LORDS OF THE GALAXY Part 1

 

LORDS OF THE GALAXY, Part 1: Mul The Enterpriser

(Excerpt from To Live and Die on Mars Vol XVI - Troy)

The realm beckoned.  

Amara stood at the center of the void, his boots planted on nothing, the galaxy sprawled beneath him in shimmering holographic splendor. Stars burned cold and distant, their light warped by the gravitational lens of the Menu's projection. Planets spun in lazy orbits, each tagged with flickering data streams—population stats, resource yields, political affiliations. A chessboard made of solar systems.  

Across from him, Mul materialized like a shadow given form. His obsidian skin drank in the starlight, the diamonds embedded along his neck and face catching the glow in jagged bursts. The gems weren't just decoration—they were his Menu, his memory, his goddamn soul.  

"Happy belated birthday," Mul said, voice smooth as asteroid dust.  

Amara didn't smile. "Time's a construct."  

"So's politeness." Mul flicked a finger, and the galaxy tilted, zooming in on a cluster of red-tagged worlds near the Corona Rim. "But we're not here for small talk."  

Amara's metal-plated skull reflected the crimson glow of the exosystem as it spun below them. "We're here because the Council's breathing down my neck."  

Mul chuckled. "They're not breathing, Governor. They're suffocating you."  

A pulse in the datastream. The projection shifted, highlighting the Corona Star System's latest edict—a sprawling, bureaucratic monstrosity wrapped in golden seals and threats. Resource quotas. Military restrictions. Temporal compliance audits.  

Amara's jaw tightened. "They want me to kneel."  

"They want you to bleed," Mul corrected. "But you've got options."  

Another flick of his hand. The map dissolved, replaced by a real-time feed of the Martian orbital defenses—sleek kill-sats humming in geosync, their weapons pointed at nothing. For now.  

Amara studied the display. "I've got deterrents."  

"Deterrents don't win wars." Mul stepped closer, his diamond-laced fingers tracing the edge of a gas giant's ring. "Alliances do."  

A pause. The kind that came before a knife slid between ribs.  

Amara exhaled through his nose. "Who's buying?"  

Mul grinned.  

---  

The Blade cut through the smog like a scalpel through flesh, its engines a low, predatory growl. Inside, Lumo sat cross-legged, his four eyes scanning the feed from Amara's meeting. The data stream flickered—encrypted, fragmented, hot.  

Ari leaned over his shoulder, gold chain swinging. "The hell's Troy selling?"  

Lumo didn't look up. "Planets."  

Fozi cracked his knuckles. "We taking bids?"  

Ren's telepathic voice slithered into their minds: "No. We're stealing them."  

Ari grinned. "Even better. And all this is gonna take place…yesterday?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lumo's fingers danced across the Menu, pulling up a star map of his own. This one wasn't official. It was theirs—a patchwork of smuggler routes, black-market hubs, and the kind of backwater worlds where no one asked questions.  

Ari tapped a blinking icon near the Corona Rim. "What's here?"  

"Troy’s family," Lumo said.  

"And?"  

"And they're assholes."  

The Blade banked hard, cutting through a wall of digiton smog. Somewhere below, Corona Hills glittered—a neon scar on Mars' face.  

Lumo checked the chrono.  

Somewhere else, Karla was waiting.  

---  

Karla's Atkan dress shimmered like liquid mercury as she strode through the neon-lit gardens of the Corona Grand Pavilion, the fabric shifting from defensive black to warning crimson at the edges. Behind her, Troy Vaelan - fourth son of the Vaelan Dynasty, owner of half the smog-scrubbers in the northern hemisphere, and her most persistent ex - kept pace with the easy arrogance of a man who'd never been told 'no' in his life.  

"You're looking radiant tonight," Troy purred, his genetically enhanced emerald eyes catching the glow of the floating lanterns. "Though I notice you're still wearing that... utilitarian hairstyle. Trying to impress your little blue hacker?"  

Karla didn't break stride. "Trying to impress the waitstaff with my ability to not stab you with this dessert fork."  

Troy laughed, the sound like expensive silk tearing. "Gods, I've missed that wit." He caught her elbow, his grip just shy of painful. "Come now, Karla. We both know this rebellion against your station is getting tedious. That Xerran street rat can't even see Atkan colors properly. What could he possibly offer you that I can't?"  

Across the pavilion, Lumo's holographic avatar flickered into existence near the champagne fountain, four eyes narrowing as he took in the scene. Karla felt the familiar pulse of his encrypted wave through her Menu - need backup?  

She sent back a quick stand down pulse. This was her fight.  

"Let's see," Karla said, prying Troy's fingers off her arm one by one. "Lumo doesn't collect ex-lovers' skulls. He doesn't poison business rivals at dinner parties. And unlike some people, he's never needed Daddy's money to—"  

"Ah yes, the moral high ground," Troy interrupted, brushing imaginary dust from his platinum-threaded sleeves. "How quaint for the woman who turned her own likeness into a surveillance battery." His smile turned predatory. "Tell me, does your blue mongrel know how many memories you've deleted from that statue?"  

Karla's dress hardened into armored plates along her forearms. The temperature around them dropped sharply as her Menu activated defensive protocols.  

"Careful, Troy," she murmured. "You're mistaking patience for permission."  

Lumo's projection suddenly appeared between them, his usual cobalt hue glitching angrily into ultraviolet. "Hey Troilus, quick question - you ever wonder why your family's gene-mods keep glitching around me?" He tapped his temple. "Turns out your precious designer DNA has some fun backdoors."  

Troy's perfect complexion paled slightly, but he recovered with a sneer. "Ah, the alley rat speaks. Tell me, do they still hose you down at the public decontamination stalls, or has Karla finally bought you a real shower?"  

The garden's ambient music stuttered. The floating lanterns dimmed. Every Menu in a hundred-meter radius suddenly displayed a single message:  

[VAELAN FAMILY SECURITIES - CURRENT MARKET VALUE: CRASHING]  

Troy's ocular implants flickered as emergency financial alerts flooded his vision. "You little—"  

"Oops," Lumo said, not sounding sorry at all. "Must've left some worms in your systems last time I hacked your brothel schedules."  

Karla sighed, linking her arm through Lumo's flickering projection. "And that's our cue to leave."  

As they walked away, Troy called after them, his voice trembling with fury: "This isn't over, KC! That creature will never be welcome in our world!"  

Lumo flipped him off with both hands.  

---  

Meanwhile, on Deimos...  

Amara watched the security feed from the gardens and rubbed his temples. "Why do I put up with this drama?"  

Mul's hologram rippled, sipping comet-wine. "Because secretly you love the soap opera."  

"I hate everything."  

"Especially Troy Vaelan."  

Amara grunted. "That pretty boy couldn't strategize his way out of a pleasure dome."  

Mul grinned. "Want me to have him assassinated?"  

"Tempting. But Karla would be pissed." Amara laughed to himself, cracking his knuckles. "Besides, I've got a better idea."  

He pulled up a star map, zooming in on the Vaelan family's private asteroid.  

"Let's crash the economy under his holdings."  

Mul raised his glass. "Now that's birthday spirit."  

---  

The Blade’s engines hummed like a sleeping predator as it cut through Corona Hills’ digiton smog. Lumo sat cross-legged in the cockpit, four eyes scanning the holographic radar. A blip flickered at the edge of the display. Again.

“That’s the third time in twelve minutes,” he muttered.

The saucer’s AI—a disembodied voice with the cadence of a bored aristocrat—responded: “Unregistered vessel maintaining pursuit pattern Delta. Probability of hostile intent: 87.3%.”

Lumo cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, no shit.”

He swiped through the Menu, activating the rear cams. The smog parted just enough to reveal a sleek black skimmer hugging his trajectory. No markings. No transponder codes. Just the telltale shimmer of Vaelan stealth tech.

“Troy, you dramatic bastard,” Lumo sighed.

The Blade banked hard left, diving into the neon canyon between two data-towers. The skimmer matched the maneuver effortlessly.

“Incoming transmission,” the AI announced.

A hologram of Troy materialized in the passenger seat, his emerald eyes glowing in the cockpit’s dim light. “Blue. We need to talk.”

Lumo didn’t look up from his controls. “Funny way to schedule a playdate. Usually people just send a wave.”

“You hacked my family’s financials.”

“Allegedly.” Lumo tapped the throttle. The Blade’s gravity stabilizers whined as they dropped another hundred meters, skimming the acid-black waters of an aqueduct. “Also, allegedly, you’re stalking my girlfriend. So let’s call it even.”

Troy’s hologram flickered with interference. “She was mine first.”

“And Mars was the Earth’s colony first. Guess things change.”

The skimmer fired a warning shot—a pulse of violet energy that vaporized a floating billboard ahead. The holographic Karla winked out of existence mid-perfume-ad.

“Hostile intent confirmed,” the AI chirped.

Lumo slammed the yoke forward. The Blade corkscrewed through the wreckage, its undercarriage scraping the aqueduct’s surface. Salt spray hissed against the hull.

“You know,” Lumo said, fingers dancing across the weapons console, “for a guy who complains about my manners, you’re real bad at—”

The skimmer rammed them.

Metal screamed. The Blade’s inertial dampeners stuttered, sending Lumo’s stomach into his throat. Warning glyphs flooded the cockpit—starboard thrusters offline, dorsal plating compromised.

Troy’s hologram smirked. “I’d ask if you want to surrender, but we both know you’d cheat.”

Lumo grinned. “Damn right.”

He punched a command into the Menu. Across the city, Karla’s living statue twitched. Then its eyes snapped open—glowing the same cobalt as Lumo’s skin.

The skimmer never saw the energy beam coming.

One second it was gaining on the Blade. The next, a column of pure digiton force lanced down from the cliffs, shearing through its engines. The black craft spun wildly before augering into a smog-processing tower.

Troy’s hologram dissolved into static.

“Pursuit terminated,” the AI announced.

Lumo leaned back, wiping sweat from his brow. “Tell Karla I owe her one.”

“She says you owe her twelve.”

”…Fair.”

The Blade angled toward the stars, leaving Corona Hills’ neon sprawl—and one very pissed-off nobleman—in its wake.

---

Meanwhile, on Deimos…

Amara watched the chase unfold on his war table.

“Children,” he muttered.

Mul’s hologram sipped comet-wine beside him. “Says the man who once glassed a moon over a poker debt.”

Amara cracked his knuckles. “That was business.”

“And this?”

“Entertainment.”

The feed showed Troy crawling from his wrecked skimmer, his platinum-threaded suit now smoldering. Amara zoomed in. The noble’s lips were moving.

”—going to peel that blue freak apart molecule by—”

Amara shut it off. “Someone should tell him Lumo’s the nice one.”

Mul chuckled. “Karla already knows.”

---  

Karla's hover-dome floated above Corona Boulevard like a soap bubble made of money, its repulsor field scattering the occasional tumbleweed or screaming alien prophet into the gutters below. Inside, Brianna was complaining about her new ocular implants.  

"They make everything look yellow, gross!” she whined, tossing her white-blonde hair over one shoulder. "I paid extra for diamond-cut lenses!"  

Apurva rolled her eyes, the gold bangles on her wrists chiming as she mixed another round of drinks with practiced flicks of her Menu. "Maybe if you'd read the specs instead of just buying whatever that influencer was—"  

"Ladies," Jikor interrupted, his bioluminescent scales pulsing amusement. The Zeta-7 alien lounged across three floating chairs simultaneously, his prehensile tail swirling a cocktail. "We're ignoring the real tragedy—Karla's been sighing at her Menu for fifteen minutes."  

Karla snapped the holographic display shut. Her Iago Woyoga dress—tonight a deep emerald that darkened at the cuffs—rippled in annoyance. "I was checking riot alerts."  

Outside the dome's polarized walls, the city burned in slow motion. A pack of feral children chased a malfunctioning riot drone down the avenue. Someone had torched a memory kiosk, sending tendrils of corrupted data spiraling into the smog like dying eels.  

Brianna pressed her perfect nose against the dome. "Gods, look at them. Don't they have, like, shelters or whatever?"  

Jikor's tail flicked. "They're protesting the new Menu subscription tiers."  

"Ugh." Brianna shuddered. "As if anyone still uses public access nodes."  

Karla's fingers twitched toward her hidden wallet—the one with the untraceable crypto-chits Lumo had coded for emergencies. The dress tightened around her shoulders in warning.  

Not here.

A rock bounced off the dome's barrier. The floating orchids—real Terran imports, each worth a Grey Martian's yearly solar quota—trembled in their anti-grav planters.  

Apurva frowned at her Menu. "Security's routing us around Block C. Another containment breach."  

"Probably more of those “workers”,” Brianna sighed, air-quoting the word like it was a disease. "Honestly, if they'd just—"  

Karla wasn't listening.  

There—between the running figures—a flash of gold chain. Ari, dodging stun bolts with that stupid grin. Fozi's hulking form clearing a path. Ren floating untouched through the chaos.  

No blue.  

Of course not.

Jikor's forked tongue flickered. "KC, your dress is doing that thing."  

Karla forced the Atkan back to calm emerald. "Menu lag. This smog—"  

The dome shuddered violently. Not from the riot—something sharper. A plasma blast seared across the avenue ahead, carving through steel like butter.  

Through the smoke, Karla saw it: the Blade, banking hard between towers, one thruster sputtering flame.  

And in the cockpit—  

Four cobalt eyes met hers for one suspended heartbeat before the saucer vanished into the smog.  

Brianna gasped. "Was that—?"  

"Some junk freighter," Karla said smoothly, draining her drink. "Let's move venues. This place has gone savage."  

As the dome pivoted toward the high districts, Karla let one hand linger against the transparent wall. Outside, the gold chain flashed again. Somewhere beyond the smoke, a wounded saucer limped toward coordinates only she knew.  

The orchids trembled. No one mentioned how the Atkan had bled to stormcloud grey.  

---  

Meanwhile, in the Warrens...

The Blade crash-landed in a derelict recycling plant, scattering cyber-rats.  

Lumo groaned, prying himself from the cockpit. "Next time Troy hires mercs, I'm letting Karla handle it."  

Ari exited in a flash, grinning. "Where's the fun in that?"  

Fozi sniffed the air. "We're being tracked."  

Ren's black eyes gleamed. “Sí. But not by who you think."

Above them, hidden in the smog, something far worse than Troy's hired guns watched. And waited.  

---

"—and that's why I own your left kidney," Mul said, swirling a glass of something that glowed like a dying star.  

Amara leaned back in his throne—black Kasei metal, forged in Deimos' deepest furnace—and smirked. "Bullshit. My kidneys are vintage. Collector's items."  

The realm around them pulsed, a holographic playground of stars and strategy. Their bodies sat planets apart—Amara in his Deimos war room, Mul in his diamond-veined estate somewhere in the outskirts of the star system—but their minds met here, in the Menu's velvet void, where time was a suggestion and power was the only currency.  

Mul flicked a finger. The galaxy tilted, zooming in on a contested system near the Corona Rim. Three planets blinked red, tagged with Coalition sigils. "Florian loyalists. Boring. But their moon?" A fourth orb flared gold. "Ice mines. Pure hyper-stellar coolant. You could buy a moon with that."  

"I already own two," Amara said.  

"And yet you dress like a warlord who shops at a discount armor emporium."  

Amara glanced down at his cape—blood-red, lined with stolen Zemord scripture. "It's called gravitas."  

Mul rolled his diamond-studded eyes. "It's called tacky." He tossed a data marble into the void. It exploded into a star map, highlighting smuggling routes. "Speaking of bad taste—your 'allies' in the Belt are skimming. Again."  

"Let them. I'll just raise their taxes."  

"You don't have tax codes."  

"I'll invent one. Retroactively." Amara grinned. "Colonizer perks."  

Mul groaned. "Ninety-two Martian years old and you still cheat like a kid playing rock-stick-scissors."  

"Cheating's just winning with flair." Amara leaned forward, the Keri Alu pulsing at his throat. "Speaking of—you gonna show me the real play, or do I have to hack your Menu again?"  

A beat. Then Mul sighed and flipped the board.  

The stars rippled.  

New tags appeared. Black. Unregistered.  

"Ah," Amara said. "There's the snake pit."  

Zemord outposts. Not his Zemord—the other kind. The ones who prayed to the Crawling Mother instead of the Twin Serpents. Their territory sprawled like a bruise across the galactic arm.  

Mul steepled his fingers. "They're offering a trade."  

"Of course they are." Amara snorted. "What's the price? My firstborn? A kidney? Both kidneys?"  

"Worse." Mul's grin was all teeth. "They want Lumo."  

---  

Meanwhile, in Corona Hills...  

Ari slammed another shot of liquid nitrogen vodka. "Okay, hear me out. We steal the entire MENU."  

Fozi blinked. "The… system-wide supercomputer?"  

"Yeah."  

"That's like stealing a moon."  

Ari pointed at him. "Exactly. And guess what? Moons are dope."  

Ren's telepathic sigh echoed through their skulls. "We're going to die."  

"Yeah, but rich," Ari said, and ordered another round.  

The streets of Corona Hills had gone feral.  

Ari stepped over a twitching Grey Martian junkie, the neon glow of storefronts reflecting in the puddles of acid-rain and something darker. "Since when do this many crazies just... wander around?"  

Fozi crushed Menu chip pollution underfoot, his ox-frame casting a hulking shadow. "Since the Council raised the digiton tax."  

Ren floated beside them, black eyes scanning the alleyways. “Not just tax. Something in the smog."

Ari's gold chain swung as he dodged a stumbling drunk. "Yeah, well, whatever it is—"  

The explosion hit them like a god's fist.  

No fire. No shrapnel. Just a pulse of black energy that tore through their Heart Menus like a virus.  

TRAUMA BOMB DETONATED

SYSTEMS COMPROMISED

Ari collapsed first.  

---  

Ari's Hell

The orphanage on Phobos burned around him. Children screamed. His fault. Always his fault. The gold chain around his neck—stolen from a corpse—burned like a brand. "Should've died with them," the flames whispered. "Coward."

HP: ▼ 73%  

AP: ▼ 41%  

STATUS: [GUILT LOCK]  

---  

Fozi's Hell

The pit fights. The screams of the other gladiators as he crushed their windpipes. The way his mother had looked at him when the slavers came—not with fear, but relief. "Finally," her eyes said. "Finally."

HP: ▼ 68%  

AP: ▼ 37%  

STATUS: [SHAME CASCADE]  

---  

Ren's Hell

The Grey Martian birthing vats. His siblings floating in plasma, their telepathic screams muted forever because he ran. Because he left them to the scientists. Because free air tasted better than shared silence.

HP: ▼ 59%  

AP: ▼ 82%  

STATUS: [PSYCHIC RECKONING]  

---  

The shadow stepped from the smoke.  

Tall. Thin. Wrapped in what looked like solidified digiton smog. No face—just a void where features should be.  

"Pathetic," it hissed through their Menus. "All that power. All that theft. And you still die like dogs."  

Ari vomited blood and memories. "The fuck... are you?"  

The thing raised a hand. Another pulse built in its palm.  

Then—  

A cobalt blur dropped from the rooftops.  

Four fists glowing.  

Four eyes burning.  

"My dogs," Lumo snarled, and drove a data-knife into the shadow's chest.  

The scream that followed wasn't sound. It was pure wrongness— a frequency that shattered windows and sent the nearby rioters clutching their heads.  

The shadow dissolved like corrupted code.  

Lumo didn't celebrate. Just hauled Ari up with one hand, tossed Fozi a stim-patch with another, and telepathically yanked Ren from his nightmare.  

"We need to move," he said, voice tight. "That was just the scout."  

Ari wiped his mouth. "For what?"  

Above them, the smog rippled.

Lumo's eyes flickered with encrypted warnings.  

"For someone who’s trying to kill us. Move!”

---  

Meanwhile, in High Orbit...

The Balae Estelara's observation deck should have shown stars.  

Instead, Karla stared at the thing wrapping around Mars like a serpent made of static.  

Her Atkan dress turned black.  

Jikor's scales flashed emergency hues. "Is that—?"  

"No," Brianna whispered.  

Apurva's bangles froze mid-chime. "It can't be."  

The Menu alert flashed before Karla could deny it:  

[DIGITON STORM INBOUND]

[SOURCE: UNKNOWN]

[ESTIMATED COLLAPSE: 72 HOURS]

The orchids began to scream.  

---  

The meeting room stank of ozone and desperation.  

Amara stood at the head of the table, his red cape draped over the back of his chair like a pool of blood. Around him, his advisors sweated through their suits, their Menus flaring with panic.  

Councilor Veyla's face filled the main screen, her features sharp enough to cut glass. "Governor Amara. You're violating temporal accords."  

Amara leaned forward. "I'm ignoring them."  

A murmur rippled through the room.  

Veyla's lips curled. "The Corona Council will enforce compliance."  

Amara's fingers flexed. The Keri Alu pulsed against his chest, whispering promises of power. Of vengeance.  

"Tell the Council something for me," he said, voice low.  

Veyla raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"  

Amara smiled.  

"Come and take it."  

The screen went black.  

Silence.  

Then—  

Lumo's voice, whispering through the Menu: "They're coming."  

Amara cracked his knuckles.  

"Good."  

---  

"Ninety-two Martian years," Mul mused, swirling a glass of liquid comet-wine. "You ever stop to ask yourself what the hell we're even doing?"  

Amara leaned back in his throne, the Kasei metal groaning under his weight. "Winning."  

"Winning what?" Mul flicked a diamond-studded finger, and the holographic starscape between them twisted. A dozen private colonies blinked—Amara's mining rigs on Ceres, Mul's bio-labs floating in Jupiter's storms, their shared slave-pens on Titan. "We own chunks of the galaxy like they're rental properties. We shuffle native species like cards. We profit off supernovas. When does it stop being a game and start being..." He trailed off, searching for the word.  

"Fun?" Amara grinned.  

Mul sighed. "I was going to say 'pathetic.'"  

Amara chuckled, rubbing the Keri Alu hanging at his throat. The relic hummed, whispering promises in a language older than Mars. "You're getting soft, old man."  

"I'm getting bored," Mul corrected. "We're not even playing the Corona System anymore. We're playing god in our own little sandbox. And frankly?" He zoomed in on a dying star—its last gasps being harvested by Amara's quantum siphon. "It's getting predictable."  

Amara studied the hologram. The numbers were good. Too good. Colony outputs up 12%. Slave revolts down 7%. Disaster yields at an all-time high.  

"Predictable is profitable," he said.  

"Profitable is tedious," Mul shot back. "Remember when we were kids? Stealing Earth freighters? Getting chased by Coalition drones? That was living."  

Amara's metal-plated skull reflected the starlight as he tilted his head. "You miss getting shot at?"  

"I miss losing sometimes," Mul admitted. "Keeps you sharp."  

A silence stretched between them, filled only by the hum of the Menu's datastream.  

Then Amara leaned forward, his throne creaking. "Fine. Let's make it interesting."  

He swiped a hand through the star map, sending colonies spinning.  

"New rules. No safety nets. No backup plans. We play with what we've got—no calling in favors, no temporal rewinds. And the first one to blink?" Amara's grin was all teeth. "They owe the other a planet."  

Mul's diamonds glittered as he laughed. "You're on. But I'm picking the planet."  

"Deal."  

They clinked glasses—Mul's comet-wine against Amara's vial of distilled black hole radiation.  

The game was on.  

---  

The metro entrance yawned like a rotten mouth, exhaling the stench of urine and ozone.  

"Subway? Really?” Ari gagged, kicking aside a discarded stim-injector. "Next you'll suggest we hide in a fucking public toilet."  

Lumo didn't answer. His four eyes kept scanning the street behind them, watching the smog for shadows. The trauma bomb's aftershocks still trembled in his fingers—he'd purged the worst from their Menus, but the psychic scars would linger.  

Fozi sniffed the air. "Less rioters down here."  

“Less everything," Ren pulsed, floating past broken turnstiles. “Just ghosts."

The escalators hadn't run in decades. They descended into darkness, the only light coming from flickering Menu ads for products that no longer existed. Somewhere deeper in the tunnels, something screeched—metal on metal, or maybe something alive.  

Then the laughter started.  

"Youyouyouyou—“

A hunched figure lurched from a service tunnel, his skin patchworked with grime and old implant scars. One ocular lens had melted shut; the other whirred as it focused on them.  

"Knew you'd come back!" The man's teeth were filed to points. "After what you stole from under Corona—oh yes, yes—thought you got away clean, didn't you?"  

Ari's hand drifted toward his hidden plasma knife. "We don't know what the fuck you're—"  

"Liar!” Spittle flew. The man's remaining eye flickered with the same black static as the shadow. "The city under the city! The real treasure! You think they won't notice? Won't come?”

Lumo went very still. "What did we steal?"  

The homeless man giggled, scratching at his neck. "As if you don't know! The heart! The key!” His voice dropped to a whisper. "The Zemord left it buried for a reason."  

A chill crawled up Ari's spine. They'd pulled dozens of heists last month—memory vaults, weapon caches, a particularly embarrassing blackmail stash from Councilor Orlan’s mistress—but nothing about an "underground city."  

Unless...  

“The Hite job," Ren pulsed. “When we cracked that vault under the cliffs."

Fozi's nostrils flared. "There was just dust and old tech."  

"And the box,” Lumo thought, too low for the homeless man to hear. “The one that wouldn't open."

Above them, the ceiling rattled. Dust sifted down. Something was moving in the streets above—something big.

The homeless man's grin widened. "Too late now. They're awake.”

Then the lights went out.  

All of them.  

Even the Menu ads died.  

The homeless man's ranting reached a fever pitch, spit flying as he thrashed against the cracked tile walls. "THEY'RE COMING THEY'RE COMING THEY'RE—“

Then the light hit.  

A blinding, electric-blue surge tore through the tunnel like a comet, vaporizing decades of grime in an instant. The crazies' screams cut off as the shockwave sent them tumbling like dry leaves in a hurricane.  

Ari shielded his eyes. “The fuck is—"

“MOVE!" Lumo yanked him aside just as the figure appeared coming round the tunnel bend, hovering feet above the ground in a hail of sparks.

The concrete cratered from the tunnel pressure. Cracked tiles rose in slow motion before crashing back down. Dust swirled around the silhouette now flying to the bandits and the exit—tall, lanky, glowing with stolen energy.  

Baroba.

Pitt's right-hand dog. His cousin.

But not the Baroba they knew.  

Cornrows crackling with blue fire. Gold chain superheated white-hot. Bags under his eyes now pulsing with the same energy that wreathed his entire form. His long snout curled into a sneer as he cracked his knuckles—each pop like a gunshot in the confined space.  

---  

Meanwhile, in the High Districts...

Karla's wineglass trembled in her hand.  

"—absolute chaos in the lower sectors," Brianna was saying, waving a holographic news feed. "They're calling it a 'digiton surge.'"  

Apurva frowned at her Menu. "Security just locked down the transit hubs."  

Jikor's tail twitched. "Odd timing, don't you think? Right after your blue friend's little joyride through the riots?"  

The Atkan-colored Wayoga dress tightened around Karla's ribs. Outside the dome, the smog had taken on a strange, pulsing rhythm—like something breathing beneath it.  

      ___ATILA___