Chapter 3
1834 Words
The radio crackled in my jacket, faint but insistent, like a ghost clawing through the static.
I slipped into the alley, tugging my hood low, and pressed the battered receiver closer to my ear.
"This is Zero-Seven... copy?" a thin voice rasped through layers of interference.
I adjusted the dial with trembling fingers.
"Copy. Go ahead," I whispered.
A pause. Then, under the dying hum of the city generators, the message bled through.
"Transfer scheduled. Midnight. Surveillance Square. Package moving under Phoenix protocol. High risk. Confirm receipt."
Static swallowed the last few words, but it was enough.
I glanced up at the sky. Drones hovered like vultures, their red eyes blinking through the mist.
"Square’s locked tight tonight," a voice muttered behind a dumpster.
I tensed. Miles' words echoed in my head.
"Not everything lost needs to be found."
I tightened my grip on the notebook.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Tell me something new."
I edged closer to the mouth of the alley, peering out into the neon-slick expanse of Surveillance Square.
Cameras blinked on every lamppost. Armed patrols drifted through the flow of civilians like sharks cutting through bleeding water.
"Suicide," someone whispered from a group huddled under a tarp.
Probably was.
I slid my hand under my jacket, fingers brushing the leather cover of my notebook.
"You are not thinking about it, are you?" Miles' voice echoed from memory, rough and half-angry.
"Square’s a goddamn meat grinder, Quinn."
I could almost hear him lighting a cigarette, pacing, swearing under his breath.
I smiled, small and sharp, and tightened the strap of my jacket.
"Yeah. I am thinking about it," I muttered.
The ghost file burned against my ribs.
I slipped into the crowd, head down, breathing steady.
Sometimes you had to be willing to become the bait if you wanted to catch the truth.
The coat hung heavy on my shoulders, smelling of mildew and someone else's sweat.
Perfect. The more invisible, the better.
I tucked the stolen ID card against my hip and merged into the river of bodies flowing toward the Square. Mothers clutching grocery bags. Workers in grease-stained uniforms. Boys hawking cheap cigarettes with too-wide eyes.
No one looked at me.
No one ever looked too long in the Fracture Zones.
The neon signs overhead flickered through slogans about unity and obedience. Their light cast sickly shadows that stretched and shrank over broken pavement.
My heart hammered against my ribs in a rhythm too fast to control.
"Maintain your pace. Do not draw attention," Elena’s voice crackled in my earpiece, tinny and urgent.
"I am not new at this," I muttered under my breath.
Another camera pivoted on its axis, whirring as it swept the crowd.
I kept walking.
There was no going back now.
The commlink hidden in my ear crackled once, then again, a broken whisper bleeding through the static.
"Avery," Elena’s voice came sharp and breathless, "they upgraded security. There are new patrol drones. Triple numbers. You should pull back."
I ducked into the slipstream of a passing supply truck, keeping my head down, jacket collar high.
"Details, Cruz," I whispered, keeping my lips barely moving.
"I am seeing thermal readers installed on both entrances," Elena said. I could hear her fingers flying over a keyboard somewhere, desperate and fast. "And two new facial scan towers. They were not here last sweep."
I veered left with the crowd, pretending to argue with a vendor hawking roasted nuts.
"They are locking this down tighter than a vault," Elena hissed. "You need to fall back. Now."
I exhaled slowly, my breath curling white against the night air.
"Not an option," I murmured.
"Keep feeding me windows."
"Left," Elena whispered in my ear. "No patrols for seven meters."
I pivoted, slipping between a family haggling with a food vendor and a man patching his shoe on the curb.
The world tilted around me in flashes of neon and shadow, every step a gamble.
Above, drones swept the Square in slow, mechanical circles. Their armor gleamed under the floodlights, the regime’s black insignia stamped bold across their bellies.
One shifted closer, its mounted camera lens whirring into focus.
I slid behind a delivery cart stacked with ration tins, heart hammering in my throat.
"Window’s closing," Elena said, voice clipped.
"Copy," I breathed.
From here, every gap between bodies felt like an exposed wound.
Every breath risked being seen.
The drone pivoted back toward the main boulevard.
I ducked my head lower and moved, a shadow stitched tight to the seams of the street.
One wrong step and I was dead.
The earpiece crackled again, sharp against my skin.
"Fifteen minutes until full lockdown," Elena gasped, her voice ragged, almost panicked.
"Every street, every entrance. You need to move."
I froze by the rusted base of a collapsed light pole, the city's glow bleeding against the cracked asphalt.
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes before this place became a concrete tomb.
"I can still make it," I muttered, my voice steady even though my hands were not.
"You are insane," Elena hissed.
"If they tighten the perimeter, I cannot get you out."
"Was not asking for a rescue," I said, forcing my body to move again, slipping past a crumbling vending stall.
"Dammit, Avery."
Her voice faded into static as another drone passed overhead, low enough to feel the thrum of its engine in my ribs.
I gritted my teeth.
There were worse things than dying.
Failing was one of them.
A sliver of movement caught the corner of my eye.
Spray-painted across the crumbling brick wall beside the alley entrance, half-buried under grime and propaganda posters, was a single phrase written in blood-red strokes.
Not everything lost needs to be found.
I stopped breathing for half a second.
The words felt like a slap, too precise to be random. Someone had risked their life to put that warning here.
"See it?" Elena’s voice crackled, softer now, like she was afraid to name it.
"I see it," I whispered.
"You sure you want to keep going?"
I stared at the graffiti until the letters blurred.
"Yeah," I said, tightening my fingers around the ghost file hidden under my jacket.
"I am sure."
The wall seemed to lean closer as I passed it, the paint almost pulsing with a warning I refused to hear.
Sometimes you had to move forward. Even if the road was cursed.
The crowd shifted.
A shout split the air as a battered street vendor stumbled, his rickety cart tipping sideways. Metal pots clattered to the pavement, spilling oranges and wilted greens across the walkway.
"Move, move!" the vendor yelled, waving his arms wildly.
The river of bodies surged and twisted. I stumbled with them, instincts screaming too late.
For a breathless heartbeat, I found myself in open space, no cover, nothing between me and the Square's sweeping cameras.
Elena’s voice snapped in my ear, sharp and panicked.
"Avery. You are exposed. Right flank. Two patrols closing."
I yanked the hood lower, head bowed, praying the coat would be enough. The patrol's scanner beam hissed past my shoulder, close enough that the hair on my arms lifted.
"Keep walking," Elena said.
"Keep walking."
I forced my legs to move, past the spilled oranges rolling like tiny bombs at my feet.
One mistake. That was all it would take.
"Hey!" a soldier barked from somewhere behind me, sharp enough to split the night air.
Boots slammed against concrete, fast and getting closer.
I did not think. I dove sideways, slamming my body against the side of a broken advertisement drone. The thing wobbled on its cracked frame, its dead screen flashing fragments of a smiling propaganda poster.
"Unit Three, check that sector!" another voice snapped over a comm.
My heart pounded so loud in my ears it drowned out everything, even Elena's frantic whispers in the earpiece.
"Left alley, Avery. Move now, now!"
I pressed my back flat against the cold metal, sucking in shallow breaths as heavy footsteps passed just meters away.
The patrol’s beam scanned over the drone, bathing it in a sickly green glow. I clenched my fists, waiting for the shout that would mean I was caught.
The light moved on.
One second. One heartbeat.
I pushed off the wall and ran.
The rebel hideout was a concrete box buried two stories underground, filled with the constant hum of dying servers and the stale smell of recycled air.
Elena hunched over the cracked terminal, fingers flying across the keys so fast they blurred.
Every few seconds she wiped her palms against her jeans, slick with sweat.
"Come on, come on," she muttered, eyes darting between security grids flashing red across the monitors.
"Blind spot, blind spot... damn it."
"Elena," one of the junior techs whispered urgently from the corner. "If you cross their firewall again, they will trace it. We will lose everything."
"I know," she snapped, too sharp, too scared.
Another surveillance camera blinked offline in the Square.
A warning blared across the rebel network: System breach detected.
Elena sucked in a breath, teeth gritted.
"Just give me sixty more seconds," she whispered.
"She is still out there."
And she was not leaving Avery behind.
Dorian crouched low behind the crumbling ledge of an abandoned rooftop overlooking Surveillance Square.
His coat blended into the blackened stone, a shadow watching a city that did not even know it was bleeding.
Below, Avery moved like a ghost between bodies and broken light.
He adjusted the scope on the battered field binoculars, following her every step.
Each time she slipped between patrols, his breath caught, only to release when she vanished safely into another pocket of darkness.
"Do not," he muttered to himself, knuckles white against the rusted metal rail.
"Do not intervene."
The moment he broke cover, it would not be just Avery exposed.
The entire web they built, fragile as glass, would shatter.
Still, when a patrol veered too close, his hand hovered near the pistol hidden under his coat.
Another second. Another heartbeat.
For now, Dorian stayed hidden.
For now.
The crowd thinned as I neared the edge of the Square, where the cracked concrete funneled into a tighter corridor of barricades and scanners.
The data transfer point had to be close.
My palms itched. Every step felt like wading into invisible crosshairs.
"Almost there," I whispered under my breath.
The commlink hissed once, twice, then Elena’s voice broke through, raw and urgent.
"Avery," she gasped, "someone’s watching you."
I froze for half a beat, tucked between two broken vendor carts.
"Define 'someone,'" I murmured, scanning the floodlights for signs of patrols.
"Not patrol," Elena said. "Not one of ours either."
My fingers brushed the inside of my jacket where the ghost file burned against my ribs.
"You need to abort," Elena snapped.
"Now."
I stayed still, pulse deafening in my ears.
Abort?
Or run straight into the fire?
My shadow stretched long under the flickering streetlights.
And somewhere beyond the Square, someone else was already moving.
- Writer
