The replacement transport looked like a confession booth that had given up on forgiveness.
Delta-3 was a flooded plaza huddled under a sagging Veil canopy, its holo-ads dimmed to emergency austerity—just block text and warning glyphs reflecting in ankle-deep water. The burned-out carcass of the convoy still smoked behind them, cordoned off by drone-tape and a loose ring of CAD uniforms who pretended not to stare at Unit Ø7.
The new vehicle waited at the center: low, ugly, matte armor beaded with static rain. No sigils, no insignia. Just a Judiciary emblem stenciled near the rear hatch like an afterthought.
Arden's collar thrummed against his throat, the rhythm finally settling back into its familiar, hateful baseline.
"Feels like a trap," he said.
"Everything that isn't a coffin is a trap," Seraphine replied. She rolled her shoulders, as if shaking off the last of the fight. Blood—someone else's—had dried in a spatter along her jawline. She hadn't wiped it away. "Sometimes they let you choose the bait."
Darius shifted the dead weight over his shoulder. The halo-man's corpse hung limp, halo shattered, blood washed thin by the rain.
"Orders are clear," Darius said. "Fall back. Reengage. Finish the mission."
"Spoken like a man who's never fantasized about just walking away," Kai said. He stood a little apart, flexing fingers still twitchy from the static. One knee had stiffened up; his gait had a slight hitch now. "If we went left instead of toward the armored confession box, we'd be in the bazaar in five minutes. Seven if Reik insists on dramatic alley choices."
Lyra watched the rain. The static in it had thinned, but the drops still glowed faintly when they hit standing water, little bursts of borrowed code.
"It would take us forty-three seconds to be flagged as missing," she said calmly. "Seventy-two to have drones overhead. Two minutes, average, for the first crowdsource clip of us 'going rogue' to hit the Veil. Then the Obedience Machine does what it does."
"You and your numbers," Seraphine said.
"They're comforting," Lyra said. "They make the illusion of choice quantifiable."
Arden snorted. "Come on," he said. "Let's go give the illusion what it wants."
They moved together, boots kicking ripples through oily water.
A CAD lieutenant waited by the ramp. Young, sharp jaw, uniform still more theory than practice. His rank flashed faintly on his shoulder: LIEUT. CALDER, TRANSIT CONTROL.
His eyes skated over Ø7's collars and armor with the avidity of someone who'd watched too many halo-feeds about them. A little fear, a little envy, a lot of indoctrinated respect.
"Unit Ø7?" he asked, as if there might be a dozen other collared kill teams dripping in front of him.
"That's the number on our leash," Arden said. "You the driver or just the welcome mat?"
Calder's mouth tightened, but he didn't rise to it.
"Your handler's on live-link inside," he said. "I'm to secure the scene and log any anomalous tech for internal retrieval. That include your… souvenir?"
Darius shifted the corpse, halo shards clinking softly.
"Evidence," Darius said. "You'll want to mark it as hot. Halo broadcast capable of riding leash channels. If a scav gets hands on it, you'll have ghosts whispering in your stack for months."
Calder swallowed. "Copy," he said. "I'll flag it. You should roll. Rook's not patient."
Arden stepped up onto the ramp, then paused.
Behind Calder, beyond the drone-tape, civilians had begun to gather at the edges of the plaza. Some held up slates, recording. Some just watched. The static rain painted everyone in the same monochrome, collars and bare throats alike.
A little boy stood near the corner of a collapsed kiosk, barefoot in the water. His mother—or someone who wanted that job—kept trying to pull him back, but he stared at Arden with an intensity that felt like accusation.
The kid's hands mimed a circle at his own throat. A collar. Then he lifted his fingers and shaped a gun.
Arden's chest tightened.
He gave the boy a half-salute—two fingers off his brow, sardonic as he could make it. The kid's expression didn't change.
"Reik," Darius said quietly.
"Yeah," Arden said. "I'm coming."
He stepped into the dark.
⸻
The interior of the transport was all angles and restraints. Benches lined the sides; restraint rails hummed faintly in the floor. The air smelled of disinfectant and antique fear.
A holo-node hung from the ceiling like a mechanical fruit. It flickered when Ø7 filed in, waking to their presence.
"Unit Ø7," Silex's voice said, smooth as polished bone. His face resolved in the holo: neat features, immaculate suit, eyes that looked like they'd seen more spreadsheets than sunsets. "You look… tested."
"Your pop quizzes are getting creative," Arden said, dropping onto a bench. His ribs protested. He ignored them. "We aced it, by the way. For a given definition of 'no survivors.'"
"Ambush is not an exam," Silex said. "It is a feedback metric. Theta-9's event profile will be folded into future routing models."
"Glad our near-death becomes a line on a graph," Kai muttered.
Seraphine sat opposite Arden, long legs stretched out. She met Silex's gaze with that half-amused, half-bored expression she wore like armor.
"Static rain," she said. "Halo-market raiders with Ghost Syntax toys. Someone really doesn't want us in Rook."
"Which confirms the importance of your target," Silex said. "The Halo Market has grown bolder under the Judiciary's nose. Too many leaks. Too much data slippage. Your objective remains Alesis Korr, alias 'Glass Broker.'"
Saintglass's face flickered in Arden's memory: club lights, incense, bodies moving like worship, Korr smiling with his little collection of stolen lives. A middle-man who'd made a religion out of transaction.
"I thought Saintglass was his church," Arden said. "We burned that altar."
"Korr is adaptable," Silex said. "He shifted operations deeper into Rook after your visit. You will intercept a live transfer tonight—high-value halo-stacks moving from local cache to an Echo Tithe node."
Lyra's head tipped slightly, listening to something Arden couldn't hear.
"Echo Tithe," she said. "The side-channel that siphons execution feeds and Chain Dog runs into a shadow archive for select buyers."
"Correct," Silex said. "We have tolerated a degree of siphoning. Leaks are inevitable in a system this complex. But Korr has begun to move unreleased Ø7 data." He glanced at Arden. "Including yours, Reik. The so-called 'Mercy Glitch.'"
Arden felt his jaw tighten.
"You put my almost-execution on a product shelf," he said. "I feel very special."
"Your hesitation at the gallows produced unexpected neural signatures," Silex said. "The market finds novelty valuable. So does the Obedience Machine."
Seraphine's eyes narrowed. "Let me guess," she said. "We're not just retrieving stolen goods. We're scrubbing the embarrassment."
"You are preventing precedent," Silex said. "If your defiance becomes consumable myth, it might encourage… copycats."
"Wouldn't want anyone thinking mercy was an option," Arden said.
The holo's eyes flicked toward him.
"Mercy is a luxury theorem," Silex said. "Obedience is the operating system. Your task is to remove anomalies that threaten the latter. Korr is one such anomaly. The halo stacks are another. The transfer courier is a third."
"Courier?" Darius asked.
"A mid-tier smuggler," Silex said. "Local node operator. Designation: Lian Roe. She runs memory routes through Rook's transit arteries—people and packets. Tonight she carries Korr's offering to Echo Tithe: a bundled archive of curated deaths, including yours."
"And the job is?" Arden said.
"Intercept," Silex said. "Confirm contents. Execute Roe. Destroy unauthorized copies. Leave Korr's link to Echo Tithe intact for now; he is more valuable mapped than erased."
Arden blinked.
"Clarify," he said. "We're not bringing her in? No interrogation, no trial, just… bullet and delete?"
"Roe is a logistics asset," Silex said. "Replaceable. The message her death sends to the Halo Market is not."
"Public?" Seraphine asked.
"Discreet," Silex said. "But documented. Your collars will record the execution and transmit to Judiciary archive. Selected frames may be used in future deterrent campaigns."
Arden's collar seemed to tighten in anticipation. The little warmth at the back of his neck, the promise of sanctioned violence.
For a second he saw the boy in the plaza again, miming a collar, miming a gun.
"Understood," Darius said. His voice was flat. "We intercept, confirm, execute, erase."
Lyra watched Arden. Her eyes reflected faint ghosted interfaces.
"You look like someone asked you to shoot a puppy," Kai said softly.
Arden leaned back against the cold hull.
"I just enjoy when they say the quiet part out loud," he said. "'Mercy is a luxury theorem.' That's going in my motivational quotes folder."
"Reik," Silex said. "Is there a problem?"
Arden smiled without teeth.
"Just thinking about how much they pay Roe," he said. "Must be nice to be valuable enough to kill."
"Your collar disagrees with your tone," Silex said. "It's pulsing at five percent above baseline."
"I'll teach it to take a joke," Arden said.
"You will complete the assignment," Silex said. "There will be no repeats of the incident in Sector 4-K."
The memory came unbidden: a training op, a riot that turned real, a child in the path of an AI-controlled crowd-control drone. Arden breaking formation, pulling the kid clear, the way his collar had flared—white pain, licking up his spine. Darius's hand on his harness, hauling him out while his vision went static. The first time the leash had tasted his refusal.
Arden's pulse ticked up.
"No repeats," he said. "Yeah. I remember the lesson."
"Good," Silex said. "Arriving at target grid in nine minutes. Node map uploading to your HUDs now."
The holo blinked out.
The transport's engine note deepened as it lifted onto a mag-strip. The world outside became a smear of neon and concrete as they slid toward Rook.
Silence settled, heavy but not empty.
Kai adjusted a wrist-band jack that fed into his neural ports. "You going to follow orders this time?" he asked, not unkindly.
Arden watched the dim outlines of buildings through the slit window.
"Define 'this time,'" he said.
Seraphine huffed a small laugh. "Reik," she said. "When the man holding your detonator says 'execute,' you don't improvise."
"Pretty sure improvisation is why they dragged me out of my noose, not because of my charming personality," Arden said.
"Improvisation inside the box," she said. "Not outside it."
"You thinking of telling him you won't do it?" Lyra asked. Her voice was mild. "Or are you thinking of hesitating just long enough to see what the collar does?"
Arden looked at her.
"I'm thinking," he said, "that shooting a courier in the back of the head in a hallway is not justice. It's maintenance. And I'm getting tired of pretending there's a difference."
Darius nodded once. "It was never justice," he said. "Just efficient violence. We knew that."
"Sure," Arden said. "Knowing it and being the bullet are different kinds of knowing."
"You wear a leash, Reik," Darius said quietly. "You chose it over the rope. There's a cost to that choice. It's paid in other people."
"For a former soldier, you're surprisingly philosophical," Arden said.
Darius's jaw clenched. "For a former thief, you're surprisingly naive."
Kai watched them like someone observing a chemical reaction. "Hey," he said. "Save the existential crisis for the therapy you'll never get. We've got a job."
Seraphine's gaze didn't leave Arden's face.
"Listen," she said. "You don't have to like it. You don't have to feel good about it. You just have to do it clean. Quick. No spectacle. The least cruel option inside a cruel script. That's about as close as this place gets to mercy."
"Collateral mercy," Lyra murmured.
"Hm?" Arden said.
She tilted her head, listening to that other frequency.
"Collateral is loss the system already priced in," she said. "Maybe mercy is the same. Something they calculate for and call an error when it costs too much."
"Poetic," Seraphine said. "And bleak. I approve."
The transport began to slow.
Arden ran his thumb along the inside edge of his collar, feeling the faint vibration of the leash's heartbeat.
He'd pulled triggers before. Plenty. Some deserved, some debatable, some washed away by propaganda and anesthesia. But this felt different. Too neat. Too… scripted.
He swallowed the thought.
"Fine," he said. "Let's go do some maintenance."
⸻
Rook District always smelled like someone had tried to burn the city clean and failed.
The transport dropped them in a narrow service alley that opened onto a transit hub: overlapping walkways, skeletal bridges, mag-rails threading through like arteries. Neon signage fought with old painted adverts and religious graffiti—broken halos, data-angels with glitching wings.
The air was thick with incense and exhaust. Somewhere a tinny loudspeaker chanted a prayer to an unnamed Architect. Children wove between feet, running packages. Halo dens pulsed behind shuttered doors.
Node map overlays flickered onto Arden's HUD: a pulsing dot marking Roe's projected route, a slow-moving point of light threading through Rook's veins.
"She's coming in on foot," Kai said, studying his own display. "Smart. Less traceable than vehicular. She'll blend."
"Profile?" Darius asked.
Lyra answered. "Thirty-two. Former logistics coordinator for Helios supply chains. Dismissed after 'system incompatibility.' Translation: she objected to something profitable. She's been running contraband and memory packets since."
"So one of the rare idiots who grew a conscience," Seraphine said. "And we're here to shoot her for it."
"Conscience and profit aren't mutually exclusive," Lyra said. "She charges market rates."
"That's almost comforting," Arden said.
They moved through Rook with practiced casualness, weapons holstered but ready, collars glowing faintly under their armor. Crowd currents flowed around them. People noticed the collars and looked away even as they stared.
As they approached the hub, the Veil overhead brightened, simulating a late-evening wash of light. Automated announcements bled into one another: train schedules, sanitation alerts, a brief sermon about responsible data usage.
"There," Kai said softly.
Roe emerged from a side stairwell at the far end of the platform. Small, wiry, hood up against the drizzle. A courier's harness hugged her torso, loaded with sealed data-containers disguised as medkits. A halo hung around her neck rather than her head—unactivated, worn like a charm.
Arden's collar pinged.
[TARGET LOCK: LIAN ROE]
[STATUS: LIVE TRANSFER]
[PROTOCOL: TRACK → INTERCEPT → EXECUTE]
"Handler?" Darius asked.
Silex's voice slid into their ears via leash-channel.
"Confirmed," he said. "You are green-lit. Ghost suppression active—surrounding Veil feeds are being gently redirected. You have a clean window of ninety seconds. After that, Rook returns to watching."
"Location?" Seraphine murmured.
"A maintenance corridor three doors down," Kai said. "She'll cut through to avoid crowds. Long, narrow, one exit. Perfect kill box."
"Of course it is," Arden said.
They moved.
They timed it so Roe slipped into the maintenance corridor alone, the door hissing closed behind her, unaware. The mutter of the transit hub faded, replaced by the hum of pipes and faint, distant machinery.
The corridor was narrow, lit by strip-lights that flickered in pale horror-movie intervals. Steam bled from cracked vents. The floor was slick.
Roe walked briskly, head down, boots sure despite the damp. She moved like someone who'd run this route a thousand times.
Arden stepped out from a shadowed alcove halfway down.
"Evening," he said.
Roe froze.
Her hand went automatically toward the nearest data-container, then stopped, fingers hovering. She lifted her head slowly.
Her eyes took him in—the armor, the rifle, the collar. Then they flicked past him, clocking Darius to the left, Seraphine behind, Kai at the far end like a misplaced maintenance tech. Lyra, quiet as a reflection, near the door.
"Shit," Roe said softly.
"Lian Roe," Arden said. "Logistics anomaly, freelance courier, current odds-on favorite to ruin our night."
"If I run, you shoot me," she said. Her voice was low, roughened by too much reclaimed air. "If I fight, you shoot me. If I stand still, you shoot me."
"Efficient summary," Arden said. "You'd have done well in policy."
She looked at his collar.
"Unit Ø7," she said. "They send the saints now for cleanup, do they?"
"Saints?" Seraphine said, amused. "That's new."
"There's a halo-market myth," Roe said. "About the Dogs who almost broke their leashes. About the one who hung and lived. They call you the Mercy Glitch."
Kai made a soft choking sound. "I told you," he whispered in Arden's ear. "Brand recognition."
Arden's jaw clenched.
"Drop the harness," he said. "Slowly."
Roe studied him. Then she unlatched the courier rig, letting it slide down her arms to the floor with a dull clink of composite.
"Contents are encrypted," she said. "You'd need… her." She nodded at Lyra. "To see the pretty ghosts inside."
Lyra stepped forward, kneeling by the harness. Her fingers brushed a container. Biolum filaments under her skin brightened faintly.
"Confirmed," she said. "Echo Tithe packets. Multiple execution feeds. Chain Dog runs. Some flagged Ø7."
"Good," Silex said in their ears. "You've earned partial completion. Now finish the task."
Roe's gaze sharpened.
"He's listening," she said. "Of course he is."
Arden lifted his rifle.
Her eyes met his.
"Do you believe in any of this?" she asked.
He hesitated.
"My belief isn't in the contract," he said. "It's in the people behind me making it through another day."
"That's not an answer," she said.
"It's the only one I've got," he said.
Roe took a breath. Then, slowly, she dropped to her knees, hands lacing behind her head.
The corridor seemed to narrow further.
"This what you wanted?" she asked, speaking not to him but to the air. "You listening, Handler? You want your pretty leak plugged, your message sent? Do it clean, Dog. Make it worth the ghosts."
A prompt blinked in Arden's HUD.
[EXECUTION AUTHORIZATION: ACTIVE]
[ANGLE: FRONT OR REAR]
[RECOMMENDED: REAR // REDUCED EMOTIONAL RESIDUAL]
His finger rested on the trigger. The rifle felt very heavy and very light at the same time.
He could almost feel the leash leaning in, eager.
"Arden," Darius said quietly. "We don't have time."
He thought of the boy in the plaza miming a gun. Of the raiders in static rain screaming with borrowed voices. Of Korr's smirk in Saintglass. Of his own body dangling from a rope, collar burning like a false halo.
Obedience is the operating system, Silex had said. Mercy is a luxury theorem.
He could shoot her. Fast, clean. She was, by the machine's logic, guilty as charged. Her death would adjust some probabilities, tweak some compliance curves, keep the Obedience Machine humming.
He heard himself say, "No."
The word tasted like rust.
Roe's eyes widened.
The corridor went very quiet.
"Reik," Silex said. His voice had lost its surface warmth. "Repeat that."
Arden's grip tightened on the rifle.
"No," he said. "She surrenders. You want information, she's more valuable alive. We bring her in. You want a deterrent, put her on trial and halo her in public. But you don't get to use my trigger finger to clean up an accounting error."
His collar pulsed once, a warning sting.
[NON-COMPLIANCE DETECTED.]
[LEASH RESPONSE: ESCALATING.]
"Arden," Seraphine said. Her voice was very soft now. "Think."
"I am thinking," he said. "That if I shoot her kneeling in a corridor for doing the same thing you pay us to do—move death around for profit—then I'm not a Dog, I'm just a glitch you're trying to overwrite."
"Insubordination logged," Silex said. There was a strange stillness in his tone. "Arden Reik, you will execute the target. Now."
Roe let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"Look at that," she said. "The collar saint found a line."
The leash tightened.
Pain knifed into the base of Arden's skull, white and instant. His knees buckled. The rifle slipped from his hands, clattering to the floor.
"Reik!" Darius stepped forward.
"Hold," Silex snapped. "Any interference and the sequence spreads to the unit."
Arden's vision went high-contrast. The corridor stretched, colors leached away. His heartbeat became a stuttering drum in his ears.
[OBEDIENCE CASCADE: INITIATED.]
[PUNISHMENT SEQUENCE: PHASE ONE.]
It felt like hands reaching inside his head, squeezing. Every nerve lit up, screaming.
He'd felt the leash before—blazing during training, flaring when he'd pulled that child away from the riot drones. But this was different. This was personal. Focused. The machine was reaching down the line of his spine to make a point.
"Arden," Lyra's voice came through the fog. Remote, strained. "Anchor."
He tried to grab onto something—her voice, Darius's weight at his shoulder, Seraphine's sharp, ragged breathing—but the pain kept rising, an ocean climbing the walls.
[PHASE TWO.]
[NEURAL OVERRIDE: 43%]
His hands spasmed. He tasted blood. His body wanted to curl around the agony, but the collar's failsafes forced his muscles to lock, presenting his throat to the mechanism like a supplicant.
"Reik, listen to me," Silex said. "This is nothing. A fraction of what your leash can do. You will learn your error and correct it. Execute the target and the pain stops."
Roe was a blur at the edge of his vision, kneeling, hands still laced behind her head, eyes wide.
"I'm not giving them this," she whispered. "Not through you."
"Stop talking," Seraphine snapped, voice edged with panic she rarely let show.
Arden tried to lift his head.
"I won't—" he choked. "—be your… lesson."
The pain spike hit.
Whiteout.
His body arched, slamming back against the wall. Every muscle fired at once. He heard himself make a sound he didn't recognize—half scream, half static.
Somewhere far away, he felt Darius move; the big man's instinct to intervene was an earthquake in the air. But the leash had them all. Any step out of line and the cascade could jump, frying not just Arden but the whole unit.
"Handler," Seraphine said. "You're going to kill him."
"Then he dies as a deterrent," Silex said. "A demonstration of the system's resolve."
"You need him," she said. "You said it yourself. Mercy Glitch. Variable Zero. All those pretty phrases you pretend aren't superstition. You kill him here, you don't just erase an asset. You erase your favorite experiment."
There was a brief, static-laced silence.
"He made his choice," Silex said. "The machine must be seen to function. Execute the target, Arden. Or you will demonstrate collateral cost."
[PHASE THREE.]
[NEURAL OVERRIDE: 71%]
Arden's world narrowed to the collar and the pain it poured into him. Memories flickered—Vultures burning, Saintglass's lights, the boy in the plaza, Darius's battered face leaning over him, Seraphine's smirk, Lyra's dimmed eyes, Kai hunched over code. All of it drowning beneath the tidal surge.
His body started to slide sideways. His legs couldn't remember direction.
He felt a hand on his throat.
For a second, panic surged—he thought it was Silex, somehow manifest through the leash. But the touch was warm. Human. Fingers pressing hard against the collar, nails digging into his skin like she could get under the metal.
"Don't move," Seraphine whispered in his ear.
Her breath was hot against his cheek. He could smell blood and perfume and gun oil.
"What are you doing?" Silex snapped.
"Breaking the machine," she said.
Kai swore softly. "Seraphine, if you trip the cascade—"
"Shut up and feed me the exploit," she said.
Arden clung to her voice.
He dimly felt another contact at the back of his neck—Kai's hand, shaking, fingers dancing over the interface port built into the collar's bracket.
"There is no exploit," Silex said. "Leash firmware is locked at Judiciary level."
"Sure," Kai said. "And I've never pirated a firmware in my life."
Lines of code flickered across Arden's HUD, half-obscured by pain blur. Strings of symbols, leash architecture schematics lifted from some forbidden archive, mesh diagrams of how obedience cascaded through neural tissue.
"Seraphine," Lyra said. "Your collar—"
"I know," Seraphine snapped.
Arden felt it then: a second pattern sliding into the first. The warmth at his throat became a burning twin to the leash's cold. For a heartbeat, the two signals overlapped, colliding in a crackle of bioelectric static.
Seraphine hissed between her teeth.
"Re-routing," Kai muttered. "Can't stop the cascade, but… I can divert a fraction. Split the load. Use your leash as a false node."
"Do it," Seraphine said.
"You understand what that means?" Silex said sharply. "Vega, you interfere with another Dog's leash and you mark yourself for disassembly. This is not your decision."
"For someone who likes control," she said, "you really shouldn't have put all of it in a collar shaped like jewelry."
Her hand tightened. For a moment, Arden felt her pulse through his skin, quick and hard.
The pain changed.
It didn't lessen. It… bifurcated. Part of it peeled away, sliding sideways into an invisible channel. His nerves remained on fire, but there were now two people burning.
Seraphine's breath hitched. Her body shuddered against him.
"Shit," she gasped. "That's… that's ugly."
"Welcome to our world," Arden choked.
[CASCADE DISRUPTION: 23%]
[ERROR // SIGNAL PATHWAY CONFLICT.]
Lines of red text bloomed across his HUD.
"Handler," Lyra said. "The cascade is destabilizing. If it reaches full saturation with a split load, it could… feed back into the Obedience lattice. You'll fry every collar in a two-sector radius."
Her tone stayed calm, but there was steel under it. "You'll break your machine."
Another silence. Longer, sharper.
"You are bluffing," Silex said.
"No," Lyra said. "I'm observing. Arden's anomaly was always about misdirected signals. You're amplifying that through a second leash. Do the math."
Arden felt the pain spike, then stutter. The leash tried to adjust, seeking a cleaner path, but Seraphine kept her grip, feeding it her own signal, muddying the channel.
"Call it, Silex," Kai said through gritted teeth. "Or we'll see what happens when obedience goes recursive."
[OBEDIENCE CASCADE: UNSTABLE.]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: ABORT.]
Arden almost laughed. The collar's own subroutines sounded… worried.
Silex exhaled, audibly, like a man conceding a minor point in a much larger argument.
"Fine," he said. "Arden Reik, Obedience Cascade aborted. Punishment suspended. For now."
The pain cut off.
Not gradually. One moment Arden's world was microwaved nerve endings, the next it was an empty chamber where his skull should be.
He sagged. His knees hit the floor. Seraphine went down with him, collapsing half against his chest, one hand still clamped on his collar, the other braced on the slick metal.
Her breathing was ragged. Sweat slicked her hair to her temple. Her pupils were blown, collar pulsing a sickly yellow.
"Son of a bitch," she whispered. "That hurt."
Arden's hands, suddenly his again, closed around her wrists—not pulling away, just… anchoring.
"You okay?" he rasped.
She blew a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.
"I'm going to kill you later," she said. "Slowly. With affection. After I stop wanting to throw up."
"Promises, promises," he said.
"Vega," Silex said. "You have committed a violation of leash protocol of the highest order. You have interfered with a punishment sequence, redirected Obedience routines, and exposed internal firmware to hostile manipulation."
"Yeah," she said. "I know what I did."
"Explain yourself," he said.
She lifted her head and stared straight into the empty air where his voice came from.
"You were going to delete my favorite idiot over a logistics courier," she said. "That didn't feel like good resource management."
"Sentiment has compromised your judgment," Silex said.
"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe I just don't like wasting assets because I got bored of watching you pull wings off flies."
Roe stared at them all, stunned.
"You people are insane," she said softly. "And I say that as someone who smuggles death for a living."
Arden managed to sit up, leaning against the wall. Seraphine stayed close, her shoulder pressed to his.
Darius hovered nearby, hands flexing, like he wasn't sure whether to punch something or pick someone up.
Kai wiped sweat from his forehead. "Handler," he said. "We have the packets. We have the courier. We have no corpses yet, despite your best efforts. Maybe let the obedience metrics cool down before you try to melt our brains again."
Silex was silent for a long time.
When he spoke, his tone had changed. Less polished. Something brittle lurking under the professional calm.
"The Obedience Machine does not bend," he said. "If it is seen to bend, it breaks."
"Then don't let anyone see," Seraphine said. "Lock this in whatever vault you keep your worst ideas. Internally, log it as a technical glitch. Externally, you got what you wanted: Korr's leak identified, Roe intercepted, halo-stacks seized. We even gave you some new stress-test data for your collars. You're welcome."
"You think this is negotiable," Silex said. "It is not."
"Everything is negotiable," she said. "You just hate admitting it."
Roe shifted slightly.
"If it helps," she said, almost conversationally, "I am very willing to be terrified. If you let me live, I will consider it a generous marketing campaign for your wrath."
Arden looked at her.
"You're not helping," he said.
She shrugged minutely, hands still laced behind her head.
"I'm practical," she said. "Dead I'm a symbol. Alive I can be a source. Isn't that right, Handler? You want a pipeline into the Halo Market that doesn't go through Korr? I can be that leak. Just stop using your Dog like a demo unit."
Lyra's eyes unfocused for a moment.
"She's not lying," Lyra said. "Her fear is… very eloquent. So is her pragmatism."
Silex made a small, irritated sound. A man faced with a spreadsheet that refused to balance.
"The Judiciary will not negotiate with smugglers," he said. "Officially."
"Unofficially?" Seraphine asked.
"Unofficially," he said slowly, "I can mark this as a partial compliance. Roe's execution can be… deferred. Her usefulness evaluated. But non-compliance will be recorded. There will be consequences."
Arden forced himself to stand. His legs shook. Seraphine rose with him, one hand still touching his collar like she wasn't quite ready to trust it not to bite again.
"Put it on my account," Arden said. "Leave her out of it."
"No," Silex said. "This was a collective failure. You all participated. The price will be… shared."
Arden's stomach dropped.
"Public Penalty," Kai murmured. "Of course."
"Correct," Silex said. "The Bureau has been requesting a live demonstration of Obedience protocols for some time. Consider this… an opportunity to reassure the public that even their most decorated Dogs remain under control."
"Decorated," Seraphine said. "Cute word for 'well-used.'"
"You will report to Judiciary Penalty Theatre at 0900 cycle tomorrow," Silex said. "Arden will receive primary punishment. The rest of the unit will remain leashed and visible. The broadcast will emphasize his error and his return to compliance. Kai, you will ensure no tampering occurs in the feed."
Kai made a noise halfway between a laugh and a snarl.
"Sure," he said. "I'll sit on my hands and think pure thoughts."
"Any further deviation," Silex said, "and the Obedience Machine will escalate beyond my ability to intercede. Do you understand?"
Arden swallowed.
He thought of the pain that had almost killed him. Of Seraphine's hand on his throat, sharing it. Of Lyra's warning about feedback.
He thought of Roe, kneeling in the corridor, not yet dead.
"Yeah," he said. "I understand."
"Good," Silex said. "Secure the courier. Extract the data. Leave the rest to me."
The leash-channel clicked off.
The corridor exhaled.
Roe let her arms drop, slowly, as if expecting the collar to change its mind and start strangling the air.
"You just bought yourself a very ugly tomorrow," she said.
Arden flexed his fingers. The ghost of pain still lived in them, a phantom itch.
"Yeah," he said. "But you get a tomorrow at all."
Roe studied him. For the first time, some of the bravado bled out of her.
"I don't like debts," she said.
"Good," Seraphine said, rubbing her own collar with a wince. "Because we're going to collect."
Darius stepped forward, snapping cuffs onto Roe's wrists, more gently than his size suggested.
"You so sure you want to keep doing this?" Roe asked him quietly. "Playing god for a system that thinks you're disposable?"
Darius's jaw worked.
"I stopped playing god a long time ago," he said. "Now I'm just trying to keep these idiots alive long enough to break something that matters."
She nodded, once, as if that answer satisfied some private equation.
Lyra gathered the data-containers, stacking them in a neat bundle. The plastic casings seemed to hum in her hands, full of lives trapped in code.
"Triage," she said softly. "Some of these we can redirect. Quietly. Not lose them entirely to Echo Tithe."
Kai looked at her.
"You planning mercy piracy?" he asked.
"Collateral adjustments," she said. "The machine loses a fraction of what it thinks it owns. No one notices. But somewhere, someone doesn't get sold."
Arden met her eyes.
"Do it," he said.
She inclined her head, the faintest ghost of a smile touching her mouth.
Seraphine finally let go of his collar. Her hand left an ache behind that felt different from the leash's.
"You're an idiot," she said.
"I've been getting that feedback a lot," he said.
She stepped closer, close enough that he could see the fine tremor still running through her fingers.
"Next time you decide to martyr yourself," she said, "you ask first. I like to plan my bad decisions."
"You didn't have to—"
"I did," she cut in. "Because I… because we need you. And because if they kill the one person in this unit who still remembers what a line looks like, the rest of us are going to forget why we ever pretended to care."
Her eyes searched his for a second, something unspoken flickering there.
Then she leaned in and pressed her forehead briefly against his, a contact so quick and fierce it barely existed.
Static leapt between their collars, a tiny crackle.
"You break the leash," she murmured, voice so low only he heard it. "I'll be right there with you when it snaps."
She pulled back before he could answer and turned away, barking orders at Kai and Darius, all business again.
Roe watched them with a strange expression.
"You're not saints," she said. "You're just… very complicated sinners."
"Welcome to Ø7," Arden said.
They herded Roe back toward the hub, the corridor's steam swallowing the last of the tremors in his hands.
Above them, the Veil hummed. Somewhere in the Judiciary towers, Penalty Theatre preparations were already underway: cameras being calibrated, scripts written, punishments queued.
Arden's collar warmed, a little anticipatory tremor.
Tomorrow, the Obedience Machine would make a spectacle of him.
Tonight, he'd refused to kill a kneeling woman in a hallway, and he was still breathing.
In The Span, that counted as treason. And, maybe, as mercy.