The rain changed sound before the world tried to kill them.
It wasn't much, at first. Just a hitch in the rhythm.
The convoy moved through Substrate Tier Gamma under a sky that had forgotten stars. Three CAD transports in line—two armored vans bracketing the Chain Dog carrier—rolling under neon signage that pulsed debt offers and cleansing plans. Standard move: keep the expensive Dogs in the center, meat shields front and back.
Inside, the carrier hummed. Arden sat on the bench with Darius on his left, Seraphine on his right. Across from them, Lyra watched the floor like it might answer questions. Kai had his back against the bulkhead near the internal relay panel, knee bouncing, fingers drumming an invisible keyboard.
Rain hissed against the roof, steady as white noise.
Then the hiss went… grainy.
Arden frowned. The sound shifted from wet to dry, like static pretending to be water. His collar pricked at his throat, a cat's-paw warning. The overhead lights flickered once in sympathy.
"You hear that?" he asked.
"Hear what," Kai said, not looking up.
"The rain," Arden said. "Sounds like a broken channel."
Seraphine cocked her head. "Somebody's cross-wiring the weather grid," she said. "Static in the domes turns the drops weird. Happened to me once outside Crown. Thought I was being sandblasted."
"Atmospheric Veil bleed," Lyra murmured. "When the climate control overlays glitch with broadcast frequencies. The Span hums louder than its skin can handle, and the sky stutters."
"Nice bedtime story," Arden said. "Why's my collar joining the chorus?"
Darius shifted, the motion small but dense. He'd been quiet since Ghost Syntax. Too quiet. Now he lifted his head, listening in that way that meant he was counting exits and trajectories.
"Because someone's pushing signal through the rain," he said. "See that?"
He jerked his chin toward the slit-window near Kai.
Arden leaned just enough to see.
Outside, the world lay in sliced layers: street-level filth, mid-tier mag-strips, high glow of Crown signage way above. Rain came down in bright sheets, each drop catching Veil light like static motes. For a second, Arden thought he saw patterns in it—tiny geometric flickers, code-shaped, tracing down toward the convoy.
Then a billboard on the left-hand tower spasmed. The ad—a soft-focus family in matching collars, smiling up at a Helios logo—shattered into noise. For three frames, the family's faces elongated, eyes too wide, mouths a blur, then the screen went black, then it slammed back to normal.
Arden's collar pulsed again, harder. A HUD warning bled across his vision.
[LOCAL NETWORK INSTABILITY.]
[LEASH CHANNEL: INTERFERENCE DETECTED.]
[MAINTAIN FORMATION.]
"The tower's stuttering," Kai said. His fingers stilled. He finally looked up, squinting. "That's not random. Somebody's coughing on our frequency."
"CAD traffic control?" Arden asked. "Some bastard running diagnostics at the wrong time?"
"Traffic control doesn't route through weather," Kai said. "Not like that. Rain is ambient infrastructure, not a fiber line. You only use it if you want plausible deniability and maximum coverage. Who's on the route manifest?"
"Us, two cargo pods, and a judicial escort that peeled off three exits back," Seraphine said. "Why?"
Kai looked almost excited. "Because that means whoever's riding the static isn't supposed to be here."
The carrier's intercom crackled to life.
"Convoy, this is Tower Transit," a bland voice said. "Be advised: minor Veil interference in your sector. Maintain course and speed. Do not deviate from assigned lane."
Darius met Arden's eyes.
"Minor," Darius said.
"Love it when they lie in such small words," Arden said.
He glanced at Lyra. "Ghost-Eyes?"
She closed her eyes. Arden watched the lines of biolum around her neck brighten faintly as she tuned into whatever frequency only she could hear.
"There's… echo," she said. "Like a crowd behind a wall. But no one's supposed to be here. This lane's flagged clean."
"Echo Tithe?" Arden asked.
She shook her head. "Different. Less hunger, more… focus." A tiny crease appeared between her brows. "The static feels… deliberate."
"Everything in this city is deliberate," Seraphine said. She bounced her heel idly, knocking it off the bench and back. Nervous energy. "Question is: for who."
The intercom hissed again.
"Unit Ø7," the same voice said. "Override: Handler Silex requests real-time status."
Arden glanced at the ceiling like Silex might be hiding there.
"We're cozy," he said. "Rain's singing weird, the Veil's high, my collar's flirting with arrhythmia. The usual."
"Your telemetry shows elevated leash interference," Silex's voice said. Now it was him—dry, calm, interested. "Report any anomalies."
"We're in a metal box being driven through a city that hates us," Arden said. "Define 'anomaly.'"
"That," Silex said, "was rhetorical."
Kai snorted. "Somebody's trying to ride our leash channel. Could be a hijack attempt, could be a bad software patch, could be an angry god. Give me thirty seconds and I can tell you which."
"You have ten," Silex said. "Convoy is approaching Gridblind Section Theta-9. Visibility reduced."
"Gridblind?" Arden said. "Thought we avoided those on escort runs."
"Routing system says this is fastest path," Silex said. "Instruction: maintain course."
"Of course it does," Seraphine muttered. "Nothing bad ever happens in the blind spots."
The carrier lurched as they took a curve. The lights flickered again, longer this time. Arden felt his stomach do that little drop it got before things went sideways. The rain outside roared into static for one long heartbeat, the sound pressing against the carrier walls.
Then the world went white.
⸻
The blast wasn't explosive in the traditional sense.
There was no boom. No fireball.
Just a sudden, perfect absence of everything.
For a fragment of a second, Arden's entire sensorium went zeros. No sight, no sound, no body—just the cold awareness of his own name, floating in a frictionless void.
Then reality slammed back, out of order.
His ears filled first—screaming metal, someone cursing, the thin, vicious whistle of air over torn edges.
Then his body: weightlessness, impact, the snarl of the harness cutting into his shoulder as the carrier rolled.
Then sight: the world turning in jerky flips—ceiling, floor, sideways smear of neon, a spray of glass that looked like stars.
Arden grabbed for anything solid. His hand closed on Seraphine's arm. Darius's bulk hit him from the left like a moving wall, shielding rather than crushing. Kai's shout cut through the chaos: "EMP charge, localized—"
The carrier slammed down on its side.
Everything stopped.
"Roll call," Darius grunted. Something heavy shifted off Arden; the big man was already pushing himself up in the sideways-tilted compartment.
"Still pretty," Seraphine said, breathless. "Probably concussed, though."
"Kai," Arden said.
"Here," Kai coughed. "Hurt, offended, but intact. My rig's fucked. No Veil, no underlayer, just raw meat world."
"Lyra?" Darius barked.
"Yes," she said. "Minor impact trauma. Collar destabilized but not breached."
Arden checked himself. Ribs complaining, shoulder burning, blood in his mouth. Everything more or less worked.
"Convoy status?" he asked.
Kai tried to bring up a HUD. Nothing. "We lost main power," he said. "Leash channel is… jammed. We're on internal oxygen and our own bad decisions."
The carrier creaked. It lay on its right side, passenger bench now a makeshift wall. The rear ramp was half-open, twisted; Arden could see rain slanting in, white with static, illuminated by intermittent flashes from outside.
"Ambush," Darius said. "They hit us at the blind spot."
"No shit," Seraphine said. She was already on her feet—on the new "floor" of the left-hand wall—moving with the easy recalibration of someone who'd run stunts in zero-g club rigs. "You smell that?"
Arden inhaled. Ozone, burned plastic, something like incense.
Lyra's eyes unfocused. "Halo discharge," she whispered. "Cult hardware."
"Echo Tithe friends?" Arden asked.
"Or enemies," Kai said. "Everyone wants the same toys."
Static rain hissed through the ragged gap at the back. Each drop that hit the metal left a brief afterglow, like the rain itself carried bits of broken signal. Outside, shadowy shapes moved—too organized for panic, too quick for scavengers.
Arden's collar pulsed three times in rapid succession.
[CONDITION RED.]
[EXTERNAL HOSTILES: UNKNOWN.]
[PROTOCOL: ENGAGE / PROTECT ASSETS / PRESERVE LEASH INTEGRITY.]
"Assets," Arden muttered. "Nice to be appreciated."
The intercom spat a burst of noise, then Silex's voice came through, distorted.
"—seven, respond. Status— "
"Ambushed," Arden said. "Carrier down. Gridblind Theta-9. Exterior contacts moving. Rain's static. My collar's angry."
"Maintain integrity," Silex said. The words warbled. "Confirm: leash functions—"
"Moderate interference," Lyra cut in. "Feedback risk if overclocked."
"Understood," Silex said. "Ø7, you will hold position and neutralize hostiles. CAD reinforcements are three minutes out."
"Three minutes is a long time when people are shooting," Seraphine said.
"Your talents have been evaluated as sufficient," Silex said. "Consider this a live-fire review."
"Please tell me you didn't route us through a blind just to see how we dance," Kai said.
Silence. Then: "Hold," Silex repeated. The line cut.
Seraphine blew out a breath. "He totally did."
Arden flexed his fingers. "Static Rain," he said softly. "Nice title. Shame about the script."
Darius checked his rifle—jury-rigged to work through minor interference, heavy and ugly and trustworthy. "Positions," he said. "Seraphine, back ramp. Kai, left side panel. Lyra, center. Reik—"
"Where you are," Arden said. "Half-step forward, half-step stupid."
Darius's mouth twitched. "You read the manual."
Rain hissed, louder now.
The first shot punched through the carrier's hull with a dull clang, showering them in sparks and insulation. High-caliber. Not a warning.
"Showtime," Seraphine said.
⸻
They hit the back ramp together.
Seraphine went low and out first, a blur of dark leather and wet metal. Arden followed half a heartbeat later, Darius behind him, a moving bulwark.
The air outside was a different world—colder, sharper. Static-rain came down in luminous threads, each drop catching the ambient Veil-gloom, lighting the alley in strobing monochrome. The carrier lay on its side in the middle of a narrow transit lane, flanked by concrete walls tagged with saints and barcodes.
The lead CAD escort van was a wreck thirty meters ahead, nose buried in a collapsed storefront, smoke pouring from its engine. The rear van was simply gone—just a slick of burning fuel and ragged skid marks disappearing into a chasm where the street had ruptured.
Silhouettes moved through the rain—six, eight, maybe more. Human-sized, but wrong in posture. Arden's eyes adjusted, picking out halo gleam on foreheads, the glint of makeshift armor—layered leather, scrap metal, fragments of old police plates.
Halo-market raiders. Rook scum with enough money to buy last-chance salvation in someone else's memories.
One of them stepped forward, arms raised. The halo on his head pulsed with faint light, rain running in little rivers down his cheeks.
"Dogs," he called. His voice hissed, corrupted by the interference, every syllable doubled. "We come in peace."
A second voice, overlaying his own, spoke the same words half a beat later. Not an echo—another tongue trying to sync.
Arden felt the hair rise on his arms.
Ghost Syntax.
Lyra came up behind him, eyes bright. "They're broadcasting affect," she murmured. "Trying to prime us."
"Doesn't feel friendly," Arden said.
"No," she said. "It feels like… regret. Deep, wide. Manufactured."
The raider smiled, too wide, eyes glassy.
"We only want what's ours," he said. "You took our saints. Return them, and we'll let you keep your leashes."
Seraphine laughed, soft and vicious.
"You hijack a convoy in a blind spot and open with a bargain?" she said. "Bold."
Arden kept his rifle up, eye on the halo-man. "What's 'yours'?"
"Our ghosts," the man said simply. "You stole them from the House. From the Ossuary. From the rain itself. We heard them screaming in the static."
Kai's voice crackled over the unit-link. "He's not entirely wrong. The audit tripwire I dropped lit up half the Span. Everyone with a pirated feed knows the Judiciary's been hoarding extra souls."
"They aren't souls," Lyra said. "They're data."
"Tell that to whatever's riding his halo," Kai said.
The halo-man took a step closer. Static rain hissed down his face. For a moment, his features flickered—not in light, but in expression. Hints of other people's eyes, other people's mouths.
"You don't own them," he said. "You're just better at cages."
Arden's collar pulsed, warning rising. Engagement time.
"Last chance," Arden called. "Walk away. I don't want to paint this lane with whatever theology you're running."
The halo-man cocked his head like a curious dog.
"You can't stop rain by shouting at it," he said. "You can only drown quieter."
His halo flared.
The world screamed.
It wasn't sound, not exactly. More like a sudden flood of feeling that wasn't Arden's own—grief, fear, desire—a surge of Ghost Syntax routed straight into their collars via the rain. For a heartbeat, Arden was eight years old watching Vultures burn again, except he wasn't eight, he was fifty, he was a child in another district, he was a woman on a scaffold, he was—
Lyra stepped into him, hand slamming against the side of his neck, fingers over the collar like she could physically pinch the signal.
"Anchor," she hissed. "Now."
Arden grabbed onto her voice like a rope.
The surge broke. His vision cleared.
Darius roared—not metaphorically, but a real, human bellow, pure veteran fury cutting through the injected emotions. Seraphine hissed between her teeth, eyes wild for a second, then she shook it off like water.
Kai swore in a steady stream. "They piggybacked on leash-bandwidth," he said. "Using the weather as antenna. That's… inventive. And suicidal."
The halo-man's smile stretched.
"See?" he said. "We can talk to your chains."
He snapped his fingers.
The alley exploded into movement.
Raiders poured from side alcoves and upper ledges, firing improvised rifles, shock-bats crackling. Micro-drones buzzed in the rain like angry gnats, their red optics stuttering through the static. A few had visible wires trailing back to the halo-man, like leashes in reverse.
Arden dropped, returning fire in controlled bursts. One raider went down, halo shattering under the impact; the light bled out into the rain, carried away in streaks.
Seraphine moved like the street had grown her. She dove into the first cluster of attackers, sliding low under a wild swing, coming up inside the man's guard. Her baton flicked out, dancing in her hand. Two quick strikes shattered knees and collarbone. She borrowed his scream as cover to spring off his falling body, feet landing on the next man's chest.
The rain turned into a strobe-light show around her, each flash freezing her mid-kick, mid-twist—street ballet in gore.
Darius waded forward, slower but inexorable. He fired in three-round bursts, every shot a decision. When a raider got close enough to swing a machete, Darius caught the man's wrist, twisted, elbowed him in the throat, then used his body as a shield against incoming rounds. Blood sprayed across Darius's armor and Arden's cheek, warm even through the static chill.
"Left flank," Darius barked. "Reik."
"On it," Arden said.
Three raiders had broken off, using a gutted delivery van as cover to try and flank the downed carrier. One carried a compact launcher, barrel glowing faintly with charge.
Arden saw the trajectory in his head—the line from the launcher to the carrier, to where Kai was half-exposed behind the twisted hull.
No.
Arden broke cover and sprinted.
Static-rain slapped his face, each drop tingling against his skin like tiny needles. Ghost light danced at the edges of his vision; for a second, the alley seemed full of overlapping figures, echoes of people who'd died here before or would die here now.
He ignored them. He picked the real ones by motion, by heat, by the way the halo-gleam cut through.
The launcher-man saw him coming, swung the barrel toward him.
Arden slid, boots skidding on wet concrete.
He fired mid-slide, shots punching into the man's torso. Armor caught the first; the second hit meat, the third hit the launcher.
The world jerked sideways.
The launcher went off as it fell, missile clipping the carrier's hull instead of going clean. EMP and shrapnel detonated together, a twist of force and static that knocked Arden's legs out from under him. He slammed into the ground hard enough to see white, collar flaring in sympathetic pain.
The raider died badly. The launcher's blast took his hand off, ionizing the blood in the air into a fine, metallic mist.
Arden's ears rang. His HUD glitched, then rebooted. He tasted copper.
Something moved at the edge of his vision.
Another raider stepped out from behind the van. Bigger, bulkier, heavier armor. No halo—just a matte-black helmet and a shoulder rig heavy with stolen Judiciary kit. He carried a short-barreled shotgun hacked with aftermarket shocks, the kind that turned close-range hits into red vapor.
He had Arden dead to rights.
Arden tried to roll. His body responded too slow.
The raider leveled the gun.
"Reik!" someone shouted.
Then Darius was there.
He came in from the side at a dead run, moving faster than his mass should allow. His shoulder hit the raider's ribs like a battering ram. Bone cracked audibly. The shotgun went off wild, blast shredding the air where Arden's head had been.
Static rain caught the muzzle flash, turning it into a blossom of white noise.
Darius didn't stop.
He slammed the raider into the side of the van, pinning him there. One big hand closed around the man's helmet, fingers digging into the gaps. He drove the back of the helmet into the metal with a sickening crunch, once, twice, three times, until the van dented and the raider went limp, sliding down the wall.
Blood and rain ran together, dark threads on pale steel.
Darius turned, chest heaving, eyes too bright.
"You breathing?" he barked.
Arden coughed. "Currently."
He let Darius haul him up by the front of his armor. Pain spiked through his ribs. He winced.
"Gonna leave a mark," Arden said.
"You're welcome," Darius said. His voice shook more than his hands.
Arden opened his mouth to make a joke about Shadow Host, about how brutal hadn't tipped all the way into… that.
Then he saw Darius's right eye flicker.
Not the full cold flattening like in the interrogation theatre. Just a hitch. Like a second presence had leaned against the glass for a better view.
"Hey," Arden said quietly. "You with me?"
Darius blinked. The flicker vanished. He bared his teeth in something that thought about being a smile.
"For now," he said.
Behind them, Seraphine screamed—not in pain, but in the kind of exhilaration that sat one drink away from panic. She vaulted off a rail, legs scissoring around a raider's neck, twisting. His halo cracked against the concrete. Light spilled out like crushed fireflies.
"Do I get backup," she called, "or you two just going to have your war-vet bonding moment?"
"On your right," Kai cut in from the link. "Drone swarm incoming. I've got nothing to hack, so you get the authentic analog experience."
Arden and Darius moved.
The drones came low, buzzing along the wet ground—modified delivery units with jury-rigged blades and shock-prods. The static rain made their optics stutter; they compensated by mapping the convoys' leaked heat.
Lyra stepped away from the carrier's shadow, eyes distant, hands lifting like she was feeling for invisible strings.
"Their guidance is piggybacking on the halo-man's affect broadcast," she said. "I can't hack them directly, but I can… mislead them."
"Define 'mislead,'" Arden said.
"Make them think the wall is us and we are the wall," she said. Her voice had gone flat—white-mode.
"Do it," Darius said.
She inhaled.
The biolum threads under her skin brightened. Static rain seemed to slow around her, drops hanging for a fraction too long in the air. Arden felt a weird tug just behind his forehead, like someone had flipped a polarity.
The drones veered.
Half of them peeled away from Ø7's position, slamming at full speed into the concrete wall, blades screeching, sparks flying. One embedded itself halfway through a graffitied saint's face, twitching as its systems died.
The other half corrected mid-flight, jittering, then came on again. One clipped Seraphine's shoulder, sending a wash of sparks across her hair. She snarled, grabbed it out of the air with one hand, and smashed it into another like cymbals.
"Thank you, Ghost-Eyes," she yelled. "Next time, aim the whole choir."
"I'm working with bad instruments," Lyra said.
The halo-man in the center of the alley screamed.
Not in fear—in anger. His halo flared brighter, overloading. Rain around him actually steamed.
"You can't steal my congregation," he shouted. Now three voices spoke in unison—his own, a child's, a woman's. All wrong. "You are dogs. You are property. You don't get to say no."
"Funny," Arden said, lifting his rifle. "I've been practicing."
He fired.
The first shot hit the halo.
The metal band shattered with a sound like breaking glass and tearing cloth simultaneously. Light spilled upward, ripped out of the man's skull in a fountain of white, straight into the static rain.
For a heartbeat, Arden saw faces in the falling light—dozens, maybe hundreds. Some screaming, some laughing, some simply… watching.
Then they were gone.
The halo-man dropped to his knees.
The Ghost Syntax surge collapsed with him. Arden felt the emotional pressure ease, like a storm finally breaking.
The remaining raiders faltered. A few threw down their jury-rigged weapons and ran. Darius picked off the ones who tried to sprint toward cover with efficient bursts. Seraphine let one go when he dropped his knife and bolted; her jaw clenched, but she didn't chase.
"Let him tell the story," she panted.
"Of how his god got shot in the head?" Kai said. "Great recruitment material."
"Fear's a story too," she said.
The last drone hit the ground, skidding on wet concrete.
Silence swelled, broken only by the hiss of static rain and the ticking of cooling metal.
Arden lowered his rifle.
His shoulder throbbed. Every breath hurt. His collar hummed, cycling down from combat mode.
"Status," Silex's voice said abruptly over the link, clearer now the interference was fading. "Report."
"Ambush neutralized," Arden said. He looked around.
One CAD escort was a smoking ruin. The other was gone. Bodies lay scattered—raiders, dogs, citizens who'd been too close to the lane when the blind turned lethal. The static rain washed them all without distinction.
"Convoy compromised," he added. "Halos and drone tech suggest Halo Market raiders using Ghost Syntax-adjacent broadcast. They hit our leash channels."
"I saw the interference," Silex said. "You maintained control."
"Mostly," Arden said under his breath.
Darius glanced at him.
"I want the bodies," Silex said. "Bag and tag any halos still intact, plus the primary broadcaster. We'll add him to our collection."
Seraphine wiped blood from her cheek with the back of her hand. "You sound like a sommelier," she said. "This one's got notes of zealotry and burnt nerves."
"Results, Vega," Silex said.
Kai limped out of the carrier, one knee stiff. "We're down both escort vans and this crate is one more hit away from being modern art," he said. "You still want us to push forward?"
"Mission parameters stand," Silex said. "Your target is moving. The ambush confirms someone doesn't want you to reach him. That means he's valuable."
"Or this was him trying to get to us," Arden said.
"Either way," Silex said, "contact is necessary. Reinforcements will secure the scene. Proceed to fallback transit point Delta-3. A new vehicle will be waiting."
Arden looked at the ruin around them, then at his team.
Darius's armor was dented and blood-slick, but he stood like the world hadn't managed to move him more than an inch. Seraphine's lip was split, eyes bright, adrenaline still burning. Kai's hands shook just enough to betray how close he'd come to disconnecting from himself entirely. Lyra looked outwardly calm, but the glow at her temples was dimmer, like she'd drained some internal reserve.
Static rain fell on all of them, turning their outlines into flickering ghosts.
"Understood," Arden said. "We'll walk the rest of the way if we have to."
"Good," Silex said. "The Obedience Machine runs on momentum. Don't let it stall."
The line clicked off.
Seraphine spat rain and blood. "I hate when he tries to be poetic," she said.
"Don't worry," Arden said. "He's bad at it."
He turned to Darius.
"You saved my ass," Arden said. "Again."
Darius shrugged, the motion half-sheepish, half-automatic. "You're inconvenient to replace," he said.
"That sounded almost like affection," Seraphine said. "I'm scandalized."
Kai snorted. "Don't get attached. Statistically, we're all dead in eighteen missions."
Lyra's gaze lingered on the shattered halo at their feet, on the way the static rain made the broken metal hiss.
"They thought they were freeing ghosts," she said softly.
Arden followed her look.
"Maybe they were," he said. "Maybe they just didn't like the leash god any more than we do."
He stepped back as Darius bent to grab the halo-man's corpse by the collar, hoisting him like cargo.
"Come on," Arden said. "Let's get out of the static before it decides to learn new tricks."
They moved, a battered knot of Dogs cutting through the white noise.
Above them, the rain kept falling—each drop carrying a little bit of broken broadcast, a little bit of stolen feeling. The city hummed, static in its veins.
Somewhere ahead, a target waited. Somewhere behind, the ghosts they'd just shaken out of the sky drifted, looking for new shapes.
The leash warmed, pleased.
For now, they walked.