The silence in the pipe was worse than the screaming.
Jax was pressed into a jagged crack in the tunnel wall, his legs completely numb from the freezing, toxic sludge. His chest heaved in a desperate, ragged rhythm that he couldn't stop. Hhhh-uck. Hhhh-uck.FILTER INTEGRITY: 0%
The amber light on his wrist had turned a solid, unforgiving red. The air pulling through his mask wasn't being scrubbed anymore; it was raw, sulfuric poison. It felt like inhaling broken glass.
"Quiet," Ryla hissed, tears of sheer terror and adrenaline streaming down her dirty face.
She pressed her body flush against his, shoving a heavy, rot-resistant tarp they had scavenged from the muck entirely over his head. She clamped her hands over the exhaust port of his mask, physically sealing the sound of his dying lungs in.
Jax panicked. His vision grayed, the edges bleeding into static. His lungs screamed for oxygen. His instincts told him to fight her, to rip her hands away and gasp for air, but Ryla held him with her hyper-dense strength. She wouldn't let him die by moving.
Slush.
A shadow glided past the opening of their crevice.
It was tall, sleek, and darker than the surrounding dark. A Banshee. It didn't walk; it flowed, its boots making zero sound on the submerged metal. Its helmet was a featureless black oval, twitching slightly as the sensory fins on the side hunted for a pulse.
It paused. Right in front of them.
Jax's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was so loud he was sure the assassin could hear it through the tarp.
Ryla squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her full weight against him. Jax started to black out.
Don't cough. Don't cough. Don't—
The Banshee tilted its head. Then, a mutated rat skittered across a dry pipe ten meters down the tunnel.
HISS.
The Banshee vanished, launching itself toward the microscopic noise with terrifying speed.
Ryla ripped the tarp away.
Jax collapsed forward, falling to his hands and knees, retching violently into the sludge. He tore the pristine, useless mask off his face and gasped in the thick, toxic air of the tunnel. It tasted of sulfur, sewage, and death, but it was oxygen.
"We have to move," Ryla whispered, grabbing his hoodie and hauling him to his feet. "You need a filter. You're turning blue."
"Market," Jax wheezed, his voice a raw, bloody scrape. "The Spiral... crowd cover."
The "Spiral Market" of Sector 7-B was a chaotic, vertical bazaar built into a massive, defunct ventilation intake. It was loud, dirty, and crowded—the perfect place to disappear.
Jax pulled his hood low, hiding his face. He moved like a drunk, leaning heavily on Ryla as they emerged from the pipes and blended into the throng. The noise of the market was a physical assault—shouting merchants, the sizzle of fry-vats boiling cricket-crunch, and the constant, thrumming bass from a nearby vice-den.
But for once, the deafening industrial noise was a blessing. It hid his coughing.
"There," Ryla pointed to a rusted stall hanging precariously over the edge of the central walkway. A flickering neon sign read: Tech-Salvage.
Jax stumbled toward the counter, barely able to see straight. The merchant, a greying man with a cheap, robotic lower jaw, looked him up and down with absolute disinterest.
"We're closing, Meat-Bag," the merchant grunted.
"Filters," Jax rasped, slamming his Wrist-Deck onto the metal counter. The cracked screen flashed red: 42 kW. "Standard Aero-V2 cartridges. Two of them. Now."
The merchant eyed the credits. It was barely enough, but money was money. He reached under the counter. "You look like you crawled out of a corpse, kid."
"Just... give me... the filters."
The merchant pulled out a blister pack of two charcoal cartridges. But instead of handing them over, he held them just out of reach.
"Forty-two is the price for one," the merchant sneered, seeing the absolute desperation in Jax's bloodshot eyes. "Inflation. Vorg taxes."
Jax's vision blurred. He didn't have the breath to haggle. He reached for his Spark-Gap, his fingers twitching toward the merchant's robotic jaw.
Suddenly, the heavy bass music in the market cut out.
Every holographic billboard, every wrist-deck, and every public Slab in the bazaar flickered, died, and then turned a violent, blood-red.
A massive hologram projected into the empty airspace in the center of the spiral. It wasn't just anybody. It was Vorg.
The Warlord's steel trap-jaw gnashed as he spoke, his voice booming through the market's emergency speakers, shaking the rusted walkways.
"ATTENTION, SINK TRASH. BOUNTY ALERT."
Two massive, rotating 3D images appeared next to Vorg's monstrous head. One was Ryla, her neon hair unmistakable even under the grime. The other was Jax.
"CRIMES: THEFT. SABOTAGE."
Jax froze. His blood ran cold.
"REWARD: 10,000 CHARGE. ALIVE OR DEAD. PREFERABLY DEAD."
The silence that fell over the market was deafening. Every head turned. Every fry-cook stopped cooking. Every pair of eyes looked at the glowing red holograms, and then slowly shifted to the boy in the grey hoodie standing at the tech counter, leaning on the girl with the neon-pink hair.
Ten thousand Charge. To a Null, that wasn't just money. That was a lifetime of clean air. That was an apartment in the Sprawl. That was salvation.
The merchant looked at the screen overhead. Then he looked down at Jax. The Warlord's bounty reflected in his greedy eyes.
He didn't hand over the filters. His right hand dropped below the counter, reaching for a sawed-off shotgun.
"Hey!" the merchant shouted, his robotic jaw clicking. "It's th—"
Jax's exhausted brain couldn't process it fast enough, but Ryla didn't need to think. She acted.
Before the merchant could even raise the barrel, Ryla launched herself over the counter. She slammed her elbow directly into the man's robotic jaw. Because of her hyper-dense bone structure, the strike hit like a sledgehammer. Metal crumpled. The merchant flew backward, crashing through a shelf of scrap servos and collapsing in a heap.
"Run!" Ryla screamed.
She snatched the blister pack of filters from the counter, grabbed Jax's hand, and yanked him into the crowd.
"They're here!" a scavenger shrieked, pointing a skeletal finger. "Get them! 10,000 Charge!"
The market erupted. It wasn't just a gang ambush. It was a stampede. Starving mothers, crippled beggars, feral tunnel-kids—everyone saw a golden ticket running past them.
Jax stumbled, his heavy mining boot catching on a grate. He ripped the plastic off the blister pack with his teeth and jammed the new filter into his mask as he ran. He inhaled deeply. The clean, scrubbed air hit his oxygen-starved brain like a potent drug. His vision sharpened instantly, but the terror remained.
"Left!" Ryla yelled.
They were cut off. A group of four desperate glow-farmers, wielding heavy iron harvesting hooks, blocked the alleyway.
"I got 'em!" Ryla shouted, pushing Jax behind her.
This was her element. In the tunnels, Ryla was fast, but in a fight, she was a wrecking ball. The first farmer swung a hook at her head. Ryla didn't dodge. She stepped inside his guard and threw a punch straight into his chest. CRACK. The man folded in half, launched backward into his friends.
A second attacker lunged, swinging a heavy lead pipe. It connected solidly with Ryla's ribs—a blow that would have shattered Jax's ribcage. Ryla just grunted, grabbed the pipe, ripped it from the man's hands, and drove the butt of it into his face.
"Keep moving, Spark!" she roared, grabbing Jax and hurling him through the gap she just created.
Jax scrambled forward, struggling to keep his footing. His mismatched boots—one heavy and loud, one sleek and magnetic—made him clumsy on the uneven grating. He was a thinker, a mechanic. He wasn't a brawler. He relied entirely on the neon-pink blur ahead of him to clear the path.
"The stairs are blocked!" Jax yelled. A squad of Rust-King enforcers was swarming up the spiral staircase ahead, drawn by the bounty.
"Who needs stairs?" Ryla laughed, a manic, adrenaline-fueled sound.
She sprinted toward the railing overlooking the central drop of the market. Without breaking stride, she engaged the Mag-Locks on her boots and leaped over the railing.
Jax gasped, but Ryla didn't fall. Her boots caught the vertical steel wall of the ventilation shaft. She was running sideways along the wall, completely defying gravity, bypassing the blocked staircase entirely. As she ran past the ascending Rust-Kings, she lashed out with her good leg, clotheslining an enforcer and sending him tumbling down the stairs in a crash of armor.
"Show-off!" Jax shouted, panting. He couldn't do that. His rusted left boot wouldn't hold his weight on a vertical wall.
He had to take the stairs.
Two Ferals rushed him from the side. Jax slid low, dropping onto the slanted railing of the staircase to bypass them. As he slid past, one of them grabbed the hood of his thermal jacket.
Jax didn't fight the pull. Rat-Tactics. He let the momentum swing him around, bringing his wrist up. His Spark-Gap ignited. ZAP. He drove the electrical arc directly into the feral's cheap optic implant. The man screamed, clutching his sparking eye, and let go.
Jax hit the bottom of the stairs, rolling to absorb the impact just as Ryla dropped from the wall beside him.
"Through the fry-vats!" Ryla commanded.
They sprinted through the food-vendor district. The crowd was closing in behind them like a tidal wave of grasping hands. A massive brute wielding a meat cleaver stepped in front of them.
Ryla didn't even slow down. She vaulted over a sizzling vat of boiling insect-oil, kicking the rim of the heavy iron pot backward as she cleared it. A gallon of boiling, foul-smelling grease splashed across the brute and the pursuers behind him. Screams of agony echoed through the market, buying them precious seconds.
"There!" Jax pointed. "The service gate to Sector 4-C!"
It was a heavy, chain-link gate leading out of the market and into the dark, condemned ruins of the Ghost Sector.
They sprinted for it. Ryla hit the gate shoulder-first, bursting through the rusted latch. She spun around, planting herself in the doorway.
"Seal it, Spark!" she yelled, raising her fists as the mob converged on them.
Jax threw himself at the gate, pulling the heavy chain-link doors together. He grabbed his Spark-Gap, set it to maximum output, and pressed it against the locking mechanism.
Three feral scavengers hit the other side of the gate, reaching through the gaps, clawing at Jax's jacket.
Ryla grabbed one of the reaching arms, planted her foot against the gate, and pulled. A sickening pop echoed over the crowd as the shoulder dislocated. She threw the arm back through the fence.
ZAP. ZAP. ZAP. Jax held the igniter against the metal, ignoring the sparks raining down on his gloves. The heat fused the lock, melting the rusted steel into a solid, unmovable lump of slag.
The crowd slammed against the reinforced gate, screaming, cursing, and shaking the chain-link, but the weld held.
Jax stumbled backward, his chest heaving, his heart threatening to beat its way out of his ribcage. He looked at Ryla. She was covered in grease, someone else's blood, and sweat. Her neon-pink hair was plastered to her forehead, and she was panting heavily, but there was a wild, undeniable fire in her eyes.
She had just fought through an entire market of desperate killers, and she looked like she was having the time of her life.
She wiped a streak of grime from her cheek, looked at the screaming mob behind the fence, and then turned to the dark, silent ruins of the Ghost Sector stretching out before them.
"So," Ryla breathed, adjusting her suit and looking Jax dead in the eye. "We have no home. No Silas. And half the sink wants to eat us."
Jax checked the Gene-Core still strapped to her back. It was humming quietly, completely indifferent to the chaos it had caused.
"You got a plan, Spark?" Ryla asked, a challenging smirk cutting through the exhaustion on her face. "Or are we just running until we die?"