The freezing acid rain stung Jake's face the moment he left the window.
He was in freefall, the neon-drenched abyss of Sector 4 rushing up to meet him. His burning left arm hissed violently as the downpour hit the super-heated chrome. Steam exploded off his skin in thick, white clouds.
He didn't have time to brace himself. He hit the rusted iron grating of the fire escape hard.
His human shoulder took the brunt of the impact. A sickening pop echoed through his own skull. The left clavicle snapped, driving a jagged spike of white-hot agony straight into his neck.
Jake bit down on his tongue. He tasted hot copper instantly. He refused to scream.
[WARNING: Left clavicle fractured. Biological chassis at 24%.]
Yuri's text flared in an aggressive, blinding crimson across Jake's optic nerve. The words felt like they were carved into the back of his eyes.
"Warning acknowledged," Jake spat blood onto the rusted iron.
A heavy pair of combat boots slammed onto the grating beside him. The woman landed perfectly, her knees bending to absorb the shock. She didn't hesitate.
She grabbed the collar of his ruined, smoking trench coat and hauled him up.
"Move your legs, shiny!" she screamed over the roaring wind.
Above them, the apartment window was a jagged maw of fire and smoke. Four heavily armored Orion soldiers leaned out into the rain. Their visors glowed a dead, insectoid red.
Four crimson laser sights sliced down through the downpour. The red dots danced erratically over the melted, charred fabric of Jake's coat.
They were locking onto his spine.
Jake tried to stand, but his left leg gave out. The muscles were tearing themselves apart just trying to keep his human frame moving at Yuri's calculated speeds.
Before the Orion soldiers could pull their triggers, a shadow blotted out the neon signs above.
A heavy pursuit drone dropped out of the smog, hovering directly between the fire escape and the alley below. It was the size of a motorcycle, plated in matte-black military armor. Twin anti-riot sonic cannons hummed beneath its chassis, charging up with a sickening, high-pitched whine.
The drone's single optical sensor locked onto Jake. It flashed from yellow to lethal red.
The woman froze. Her tough facade shattered instantly. She raised her cheap kinetic pistol, her hands shaking.
"We're dead," she breathed, the rain plastering her shaved hair to her skull. "That's an Orion Wasp. Bullets won't even scratch the paint."
She fired anyway. Three loud cracks echoed in the alley.
The bullets sparked harmlessly off the drone's thick armor plating. The drone didn't even register the impact.
Jake didn't raise his hands. He didn't flinch.
He just stared at the hovering machine. He looked past the metal and the guns. He saw the invisible, pulsing web of local networks connecting the drone to the soldiers above.
"Yuri," Jake thought. "Give me the network."
[Interfacing. Override will increase thermal load by 4%.]
"Do it."
Jake reached out with his mind. The liquid chrome of his left arm flared a blinding, electric blue beneath the melted sleeve of his coat. He didn't need to physically plug a wire into the drone.
His Admin arm was a god-tier skeleton key.
He violently shoved his consciousness into the drone's local network. It felt like plunging his head into a freezing, rushing river. The Orion firewalls tried to reject him.
Jake crushed them. He didn't rewrite the code; he shattered it with sheer, overwhelming data mass.
In less than a millisecond, he located the drone's IFF protocol. The Identify Friend/Foe registry.
He swapped his own biometrics with the Orion soldiers above.
The drone's optical sensor clicked. The lethal red light faded, instantly replaced by a cool, friendly green.
The woman stared at the drone, her pistol still raised. "What did you do?"
"I gave it new targets," Jake gasped, clutching his broken collarbone.
The heavy drone spun around mid-air. It angled its twin sonic cannons upward, aiming directly at the four Orion soldiers leaning out of the burning window.
The soldiers realized what was happening a second too late.
The Wasp unleashed a deafening, continuous barrage of heavy suppressing fire. The sonic blasts hit the brickwork with the force of artillery shells. The entire side of the building exploded inward.
Screams were completely drowned out by the collapsing masonry. The soldiers were thrown backward into the inferno of the apartment, buried under a ton of pulverized concrete and steel.
The woman stared at the smoking crater where her apartment used to be. Her jaw was slack.
"You just hacked a military Wasp with a thought," she whispered, looking at Jake like he was a monster.
"Keep walking," Jake grunted.
She didn't argue. She grabbed his right arm and practically dragged him down the remaining flights of rusted stairs. The iron steps squealed under their weight.
Every jolt sent fresh waves of agony radiating from Jake's broken collarbone.
They hit the ground level of the alleyway. The smell of garbage and wet asphalt was overpowering.
Jake's knees buckled. He couldn't hold himself up anymore. He collapsed face-first into a deep puddle of grimy, oil-slicked rainwater.
The relief of the cold water lasted exactly one second.
The heat radiating from his chest and left arm transferred instantly to the puddle. The dirty water around his chrome wrist began to violently bubble.
The woman scrambled back as the puddle actually started to boil. Thick, foul-smelling steam rose into the cold alley air, completely obscuring Jake's arm.
[Core temperature 106 degrees. Cellular degradation accelerating. Seizures imminent in 4 minutes.]
Yuri's voice was no longer just clinical. It was fast. It was frantic math trying to solve an impossible biological equation.
Jake coughed, spitting dirty water onto the asphalt. His internal organs felt like they were sitting on a hot grill. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, beating so fast it was just a continuous, sickening vibration in his chest.
The 'Hope' archive was literally cooking him alive. The digital souls of his entire simulated party were burning a hole through his real-world nervous system.
"Get up!" The woman grabbed the back of his coat, burning her own fingers on the heated fabric.
She cursed loudly and hauled him onto his hands and knees.
"Four minutes," Jake choked out. His vision was turning a violent shade of purple at the edges. "I need coolant. Now."
"I know, I know!" she yelled, hauling him up against a brick wall. "My name is Nyx. Don't die on me yet. You owe me ten grand."
"Nyx," Jake repeated, his head rolling to the side. "Where is the clinic?"
"Underground," Nyx said, wiping rain from her eyes. "But we have a problem. That little trick with the Wasp drone? You didn't just piss off a breach team."
She swallowed hard. "You maxed your threat level."
A heavy, rhythmic thudding echoed from the far end of the alley.
The sound shook the water in the puddles. It was the distinct, terrifying sound of hydraulic pistons and heavy kinetic armor hitting the pavement.
Jake forced his eyes open.
At the mouth of the alley, the neon light of the street was blocked out by a massive silhouette. It stood nine feet tall. It was an Orion heavy-assault mech-suit.
Rain cascaded off its sloped, dark grey armor.
Two massive red optical sensors glared through the smog, locking onto Jake's thermal signature. A heavy plasma cannon spooled up on its right shoulder, glowing with blinding, sun-like energy.
"Oh, hell," Nyx breathed, taking a step back.
She didn't try to shoot it. She spun around and dropped to her knees. She frantically clawed at a heavy, rusted maintenance hatch set flat into the concrete floor of the alley.
"Help me!" she screamed.
Jake pushed off the wall. He stumbled forward, dragging his boiling left arm. He jammed his chrome fingers under the edge of the heavy iron grate.
He didn't use an Admin hack. He just used the raw, terrifying mechanical strength of the cybernetics.
He ripped the iron grate entirely off its hinges and threw it aside.
A blast of awful, sulfur-smelling air hit them. The stench of raw sewage and chemical runoff was suffocating.
The mech-suit took a heavy step forward. The plasma cannon reached full charge. The air in the alley hummed with lethal static.
"Ladies first," Nyx shouted.
She didn't climb down the ladder. She just jumped straight into the pitch-black abyss of the sewer.
Jake stood at the edge of the hole. He looked back down the alley.
The two red eyes of the mech stared back at him. It was the same dead, corporate machinery that had ruined his future. It was the same system that was hunting his wife's digital ghost.
Rage flared over his exhaustion.
The mech fired. A blinding bolt of blue-white plasma tore down the alley, vaporizing the raindrops in its path.
Jake didn't dodge. He simply let himself fall backward.
He dropped into the dark, suffocating hole just as the plasma round detonated, the sheer heat of the blast melting the concrete rim of the hatch where he had been standing a fraction of a second before.