The hum was the first thing he learned to trust.
It wasn't a sound the wolf could hear or a frequency the ice could feel. It was the Keystone, a silent thrumming in the architecture of his soul. In the long, tense months since the archive raid, Yin Lie had learned to listen to it. It was his compass in the city's storm of data and deceit, a guide to the echoes of First Wave technology. Right now, it was humming with a low, hungry resonance, pulling him toward the pulsing, organic heart of the Undercity's black market: the Cartographer's Court.
This was where memories were currency. A chaotic bazaar where information wasn't traded on chips, but in glistening, bio-luminescent mem-shards extracted from the minds of the desperate or the dead. The air was thick with the scent of ozone, recycled protein, and the faint, coppery tang of fresh neural fluid.
"The resonance is strong here," Dr. Thorne's voice murmured, a nervous whisper through Yin Lie's encrypted comms. He was back in Su Li's gilded cage, acting as the mission's remote analyst. "The target shard belonged to Dr. Kenji Tanaka, a First Wave neuro-cartographer. He mapped the psychic pathways of the early subjects. If anyone knew the mental 'address' of Chimera, it was him."
"Where is he?" Yin Lie asked, his silver eyes scanning the stalls where 'memory-mongers' displayed their wares in nutrient-gel cases.
"That's the problem," Thorne replied. "Tanaka died two decades ago. His memories were... scattered. Sold off piecemeal. Chen Gu's intel suggests the critical shard—the one containing the Chimera location data—is being auctioned tonight by a broker known as the Weaver."
Yin Lie spotted him. The Weaver was a spider at the center of a web of data-cables, his face a mess of optical implants and chrome. He was presiding over a silent auction, bids placed with a twitch of a finger or a subtle neural command. The prize, floating in a stasis case, was a shard that pulsed with a faint, golden light. The Keystone in Yin Lie's soul sang in recognition.
He was about to move when a new, chillingly familiar sensation washed over him. A subtle pressure, a focused *attention*. It was the feeling of being observed by a mind as sharp and disciplined as his own.
He didn't turn. He let his gaze drift to the reflection in a polished chrome support pillar. Standing on a gantry two levels above, a lone figure in a non-descript gray coat, was Inspector Kai. Her sharp, analytical eyes weren't scanning the crowd. They were locked directly on him. Her own "Keystone detector"—her sensitivity to his gravitational anomaly—had led her here.
"Compromised," Yin Lie stated into his comm, his voice a low growl. "Kai is here."
"Abort, Lie!" Chen Gu's voice cut in, sharp and commanding. "The risk is too high. Her field can—"
"I can't," Yin Lie interrupted. The auction was ending. The Weaver was about to close the deal. "If we lose that shard, we lose the trail."
This was the razor's edge. A direct confrontation was suicide. Kai would harmonize and neutralize his powers in seconds. A massive, chaotic display would bring the entire Directorate down on this market. He needed a third option. He needed a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He didn't reach for the wolf's rage or the ice's power. He reached for the Keystone. He had learned to do more than just see its geometric vision; he could now subtly *influence* it.
He focused on the Weaver's auction terminal, seeing it not as a machine, but as a nexus of energy and data. He didn't hack it. He nudged it. He gently pushed a single, corrupting thread of the Keystone's chaotic, pure energy into the terminal's logic flow.
On the gantry, Kai's hand went to the device on her wrist, her brow furrowing in confusion. Her target's energy signature wasn't flaring; it was doing something strange, something she had never seen before. It felt like it was… fading.
Down below, the Weaver's implants sparked. The silent auction bids on his holographic display flickered, scrambled, and then resolved into a single, winning bid from an anonymous, untraceable account—one Su Li had provided for just such an emergency. The Weaver, confused but bound by the rules of the market, grunted in annoyance and handed the stasis case to a runner.
The runner, a wiry youth with jump-jet augments on his legs, took the case and headed for the designated exit.
Yin Lie began to move, a shadow detaching from the crowd, intending to intercept the hand-off. But Kai was already moving, too. She hadn't been fooled. She knew the energy fluctuation was a trick, a misdirection. She vaulted over the gantry railing, landing with a silent, controlled grace, her path intersecting his perfectly.
"It ends tonight, Frost Wolf," she said, her voice calm and absolute. Her power was already reaching for him, a wave of harmonic energy that felt like a gentle but irresistible tide, threatening to pull his own powers under.
He couldn't fight it. So he fed it.
He unleashed a torrent of pure, raw ice power, not at her, but straight up. A massive, intricate column of ice erupted toward the ceiling, branching out like a frozen tree. It wasn't an attack; it was a distraction. A massive, impossible-to-ignore flare of the very power she was trying to suppress.
As her senses and her ability were forced to focus on the overwhelming burst of cryogenic energy, Yin Lie did the opposite. He let the wolf and the Keystone take over. With a burst of primal speed, he didn't run away from her—he ran *past* her, so close she could feel the momentary chill of his passage.
By the time she had re-calibrated, countering the ice flare and refocusing on him, he was gone. He intercepted the shocked runner in a darkened corridor, snatching the stasis case.
"My apologies, Mistress Su," Kai's voice suddenly echoed from a hidden speaker in the corridor. She wasn't speaking to him. "It seems your asset is more resourceful than anticipated. But your direct interference in this auction has been noted."
Yin Lie froze. Su Li. The winning bid hadn't been his emergency measure. It had been hers. She hadn't just given him a tool; she had played her own hand, using him as a distraction for her own acquisition.
He was never meant to get the shard. He was the bait for the Inspector.
With a low snarl, he crushed the speaker under his heel and melted back into the Undercity's depths, the golden mem-shard clutched in his hand. He had the prize, and he had escaped the hunter.
But the cold certainty settled in his gut that he had just played his part perfectly in a game he was only beginning to understand, a pawn between a relentless hunter and a manipulative queen.