Will stepped out of Lilith first.
His boots hit the Mojave glass. The heavy tread crunched against an irradiated aftermath—a fused surface that looked less like sand and more like a shattered mirror settling into a new geometry.
The heat hit immediately. It was an aggressive, physical weight pushing against exposed skin. The glass-sand threw fractured light in every direction. The air tasted like burnt pennies and battery acid. Every breath scraped down his throat, heavy with the ambient Qliphothic radiation the corporate terraformers had permanently baked into the atmosphere.
Before he looked at the city, Will pressed two bare fingers against the inside of his left wrist.
He was not checking his pulse. He felt for a colder, intermittent signal. It was a live tether, beating in a rhythm that had nothing to do with human blood. He held the pressure for three seconds. The rhythm verified. The seventeenth asset was still alive behind enemy lines.
He dropped his hand.
