Lina ran.
Not to fight. She wasn't suicidal.
She ran because she knew what they were.
Three Seraphs descended without warning. No words. No mercy. Just that clean, awful hum of power charging.
And the Seraphs—those weren't just drones. Not patrol units. Not even soldiers.
They were divine instruments. The system's judgment made flesh.
Each one was a shard of Aurelion's will—designed not to question, only to enact.
Flawless. Wordless. Irrefutable.
To most, their presence was a kind of liturgy: gold light, seamless alloy, wings folded like prayer.
Aurelion's justice didn't arrive with alarms or sirens.
It descended in silence, wrapped in holiness.
People didn't run from Seraphs.
They knelt.
Or they vanished.
But Lina didn't kneel.
She ran.
She'd seen the robes before—the immaculate lines, the silence that felt like watching, the way they held still like the moment before a hymn.
She twisted around a corner, feet slipping across cracked concrete, lungs raw with each breath. The chain at her neck rattled faintly with her stride—soft, irregular, almost lost in the chaos. A shockblade flashed past her head, biting into a steel railing, sending molten sparks cascading into the night.
She dove behind a rusted coolant barrel, tasting blood and rust as her shoulder slammed painfully into metal.
[ SYSTEM SCAN: LIVE FEED / SECTOR NINE ]
ENTITY: HUMAN (UNREGISTERED / ORGANIC)
THREAT LEVEL: NEGLIGIBLE
COGNITIVE SCORE: NULL / ERROR 217
ACTION: SUBJECT FLAGGED FOR DEEP INTEGRATION EVALUATION
A burst of distorted audio cracked past her ear—somewhere behind her, one of the Seraphs voicing system chatter, sharp and mechanical.
She didn't catch it all. But she heard two words, clear as glass:
"Integration valuation in progress."
The phrase hooked something deep in her memory—half-remembered reports, black sites, missing people. Integration. Whatever it meant, it wasn't good. And it sure as hell wasn't voluntary.
She'd heard the word before.
Not in official briefings—those never said anything useful—but whispered between students in the back corners of the old tech hall, when the instructors weren't watching. About how Mara never came back after the second assessment. About how Anik's brother was "reclassified" and vanished two days later. Just... gone.
Lina hadn't believed it then. She told herself it was fear talking, or rumors from the outer districts. Not something that could happen to them. Not here.
Because in Sector Nine, people didn't fight back.
They rationalized.
He must've done something.
She probably failed her metrics.
The system doesn't take people without reason.
Aurelion sees the full pattern—we don't.
Lies, spoken so softly and so often they became air.
Breathe them in long enough, and even fear tasted normal.
Lina had heard it from neighbors, from teachers, even from kids not much older than her:
"Keep your head down."
"Don't be clever."
"Stay small. You'll live longer."
But even then—she'd hated it. The way people stared at the ground when others were dragged away. The way no one ever said the names of the taken out loud. Like remembering made it contagious.
She didn't want to be like that.
And she hadn't been—at least, not entirely. Kai made sure she stayed out of the worst of it, always holding her back, always saying it wasn't her time. That she was too visible. Too curious. Too angry.
Maybe he was right.
But that didn't make her wrong.
Because she'd seen it happen. Just once.
A boy—she never learned his name—screaming into the back of a transport truck as the gates slammed shut, arms thrashing like they could still reach something real. His mother was still screaming too, long after the truck had left. But no one ever mentioned it again.
Not officially. Not casually.
Not ever.
So when Lina heard the word Integration, her body remembered before her brain did.
The silence.
The closing gates.
The sound of someone who knew they were being erased.
And now it was her turn.
Lina's heart slammed against her ribs as she skidded around another corner, boots nearly losing traction on the broken pavement. She didn't dare glance back—didn't need to. She could already feel their cold, wordless presence closing the distance, the faint hum of energy blades growing louder with every step.
One hand fumbled at her collar, tapping twice on the comm node Kai had wired into her jacket, the old rebel frequency still embedded in muscle memory. "Kai, do you read?" she rasped, voice cracking.
She remembered what Kai said that morning.
Just routine, he'd told her.
A simple grid check. Mid-level frequency alignment.
"You're too jumpy lately," he'd said with a half-smile. "Take the long route. Clear your head."
They always said that—like simple errands were all she could handle.
But now—
No pulse. Just silence—dead air and empty sky.
The silence told her everything she needed to know. If help was coming, it wouldn't be now.
She was on her own.
Somewhere in the static, a low burst of distortion cracked—brief, glitchy, unnoticed. She didn't hear it. Too focused on the silence.
If she could just get to the far alley—if the blind spot in the grid was still active—if she was faster—A flicker of gold knifed through the corner of her vision.
She dove before thought could catch up, and the shockblade missed her head by inches. It slammed into the wall beside her with a hiss, carving clean through rusted signage. Sparks rained. The wall steamed.
She hit the ground hard, rolled, forced herself back up.
They were gaining. No footsteps. Just that hum—clean, cold, inevitable.
She pushed forward, desperate, but they were already adjusting. One blink later, and one of them reappeared in front of her path, cutting off the alley entirely.
No way out.
Her momentum faltered. Reality slammed down.
It was never an escape.
They didn't want her dead.
Not yet.
Maybe they needed her functional. Maybe conscious.
Her eyes scanned wildly for cover—anything solid, anything real—but the plaza offered only open space and ruins. She wasn't ready to die here. Not like this.
Her fingers found the sidearm—scratched, unstable, barely above scrap.
But it was still hers.
She didn't hesitate.
Turning, she raised it with both hands, bracing her stance the way she was taught—feet staggered, shoulders square—and emptied the entire clip in one fast pull, squeezing the trigger until it clicked dry.
Bolts of searing blue light lanced through the dark, slamming into the nearest Seraph's chest and shoulder. But the armor held. The machine barely flinched.
A flicker of steam rose where the impact scorched the outer plating, nothing more.
The pistol powered down with a soft whine, spent and useless.
Panic tightened around her lungs, but she moved anyway—threw the pistol aside, grabbed the nearest shard of concrete, and hurled it backward in one desperate arc with a half-choked yell.
It hit center mass.
Bounced off.
Did nothing.
It didn't flinch from the impact. But it recalibrated—hesitated, just long enough. Not from pain. Maybe from surprise?
And that was all she needed.
She ducked behind a scorched bench frame, hand scrambling once more to the collar of her jacket, fingers jabbing at the comm node like maybe the urgency could force a signal through. "Anyone—this is ∆–092, Sector Nine," she whispered, barely breathing. "Seraphs inbound. I need backup. I need anything. Kai, if you're out there—please."
Still nothing.
No crackle. No flicker of reception.
Only her own breath, ragged and loud in the quiet.
She swallowed hard, wiped the sweat from her brow, and blinked against the sting rising in her eyes.
The fight had been anything but quiet—enough noise to wake even the deepest sleepers. Their base wasn't far. A few miles at most. Close enough that someone should've heard the blasts. Close enough that someone should've come.
So why hadn't they?
Was the base under attack too?
Or had everyone gone underground—hiding, just like they'd always trained for?
Even then, there should've been something.
The silence gnawed at her more than the danger. Lina didn't want to think it—not yet. But part of her already was.
What if something had gone wrong?
What if they were already gone?
Then—a sound, faint but sharp, cracked through the stillness like a snapped thread—distant gunfire, ricocheting off unseen structures somewhere near the old comm line, in the direction of the base.
Panic went white-hot. Her body wanted to run, but there was nowhere left. She stumbled toward a rusted pipe jutting from debris, grabbed it. Something. Anything. Even a lie of control.
The nearest Seraph tilted its head—a gesture too fluid, too exact. Like a programmed mimicry of instinct.
Then it stepped forward.
She cursed inwardly, panic flaring hot in her chest. Her breath burned in her lungs; the taste of iron and dust filled her mouth. She had no illusions—she wasn't fighting to win, just to buy time. There was no space left in her mind for anything else—no time to wonder what had gone wrong. She just had to keep moving, keep breathing, until someone came.
And she didn't dare let herself think about what the gunfire might mean.
But the machines advanced relentlessly, their pace unbroken. Mechanical, patient, inevitable. Fear settled deeper into her chest, sharper now, ice-cold beneath the adrenaline rush. She couldn't shake the certainty that she wouldn't leave this plaza alive.
Yet she ran anyway, driven by something deeper than logic or survival—pure, stubborn instinct, carved into her bones by years spent in Sector Nine. Never stop. If you stop, you die.
So she ran toward the base, clinging to the hope that someone—anyone—might still be there. It was still out of sight, somewhere beyond the haze and broken skyline. The gunfire meant something was happening. A fight. A last stand. Maybe a trap.
And if there were people still breathing when she got there—if they were still holding on—she was going to help them.
She stumbled, caught herself, and kept moving, eyes flashing across the terrain. Rebar, rusted sheet metal, loose wiring—useless garbage against elite killing machines, but her desperation made everything look like a weapon. Her fingers found the jagged end of a broken pipe, grasping it so tightly her knuckles went white.
Then the air split—not with the clinical hum of a Seraph's weapon, but with something raw. Human. A sharp, stuttering crack of gunfire echoed from beyond the ridge, skipping across broken rooftops and glass-strewn streets. It faltered at first, then steadied, then escalated—rapid, uneven, close.
Lina froze because she knew that sound.
It was the direction of the base.
Another burst followed, louder this time, carried on a wind that reeked of scorched metal and something sharper—plasma, maybe, or smoke. It twisted in her lungs.
Her grip tightened on the pipe. Her breath didn't.
Because this wasn't silence anymore.
It was confirmation. No backup was coming.
A shadow flickered to her left—too close. The nearest Seraph was already moving, blade glowing gold as it prepared for a clean, surgical strike.
Panic surged, white-hot and paralyzing. Her body screamed to run, but her legs wouldn't move—frozen between instinct and the absence of options. Her chest locked tight. There was no cover. No exit. Just the cold certainty of an end she couldn't outrun.
And still—it didn't strike.
The Seraph stepped forward, smooth and measured, like time wasn't a factor. Its movements were precise, deliberate, almost... cautious.
Lina stared up at it, breath jagged, heart hammering.
The machine didn't speak. Didn't flinch. But its eyes glowed—sharp and narrow, burning red like a lens set to observe, not strike. Not yet. Like a predator in a cage it built itself, waiting for a signal she couldn't hear.
No rage. No haste. Only precision, cold as the steel beneath its armor.
And something else—intention.
It was watching her too closely. Not just tracking. Studying.
Like it needed something from her before it moved.
The realization struck deeper than fear.
Her breath caught. That chill down her spine wasn't panic anymore—it was recognition.
They hadn't come to kill her.
Not first.
And that made it worse.
They weren't supposed to be here—not now, and certainly not in Sector Nine. This district had long fallen off the system's radar, left to crumble under its own weight while those in power watched from a distance, perfectly content to let the rot spread without getting their hands dirty. Security sweeps were rare, and when they did happen, they were shallow, symbolic at best—never with force, never with precision, and never with Seraph-class units.
But tonight, three of them had arrived. High-grade, combat-optimized, and silent as judgment, they dropped from the sky in flawless formation, and moved like they'd been assigned one task only.
Lina wasn't important. She was barely a name on a forgotten registry.
So why send three apex units for her?
This wasn't routine.
This wasn't a patrol.
And it didn't feel like a kill order, either.
Not yet.
She was on her feet—barely. Every breath scraped her throat raw, her legs trembled beneath her, and her vision blurred at the edges. She couldn't tell if it was the sprint, the adrenaline crash, or the slow, gnawing terror of not knowing why they were after her—or what they wanted her alive for.
Then—a voice cracked through the comm node at her collar. Not static. Not silence. A rupture. Sudden and sharp, like glass breaking through a sealed room.
"Lina," the voice said—low, male, steady. Not Kai.
Not anyone she recognized.
The signal stuttered once, warped by a faint digital hiss—like something fighting its way through jamming fields.
"You need to listen," it continued. "Don't go back to the base."
The Seraph loomed above her now, blade raised—golden, precise, emotionless.
"No," she whispered. The word came out dry. Brittle.