[THREAT CLASS: WOLFSKIN PACK]

  [RANGE: CLOSING]

  [THERMAL ECHO: ACTIVE]

  "The Wolfskins heard the flare you threw at the pickpocket."

  "They heard heat?" I asked, trying to keep my breath as we made our way through the Vein at a breakneck pace.

  "They have sensory mods spliced into their skulls that can smell a temperature spike from three blocks away," Dax said, steadily. He kept a hand on the pistol holstered on his hip. "And now they have a scent trail."

  "Stay calm," Dax said, not even breathing hard. He took a sharp left, ducking under a cluster of hanging power cables. "If you panic, it makes you hot. Hot keeps them on you."

  "I'm not panicking," I lied, my voice tight. "I'm tactically hyperventilating."

  “New tactic…” he shot back. “Just breathe!”

  I tried. I forced air into my lungs, counting with my steps.

  One…two – breath.

  Again.

  Again.

  It helped. Something shifted in my perception. It wasn't the heat this time; it was clarity.

  The gloom of the service tunnel seemed to brighten just a fraction, the edges of the shadows sharpening. The chaotic layered noise of Sector 9 – the distant trams, the hum of generators, the shouting…it separated into distinct audio tracks.

  I could hear the drip of condensation thirty feet ahead. I could hear the scuff of Dax's boots on the grit.

  And I could hear the wet, snuffling intake of air behind us.

  Sniff-click.

  Wolfskins. They were close enough to smell the fear on me.

  "They're triangulating," I whispered.

  "They're hunting," Dax corrected. "Keep moving."

  We burst out of the tunnel and into the under-market, a sagging, rusted grid of catwalks suspended beneath the main thoroughfare. It was a ceiling of hanging tarps and exposed conduits, leaking oil and neon light onto the scavengers below.

  Vendors were already scrambling. They knew that howl. Stalls folded inward like dying flowers; shutters clammed shut.

  We ducked behind a stack of plastic crates smelling of old fish.

  "Stay low," Dax ordered.

  I crouched, pressing myself into the shadows. My heart hammered against my ribs. I could feel the warmth coursing through my veins.

  I looked down at the metal grating beneath my boots.

  Faint, glowing orange footprints marked where I’d stepped. They were fading, slowly…but too slowly.

  Fade, I willed them. Just fade.

  I forced my breathing to slow, visualizing the heat inside me as water, still and deep. The footprints dimmed a fraction faster.

  "So, I can't stop leaking heat," I muttered. "But I can leak slower."

  "Progress," Dax murmured, scanning the catwalks above.

  A group of locals hurried past our hiding spot, heads down, eyes wide. They didn't see us at first. Then, a woman with a cybernetic eye that whirred too loudly glanced into the shadows.

  She froze.

  Her gaze locked onto me, the scorched jacket, the pale skin, the faint violet pulse of the Brand I was trying to hide.

  "It's her," she whispered. Her voice carried over the din. "The ember girl."

  "Bullshit," her companion hissed, pulling at her arm. "She burned. I saw the feed."

  "No," the woman insisted, backing away. "They say she walked off the pyre laughing. They say she burned a patrol alive in the Cut."

  "Shut up, that’s just another Ash-rat," a third man growled. "You want the Order on us? They say she's a Nullchild. Bad luck. Don't look at her."

  They scattered, giving us a wide berth, their arguments fading as they disappeared.

  My HUD glitched, static washing over my vision:

  [BROADNET TRACE: PARTIAL MATCH]

  [ERROR: ANOMALY SIGNATURE UNSTABLE]

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  I whispered, watching them run. "I didn't laugh. I screamed."

  Dax cursed under his breath. "City’s writing your story faster than you can live it. We have to move. That crowd just painted a target on us."

  A growl from above ripped through the air, vibrating the catwalk.

  I spotted movement through a tear in a blue tarp. A shadow leaping from a support beam to a ventilation duct. Long limbs. Too many joints.

  "Roof interceptor," Dax said. "One high, two low. They're boxing us in."

  He grabbed my arm and hauled me up.

  "Run."

  We sprinted across a rickety catwalk that spanned a gap between two hab-blocks. The metal groaned under our weight. The drop below was a hundred feet of smog and jagged rebar.

  Stay calm…

  Good luck with that. The panic spiked. Heat flared in my chest, rushing to my skin.

  I grabbed the handrail to steady myself.

  Hiss.

  The metal glowed bright orange under my palm. I snatched my hand back, but the print remained: a perfect, burning handprint stamped into the rust.

  "Dammit," I gasped.

  The Wolfskin on the roof saw it.

  It shrieked, a high, mechanical sound, then launched itself down.

  It landed on the catwalk twenty feet in front of us.

  The impact shook the entire structure. It straightened, unfolding like a nightmare spider. It was tall, wiry, with a face that had been surgically pulled forward into a muzzle. Goggles were fused to its skull, lenses cycling through thermal spectrums.

  It chittered, clicking its teeth. It looked at the glowing handprint.

  It looked back to catch it with what I could only assume was a smile through the taut skin that remained on its hybrid face.

  "Fresh," it gargled. "Hot."

  It crouched to spring.

  "Dax," I said, backing up.

  "I see it," Dax said, his hand moving to his pistol.

  But I knew a bullet wouldn't stop it fast enough. It was too close. It would be on us before he cleared the holster.

  I needed to hide. Not my body. My heat.

  I closed my eyes for a microsecond. I found that pilot light inside…the core of the Brand's fire. Instead of pushing it out, instead of letting it flare, I shoved it down. I imagined burying it in concrete. I imagined ice.

  It worked.

  My skin went cold.

  The glowing handprint on the rail faded abruptly. My thermal signature dropped.

  The Wolfskin hesitated.

  It cocked its head, the thermal lenses whirring as they tried to reacquire the target. For a second, I was just a cold spot in a warm world. It was confused.

  BAM!

  Dax didn’t hesitate.

  The shot took the Wolfskin in the shoulder, spinning it around. It wasn't a kill shot, but it knocked the thing off balance. It stumbled, nearly tumbling off the catwalk, but its claws found purchase on a railing.

  "I don’t know what you just did, but if you can do it again…" Dax said, grabbing my collar and shoving me past the creature while it was disoriented. "…you might actually live the night."

  "Sure," I wheezed, sprinting past the snapping jaws. "Biofeedback yoga while being hunted by Wolfskins. No prob!"

  We hit the far side of the catwalk and scrambled up a maintenance ladder. The Wolfskin recovered with a roar, scrambling after us. Howling to its team, a mix of pain and desperation.

  Above us, sparks showered down from a broken high-voltage conduit arcing rhythmically against a support strut.

  SNAP-CRACK.

  Dax timed it perfectly, leaping through the gap in the sparks. He landed on the platform and turned to pull me up.

  I looked back. The Wolfskin had recovered and was climbing the ladder, fast. Too fast.

  I looked at the sparks.

  Physics, I thought.

  I didn't jump immediately. I waited.

  “Hold,” I told myself.

  One…two…

  The Wolfskin lunged for my ankle.

  I jumped.

  I cleared the gap just as the conduit swung back.

  SNAP-CRACK-BZZZZ

  The arc hit the Wolfskin square in the chest.

  It didn't die. These things were built to take punishment. But the voltage locked its muscles. It convulsed, claws frozen on the ladder rungs, body seizing in a rigid spasm of electricity.

  [COMBAT ADVANTAGE CREATED]

  [THREAT STATUS: DELAYED]

  The Wolfskin’s body seized. It held a death grip on the ladder but couldn’t move. A muted howl emanated from its muzzle weakly.

  “Nice trick," Dax said, hauling me onto the platform. "You might actually survive the night after all.

  "Your confidence is so reassuring," I blurted, wiping a cold sweat from my forehead.

  We scrambled through a hatch into a maintenance shaft. It was dark, stinking of oil and old blood. I kicked a loose grate back into place over the opening, jamming it with a piece of rebar.

  "That won't hold them long," Dax said.

  "It doesn't have to," I said. "Just long enough to disappear."

  We moved deeper. The shaft narrowed into a dead-end corridor lined with old mod-chairs and broken screens. The floor was stained dark.

  "This block's dead," Dax said, stopping short. "We just sealed ourselves in…”

  "They're tracking the heat," I said. "If I can stop leaking, they stop tracking."

  I ducked behind a toppled cyberwear table, curling into a ball.

  "Cover me," I whispered.

  Dax understood. He threw a heavy, lead-lined tarp over the table, boxing me in.

  I laid in the dark, listening.

  Scratching. Howling. They were at the grate.

  I forced my breathing to slow. I visualized the ice again. I pulled every scrap of heat from my skin and shoved it deep into the Brand. It hurt. It felt like swallowing a star. The pressure built in my chest, aching, demanding release.

  Hold it, I told myself. Hold it.

  The scratching stopped.

  Silence stretched.

  Then, a frustrated yelp. The sound of claws retreating. Fading.

  They had lost the trail.

  My HUD chimed, soft and blue in the darkness:

  [COMBAT EVENT: ESCAPE / EVADE]

  [HOSTILES: WOLFSKIN PACK (x3)]

  [OUTCOME: SURVIVAL]

  [XP GAINED: +120 ]

  I let out a breath it felt like I’d been holding for an hour.

  Dax pulled the tarp back.

  "They're gone," he said.

  He looked at me. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between respect and calculation.

  "You're learning fast," he said. "Or you're lucky. Are you okay? You're trembling..."

  I looked at my hands. They were shaking violently. The adrenaline crash was hitting, and it was hitting hard. It was the first time he showed genuine concern beyond finding me interesting.

  "I need gear," I said, my voice thin. "I can't keep doing this in rags."

  "I know," Dax said. He moved to a side hatch I hadn't noticed, punching a code into a rusty keypad. "I'll bring you gear. Filters. Food. Try not to ignite anything while I'm gone."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To cash in a favor," he said. "Stay put. If you leave this room, you die."

  The hatch hissed open. He stepped through, then sealed it behind him.

  I was alone.

  The silence of the room pressed in. The cold from the concrete floor seeped into my bones.

  It wasn’t lost on me that he had another way out of that dead end all along. Was he testing me? Who the fuck did he think he was?

  And then the heat came back.

  It didn't sneak up. It rushed in. The suppression I’d held onto... it broke. The dam shattered.

  Heat flooded my system, rebelling against any false sense of control I thought I had.

  [WARNING: BURN LOAD / CORE TEMP MISALIGNMENT]

  [RISK: OVERHEAT EVENT]

  [SYMPTOMS: TREMOR / MEMORY ARTIFACTS]

  My vision tunneled. The room seemed to tilt. Shadows stretched and warped, turning into shapes that weren't there.

  I sank to the floor, clutching my chest. It felt like my heart was beating pure fire.

  Not now, I thought. Not now.

  But the darkness was already pulling me down.

  As my eyelids pulled themselves together, I couldn’t help but think:

  If anyone found me there, this would be my end…