The tower woke Arden with someone else's fear.
Not his own—the shared spike came thin and sour along the unit-link, there-and-gone before he could tag the source. The collar answered with a low, disciplinary buzz, like a hand closing around the back of his neck.
[UNIT Ø7 // ALERT.]
[ACT II PROTOCOL: ACTIVE.]
[REPORT: HANGAR 2C. FULL GEAR. 180 SECONDS.]
"Yeah," Arden muttered to the ceiling. "Good morning to you too."
He rolled out of the bunk. Muscles still remembered Silex's last lesson: Tier Two correction like white wire ripping through bone. When he straightened, vertebrae clicked in exhausted protest.
He dressed fast.
Armor slid on easier now, as if admitting he'd been shaped for it all along. Matte plates over pressure-woven undersuit, Ø7 sigil dull on his chest. Boots that made silence out of steel. Sidearm at his hip. Compact SMG on mag-clamp. Knife where a judge wouldn't see it.
The collar pulsed in approval when he palmed the door. Good Dog.
The corridor arrows lit white, impatient.
Hangar 2C was already breathing when he stepped in: engine heat, coolant stench, ozone from charging drones. A transport squatted in the center like a waiting bruise. Above, Veil-screens cycled muted news—edited footage of their First Run: Ø7 haloed in blue-white, collars sainted by post-production.
Seraphine, Darius, Kai, Lyra. All present.
Seraphine leaned against the transport ramp, in full armor and half a smirk. Collar glitter at her throat like a dangerous necklace. She watched him with eyes that said she'd clocked how long it took him to walk straight.
"You look like shit," she said. "Comforting. Means you're learning."
"Learning pain," Arden said. "Syllabus is repetitive."
"That's bureaucracy," Kai said from where he crouched by an open panel, jacks sunk into the transport's spine. "Endless form, same outcome."
Darius stood near the bulkhead, rifle slung. Solid, steady, scars pale against dark skin. His nod to Arden carried both acknowledgment and warning: you're here, don't push.
Lyra hovered by the far wall, fingers resting on a conduit. Her gaze unfocused, as if she were hearing the tower's dreams. Collar-glow soft, like a heartbeat hiding in cloth.
Silex stepped out from behind the transport.
Matte-black ops suit. No helmet. Eyes that had watched men hang and calculus their twitch into policy.
"Sit," he said.
There were no chairs, so they didn't.
Silex's mouth almost twitched. "Fine. Stand and listen."
He flicked his wrist. A Veil-slab bloomed in the air: map of The Span, then a slow zoom downward—past gleaming Crown arcs and helix-rails and Helios towers, down into the underbelly where light got mean.
"Rook District," Silex said.
The highlighted sector blinked on: a knot of leaning blocks near an old freight spine, architecture like stacked chess pieces left out in the rain.
Arden knew the name. Rook: smugglers, dead channels, carved-up jurisdiction. A place even drones flew around.
"Substrate corridor on the east flank," Silex went on. "Unofficial neutral ground. No single gang, no single corp. We let it rot because it's useful. Tonight, it stops being useful."
The map split-screened with grainy footage: a cramped room, twenty people shoulder-to-shoulder, heads crowned in chrome halos patched with colored tape. Faces slack with rapture. On a makeshift altar, a preacher in a cracked white mask whispering; the room's Veil-skin glitching with stolen images: laughing kids, wedding dances, last hospital beds.
"They're called the Halo Market," Silex said. "Data-smuggler cult. Their product: black-market halos loaded with contraband memory. Stolen from corporate archives, judiciary vaults, post-mortem brain scrapes. People pay to wear the dead a while."
"Neural necrophilia," Kai said. "Classy."
"Helios wants their tech back," Silex continued. "Judiciary wants their control back. CAD wants to know how they breached storage. Ø7 gets to educate them."
"Kill or cage?" Darius asked.
"Priority: capture of key nodes," Silex said. "Their 'Pastor Rook' and any primary riggers. Secondary: seizure of hardware. Minimize civilian casualties. Less blood on camera this week."
Seraphine's brows rose. "We going soft now?"
"We're going precise," Silex said. "And we're reinforcing a lesson."
His gaze cut straight to Arden.
"You cost us Red-2," Silex said. Matter-of-fact, like noting the weather. "You also helped pull a win out of Helios' mess. I let you walk. I linked your leash to theirs."
Arden's collar warmed. The others' glowed in answer—a faint sympathetic pulse along the link.
"This is your first assignment under shared response," Silex said. "Any unsanctioned deviation from you, Reik, and Ø7 pays with you."
The room went a little smaller.
Seraphine's jaw clenched. Kai went very still. Darius's hand flexed by his side. Lyra's head dipped, as if bracing for a blow.
"Good motivational speech," Arden said. "Very team-building."
"It should remind you of two truths," Silex said. "One, your conscience isn't private property. Two, if you want to keep these people from suffering on your behalf, obey me better or break rules smarter."
Arden held his gaze. "Noted."
Tier One brushed his nerves. Not full flame, just teeth.
"Get in the transport," Silex said. "We brief specifics en route. Move."
They moved.
⸻
The transport knifed low through the Span, beneath the polished sky-level lanes where civic angels flew. Outside, the city was a smear of bruised neon and static rain.
Inside, strap-rings rattled as Ø7 settled on the benches.
Darius checked his rifle, movements disciplined. Seraphine toyed with the chain coiled at her hip, links whispering. Kai jacked into the compartment's Veil-port, pupils blooming with light. Lyra sat opposite Arden, hands folded, watching nothing and everything.
Silex stood braced up front again, one hand on a ceiling strap.
He gestured; a new holo unfurled midair. Images: broken tenements stacked like chipped teeth. Narrow alleys glowing with improvised sigils. Figures with halos of scavenged chrome and LED prayer-crowns.
"Rook District was a shipping grid once," Silex said. "Rooklines moved product for half the corps. When the Convergence burned the outer belts, they abandoned it. Everyone with nowhere to go stacked themselves there instead. No stable gangs. No clean contracts. It's a graveyard where people refuse to stay buried."
Darius's voice joined, quiet; this part wasn't in the brochure.
"Rook's where they dump the stories that don't fit," he said. "Anyone who doesn't make sense on a chart. Too poor to matter, too angry to forgive. Walls are hollow with old contraband channels. Every room's got ghosts if you leave a mic on."
Arden listened. Darius narrated like a tired prophet, and the map felt less like streets and more like scar tissue.
Kai snorted softly.
"And now the ghosts watch reruns of other people's lives," Kai said. "Efficient."
Silex indicated a blinking dot. "Target complex: deconsecrated freight chapel, grid L-7, calls itself the 'House of Recall.' Halo Market runs sermons three nights a week. Riggers in the back rooms, pastor on the altar, clients in the pews. We go in quiet, no insignia. They think we're just another enforcement sweep until it's too late."
"No insignia?" Seraphine asked. "What's the dress code then, boss?"
"Standard armor," Silex said. "Muzzles optional until contact. No CAD colors. You're ghost-contractors for Span Security."
"So we're pretending to be someone worse," Arden said.
"That line's getting thin," Seraphine muttered.
Lyra's gaze slid to Arden.
"Remember the link," she said, voice low. "Whatever you do lands on us."
He hated that it sounded less like accusation and more like concern.
"I'm not in a hurry to barbecue you," Arden said. "Relax."
"I didn't say don't be you," Lyra said. "Just…aim carefully."
Their collars trembled together, tiny sympathy quake.
"Approach in ninety seconds," Kai said. "Veil shows moderate crowd, heavy halo usage. I'm picking up unregistered uplinks piggybacking Judiciary archive channels. These people aren't stupid."
"Stupid's not the bar," Arden said. "Stupid doesn't survive in places like that."
Silex cut in.
"Rules," he said. "We are clear?"
Darius: "Capture key nodes. No stray bullets."
Seraphine: "No shootings on camera unless they start it."
Kai: "Secure rigs, copy data before we pretend we never saw it."
Lyra: "Watch for anomalies in the code."
Arden: "Don't make choices you don't like, unless you like sharing pain."
A ghost of a smile at Silex's mouth.
"Good enough," he said. "Masks on."
The respirators dropped from overhead. Arden's sealed over nose and mouth with a familiar hiss.
The collar synced. Breath on a leash.
The transport sank.
⸻
Rook District hit like a bruise.
Cold rain came down in hard, slanting sheets, turning cracked concrete into black mirrors. Old logistics towers hunched inward over narrow streets, their upper floors lashed together with jury-rigged bridges and laundry lines. Flickering signage painted everything in cheap colors: pawn scripts, stim vendors, gospel pop-ups.
Neon rooks glowed on corners, stylized chess pieces made from broken light.
The transport bled into a slot between two leaning blocks.
Ø7 dropped into the rain.
Arden's boots splashed. The air smelled of coolant, cheap smoke, fried protein, damp wiring, overripe humanity. His collar hummed appreciation; it liked data-dense places.
Above, Veil-banners glitched—the official feed trying to insist on weather reports and Helios promotions, local pirates stuttering their own graffiti over the top.
Darius took point, rifle held casual but ready.
Seraphine fell in at his flank, baton riding her thigh, jacket half unzipped like this was a bar run. Kai walked slightly behind, eyes unfocused, ghost-lit by internal displays. Lyra drifted near Arden, scanning.
"Lots of hot spots," she murmured. "Halos running hot on half this block. Some of them are wrong."
"Wrong how?" Arden asked.
"Emotional signatures don't match the hosts," Lyra said. "Grief on faces that never lost anything. Bliss on children watching soldiers burn. Borrowed feeling."
Psychological rot. Consumption of pain.
Arden watched a kid—they couldn't be older than twelve—slip past with a cheap chrome hoop around their temples, eyes glassy. The halo strobed secondhand sunlight and the echo of a woman's laugh he didn't know.
The boy giggled at nothing.
"What do they charge?" Arden asked.
"Depends on the memory," Kai said. "Wedding nights and childhood summers cost more. Executions are discounted. You can watch yourself die cheap, if they've scraped you."
"Fuck," Seraphine said softly. "Pornography of the dead."
A figure in a patched coat watched Ø7 pass, halo askew on tangled hair. Their voice slurred.
"Chain Dogs," they whispered. "Pretty collars. Bet someone's wearing you, too."
Arden didn't answer. The thought clung: some bored Crown kid renting the First Run for thrills. Living his pain thirdhand with a snack.
The House of Recall squatted at the end of the alley like an altar someone had tried to bury.
Old freight chapel: high archway now rimmed in neon, rusted doors chained open. Speakers coughed static and low, syrupy music. A sign flickered in three languages: COME SEE / COME REMEMBER / COME BE MORE.
"Subtle," Seraphine said.
"Rigs in the back," Kai murmured. "Signals bleeding through like fever. Pastor on the main floor."
Silex's voice hummed in their skulls.
"Ø7, confirm infiltration positions," he said. "I'm on outer net with Span Security. They think you're their boys tonight. Don't embarrass me."
"Copy," Darius said. "We go in as hired sweep. Talk first. Hit if we have to."
He looked to Arden.
"You with me?" he asked.
"Yeah," Arden said. "Let's go kick over a church."
Seraphine's grin went sharp. "Now he's getting in the spirit."
They entered.
⸻
Inside, the House of Recall glowed like a wound.
The nave had been stripped of icons and pews; in their place: plastic chairs, crates, bodies. Maybe fifty people sat or knelt in loose rows, each with a halo clamped to their skulls. The halos were ugly: exposed wiring, scavenged chrome, blinking lights like sick fireflies.
The faces beneath them were rapt.
On a raised pallet at the far end stood the preacher.
White cracked mask. Dark coat. Thin hands stroking the air like petting invisible fur. His halo was more ornate—banded layers, braided cables vanishing into the wall behind him.
"…and in Recall we are more than meat," the Pastor was saying, voice sweet and low through battered speakers. "We are archive. We are every kiss, every scream, every breath preserved. The Span would lock your lives away. We give them back. For a price that is mercy."
Around him, the Veil-skin shimmered with stolen scenes: a baby's first step; a soldier's last stand; two men tangled in a bed that was gone twenty years; a woman lighting a match in a gas-leak room.
Arden felt it like fingers in his scars.
"Disgusting," Kai whispered on their private band. "Also impressive."
Seraphine leaned toward Arden.
"If they've got my old footage in there, I'm suing," she murmured.
"Pretty sure you're past suing," Arden said.
"Then I'll improvise," she said.
Darius raised a hand and called out with professional boredom.
"Span Security," he said. "Compliance sweep. Keep your seats, keep your toys on, nobody gets rattled."
A few heads turned. The Pastor's mask tilted, serene.
"Brothers, sisters," he said, smiling behind ceramic. "Our guests arrive. State dogs wearing stranger collars. You come to Remember, officers?"
Darius walked forward with the weight of sanctioned violence. Arden and Seraphine flanked him; Kai and Lyra hung back, eyes and sensors wide.
"Routine inspection," Darius said. "Complaints about unsafe wiring. And data licensing. You know the spiel."
Murmurs rippled. People clutched their halos like relics.
"No threat here," the Pastor said mildly. "We sell solace. Broken moments glued together."
Kai: "He's lying. Rigs pull from judiciary archives; I can see the handshake."
Lyra: "He believes his own lie. That's worse."
Arden let his hand hover near his sidearm. "We'll need to see your backend," he said. "Rigs, sources, all of it."
The Pastor's head cocked. "Language, Dog."
Seraphine's lips quirked behind her mask. "He's shy. He means the machines."
"Of course," the Pastor said. "This is a house of transparency."
He spread his arms theatrically.
"Rook District has nothing if not honesty," he said. "Come. I'll show you my saints."
Ten percent of the dialogue: theatrical. Box checked.
He turned toward a side door behind the pallet.
Darius murmured on-link: "Seraphine with him. Arden on his six. Kai, Lyra, monitor the room."
"Copy," Kai said.
Lyra: "Some of these halos are burning too hot. If someone pulls one mid-stream, it'll tear."
"Tear what?" Arden asked.
"Whoever they're wearing," she said.
Psych horror, check.
They followed the Pastor through.
⸻
The back rooms smelled like cooked circuitry and wet leather.
Crudely partitioned spaces, racks of halos hanging like butchered metal flowers. Spools of cable. Stacks of storage slates. Three riggers at a central slab, fingers dancing over keyboards, eyes reflecting code and stolen light.
On the slab itself: a man's body.
Naked to the waist, shaved skull gleaming with surgical scars, wires worming into ports. Eyes darting under lids, teeth bared in an endless, silent snarl.
"Donor," the Pastor said, stroking the man's cheek. "He had such beautiful sins. Why let them go to waste?"
Arden took a step closer.
The man's chest rose and fell too fast. Halo hardware drilled directly into bone. Thin rivulets of blood traced the cable entries, dried in rusty petals.
"Is he alive?" Arden asked.
"Every time someone pays," the Pastor said.
"Illegal neural retention, breach of judiciary archives, unlicensed hardware," Darius said. "You're shut down."
The Pastor chuckled.
"You think law lives down here?" he said. "We just rent your ghosts."
Seraphine moved fast.
In two strides she was at his back, chain flashing. It whipped around his throat; she yanked him off-balance, bringing him to his knees.
"Hands," she said. "Now."
He lifted them, fingers spread. She bound his wrists with the chain, snug.
Arden drew, covering the riggers.
"Off the boards," he said. "Before someone sneezes wrong and you fry half your flock."
They hesitated, then slowly raised their hands.
Kai's voice was clipped. "I'm in their system. Confirmed: they're jacked straight into restricted post-mortem storage. Not just local. Someone up-chain opened a door."
"Of course they did," Seraphine muttered.
Lyra slipped in behind, eyes wide, pupils blown.
"It's loud," she whispered. "So many feelings in here that didn't get to finish."
The collar warmed at her distress.
Arden jerked his chin at the bound Pastor.
"Turn it off," he said. "All of it. Now."
Pastor Rook smiled up at him through the cracked mask.
"Can't," he said. "Won't. We're giving them back their dead."
"Those aren't yours to give," Arden said.
"Are they yours?" the Pastor asked. "Judiciary's? Helios'? Who owns grief, Dog?"
The question slid in ugly. Arden's jaw clenched.
Darius's voice cut, firm.
"Enough," Darius said. "Kai, pull a full copy. Lyra, map connections. Seraphine, keep our host saintly."
Silex whispered over comms.
"Status," he said.
"Targets secured," Darius answered. "Pastor in custody. Rigs under our control. No casualties."
There was the faintest disappointment in Silex's reply. "Keep it that way. Span Security is inbound to take possession. Clean scene."
Arden scanned the racks of halos. One in particular glowed a sick, familiar amber.
He stepped closer.
Footage bled across its inner ring—plaza floodlights, a rope, a young man on the gallows smirking at a Marshal.
His own execution. Or the aborted one.
His stomach turned.
"Kai," he said. "Tell me that's not—"
"It is," Kai said quietly. "Somebody scraped your death packet at intake and sold it. 'Live the Last Ten Seconds of the Vultures' Traitor'. Trending nicely."
Seraphine hissed. "You're kidding."
Kai's mouth was a hard line. "I don't joke about DRM."
The Pastor laughed wetly.
"People love your show," he said. "They shudder when the rope snaps. Oh, that shock in your eyes. We loop it slow for a little extra."
Arden's collar surged.
Tier One—hot; Tier Two coiled.
His gun was suddenly very heavy, very real, aimed between the mask's eyes.
"Careful," Lyra whispered.
Darius stepped between them like a wall.
"Reik," he said. "Stand down."
"He's selling me," Arden said.
"He's selling all of us," Seraphine said. "Welcome to syndication."
Pastor Rook's eyes gleamed through the mask slits.
"You're a sacrament," he said. "They watch you die to feel alive."
Something in Arden's vision tunneled. The rope. The bright white plaza. The broken breath.
The link stuttered—shock leaking.
Kai snapped, "Hey. Arden. Don't give Silex an excuse."
Lyra's hand closed lightly around Arden's wrist, not trying to force the gun down, just being there.
"If you shoot him now," she said, voice soft, "they hurt all of us. And his death just becomes another file."
The collar waited, eager.
Arden inhaled slow through the mask. Filtered air; unfiltered rage.
He lowered the gun.
"Cuff him," he said.
Seraphine exhaled a theatrical sigh of relief. "See? He can learn."
Pastor Rook chuckled.
"You can't arrest an archive," he said.
Kai responded by jamming an injector-spike into the nearest console.
"Watch me," Kai said. "I just backed up your little church. Twice."
He looked at Arden, something sharp in his eyes.
"We keep a copy," Kai said, low-band. "Proof they're pulling from judiciary stores. You're not just their victim; you're evidence."
Silex came over comms, cool.
"Security is at the door," he said. "Hand them our sanitized package. We'll handle the rest."
"What about this?" Arden asked, gesturing at the halo showing his own death.
"Destroy contraband," Silex said. "Officially."
It would be easy.
Shoot the rig. Smash the halo. End that flicker of himself in strangers' hands.
"Officially?" Seraphine repeated, catching the word. One brow arched beneath her fringe.
"Arden," Lyra murmured. "What do you want done with it?"
He hesitated.
If Kai kept a copy, it lived in a system he halfway trusted. If he wiped it, the people who scraped him would just do it again from the source.
"We take it," Arden said finally. "Not them."
Seraphine grinned. "Stealing your own snuff film. Romantic."
Darius nodded once. "Bag it. Chain of custody: Ø7."
Kai popped the halo off its hook, coiled its cable, slid it into an evidence pouch like a relic.
"Done," he said. "One forbidden martyrdom, now in-house."
Span Security stormed in three minutes later in blue armor, faces hidden, weapons out. Good little hammers arriving after the nails had been arranged.
"Perimeter secure," their captain barked. "We'll take it from here."
"Pastor Rook, illegal rigs, full logs," Darius said, handing over a cleaned-up slate. "CAD contract satisfied."
Arden watched as they jerked the Pastor to his feet. The man didn't resist. He just leaned close as he was led past.
"We'll still be here," he whispered through cracked ceramic. "People want to feel. You can't leash that."
Arden didn't answer. The collar burned his silence for him.
Outside, Rook's rain hadn't let up. The House of Recall's neon blinked as Span Security planted their tape. On neighboring rooftops, watchers filmed anyway.
Silex's voice cut in.
"Ø7," he said. "Return. We're done."
As they walked back to the transport, Seraphine bumped Arden's shoulder.
"On a scale of one to 'this city is a mistake,' how are you doing?" she said.
"Leaning 'mistake,'" Arden said. "You?"
She smiled crookedly.
"I like you better now that I know people pay to watch you hang," she said. "Means my taste isn't niche."
"Jesus, Sera," Kai muttered.
Lyra's voice was quiet.
"You did well," she said to Arden. "You didn't give them another show."
He wasn't sure which them she meant. Silex. The Halo Market. The Veil.
All of the above.
Darius clapped a heavy hand to his back as they climbed the ramp.
"Rook District's a test," he said. "Not just of aim. Of what you let yourself see."
"What'd I just see?" Arden asked.
"Obedience," Darius said. "And how they package disobedience for sale."
The ramp closed. Engines rose.
As the transport clawed back into the tower's throat, Arden sat with the weight of the stolen halo in Kai's pack, the phantom noose around his own neck, the knowledge that somewhere in Rook's wet alleys, a kid might already be jacking into his borrowed death.
The Obedience Machine had started to purr.