The Span woke them with a smile that wasn't theirs.
Arden felt it first as a curl in the code behind his eyes—soft, synthetic satisfaction rolling through the leash-channel like someone else's good mood. It brushed his nerves, tagged his pulse, noted each of them in turn.
[UNIT Ø7 // STATUS: ONLINE.]
[COMPLIANCE METRICS: ACCEPTABLE.]
[HANDLER: OBSERVING.]
He lay in the Somnolence pod's dim cradle, breath caught half-between sleep and emergence. The pod lid was still closed. Foamed interior cupped his shoulders, spine, skull; respiration vents exhaled a temperature-controlled approximation of comfort.
For a second he didn't know if he was awake.
The dream—if it had been a dream—hadn't ended. It had just… minimized. Its cold afterimage clung to him: corridors made of teeth, a city speaking in his own voice, Lyra's fingers twisted into his collar like she was pulling him out of a hole only she could see.
He blinked. The lid tinted down from black to grey. A ghost-reflection of his face stared back.
"Pod two," a neutral voice said. "Emergence stable."
The lid hissed open.
Light knifed in, hospital-white and humming.
Arden squinted and sat up. Foam peeled away from the back of his head with a tacky whisper. His collar warmed, syncing him to local cadence—Somnolence Suite, Tier-Theta, not the holding tower. Clean steel and glass instead of concrete. Different smell: antiseptic, faint ozone, trace of coffee.
He turned his head.
Lyra lay in pod one, to his left, lid already fully retracted. She hadn't sat up yet. Her hands were still folded on her stomach, fingers laced; the biolum filaments along her throat pulsed faintly, out of time with the pod's monitors. Her eyes were open, fixed on a point somewhere past the ceiling.
"Hey," Arden rasped. His voice came out rough, full of sleep and static. "Still with us?"
She turned her head slowly. Her gaze clicked onto him like a lens finding focus.
"Yes," she said.
Her voice sounded scraped. Like something had run through it and left edges.
"How bad?" he asked.
She considered that.
"Moderate," she said. "They touched surface layers, not the fragment. I cut the link before it burrowed deeper."
"You cut it," he said. "Not them."
"The system moves toward its most efficient shape," Lyra murmured. "Self-harm is rarely efficient."
He swung his legs out of the pod. The floor was cold enough to make his toes curl. His muscles protested; whatever the Sleep Cycle had done, it hadn't been rest. It had been work of a different kind.
Pod lids opened in a slow cascade around the arc.
Seraphine sat up with a full-body flinch, hand already halfway to an invisible weapon. She caught herself, masked it as a stretch, and rolled her shoulders until vertebrae cracked.
"Ugh," she said. "Ten out of ten, would not nap here again."
Kai groaned from two pods down, dragging one hand over his face.
"They put adware in my dreams," he said. "I just spent forty minutes being upsold on grief-management packages. If my subconscious starts pushing subscription tiers, I'm burning this place down."
Darius emerged last, as always. Slow, controlled. He sat up with his body already squared, like he'd been awake the whole time and just now decided to move.
"How's the noise?" he asked Lyra.
She blinked once.
"Loud," she said. "But not incoherent. Yet."
Director Havel stood by the central console, white coat immaculate, expression tidy as her hair. Screens around her displayed metrics Arden didn't have names for—pulse curves, neural-flux graphs, leash-channel overlays.
"Baseline established," she said. "Somnolence Suite thanks you for your cooperation."
"Anytime," Arden said. "Do we get a mint on the pillow, or just the usual emotional violation?"
Havel's smile was professional and thin.
"Asset Ø7-∆-AR," she said, "your resilience to dream-insertion is… noteworthy. You destabilized three planned scenario threads and inverted one. The models will want to study that."
"Tell your models to buy me dinner first," he said.
The leash buzzed—low, warning, more like a nudge than a slap. Havel's eyes flicked briefly to the collar at his throat.
"Handler Silex has requested immediate post-cycle review," she said. "He's waiting in Observation."
Seraphine swung her legs off the pod and hopped down. "Of course he is," she said. "Can't have the Dog's first government-approved nap go ungraded."
Kai slid out of his pod, grimacing. "Is this the part where he tells us we slept wrong," he asked, "or the part where he pretends this was about our mental health?"
"Does it matter?" Darius said.
"No," Kai said. "But the flavor of bullshit is important to me."
Arden stood. The world did a small, unpleasant tilt; he caught the pod's edge until it steadied. His collar pulsed once, tight, as if checking he still fit.
[LEASH INTEGRITY: VERIFIED.]
[ANCHOR: Ø7-∆-AR.]
[HANDLER CHANNEL: PENDING.]
He glanced around at his unit.
Seraphine's eyes were bright, adrenaline sparkling over whatever the Sleep Cycle had stirred up. Kai's pupils were a little too wide; his fingers twitched like he was still typing. Lyra had that distant tilt to her head—as if part of her was still somewhere else, listening to echoes. Darius looked unchanged, which meant he was holding more than he let show.
"Everyone upright?" Arden asked.
"Define upright," Seraphine said.
"Vertical, making jokes," he said. "We'll workshop the deeper meaning later."
Darius's mouth twitched. "We're here," he said. "Move."
They obeyed. Not because the leash buzzed, but because that was the shape they'd worn into themselves: Arden first, Darius half a step behind and to the left, Seraphine on flank, Kai trailing but always within link-range, Lyra somewhere between them all, orbiting the center of the pattern.
The door to Observation opened as they approached. It knew their collars and stepped politely aside.
Inside: glass and distance.
The chamber overlooked a larger hall below through a wide, polarized window. Rows of tiered seating. A stage. Screens. The air smelled of sweat and money: the faint, sour tang of people who signed orders instead of holding guns.
Silex stood with his back to them, hands clasped behind him, facing the glass.
His armor was matte black as ever. No helmet. The lights picked out the threads of scar across his close-cropped scalp, the tension at the corners of his mouth. His collar was a sleek band of control hardware, not the brute thing they wore. His leash was up-chain.
Arden's collar warmed.
[HANDLER CHANNEL: OPEN.]
"Unit Ø7," Silex said without turning. "Approach."
They approached.
Arden came to stand at his shoulder, a step back. Seraphine and Kai flanked. Darius took slightly behind and right. Lyra hung back half a pace, as if the glass itself demanded a buffer.
Below, the hall hummed with bodies. Judiciary officials in ash-grey, Helios execs in polished gold accents, SSC brass with their subtle riot scars. And, on the stage, a line of figures standing very, very still.
Arden saw collars first.
Bands of metal at throats, more slender than theirs but glowing brighter. Uniform black armor. Hands behind backs, feet shoulder-width. Heads forward.
They looked like mannequins until Arden's eyes adjusted. Then he saw small tells: the rise and fall of chests, the minute twitch of fingers.
Chain Dogs.
New ones.
"Welcome to the demonstration," Silex said. "You're just in time for the show."
Seraphine's lip curled. "Didn't realize we were invited to the gala," she said. "Should've worn my good leash."
Kai leaned closer to the glass. "Model numbers?" he asked. "I don't recognize the collar hardware."
"You wouldn't," Silex said. "They're prototypes."
Arden watched the Dogs below.
Five of them. Same height bracket, same build range. Not clones, exactly, but clearly selected to fit a visual mean—broad-shouldered, symmetrical, scarred in those artful ways that suggested violence and survival without any of the real, ugly randomness he saw in Darius's knuckles or Seraphine's jaw.
He tried to read their faces.
It was like staring at a reflection through static. Something was there, but the noise was thick.
"What are they running?" he asked.
"Leash Protocol, Generation Two," Silex said. "Integrated feedback architecture, tighter loop with the Veil. More automation. Less… variance."
"Less 'unauthorized mercy impulse,' you mean," Arden said.
Silex glanced at him then.
There it was.
The smile.
It was small, sharp, and absolutely humorless. It curled his mouth just enough to show its teeth, but his eyes didn't join in. Arden felt it like a hand placed gently but firmly on the back of his neck.
"Variance is expensive, Arden," Silex said. "The Directorate prefers predictable assets."
"Then why are we still here?" Arden asked.
"Because you're useful," Silex said. "For now."
Down below, a woman in Judiciary black stepped up to the dais. Her robes were cut like a judge's, but their trim glowed with Helios blue. Arden didn't know her name and didn't care.
"This session is classified under Obedience Metrics Review," she said, voice carrying through the hall and up into their chamber via pipe. "Today, Division Ø9 will demonstrate the capabilities of the updated Leash Protocol on live assets."
"Ø9," Seraphine echoed. "Cute. We're a franchise now."
Kai's nostrils flared. "They moved quick," he said. "We've been Dogs for, what, a few weeks? And already there's a newer model."
"They were preparing parallel units long before you arrived," Silex said. "You're proof of concept. They are product."
Lyra's eyes tracked along the line of new Dogs. "How many of them volunteered?" she asked quietly.
Silex said nothing.
Arden already knew the answer.
The judge made a gesture.
The first Dog stepped forward.
He was younger than Arden expected. Maybe twenty, maybe less. His hair was shaved close; a bar code ran from temple to jaw. The collar at his throat had three thin bands instead of one, braided in metal and light. His eyes were empty in a tidy, presentable way.
"Asset Ø9-α-01," the judge said. "State your designation."
"Asset Ø9-α-01," he repeated.
"State your purpose."
"To obey," he said. "To contain."
"Define yourself."
"I am function," he said. "I am the hand that closes."
Arden's jaw tensed. Darius's hand flexed once at his side.
"Glad they cleared that up," Seraphine murmured. "Wouldn't want him accidentally thinking he's a person."
"Watch," Silex said.
Onstage, two SSC operatives rolled out a rack of weaponry. Guns, blades, shock-staffs. The judge nodded to Ø9-α-01.
"Demonstrate obedience," she said. "Protocol tier one."
The Dog stepped to the rack, took up a pistol at random, and turned to face a line of mannequins set up at the back of the stage. Human-shaped targets in civilian dress.
"Nonlethal," the judge said. "Disable only. Maximum efficiency."
The collar around his neck pulsed once. Arden could see the light from here.
Ø9-α-01 moved.
His shots were precise, mechanical. Knees, shoulders, hands—each bullet placed with machine grace. The mannequins jerked, heads untouched, center of mass unmarred. Arden recognized the training; Darius could do the same when he cared to. But there was no hesitance in the kid, no adjustment for breathing, no weighing of each shot. He moved like someone pushing a pre-written script through a human body.
"Obedience tier two," the judge said. "Reversal."
The Dog froze mid-step. His collar flared bright.
"New directive," she said. "Lethal. Center-mass elimination."
A mannequin's image flickered; for a second, it looked like a woman with a child on her hip.
Ø9-α-01 shot it through the heart.
No blink. No hitch. His collar dimmed again.
"Impressive," Kai said dryly. "They built an on-site moral patch. Flip a bit, change the definition of 'acceptable.' Very efficient."
Lyra's fingers twitched near her own collar. "His affect trace is wrong," she murmured. "Flat, but there's… echoes. Like something else is wearing him."
Arden swallowed, mouth tasting like copper.
He thought of his own first run. The screaming crowd. Red-2's face. The way his collar had punished the moment he'd decided not to pull the trigger.
The leash wanted this kid. Clean, quick, no questions. The leash wanted a world where mercy wasn't a variable to cost in.
"Next asset," the judge said.
The second Dog stepped forward.
Female this time. Scar along her jaw that looked like it had been curated for effect. Same three-band collar. Same hollow calm.
The demonstration shifted.
They had her fight a live opponent—an SSC volunteer wearing padded armor and a helmet. They engaged with batons and bare hands. Arden watched the girl move. Her technique was impeccable, borrowed from a hundred training sims: no wasted motion, no improvisation, no visible fear.
At the judge's word, the collar redirected her mid-strike. She broke the volunteer's arm with a crisp snap at an angle that would take surgery to fix.
The volunteer screamed. She didn't flinch.
"Tier three," the judge said.
Arden's collar pricked his own skin in sympathy. Tier three was Finalization.
He held still.
Below, the girl's collar flared from soft blue to hard white.
"Asset Ø9-β-02," the judge said. "Directive: self-termination."
The girl's hand moved toward her own throat.
Arden's stomach dropped.
He heard Seraphine swear under her breath, a word that might've been a prayer or a curse. Darius snarled one syllable that wasn't a language, just sound.
The girl's fingers brushed the collar. Her other hand tightened on the baton.
Her arm shook.
For the first time, her face changed.
A flicker—small, but there—of terror.
She froze.
The collar pulsed again, harder. Her whole body jerked. A strangled noise forced itself out of her throat.
Arden's own collar warmed, a sympathetic echo. The leash channel hummed with system chatter he wasn't allowed to parse. Obedience metrics, error flags, predictive cascades.
"Interesting," Havel murmured from behind them. "There's residual self-preservation. The patch isn't perfect."
"Of course it isn't," Kai said. "You can't fully delete the human instinct not to die without breaking everything else. They're trying to debug mortality."
Lyra's eyes were locked on the girl.
"There's a child memory overlaying her motor function," she said quietly. "She's remembering being told to stand still. Hand on a hot stove. Don't move. Don't scream."
"How do you know that," Seraphine asked.
"I was there," Lyra said. "Not with her. With one like her. The fragment rhymes."
On the stage, the judge tipped her head, listening to some feed Arden couldn't hear.
"Override," she said. "Directive amended. Stand down."
The collar dimmed. The girl gasped, knees nearly buckling. She caught herself, straightened, forced her face back to neutral.
The hall applauded.
Polite, controlled, meaningless.
Arden wanted to shoot through the glass and see how far the judge's calm would go without her leashes.
"Your turn," he said, glancing at Silex. "Going to have them bite someone's throat out next, or is this enough for the donors?"
Silex's gaze stayed on the scene below. "This isn't for donors," he said. "This is for the Committee."
"Same thing," Seraphine said.
"Not entirely," Silex said. "Donors only pay in money. The Committee pays in amendments to reality."
Below, the demonstration continued.
They walked the new Dogs through scenario after scenario: hostage simulations, riot dispersals, blind obedience drills. They gave them impossible commands and watched the collars throttle whatever resistance their bodies tried to mount. They measured how long it took before instinct gave way.
Arden forced himself to watch all of it.
Not out of morbid curiosity. Out of obligation.
These were his replacements. His future, if the system got its way: not beasts on a leash, but neatly-trimmed ghosts wearing flesh.
When it ended, the hall lights came up. People stood, murmuring, satisfied.
Onstage, the Dogs remained motionless. Waiting for someone to decide if they were allowed to move.
Silex finally turned away from the glass.
His eyes swept across Ø7, weighing, measuring.
"Well?" he said. "First impressions?"
"Creepy as fuck," Seraphine said immediately. "I like my monsters with more personality."
"They're efficient," Darius said. "But brittle. You push that hard on self-kill directive, you'll get fractures in the wrong directions."
Kai shook his head. "They're building a distributed suicide weapon and calling it law enforcement," he said. "Somebody up-chain really wants assets that will vanish at a keystroke."
Lyra's voice was softer than all of them, but somehow cut deepest.
"They're making collars that get there before we do," she said. "Leash as thought, not metal."
Arden met Silex's gaze.
"Why show us?" he asked. "If they're so proud of the new line, why bring the broken toys to watch?"
Silex's smile returned.
This one was different. Less blade, more mask. It folded his face into the approved shape of reassurance without touching the eyes at all.
"Because perception is part of obedience," he said. "You need to understand the direction of travel."
"Toward what?" Arden asked.
"Toward a world where my job is redundant," Silex said calmly. "Where Dogs don't need handlers because the leash runs itself."
"That sounds like you're talking yourself out of a paycheck," Kai said.
Silex's lip twitched.
"That sounds," he said, "like a problem for the future. For now, the Committee intends to run legacy and prototype units concurrently. Side by side. Comparative analysis."
He stepped closer to Arden.
"You will be their control group," he said.
Arden felt his collar tighten; phantom fingers around his throat.
"Control," he repeated. "As in 'in charge,' or as in 'lab rat you measure the other rats against'?"
Silex's smile deepened a fraction. Teeth in it now. Still no warmth.
"As in the baseline," he said. "The unpredictable variable we test our improvements against. You, Arden, are the crack in the leash. You break protocol, you improvise, you show empathy where the charts say you shouldn't. Fascinating, but inconvenient."
"Flattered," Arden said. "Truly."
"You shouldn't be," Silex said. "Do you know what happens when the Committee decides a variable has taught them everything it can?"
Arden held his gaze. "They delete it."
"They finalize it," Silex corrected. "Semantics matter at our level."
"Feels the same at mine," Arden said.
Silence hummed between them for a heartbeat.
Silex dropped his voice, pitched it just under the collar's auto-flag threshold. Arden felt the channel buzz but not spike.
"You forced my hand at the Rust Shrine," Silex said. "You should've been finalized for that alone. Instead, I took your insubordination and sold it as tactical adaptability. Do you know why?"
Arden's temples pulsed. "Because I'm charming," he said.
"Because they need stories like you for a little while longer," Silex said. "Grim miracles. Dogs who choose not to bite. It makes the leash look humane while we install the new system. Your mercy buys them time."
"That seems backwards," Arden said. "Thought mercy was supposed to buy us time."
Silex's smile did something strange then.
It softened.
Not much. Not enough for anyone in the hall below to see. But up close, Arden saw a flicker of something that wasn't cold calculus.
Regret. Fatigue. A hairline fracture.
"The system doesn't care what you feel," Silex said quietly. "But it cares that you feel. Because feelings can be modeled. Monetized. Weaponized. You terrify them, Arden, because you keep choosing the wrong option and surviving. That means their models are incomplete."
"Good," Arden said. "Let them lose sleep."
"They don't lose sleep," Silex said. "They build new chains."
He stepped back, voice rising to normal volume.
"The Committee has decided," he said. "Unit Ø7 remains assigned to Director Silex as primary field Dogs for the next twelve cycles, under observational status. Ø9 will take parallel contracts in less sensitive districts. Your leash data will be compared. Performance will be incentivized."
"Incentivized how?" Seraphine asked.
Silex regarded her. "You like nights off, Vega?" he asked. "You like being able to walk your city without a handler looking over your shoulder every minute?"
Her jaw worked. "Occasionally," she said.
"Good," he said. "Because continued discretionary privileges for Ø7 are now tied directly to your obedience metrics. Step out of line often enough, and the Committee will recommend full protocol upgrade. You'll wake up one day with three-band collars and missing pieces."
Kai exhaled slowly. "So we're gamified now," he said. "High score keeps our personalities."
Lyra's eyes went distant again. "And low score means we become like them," she murmured. "Bodies first, ghosts second."
Darius spoke for the first time since the demonstration ended.
"What's your stake in this, Handler?" he asked. "You stand to lose us either way."
Silex's smile vanished.
For a heartbeat, his face was just tired flesh.
"My stake," he said, "is that I prefer Dogs who know what they are to ghosts that think they're tools. I can talk to you. I can't talk to whatever code they're writing into those collars."
It was the closest he'd ever come to saying he gave a damn.
Arden felt the words land in his chest like a small, unwelcome weight.
"You could just not run the program," he said. "Refuse their toys. Walk."
"And go where?" Silex asked. "Outside? You've seen the border feeds. Wildspace eats people slower than the system does, but it still eats them. In here, I can at least redirect the teeth."
"That what you call what you did at the Shrine?" Arden asked. "Redirection?"
Silex met his gaze without flinching.
"What I did at the Shrine," he said, "was choose between one set of dead you could see and another you couldn't. I chose the option that kept your collars from cooking and the city from burning that week. You want to hate me for it, get in line. At least hate me for the right reasons."
The leash hummed. The system flagged words like "dead" and "burning" and "hate" and weighed them against biometric readouts.
Arden ground his teeth.
He thought of Crohn's laugh. Of Rust Saints praying to ghosts in the pipes. Of static rain luminous with stolen feelings.
"Fine," he said. "Here's the right reason."
He stepped closer, until he could see his reflection in Silex's pupils—warped, small, leashed.
"You smile when they hurt us," he said. "You sell it as calibration. You smile when you talk about deletion like it's a metric. And now you smile when you tell us we're useful for making the leash look kinder while you help build one that won't need us at all."
Silex's jaw tightened. The scar along his cheek whitened.
"That's your read," he said.
"That's my read," Arden said. "You want a different one? Change the story."
For a moment, Arden thought he'd pushed too far.
The collar prickled, heat licking the base of his skull.
Then Silex did something nobody in that room expected.
He laughed.
Not the harsh, single bark from their first debrief. Not the cold little exhalations he used to pin people to the walls of their own sentences.
This laugh was low, exhausted, almost genuine.
"You really are a problem," he said. "Do you know what the Committee calls you?"
"I can guess," Arden said. "Starts with 'mal' and ends with 'function.'"
"'Human error,'" Silex said. "That's their term. They say it like a diagnosis. I say it like a possibility."
He tapped his own collar.
"Here's the secret, Arden," he said. "Every leash has a weak point. Including mine. The trick is to know when to pull."
He turned away before Arden could answer.
"Unit Ø7," he said, voice back to Handler register. "You're on stand-down for the next six hours. Medical checks, debrief, then discretionary time. Don't leave Tier limits without clearance. Don't talk to anyone about what you saw here who doesn't have the collar to prove they already know."
Seraphine scoffed. "So, same old."
"Almost," Silex said.
He looked back over his shoulder, eyes on Arden.
"And Reik," he said. "Try not to make me smile in front of the Committee again. They already think I'm growing sentimental."
"Wouldn't want to damage your brand," Arden said.
Silex's mouth quirked.
For a heartbeat, the Handler's smile was something else entirely—a crack, not in the leash, but in the man holding it. A hint that under all the protocol and precision, there was someone watching the same burn and making his own ruinous calculations.
Then it was gone.
The collar cooled.
[HANDLER CHANNEL: CLOSED.]
The glass dimmed, cutting off the view of the stage. The new Dogs vanished behind polarized opacity, like a dream someone else had paid for.
Arden exhaled.
His lungs felt too big for his chest.
"Six hours off," Seraphine said. "We should celebrate. Do something stupid and marginally illegal."
"Define 'marginally,'" Kai said.
"Something that doesn't trigger an automatic Tier Two," she said. "Maybe just a Tier One and a stern talking-to."
Darius's gaze stayed on the fading reflection in the glass.
"They're not just replacing us," he said. "They're testing how far they can push the leash before it breaks. On them and us."
Lyra nodded slowly.
"The leash learns," she said. "Pain is input. Mercy is noise. We decide which one we want to be."
Arden rubbed the heel of his hand against his collar, feeling the faint thrum of its heartbeat against his.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go fail to relax for a few hours before they wind us up again."
They turned as a unit.
As they left Observation, the Somnolence Suite doors whispered shut behind them, sealing in the smell of antiseptic and committee approval.
In the corridors beyond, The Span hummed.
Above, invisible but very real, the new Dogs of Ø9 stood waiting for their next command.
Below, in places the Committee never visited, rust crept along old metal, whispering its own gospel about what happened to chains when nobody maintained them.
And between those layers walked Ø7—collars bright, leashes taut, carrying the Handler's smile like another kind of scar.
For now, the leash held.
For now.