Crynix's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Two nights after the panel blinked green, Crynix could not lie still. The Neon-Tigers wanted a friend with claws. But he did not know what they did to the blocks they called theirs. If he signed on to something cruel, he would not guard the city. He would help feed it. He needed someone who watched all of it. He found her on the roof of a weathered brick apartment building. She crouched over a glowing desk hauled up somehow, six screens washing her face in blue and pink. Her goggles sat pushed up on dark hair. She did not turn when his claws scraped the gravel. "Don't move behind me," she said. "You'll break the line of sight to the tower." Crynix stopped. On one screen a bar climbed, then a timer counted from twelve. "You watch the whole city," he said. "I need to know about the Neon-Tigers." Her fingers kept moving. "Cypher," she said, not a question, just her name dropped like a coin. "What do you want to know." "What they really do. To the neighborhoods they protect." The timer hit zero. The bar collapsed. Cypher exhaled through her nose and typed a new string. "They tag a wall. Owners pay for eyes. Cameras, sensors, panels. If you don't pay, the dog-cutters come through and the Tigers watch it happen." "They let it happen." "They arrange it." She pulled up a still on the far screen. A metal-jawed doberman stood in a doorway, orange plating along its ribs, eyes lit yellow. "That's what they send when a block goes quiet on payment. It doesn't bark. It's on your street in ninety seconds." Cold ran down Crynix's spine. The house behind the rail yard. The cameras on his porch. He had let them wire his walls with the same stolen eyes. "Their leader," Cypher said. "Shun Steel. Cybernetic. Wings, metal arm. Smart. He feeds his family a soft story and runs the rest in the dark." She said it flat, like reading a signal strength. "He'll want you to owe him. You already do." Crynix looked at the doberman on the screen, then at the timer resetting to twelve. "What are you sending?" "A message. Someone I care about is inside a facility. Twelve seconds through a tower during lights out." Her jaw tightened. "That's all you get." He understood then. She was not a guardian. She was one person trying to reach one person. But she had told him true. "I won't sign," Crynix said out loud, and the words settled his chest. He would not be their claws. He would pull the panel out with his teeth if he had to. Cypher's next burst climbed past twelve. She almost smiled. "Then Shun will treat you like a dog-cutter," she said. "He already knows where you sleep." Crynix stood. His safe house was no longer safe. But now he knew what he was fighting.