Halden didn't holster her weapon. She turned her back on the dissolving hybrid remains, eyes narrowing in focus.
"That sensation..." she murmured, tapping her temple. "It wasn't just a feeling. It left a faint essent trail. Buried deep."
She walked, following an invisible thread away from the ruined promenade. Darian, Zeri, and Ravion fell in behind her. She led them through the twisting, pristine corridors of the Jingjie Sector, leaving the panic behind. Finally, she stopped in a quiet, dead-end courtyard.
Before them stood a massive, flawless jade mural of the Heavenly Court's Emperor gazing benevolently over his people.
Darian frowned, scanning the courtyard. "Captain? It's a solid wall."
"The trace is bleeding through micro-fissures in the stone. There's a draft," Halden said. She sparked a fresh cigarette and blew a thin stream of smoke toward the mural. Instead of rising, it drifted horizontally, slipping into an invisible seam in the jade.
She stepped back. "Ravion. Knock."
Ravion stepped forward. Forgoing finesse, he drove the heavy butt of his spear directly into the Emperor's painted face.
The jade shattered like cheap glass, exposing the pristine wall as a thin veneer. Behind it sat a rusted, industrial blast door that looked sealed for centuries.
Ravion wedged his gauntleted fingers into the seam. He grunted, immense muscles straining against gears seized with age. With a screech of metal, the door gave way to a plunging, pitch-black access shaft. A heavy draft washed over them, reeking of damp iron, stale sweat, and burning oil.
Halden stepped into the dark. Darian, Zeri, and Ravion followed.
They descended a steep, crumbling stairwell, emerging onto heavy metal grating. The incense-laced air of the city above vanished. Twitching emergency lights cast long shadows across a cavernous asteroid underbelly.
A makeshift shantytown clung to the underside of the sector, built from rusted crates and exposed conduits. Unlike the promenade above, this place was loud.
The squad's arrival from the sealed shaft sent the settlement into unfiltered chaos. Mechanics dropped tools, teenagers vaulted over crates, and a mother clutching a child sprinted for the shadows.
Darian stared. "They're... they're actually running."
No blank stares. No forced smiles. Just genuine, unscripted panic.
From the terrified crowd, a figure stepped forward.
She wore a pastel-peach blazer, absurdly out of place in the grime despite being caked in dust. She held a jammed, bubblegum-pink conduit-rifle, slowly lowering the barrel as her sharp eyes swept their tactical plating.
"Who the hell are you guys?" Her voice echoed in the rusted dark, laced with suspicion and profound hope.
Her eyes widened as she took in Halden's pulse-rifle. "Wait... look at that gear. You're actual foreigners, aren't you? Outsiders!"
Halden raised her weapon a fraction. "Who's asking?"
"Oh, this is fantastic!" the woman beamed, ignoring the hostility as she walked right up to Halden with disarming energy. She offered a silver hip-flask. "I'm Lin Yan. Welcome to the real Liuli Expanse! Drink? It's fermented rice wine. Burns like thruster fuel, but it calms the nerves."
Halden stared at the flask, then lowered her pulse-rifle a fraction. "Captain Halden," she said crisply. "This is my squad."
"We aren't tourists," Ravion grunted, towering frame tense.
"Oh, don't be so stiff, big guy," Yan laughed, patting Ravion's muscled arm. He looked horrified by the casual contact.
Yan spun toward the refugees peeking from behind rusted crates. "Bao! Fen! Seal the breach before anyone notices the draft! Move, move!"
Two figures darted from the shadows toward the stairwell. A burly man slammed his palms against the heavy metal door, arms glowing with deep amber essent. The thick iron groaned, bending shut to lock tight. Beside him, a young girl wove her hands through the air, casting a hard-light illusion over the entryway that seamlessly camouflaged it into the surrounding junk.
Within seconds, the shantytown was sealed off from above.
Halden crossed her arms, chewing her cigarette. She tapped her wrist-comm, projecting a glowing blue hologram of a gaunt, hollow-eyed man into the dim air. "We're hunting this man. Doctor Halvek. Have you seen him down here?"
Yan leaned in, squinting at the flickering hologram before shaking her head. "Can't say that I have. We get a lot of strays down here, but nobody looking quite that mad."
"He's in hiding," Halden said, tone sharp. "And masking his signature. My essent ability should map every biological form within a ten-mile radius, but I couldn't get a read on him. It's highly probable he's using an essent ability of his own."
She took a drag of her cigarette, the cherry glowing dull red. "Furthermore, he tends to establish massive underground laboratories, and our intel suggests he's directly targeting the Great Tree."
Yan hummed, gesturing for the squad to follow her deeper into the vibrant, chaotic encampment. Red lanterns hung from coolant pipes, casting warm light over traditional tapestries draped on rusted metal.
"If he's digging for the taproots, he's not in the standard vents," Yan said over the ambient din. "There's an ancient network of war-tunnels layered beneath the jade, carved during the old Chiyou conflicts. The Court sealed them centuries ago, but my people know the blind spots. If he's moving undetected, he's using that grid."
Yan stopped near a communal fire burning inside a dented steel drum. Her bright smile turned calculated. "We don't know his face, but we know the underground. We can send a team to flush him out. Consider it a mutual exchange of favors."
Halden narrowed her eyes. "You're offering a lot to a corporate hit squad. What kind of favor?"
Yan chuckled, her gaze sweeping the camp with fierce, affectionate pride. "Hiding in the dark doesn't break the cage, Captain. We need allies who can actually change the equation. People exactly like you. Foreigners."
"What does that mean?" Darian asked, stepping closer to the fire.
Yan's smile softened into something ancient and heavy. "It wasn't always a floating golden cage," she said, her voice dropping its cheerful cadence. "Millennia ago, our ancestors lived on a real planet. Real dirt, real oceans. But the Chiyou Dominion—the warlords outside our borders—nearly drove us to extinction. We were burning."
Yan looked up at the rusted, patched ceiling. "To survive the endless war, the Emperor struck a terrifying bargain. He fused his physical body with the Shenmu Core, the Great Tree. The sap gave the citizens of the Expanse immortality, yes. But more importantly, it gave the Heavenly Court's Diviners absolute foresight."
Halden's eyes narrowed. "They can predict the Dominion's attacks."
"Exactly." Yan nodded. "But divination isn't magic, Captain. It's mathematics. To predict the Dominion's attacks flawlessly, the Diviners need our society to be a closed, perfectly predictable system. That is 'The Script.'"
A cold knot formed in Darian's stomach as the pieces clicked together. The man drinking tea while his neighbor was crushed. The woman sweeping the stairs as a monster approached.
"If every citizen walks the exact same path, drinks the exact same tea, and feels the exact same sanctioned emotions... the future is clear," Yan said, voice turning bitter. "The math works. But if you introduce a variable—like unsanctioned grief, a new idea, or a squad of foreign corporate soldiers—the equation breaks. The Diviners go blind. And if they go blind, the Expanse becomes vulnerable to the Dominion."
"So they banned free will to keep the shield up," Darian breathed.
"They traded the future for eternal survival," Yan said quietly. "If you deviate from the Script, the Enforcers take you away. So, people pretend."
Yan turned back to Halden. Her demeanor shifted into the hardened, desperate resolve of a revolutionary leader holding her people together in the dark.
"You want to find your mad scientist, Captain? Fine. My people will chart every unmapped tunnel and ventilation shaft. In the meantime, you and your squad can stay here, rest up, and enjoy some actual hospitality."
Halden exhaled a thin cloud of smoke. "And what do you want in return?"
"Your support," Yan said, eyes shining with fierce, rebellious pride. "Outsiders like you—variables the Diviners can't predict—can actually change things. You have the power to break this cage. Help our cause when the time comes, and we'll hand you your target on a silver platter."