times, hadn't they? Then did that mean this whole place was, legally, seen as some sort of short-term camp?

Anger flared through me, there was no way the CYPHER system would've seen the current situation of the fourth district and deemed it "temporary" without meddling somewhere along the way. I thought back to the elders, and for a moment wondered whether they were actively responsible for this. There was just no way for no one to have been able to ream this through!

"There is an injured meguca in need of assistance, I request escalation of contact." I lied, but there wasn't much time for us to stick around and play with a potential red-tape labyrinth.

"We will answer your request once a L5 administrator or higher reviews it." The smooth voice answered.

"Just say the word," Isia whispered through the earpiece, there was a hint of amusement there.

"Not yet." My lips drew thin. I picked up one of the doused tires with my free hand as I stepped closer, eyeing the wall. Holding the tower-shield tightly, the number of turrets pointing at me increased the closer I got, until every available turret was pointing at either me or Quinn's drone. "If this is considered badlands, then I request a temporary sanctuary, with adequate remuneration to be negotiated."

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

"Request denied." The system answered. "Leave the premises or we will open fire."

My teeth ground together as I hefted the shield and took a slow step toward the gate. A dozen faint clicks echoed in the stale air, and half a heartbeat later rifles flared. A handful of rounds pinged off the shield like angry hornets rebounding from metal, but most exploded against the concrete slab at my feet, spraying chips of stone into my boots. Then came the flash under the lip of my shield and a white‑hot jab of pain in my calf. I staggered, breath catching, realizing too late that one of those shots had found its only vulnerable seam.

A blast echoed from behind me, followed by a turret getting turned into a whirlwind of sparks and jagged steel fragments. The concussion rattled through my bones before a second boom ripped the air apart, shredding another gun emplacement into twisted scrap.

Isia's triumphant laugh crackled in my ear. "Should've given me the…"

"DUCK!" I bellowed, flinging caution aside as I lunged for the nearest wall. Every turret save one pivoted toward the sniper who'd just become target number one and opened fire. Seizing the split second, I hurled the half-burnt tire at the lone cannon still tracking me. The rubber ring struck with a dull crack, throwing its barrel askew, buying enough time for me to scramble up the rough brick, until I pulled myself over the edge.

I glanced back at Isia's empty perch to watch the turrets swivel in confusion, their firing arcs tangled as they tried to reassign priorities. With their lines of sight crossing one another, only two barrels could bear on me at once, and with the tower-shield on my back, I took aim with my Bulstra to rip two holes on the turret in front of me.

The damage was not enough to rip the weaponized machine to shreds like Isia's firearm, but it put it out of commission.

"Are you hurt?" I called, the echo of spent rounds pinging off my shield like rain on steel.

"Almost got me," Isia answered, her tone flat and annoyed. "I'll handle the rest, just-"

"Don't waste bullets, I can take them," I cut in, now painfully aware that Isia might be a great markswoman, but she did not have knowledge or experience against machine combatants. That was a mistake to tackle later, not now. "I need your eyes in case they send something that isn't stationary." Whoever had laid this perimeter had clearly just minimized the defenses under the consideration the only attackers would be humans, not someone with enough muscle or speed to climb the walls.

The defenses had been blatantly designed with mobs and thieves in mind, not monsters. I pummeled my way through, walking the wall's edge, using my shield to block off the bullets as I tore through the turrets one at a time.

"You are destroying LML property, a repo team will arrive shortly." The AI threatened over and over. I'd tuned out the voice as I checked the area for any other potential dangers.

As far as I could tell, the place was decrepit and falling apart, even the turrets had been slightly rusted on closer inspection. It was hard to imagine any corporation would actually bother sending a repo team out here, much less with a monster horde on its way.

"Not seeing any movement," I muttered as I pried open the main gates for Isia to come in. "Place's falling apart."

"The usual shit. Pretty sure they insured it for ten times the actual worth," Was all the explanation she gave, gaze half-focused in that way that betrayed that she was currently looking at something through her neuralink. "Gotta get Quinn's dongle plugged in the drone-control port." She stopped as she noticed my hesitation. "What is it?"

I was staring at the broken turrets, lingering on the speaker that kept repeating the same empty threat. "No, nothing," I said, taking point in case we found anything that might pose a threat inside… like more turrets. "Let's get going, we've got a dozen of these to get through."

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