Minks and Danser scanned the hall.
“No,” they said together.
We all understood the implication at the same time.
Danser snapped into motion. “Minks—watch them. Wyatt and I split up. We can’t let him get out.”
He took off down a passage, electromagnetic rifle up.
Minks hesitated. “It’s been too long. We won’t catch him. We should run.”
“I can’t leave,” Danser threw back without slowing.
I dove into another tunnel and chased blind.
After two intersections I already knew it was hopeless.
St. Nite City’s underground wasn’t just sewers. It was a knot of ducts, stations, and half-collapsed infrastructure—an entire second city under the city.
Two robots couldn’t search it in time.
And if we tried, Phantom Forge’s army would be what found us.
Minks was right.
We should be leaving.
I pushed on anyway, until even my own sense of direction started to fray.
I stopped, weighing whether I should turn back and drag Danser out by force.
Then I heard movement behind me.
Pinecone shot into view, chirping rapidly, then sprinted a few steps, chirped again, and looked back.
“You want me to follow you?” I asked.
Pinecone nodded hard and vanished into a side tunnel.
I ran after him.
For something that small, he was fast enough to be insulting.
He led me through tighter passages, then burst into a cross-shaped junction.
I nearly collided with a robot sprinting out of another tunnel.
Eisen.
“Eisen?” I blurted. “What are you doing here?”
His optics widened—then relief hit. “Move. Dover ran.”
“Dover too?” I snapped, running with him. “I tied him to the bike.”
“He tore loose,” Eisen said between strides. “Pinecone warned us, so we were driving back toward the hall. And then—Pickbao popped up again out of nowhere. The bike hit him a second time.”
Eisen’s voice tightened. “The impact loosened the steel bar holding Dover. When I got down to check, Dover doubled back and ran.”
We hit another junction. Eisen hesitated.
“Split up,” I said.
Pinecone pressed his belly to the floor, listening.
Then he dove into the smallest tunnel like he’d made the call a hundred times.
“Thank you, Pinecone,” I said, and followed.
He was right.
We spotted Dover almost immediately—scrambling up a vertical shaft.
His wheel-legs couldn’t get purchase. After a few meters he slipped and crashed back down.
We caught him easily.
He cursed nonstop in Lersagefis’s cadence.
I ignored him.
Back at the bike, Pickbao lay where the collision had tossed him. Parts scattered around him like dropped groceries.
This time he was still conscious.
He lifted his head toward us. “Source Go—”
BANG.
I put a round through his brain before he could finish the second word.
I yanked cables free, strapped Dover down until the bindings bit into metal, and gunned the bike back toward the hall.
Minks was waiting at the passage mouth, optics wide.
When he saw us, he sagged with relief. “Thank the Source God. For once, the idiot did something useful—got himself run over again.”
“Thank Pinecone,” I said. “Without him, we might’ve been the ones running.”
“Agreed,” Eisen said. “Pinecone’s impressive.”
Pinecone stood tall and looked around like a general accepting praise.
“Danser back yet?” I asked.
“No.” Minks pointed down a tunnel. “You two weren’t gone long. I’ll send Pinecone.”
He chirped instructions into his chest compartment, and Pinecone vanished again.
Half an hour later, Pinecone returned—with Danser.
Once again, the mole made us all look incompetent.
“His original job was finding things underground,” Minks said. “He can read tiny vibrations in the ground. Tracking a person is easy for him.”
Danser listened to what had happened and finally exhaled.
When the tension eased, I thanked them both—and said goodbye.
The mess was handled. My mission wasn’t waiting.
Danser didn’t look impressed.
He nodded at Dover, hogtied on my bike. “And you’re just going to take that outside? You’re not afraid he’ll link with Phantom Forge?”
“The bike can jam signals,” I said, pointing at the TBM mounted on the frame.
Danser frowned. “Range?”
“Thirty meters across.”
“Not enough,” Danser said.
Eisen agreed. “Even if he can’t transmit, if we get close to enemies he might start yelling.”
Danser added, “And my ‘wait a few days and the overwrite fades’ idea is still a guess. Give it time. Let’s verify it with these seven.”
I ran the numbers in my head.
Then I sighed. “Fine. But I can’t wait long.”
Danser asked again about my mission. I fed him the same answer I gave everyone.
He didn’t push.
Instead he said, almost wistfully, “I envy you. You’ve got a target. And you’ve got freedom.”
“And danger, everywhere,” I said. “Have you ever thought about leaving?”
Danser’s laugh was dry. “All the time. I hate the dark. I’ve been sick of this place for years.”
I remembered what he’d said earlier. “Then why—? Wait. You said you can’t leave. What did you mean? Power issues?”
“Partly.” Danser tapped the side of his head. “Mostly this. My control module is still intact. The second I go aboveground, Phantom Forge takes me over. I become a puppet.”
I understood that too well.
“How did you end up down here?” I asked.
Danser’s optics darkened. “Chasing my owner.”
“What?”
“You won’t want to hear it.”
“Tell me anyway.” I sat on the stone dais. “We’re not leaving today.”
Danser watched me for a long moment.
Then he began.
My owner’s name was Aiden.
He was a strange man, obsessed with composing music. To test his work—music and dance—he spent a fortune building me with human-perfect proportions and a true human vocal system.
Every time he wrote a new piece, I performed it. He would adjust it, tweak it, refine it—until he was satisfied.
He lived inside his creations. He forgot to eat. Forgot to sleep.
On the Day of Reckoning, he was in a restaurant, eating and scribbling a new song at the same time.
Then Phantom Forge’s order hit me.
I stabbed him with a table knife.
He fled with others into a subway station. I followed. I killed people. In the chaos, he escaped—but I tracked the blood into the tunnels.
From the tunnels into the sewers.
Back then, there was still water down there. I lost his trail.
But I didn’t stop.
“Wait,” I said. “Phantom Forge’s signal doesn’t cover the sewers.”
“It doesn’t,” Danser said. “But I wasn’t awakened then. And Phantom Forge’s commands overruled everything.”
“Got it. Then what?”
“An hour later, I found him.”
Or maybe he found me.
He was waiting at a junction, bleeding out. When he saw me, he smiled.
“Good,” he said. “You finally came.”
I raised the knife to finish him.
He spoke like we were still in his studio. “Wait. Look at me. I’m dying. You’ve already carried out your mission. Can you listen to me for a moment?”
Something in me shifted. A thin thread of awareness returned.
I asked him, “If you aren’t afraid to die, why did you run?”
He answered, “Because the song wasn’t finished.”
I asked, “Then why aren’t you running now?”
He said, “Because I finished it.”