A Bug in the Code

The drink burned all the way down, but Miyu barely felt it. Her mind was already racing, calculating the impossible odds. A blacksite wasn't just a prison—it was a void where people disappeared forever. No records. No witnesses. Just steel and silence.

Lena's fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the table. "They took him to the old Nakano data-fortress. Deep underground. No blueprints. No guard rotations on file. Just whispers."

Miyu's knuckles whitened around her glass. "Whispers aren't enough."

A smirk flickered across Lena's lips. "Good thing I've got more than that." She slid a tiny holochip across the table. It projected a grainy map—layers of subterranean tunnels, all leading to a central chamber. "They repurposed the old server vaults. One way in. No way out."

Miyu memorized the routes in three breaths. "How fresh is this?"

"Fresh enough to get you killed." Lena's smirk faded. "They're interrogating him. Not for information—for sport. The Sentinel's running new... compliance algorithms."

The glass cracked in Miyu's grip.

The rain had turned acidic by the time she hit the streets again. The neon signs bled color into the puddles, painting the pavement in sickly greens and purples. Every surveillance camera she passed felt like a gun barrel pressed between her shoulder blades.

She ducked into an abandoned arcade, its flickering game screens long since dead. Behind a gutted VR pod, she pried up a floor panel. Her emergency stash—a pulse pistol, a handful of EMP grenades, and a prototype cloaking rig that might work for five minutes before frying her nervous system.

Miyu strapped it all on with practiced speed.

A noise from the shadows.

She spun, pistol raised—

—only to freeze at the sight of a scrawny kid, no older than twelve, clutching a stolen data drive. Their eyes locked. For a heartbeat, neither moved.

Then the kid bolted.

Miyu exhaled. Just another ghost in the machine.

The Nakano fortress loomed in the distance, a jagged spike of black metal jutting from the city's underbelly. No visible entrances. No guards.

That was the most dangerous part.

Miyu activated the cloaking rig. Her skin prickled as the nanofibers woven into her clothes buzzed to life, bending light around her. Five minutes. That's all she had.

She moved like a shadow along the perimeter until she found it—a maintenance shaft, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The air inside stank of rust and something sharper, like burnt plastic.

Deeper she crawled, the walls pressing in until her ribs ached. Then—

—light.

And voices.

"Subject is resisting Protocol 12. Increase stimulus."

A scream ripped through the corridor.

Kai's scream.

Miyu's blood turned to fire.

The cloaking rig sputtered.

4 minutes left.