Stella was trying to disengage, to help Arthur, but Vector wouldn't let her. Every time she tried to create distance, he closed it.

  "Your friend is losing," Vector called out, not even breathing hard. "He's running out of energy. I can see it in the way he moves."

  Arthur heard the words through the haze of exhaustion and hunger. Heard the cold certainty in them.

  He looked at Stella. She met his eyes across the apartment—silver meeting silver. And he saw the moment she made her decision.

  She was going to disengage from Vector. Going to leave herself open. Going to save Arthur even if it meant losing the fight.

  Just like he'd jumped after her without thinking.

  For a fraction of a second, Arthur felt something other than fear or hunger.

  Then Stella disengaged from Vector.

  And Vector smiled.

  She made a sound Arthur had never heard from her before.

  Not a scream. A high-frequency alarm—raw, piercing, the sound of systems overriding safety protocols. The sound of an android choosing emotion over logic.

  She lunged toward Rhino in a burst of impossible speed, leaving herself completely open to counter-attack.

  Vector saw the opening. Exploited it.

  His hand came up trailing monofilament wire that gleamed in the neon light. The wire wrapped around Stella's left arm—once, twice—and cinched tight with a

  Stella jerked to a stop mid-lunge.

  Vector backward.

  She stumbled, her balance broken, her blade arm waving uselessly as she tried to regain control.

  Rhino turned toward the sound. Blind, damaged, but still operating on combat protocols and proximity sensors.

  His chrome hand shot out, grabbing Stella's right wrist—the one with the blade. His fingers clamped down with hydraulic force.

  Something Metal on metal, servos crushing servos.

  Stella's blade retracted halfway, stuck, the mechanism damaged.

  "No—" Arthur pushed himself up from where he'd fallen.

  They had her. Vector held the monowire taut, keeping her left arm immobilized. Rhino gripped her right arm, preventing the blade from moving. She was caught between them, trapped.

  "Let her go!" Arthur found his voice, found his legs, stumbled forward despite the exhaustion. "She's not part of this!"

  "She is now," Vector said calmly. "She attacked us. That makes her an accomplice." His eyes flicked to Arthur. "But if you cooperate—if you come with us quietly—we'll let her walk. Fair trade."

  "Don't," Stella said. Her voice was tight, strained. "Don't trust them. They'll—"

  Rhino's grip tightened on her wrist. More cracking sounds—servos breaking, synthetic bone compressing.

  Stella's words cut off in a sharp intake of breath.

  "Shut it," Rhino growled.

  Arthur took a step forward. Another. His hands were shaking. The rage was burning through the exhaustion, making him move despite the hunger—

  "One more step," Vector said pleasantly, "and Rhino breaks her arm. Then her other arm. Then we start on the expensive parts."

  Arthur froze.

  "That's better." Vector's smile didn't waver. "Now, let's all stay calm and—"

  Rhino's left arm

  The chrome plating split apart with a mechanical , panels sliding aside to reveal what was hidden beneath. A barrel. Dark and deep, wrapped in coils that began to glow with building charge.

  A kinetic cannon.

  Military-grade. The kind of weapon that could punch through reinforced walls.

  The coils brightened. Blue-white. Humming with gathered force.

  The cannon was pointed at Stella's torso. Point-blank range.

  "Wait—" Arthur's voice cracked. "Don't—"

  "Rhino," Vector said, still calm. "Fire."

  "NO!"

  Arthur lunged forward, hands outstretched, power flaring in his palms despite the emptiness in his gut—

  The kinetic cannon fired.

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  The sound was apocalyptic.

  A deep, bass that rattled the windows and shook the floor and seemed to hit Arthur's chest like a physical blow. The air itself —a visible ripple of compressed force that slammed into Stella like the fist of an angry god.

  She flew backward.

  Through the air, through Vector's grip, the monowire under the impossible force. Through Rhino's grip, her synthetic skin tearing. Through the space where Arthur had been lunging, too fast for him to reach—

  Through the window.

  The safety glass exploded outward in a glittering cloud—thousands of fragments that caught the neon light and scattered it like dying stars. The sound was musical and terrible, a crystalline that seemed to echo in Arthur's skull.

  And then Stella was

  Through the window. Through the eight-story drop. Into the darkness below, falling toward the street lit by neon glow and endless traffic.

  "STELLA!"

  Arthur was moving before he could think. Sprinting toward the window, toward the gaping wound in his apartment wall, his boots crunching on scattered glass. His ribs screamed. His lungs burned. The hunger clawed at him. None of it mattered.

  His energy sense flared to life.

  He felt Stella falling. Felt her energy signature tumbling through the darkness, growing more distant with each fraction of a second but not—

  Not

  Still there. Still active. Damaged, failing, but still transmitting.

  The thought hit him with the force of a religious revelation.

  He could see her now—a silver-haired figure lying motionless on the fire escape platform eight stories down, illuminated by emergency lights. His enhanced vision let him make out details even in the darkness. Her torso was crushed inward on the right side, chassis cracked. Her right arm hung at an impossible angle. Her left leg was twisted wrong.

  But her energy signature was still there. Weak. Flickering. But

  Arthur's foot hit the windowsill. Glass crunched under his shoe. The night air hit his face, cold and sharp.

  He

  For one weightless moment, Arthur was airborne. Flying. The world spread out below him—Stella's form on the fire escape, the street far below, the glowing city stretching to the horizon.

  Something wrapped around his ankle.

  Monowire.

  It cinched tight like a noose and

  Arthur's trajectory changed mid-air. Instead of diving toward Stella, he swung back toward the building, his body pivoting around the fulcrum of his trapped ankle.

  The world spun—sky, ground, window, wall—and then he slammed face-first into the concrete beside the shattered window frame.

  His nose Blood exploded across his face, hot and metallic. His cheekbone hit concrete. Stars burst across his vision, white and blinding.

  The reactive hardening tried to activate— across his face—but there wasn't enough energy left.

  Not enough.

  He hung there against the wall, eight stories up, suspended by one ankle wrapped in monofilament wire. Blood ran down his face from his broken nose, dripping onto the street below.

  Then he felt it.

  A warmth spreading through his shattered nasal bone—his body knitting itself back together without his permission. Cartilage and bone shifting, realigning with small, grinding pops that made his eyes water.

  The sharp, stabbing pain faded to a dull ache as his nose itself. The break healing in seconds, tissue regenerating, blood vessels sealing.

  The blood flow slowed. Stopped.

  His silver eyes—one contact lens knocked loose—stared at the fire escape below where Stella lay motionless.

  Eight stories. Too far to reach. Too far to help.

  "Rhino," Vector's voice came from inside the apartment, distant and detached.

  Arthur heard something whistle through the air. Saw it in his peripheral vision—a small cylinder, tumbling end over end.

  It hit his chest.

  The capsule burst on contact and white foam like a bomb, expanding instantly. The chemical reaction was hot at first—burning against his skin—then it hardened in seconds, solidifying into a rigid cocoon that locked his arms against his sides and pressed against his ribs.

  Arthur couldn't move. Could barely breathe. The foam covered his mouth, his nose, leaving only narrow gaps for air that whistled with each desperate inhale.

  The monowire began to retract.

  He was pulled backward, scraping across the wall, dragged through the shattered window back into his apartment. Glass crunched under his back. The foam cocoon protected him from the worst of it, but he felt fragments cutting through his clothes, his skin.

  Then he was inside again.

  Lying on the floor. Trapped in hardened foam. Blood dried on his face. Staring up at the ceiling where the neon patterns still played—cyan bleeding into magenta bleeding into amber—as if nothing had changed.

  Vector appeared in his field of vision, looking down at him. He crouched, bringing his face level with Arthur's.

  "Your friend will survive," Vector said conversationally. "Eight stories is a long drop, but she's built tough—whoever made her knew what they were doing. But she won't be in any condition to help you. Not for hours." He paused. "And by then, you'll be long gone."

  He reached down and peeled away Arthur's remaining contact lens with careful fingers.

  Arthur's silver eye stared up at him, exposed and unmistakable.

  Vector stared at the luminous iris for a long moment, and something shifted in his expression. Not surprise. Recognition. The look of someone who'd just found something valuable they hadn't been looking for.

  "Rhino," he said quietly. "Change of plans."

  Even through the foam, even through the exhaustion and hunger, Arthur's energy sense was still active.

  He could feel Vector. Could feel Rhino. Could feel the building's power grid in the walls, tantalizingly close but unreachable.

  And he could feel Stella. Eight stories down, damaged but alive, her energy signature a cold flame in the darkness.

  She was alive.

  That had to be enough.

  "Where are you taking me?" Arthur managed to gasp through the narrow air gaps.

  "Somewhere quiet," Vector said, standing. "Somewhere we can have a longer conversation about what you are and what you can do." He paused, studying Arthur with new interest. "Originally, we were going to use you as leverage. Grab you, hold you, make Kira understand that some questions have consequences. Then we'd let you go once she backed off."

  Vector tilted his head.

  "But after seeing what you can do? How you drained Rhino's systems with a touch? How your skin hardens on impact?" He let the contact lens fall to the floor. "I don't think Kira's going to see you again, Arthur. My boss pays very well for unusual acquisitions. And you just made yourself very valuable."

  Arthur's silver eye widened. "No—Kira will—she'll look for me—"

  "Oh, she'll search," Vector agreed pleasantly. "She'll tear the city apart looking for her friend. But by the time she even knows where to start?" He gestured vaguely. "You'll be sold, studied, put to use. Whatever my boss decides. The trail will be cold. Untraceable."

  "You can't—"

  "Consider it an opportunity," Vector said. "You were nobody, Arthur. A dropout living in a third-rate apartment. Now?" He gestured to Arthur's foam-encased body. "Now you're valuable. That's something."

  Rhino's chrome hands grabbed the foam cocoon and Arthur's world tilted as he was hoisted into the air like a sack of grain, hanging from Rhino's grip, helpless and immobilized.

  The tracker bracelet on his wrist pressed against the foam. Still active. Still transmitting its quiet signal.

  "Let's move," Vector said, already heading for the door. "Before someone calls the cops about the window."

  The door opened. The hallway lights were harsh and fluorescent, nothing like the gentle neon glow of the apartment.

  Arthur twisted in the foam cocoon, trying to look back through the shattered window one last time.

  Rhino carried him out into the corridor, and Vector closed the door behind them with a soft click, and the last thing Arthur sensed before they turned the corner was Stella's energy signature eight stories below—weak but burning, a cold fire that refused to go out.

  * * *

  [End of Chapter Nine]