Shun Steel's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Shun Steel stepped into the penthouse and set his metal hand flat on the table. His mother sat across from him, the only family he had left at this table. He kept his face still. He came here for the crew, not for her. Everything he did now pointed one way — keep the Nightrunners standing, even if it meant cutting the last thread to his blood. She slid a small pink drive across the polished surface. "Take it," she said. "Before you ask, no, your crew has never seen what's on it." Shun plugged it into his arm port. Files bloomed behind his night vision eyes. Maps. Names. A rival outfit had been hunting his crew for months. His mother had been watching them through a tall neon tower across the skyline — a private listening spire only their company owned. She had been shielding the Nightrunners in silence, feeding the threat false trails. "Why?" he asked. "Because you would never come home if they died," she said. "And I would rather you be alive out there than buried here." Shun pocketed the drive. His sleek car waited below, his robotic dog curled in the passenger seat, the hidden base entrance already pinged on his map. He stood. "Then stop shielding them. I will." He walked out knowing the truth now sat in his pocket, and the crew would hear every word of it before sunrise.