Two hundred miles away, inside a silent satellite node disguised as an abandoned weather station, a red light blinked for the first time in years.
"GHOST SEED KEY ACCESSED.""ASSET: RIVEN // STATUS: UNCONTAINED."
A chair turned.
A woman stood. Long coat, silver implants running down her spine like a second nervous system.
Codename: EMBER.Job: Memory reclaimer. Asset burner. Ghost hunter.
She didn't ask for permission.
She just grabbed her case, boarded a stealth skimmer, and vanished into the wind.
Back in The Nest, Riven knew something had changed.
The air felt different.
The cube's glow had dimmed, but something still pulsed from it—a signature.Weak. Faint. But traceable.
He scanned the room again. No drones. No signals.
"Paranoid," he muttered."Good."
He sealed the cube in a lead-cored box and buried it under the floor.
Then he prepped The Nest.
—EMP bursts by the windows—Pulse traps in the stairwell—Motion tripwires synced to TOOLHAND
He didn't know who was coming.
But he knew they were.
Three hours later, Ember stood on a rooftop across the block, visor reading heat signatures.
Nothing.
Except a trace… like a footprint in infrared.
Her lips curled.
"He thinks he's hidden.""That's adorable."
She vanished in a flicker of static, moving toward the Nest—silent and fast.
Riven checked his last alarm node.
Everything set.
He sat down, TOOLHAND primed.
"Alright," he whispered."Let's see who knocks next."