Qwin sues's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Qwin pressed her palm against the cold tunnel wall and felt the hum before she heard it. The federal power grid wasn't supposed to reach this far into the abandoned zone. She'd mapped every decommissioned facility in Sector 7, chased down every gene-splicer operation through corridors like these. But this tunnel still had power. She rounded the corner and stopped. A massive sphere of yellow electricity crackled in the center of the passage, suspended between floor and ceiling like a caged sun. The light carved shadows into every crack and crevice. Her scanner read active federal frequencies—recent ones, not the fifteen-year-old signal decay she expected. Someone was here. Recently. She found the chest tucked behind a collapsed support beam, its metal surface clean of the dust that coated everything else. Inside: fresh coils, gloves with supple leather, computer chips still in their protective cases. Equipment staged for retrieval, not storage. Her pulse kicked up. This wasn't a forgotten facility. It was operational. The watch on her wrist buzzed with an incoming transmission. Unknown sender. Federal encryption. The message blinked across the tiny screen: "You shouldn't be here." Qwin's jaw tightened as she photographed everything with her scanner. Chief Harken wanted proof she could build networks and run intelligence operations. She'd just found someone running one in their own abandoned infrastructure—and now they knew she was coming.