Kane’s head whips around. A woman drags two kids from a cluster of makeshift dwellings he’d marked as empty. More residents spill out from neighboring shacks onto the street. A knot tightens in his chest.
Echo cleared the area. She only had a few hours, but it should’ve been enough.
“We’ve got civilians! Echo, get them contained!” Kane barks into the comm.
Down the side street, he spots her weaving on her HOV board, ushering families to cover.
“I’m trying, boss man. But it’s kind of—”
“I don’t care. No excuses. Get it done.” There’s no time for pushback.
Kane’s focus returns to the battlefield. Wren’s squad has the disarmed Natural Order fighters pinned.
A glint flashes from the mill’s rooftop.
>UNREG SIGS DETECTED>ROOFTOP: TEXTILE MILL
Enemy troops crawl across the rust. A hidden unit his recon never detected. Another failure of their mission.
He opens his mouth to warn the crew, but the troopers are already hooking into grapple descenders. They drop in perfect formation, hitting the street with bows raised.
Wren’s riders notice too late.
Pulse bows fly from enemy weapons, ripping through their HOVs. Metal detonates in bursts of flame as bikers are thrown clear.
Kane’s HUD floods red with spiked alerts of impact vitals, system failures, and collision warnings.
His stomach plummets. He held Viper’s team on standby,certain they wouldn’t be needed. Not anymore.
“Viper, move in!”
Static.
The thunder of boots pounds against the pavement as Viper’s unit storms from an alley. Natural Order scrambles to regroup, but they barely make a dent.
Viper’s enforcers split. One group drives the center. The other circles to cut off retreat. Kane tracks them from above. It’s an attack from his own playbook.
But watching from the sky twists something inside him. His crew is bleeding for territory that never should’ve slipped. It’s on him to end this.
He drops low, weaving over scattered bodies and rolling smoke. His HUD snaps to a target, a Natural Order fighter barking commands. No doubt a higher-ranking “brother” by his robes.
Kane rockets in, and their eyes meet. The man’s expression tightens. Kane’s lips curl, and he pushes the throttle harder.
The man lunges forward, snatching a stumbling civilian woman. Another one Echo missed. He yanks her tight, driving a blade against her throat. Kane’s fingers lock on the brake.
His bike screeches to a halt inches from her face.
“Call off your crew,” the man snarls, pressing the knife harder. “Or she dies right here.”
Kane’s muscles go rigid. Numbers rattle off in his mind. The distance, speed, angle of the knife.
His commlink crackles.
“Kane—” Echo is breathless in his ear. “There are stragglers! Parents are reporting—” Static swallows the rest, but the message hardly matters.
Athena manipulated their people, and now one wrong movemeans a civilian dies on his watch.
“I need to call my crew,” Kane declares. The Natural Order member nods.