Eira was no longer a courier. The network had made that brutally clear the moment his ident-chip refused to sync at the dispatch terminal. One blinking red glyph—"ID: INVALIDATED." That was all it took to reduce him from a sanctioned asset to a walking liability.
He didn't linger. The dispatch operator, a thin man with iridescent cybernetic lenses for eyes, barely looked up as the warning alert blinked across the interface. Eira turned and walked out of the queue before anyone could notice, his boots barely making sound against the rusted polymer tile of the alley-level exchange node. But his mind raced.
The chip in his wrist—burned with the network's approval for three years now—was his only way of earning time. Without it, he couldn't pick up jobs. He couldn't navigate the city without triggering automated security sweeps. He was, effectively, dead weight.
And worst of all: someone had pulled him.
The cause was obvious. That corrupted drive. The list. His name on it—dead five years ago. Somehow, plugging that file into his old decryptor had sent a signal, a flag. Whatever system had tracked the expired, whatever network ghost lived in that black market data coffin, it had decided he didn't belong in the world anymore.
He moved quickly, weaving through the maze of ChronoCity's second-tier mezzanines. Elevated walkways arced between time-scrapers, layered like spiderwebs of steel and solar glass. Above, the towers of the wealthy sparkled with kinetic shielding and private skyrails. Below, the rusted chasms of the worker levels buzzed with anti-riot drones.
Eira didn't have a destination. Not anymore.
His timer ticked in his vision—faint red holograph projected just behind his retina, counting down: 41:07:12. Forty-one hours left to live. And dropping.
He ducked into a maintenance corridor that fed into the old sewage tunnels—disused by sanitation, but mapped by couriers over the years as a backdoor escape route. He kept his head down, the hood of his smog-cloak pulled low, filtering the sulfuric stench of city runoff. He moved with practiced ease until he reached an old conduit box set into the wall.
With a sharp breath, he connected his wrist implant to the box. Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
Then—a flicker. Static. A half-beat heartbeat. A message blinked across his interface.
"Network Access Denied. Courier ID 74-09-EX: REVOKED."
He hissed through his teeth and yanked his arm free, clenching his fist. Whatever damage he'd done by viewing that drive, it had spread. His name wasn't just on the list. It had rewritten the network's perception of him. The system thought he was a ghost.
Or worse: a thief.
A voice chimed in the corridor behind him. Not words. A tone. Two notes, rising.
He turned sharply—too sharply—and nearly lost balance.
Above, perched atop a collapsed service ladder, stood a figure in a clean suit. Matte white armor, featureless mask, and a black visor band pulsing with soft teal light. No insignia. No voice.
Just watching.
Eira didn't wait to be asked questions. He ran.
The tunnels behind him echoed with the clang of footfalls. Not many. Just one. Steady. Controlled.
He bolted into the adjoining pipe—half-flooded, lined with oxidized metal and graffiti-coded messages from couriers long gone. His boots splashed in acidic runoff. Sparks of timer pain flicked across his nerves. Every burst of adrenaline burned seconds, maybe minutes, off his life. But stopping would cost more.
He reached an access hatch that led back into the city's fringe. The old rail yard. Obsolete. Forgotten. Mostly.
He emerged into the waning dusk light, the sun a dull smear behind ChronoCity's domed smog barrier. No crowds here. No traffic. Just decommissioned rail carts and the dry whine of magnetic residue.
The clean-suit figure was still following. Still tracking.
Eira climbed a freight container. Dropped down the other side. Then pivoted around a maintenance shed. He waited, hidden behind the angular shadow of twisted steel. Breath held.
He pulled up his HUD overlay. His remaining time now: 39:58:01.
More than an hour lost. Burned in adrenaline, stress, sprint. No income to earn it back.
A brief burst of digital static pinged in his implant—a trace signal. Someone had tried to reconnect.
Then silence.
He waited.
The clean-suit figure didn't appear.
Instead, across the lot, an old drone shifted. Its optics clicked. Re-focused. Then…relayed. A low-pulse data flash blinked from its chassis. It wasn't acting alone.
Someone had eyes on him. From everywhere.
Eira moved again, circling back toward the city's industrial gut. The old desalination plant had long been converted into an autonomous data tower—off-grid and mostly abandoned. He could hole up there. Maybe reach someone. Tarin, if he was still around.
But the question clawed at him: who had the authority to revoke his courier status? Who had rewritten his file across every node of the city?
And who the hell was wearing clean-suits without insignia, tracking ghosts through the sewer system?
Just before disappearing into the steel alley between substation walls, Eira glanced back at the rooftop.
The clean-suit figure was there now. Watching again.
Except this time, he raised a hand.
And pointed.
Not at Eira.
At the sky.
Seconds later, a silent, needle-thin probe broke through the upper dome's cloud layer—its lights dimmed, its sensors aimed downward.
He'd just become a national alert.
To be continued…