I raised my hands slowly. Not because I was brave, but because the rifle barrel pointed at my face was steady.
Lyra didn't raise her hands. Her hand hovered near her boot knife, her muscles coiled like a spring.
"Don't," I whispered to her. "There are three of them. We have one knife. Do the math."
"I hate math," Lyra muttered, but she slowly unclenched her fist.
The figure on top of the barricade laughed. It was a wet, rasping sound, amplified by a cheap voice modulator.
"Smart boy," the gunman said. "The Ghost knows how to count. Come on up. Slowly. If you make a sudden move, Jax will turn you into pink mist."
He pointed to the figure on his left—a massive hulk of a man wearing armor made from flattened car doors. Jax was holding a heavy rotary cannon that looked like it had been ripped off a tank.
We climbed.
The metal groaned under our boots as we scaled the barricade. When we reached the top, I got a good look at our welcoming committee.
They weren't Scavengers. They were humans, but they looked... repurposed.
The speaker was a wiry man with neon-green dreadlocks and a mechanical jaw that clicked when he spoke. The third member was a girl, barely twelve years old, sitting on a crate and tossing a jagged piece of metal in the air. She wore goggles that were too big for her face.
"Welcome to the Rusty Spire," the dreadlocked man said, hopping down. He circled us, his mechanical eye zooming in and out with a soft whirrr. "I'm Vex. The big guy is Jax. The kid is Mink."
Vex stopped in front of Lyra. He leaned in, sniffing the air.
"Smell that, Jax? Filtered air. Synthetic soap. Upper-city quality." Vex grinned, revealing metal teeth. "You two are a long way from the sky-bridge."
"We're just passing through," Lyra said, her voice cold. "We don't have credits. We don't have tech. We have nothing you want."
Vex laughed again. "Nothing I want? Sweetheart, you're glowing like a Christmas tree. That Echo of yours... it's Military Grade. Maybe higher."
He turned to me. The smile vanished.
He frowned. He tapped the side of his mechanical eye. He squinted.
"But you..." Vex stepped closer, uncomfortably close. "My scanner says you aren't here. I'm looking right at you, but my thermal reads room temperature. My Echo-feed reads static."
He poked my chest with a dirty finger. It was solid.
"You're a Null," Vex whispered, a mix of disgust and awe in his voice. "A real-life, walking dead spot."
"Is that a problem?" I asked, keeping my voice steady.
"Down here? It's a miracle," the little girl, Mink, piped up. She hopped off the crate, holding a tablet that was wired to a battery pack on her belt. "Boss, if he's a Null, he can walk past the Sensor Wall. He can get us into the Old Vault."
Vex's eyes lit up. The mechanical jaw clicked rapidly.
"Well now," Vex purred. "Change of plans. Jax, lower the cannon. We aren't killing them."
He put an arm around my shoulder—it felt heavy and smelled of grease.
"We're going to employ them."
They marched us inside the Signal Tower.
It wasn't just a tower; it was a fortress. The inside of the skyscraper had been hollowed out and turned into a vertical village. Ropes and bridges connected different floors. People—hundreds of them—were living in the shell of the building.
I saw mechanics welding scrap metal. I saw families cooking rats over chemical fires. I saw children playing with broken drone parts.
This was the society the System threw away.
They took us to the "Throne Room"—an old server room on the 10th floor.
Vex sat in a chair made of pilot seats welded together. He gestured for us to sit on two overturned buckets.
"Here's the deal," Vex said, cleaning his fingernails with a knife. "You need shelter. You need food. And looking at your shoulder, kid, you need meds."
I touched my shoulder. It was throbbing again.
"And what do you need?" Lyra asked, eyes narrowing.
"We have a problem," Vex said. "About two miles east of here, there's a Government Supply Depot that crashed down here during the War. It's full of energy cells, clean water, and weapons."
"So go take it," Lyra said.
"We can't," Mink interrupted, tapping on her tablet. "The perimeter is guarded by a Static Field. Any Echo that crosses the line triggers the automated turrets. If you have a future, the turrets shoot it."
Vex pointed his knife at me.
"But you don't have a future, do you, Ghost Boy?"
The room went silent.
"You want me to walk through the turrets," I realized. "Because they can't predict where I'm going."
"Bingo," Vex smiled. "You walk in, disable the generator, and we loot the place. In exchange, we give you a safe place to sleep, food, and we don't sell you to the Scavengers."
"And if we refuse?" Lyra asked.
Jax, the giant in the corner, cracked his knuckles. The sound was like gunshots.
"We didn't ask," Jax grunted. His voice was deep, like stones grinding together.
I looked at Lyra. She gave a microscopic nod. We had no choice. We were tired, injured, and hunted by the Admin. We needed allies, even if they were criminals.
"Fine," I said. "I'll do it. But I have a condition."
Vex raised an eyebrow. "You're in no position to bargain, Null."
"I want information," I said. "You monitor the Underside. Have you seen... a black shadow? Something that tears up the ground?"
Vex froze. Mink stopped tapping on her tablet.
The mood in the room shifted instantly from casual to terrified.
"You mean the Dark Eater?" Vex whispered. "The thing that screams in the tunnels?"
"You've seen it?"
"We don't talk about that," Vex hissed, leaning forward. "That thing isn't a machine. It isn't human. It's a curse. Last month, a patrol saw it near the Core vents. It ate three men. Didn't leave bodies. Just... erased them."
My blood ran cold. It ate three men. Was that my Echo? Or was that the Admin's projection?
"So," Vex said, his voice shaky now. "You help us get the supplies, and I'll tell you where we saw the Dark Eater. But be warned, kid... if you go looking for that thing, you won't come back."
He stood up and clapped his hands, the fake cheerfulness returning.
"Mink! Get them some ration bars and a med-patch. Jax, prep the rover."
Vex grinned at me, his mechanical eye spinning.
"Tomorrow, Ghost Boy, you're going to be a hero. Or a corpse. Either way, it's good entertainment."