The hallway in Sector 7 was silent for a heartbeat.
"Arrest them," Marcus repeated, his voice devoid of anger, merely efficient.
The two Gold-Guardians moved. They weren't clumsy mechs like the Scrapyard bots; they were elite cyborgs in sleek, gilded power armor. They moved with fluid, liquid speed.
One lunged at Lyra, swinging a Stasis Baton. The other leveled a suppression rifle at Julian.
"Don't kill them," Marcus added, turning back to his console. "I need their neural patterns intact for interrogation."
Julian didn't wait for the rifle to fire.
He stepped forward, his new nanite arm humming. He didn't use a sonic blast; he used raw speed. He caught the barrel of the suppression rifle in his black metal hand.
CRUNCH.
He crushed the barrel like a soda can.
The Guardian stared at the ruined weapon. Julian pivoted, driving his shoulder into the Guardian's chest. The impact dented the gold armor and sent the cyborg flying backward into the wall.
"We're leaving, Marcus!" Julian shouted.
"You're trying," Marcus didn't look up. He tapped a key on his holographic desk.
HUMMM.
The floor panels illuminated. Hard-light barriers—walls of translucent golden energy—shot up from the ground, partitioning the hallway.
Julian, Lyra, Zephyr, and Isolde were separated instantly, each trapped in a box of light.
"You break things, Julian," Marcus said, walking toward the barrier trapping his brother. "I build them. This is a Hard-Light Architect system. Nothing physical can pass through it."
He looked at Julian through the energy wall.
"You brought a knife to a physics fight."
The Escape
Julian punched the wall. His nanite fist hit the energy field with a deafening CRACK. The field rippled, but didn't break. His arm jarred with the feedback.
"It's resonance-proof," Marcus noted calmly. "I designed it specifically to counter your gauntlet. I studied your frequency data from the Jungle. You can't sing your way out of this one."
"Maybe not," Julian gritted his teeth. "But I can overload it."
He looked at Isolde in the adjacent cell. She was already working on a panel in the floor.
"Isolde!" Julian shouted. "The conduit!"
Isolde nodded. She jammed her heavy wrench into the floor seam, prying up a maintenance plate. Beneath it ran the high-voltage cables powering the facility.
"Skid!" Julian tapped his comms. "Surge the grid!"
"I'm in the local node," Skid's voice crackled. "But if I surge it, the backlash will fry the door locks. And the lights. And probably the coffee machine."
"Do it!"
Skid executed the command.
ZAP.
The lights in the hallway exploded. The Hard-Light barriers flickered violently as the power grid spiked.
For a split second, the wall in front of Julian vanished.
He charged.
He didn't run at Marcus. He ran at the floor.
He activated his nanite arm's Pile-Driver mode—a piston-like mechanism in the elbow.
SLAM.
He punched the floor with enough force to crack the tectonic foundation of the building.
The pristine white tiles shattered. The concrete beneath gave way. The floor of the hallway collapsed into the maintenance sub-level below.
"Going down!" Julian yelled, grabbing Lyra as the ground fell away.
The Undercity
They fell twenty feet, landing on a pile of refuse bags and discarded conduits.
"Ugh," Zephyr groaned, pulling a banana peel off his shoulder. "This smells like the bad wind."
"We're in the Waste Processing Level," Julian said, standing up and scanning the dark tunnel. "The Undercity."
Above them, through the hole in the ceiling, Marcus looked down. He wasn't chasing them. He just watched, his expression disappointed.
"You can run into the filth, Julian," Marcus called down. "But the rats always get caught eventually. I'm locking down the Sector."
The blast doors above slammed shut, sealing the hole.
"He let us go," Lyra said, checking her gear. "Why?"
"He didn't let us go," Julian started walking down the tunnel. "He flushed us. He knows we can't get back up to the Palace from here. The elevators are DNA-locked."
"So we're trapped in the sewer?" Isolde asked.
"Not trapped," Julian said. "Hidden. The Undercity covers the entire footprint of the Capital. If we follow the waste lines upstream... we can get to the Core."
"The Core?"
"The power source," Julian said. "The Aether-Wall needs a generator. Marcus built it directly over the Titan's heart. If we can't hack the wall from the control room... we'll shut it off at the fuse box."
The Forgotten Citizens
They moved deeper into the Undercity.
It was a stark contrast to the world above. Up there, it was gold and light. Down here, it was wet concrete, flickering sodium lamps, and the smell of ozone and rot.
But it wasn't empty.
People lived here.
Thousands of them. The "rejects" of the perfect society. People with mutations, people who questioned the Emperor, people who were too poor to afford the citizenship tax. They lived in shantytowns built from stolen crates, huddled around thermal vents for warmth.
They watched Julian's team pass with fearful eyes.
"The Empire hides its sins," Zephyr whispered. "Just like the Scrapyard."
A group of thugs blocked the path ahead. They wore makeshift armor made of street signs and held rusty pipes.
"Toll road," the leader grunted. He had a cybernetic eye that was sparking. "50 credits to pass."
Julian stepped forward. He didn't raise his weapon. He raised his nanite arm. The blue veins glowed in the dark.
"I don't have credits," Julian said. "I have a way out."
The thug looked at the arm. He recognized the tech.
"You're... him," the thug whispered. "The Conductor. The one on the wanted posters."
"The poster says I'm a terrorist," Julian said. "The truth is, I'm a plumber. I'm here to unclog the drain."
The thug lowered his pipe.
"If you're going to the Core," the thug said, "you're walking into a meat grinder. The Red-Guard patrols the generator. They don't use stun batons. They use flamethrowers."
"Thanks for the tip," Julian said.
He walked past them. The thugs parted like the Red Sea.
The Message
As they walked, Skid's voice came over the comms.
"Julian. I decrypted the data stream Marcus was looking at before you crashed the party."
"And?"
"It wasn't a defense grid. It was a countdown."
Julian stopped. "Countdown to what?"
"Project: Ascension," Skid said. "It's launching in 12 hours. The Emperor isn't just sitting in the Palace. He's preparing to leave."
"Leave?"
"The orbital logs show massive refueling at the Space Elevator. The Emperor is planning to board Titan 07—the Orbital Spire. And he's taking the 'Gilded King's' core with him."
Julian went cold.
"He's harvesting the Earth Titan," Julian realized. "He's going to suck Titan 01 dry to power his escape ship. If he does that... the Capital collapses. The Undercity... all these people... they'll be crushed."
"Marcus knows," Julian said, his fists clenching. "He knows, and he's still following orders."
"We have 12 hours," Lyra checked her chrono. "To fight through an army of flamethrowers, shut down a city-sized forcefield, and wake up a god before the Emperor kills it."
Julian looked at the massive conduit pipes running along the ceiling, pulsing with stolen energy.
"Then we better start running."