Riley's hands freeze over the circuit board when Marcus walks into the workshop. His second-oldest brother, here on Level 13, maybe fifty yards from the warehouse where Riley spends every night building things the Alley Rats use to hurt people. Marcus doesn't know yet. Nobody's told him what his little brother actually does down here. Riley shoves the circuit board under a tarp and stands. The workshop-garage behind him spreads across the concrete like a map of everything he's accomplished since leaving home—the orange stripes bright against the gray buildings, the cartoon rat grinning above the main garage door, tools arranged on benches he welded himself. He built this. The Alley Rats gave him space and materials and told him he was brilliant every time something worked. Marcus is looking at the rat logo now, his face doing that thing where he's trying to figure something out. Riley talks fast, waving at the setup like it's a legitimate business, like the workbenches and gear aren't two steps from gang territory markers. He needs Marcus to see success here, to finally think his little brother is worth something. But Marcus's eyes keep going back to that grinning rat, and Riley knows the exact second his brother understands what kind of people paint their logo that big. Marcus walks past Riley without a word and pulls back the tarp. The black box sits there with its red light blinking steady. All those wires and metal strips wrapped around reinforced plating. Marcus spent two years in security before he moved up-Spire. He knows what a remote detonator looks like. Riley opens his mouth to explain, to say he just makes things, that he's not responsible for how they get used. But Marcus is already walking away, and the silence Marcus leaves behind is louder than any words. Riley stands in his workshop surrounded by everything that finally made him matter to someone, and watches his brother disappear into the crowd without looking back.

Riley runs. Marcus is already three blocks ahead, weaving through the Level 13 crowds like he still remembers the routes from when they were kids. Riley's lungs burn but he doesn't slow down. If Marcus reaches their older brothers first, if he tells them about the workshop and the detonators and the Alley Rats, then everything Riley built means nothing. Marcus cuts left past a chain link fence plastered with posters and wire ties. Riley loses sight of him for three seconds, then spots him again near the auto-shop with the bright pink neon sign. The word FAMILY glows above the garage door. Their brothers run the place now, fixed it up after Dad sold it off. Marcus is twenty feet from the entrance. Riley's chest feels like it's splitting open but he pushes harder, closes the gap to ten feet, then five. He grabs Marcus's shoulder just as Marcus reaches for the door. Marcus spins around and shoves him back against the fence. The metal rattles. A poster tears loose and flutters to the ground between them. "Don't," Riley says. He's gasping, can barely get the word out. "Don't tell them. Please." Marcus stares at him like he's looking at a stranger. "You think I want to?" Marcus says. His voice is flat. "You think I want to walk in there and tell them their little brother builds bombs for gangbangers?" Riley opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Marcus isn't angry. That's what breaks something in Riley's chest. Marcus just looks tired and sad and done. "I have to tell them," Marcus says. "Because if I don't, and something happens, and they find out I knew?" He shakes his head. "I can't cover for you, Riley. Not this." He pulls open the door and the pink light spills across the concrete. Riley watches his brother walk inside and the door swings shut behind him. Riley stands alone against the fence, still breathing hard, and realizes he just lost the only brother who might have kept his secret. Inside that shop, Marcus is telling them right now. Riley can picture their faces. The disgust. The shame. The final proof that their weird little brother never grew into anything worth respecting. He slides down the fence until he's sitting on the ground, and for the first time since he started building, the noise in his head goes completely silent.

Riley sits with his back against the fence, knees pulled up, staring at the pink glow bleeding under the auto-shop door. He can't hear what Marcus is saying inside. He doesn't need to. He knows exactly what words his brother is using right now, knows the way their older brothers' faces are shifting from confusion to disgust. He doesn't remember moving, but he's halfway down the block now, stumbling past a noodle stall where steam curls into the pink and blue neon lights. The silence in his head is worse than the noise ever was. It's not peaceful. It's empty, like standing in a room after everyone's walked out and realizing you're the reason they left. He trips over something and goes down hard on his hands and knees. Boots appear in his vision. Black, worn, practical. He looks up and sees Xyra standing over him, magnetic climbing gloves on her hands, a stack of sleek metal crates behind her still humming from whatever delivery route she just finished. She doesn't ask if he's okay. She just looks at him like he's a problem she's calculating. "You staying down there?" she says. Her voice is flat. No sympathy. No judgment. Just the question. Riley opens his mouth to say something, maybe to explain, maybe to deflect, but she cuts him off. "Because if you are, move. You're blocking my next pickup." She adjusts one of the gloves, the magnet whirring softly. "And if you're not, then get up and do something about whatever put you there." She doesn't wait for an answer. She steps around him and starts checking the crates, her focus already somewhere else. Riley sits there for three more seconds, then pushes himself to his feet. His hands are shaking but his legs hold. Xyra doesn't look back at him, doesn't acknowledge that he moved, and somehow that makes it easier. He can't wallow when someone just told him he's in the way.

Riley is still catching his breath when the shout cuts through the market noise. He turns and sees two GiganCorp guards closing in on Xyra's crates, the ones she just finished stacking. She's twenty feet away, her back to them, adjusting her climbing gloves. They're moving fast. A security drone drops from above, red and blue lights washing over the stack of metal boxes. The crates are sleek, covered in glowing patterns that pulse brighter now, like they're reacting to the scan. Riley's brain kicks into gear before he can stop it. Those boxes are flagged. Contraband, prototype tech, something GiganCorp wants badly enough to send muscle and hardware. Xyra still hasn't noticed. She has maybe ten seconds before they box her in completely. Riley's hand goes to his pocket. The EMP detonator is there, the one with the smiley face he etched on last week because it made the Rats laugh. He built it to knock out surveillance grids, not corporate drones, but the principle is the same. One pulse and everything electronic in fifteen feet goes dark. The guards would still be a problem, but without the drone scanning her face, Xyra could slip away. His thumb hovers over the trigger. If he does this, GiganCorp will know someone interfered. The Rats will ask questions. His brothers will have one more reason to be disgusted if they ever find out. But Xyra is right there, and she doesn't see it coming. He presses the button. The drone drops like a stone, lights dying mid-spin. The guards shout and spin toward Riley, and Xyra's head snaps up. She sees the dead drone, sees Riley twenty feet away with his hand still in his pocket, and her eyes narrow. She doesn't say anything. She just grabs the top crate and runs, vanishing between two stalls before the guards can recover. Riley backs up, pulse hammering, and realizes his hand isn't shaking anymore. He just made a choice, not because it would impress anyone, but because letting her get caught felt worse than the consequences. The guards are closing in now, shouting for him to stop, and he turns and runs. But for the first time in days, the noise in his head is quiet.

Riley makes it three blocks before his burner phone starts buzzing. He doesn't need to check it to know what's happening. The Rats saw something. Someone always sees something on Level 13, and GiganCorp doesn't let a dead drone go quiet. He rounds the corner near the workshop and freezes. The Rats are already there, clustered under the spray-painted orange rat that marks their turf. They're not looking at him. They're looking at the massive screen mounted on the building across the street, the one that usually cycles through sponsored feeds and corporate ads. Right now it's playing footage on loop. Security camera angle, timestamp in the corner. Riley's face, clear as day, thumb pressed to the EMP detonator. The drone dropping. Xyra running. The caption scrolling beneath reads: GiganCorp Property Destroyed by Alley Rats Affiliate. The Rats turn toward him as one, and Riley sees it in their faces before anyone speaks. They think he burned them. He opens his mouth to explain, but the words tangle up with the realization that there's nothing he can say that won't sound like an excuse. One of the Rats steps forward, holding up a small metal data chip. Riley recognizes it from the timestamp. Surveillance footage, packaged and delivered. "They sent this to us," the Rat says, voice flat. "With your face on it. Said you've been working with a rival crew, hitting their assets to frame us." Riley shakes his head, trying to form a sentence, but another Rat cuts him off. "You got proof otherwise? Because they got footage of you doing exactly what they said." Riley's brain spins through a dozen explanations, each one requiring him to admit he helped Xyra, admit he acted alone, admit he didn't think about how it would look. The silence stretches too long. Someone mutters a curse and turns away. The others follow. Riley stands there, alone under the orange rat graffiti, watching the Rats disappear into the alleys. The screen keeps looping his face, over and over, with the lie underneath. GiganCorp didn't just catch him. They weaponized it. He could chase after the Rats, explain everything, beg them to listen. But the truth is worse than the lie. He helped someone outside the crew without asking, without thinking about what it would cost them. And now the one place that made him feel like he mattered just walked away. His phone buzzes again, but he doesn't reach for it. For the first time since Marcus left the auto shop, Riley understands what his brother saw. Not that Riley built dangerous things, but that he kept building without caring who got hurt. The noise in his head roars back, louder than before, and this time he can't run from it.

Riley walks. Not toward the workshop, not toward the auto shop, not anywhere that matters. Just forward, because stopping means the noise gets louder. His phone keeps buzzing in his pocket, but he doesn't check it. The Rats are gone. His brothers won't answer. The message comes through an hour later, when he's sitting against a stack of green and yellow storage crates near the edge of Rats territory. Not a call. A location pin and three words: "Last chance. Come." Riley stares at the screen until it goes dark, then gets up. He follows the orange spray-painted stripe on the ground that marks the route deeper into their turf, past the places he used to feel safe. The stripe ends at a loading zone he's never seen before, empty except for a single figure waiting beside something covered with a tarp. The Rat pulls the tarp back without a word. Underneath sits a device Riley recognizes immediately because he designed half the components himself. Bigger than anything he's built before, wired to detonate on a scale that would take out a city block. The Rat steps back. "GiganCorp's main distribution hub. Tomorrow night. You plant this, we forget the drone thing ever happened." Riley looks at the exposed wires, the blinking red light that seems to pulse in time with his heartbeat. He built things like this before, told himself it didn't matter what happened after they left his hands. But this isn't a detonator tucked in someone's pocket. This is a statement. This is bodies. The Rat crosses his arms, watching. "You help outsiders, you burn us. You want back in, you prove where you stand. No more 'I just make the thing.' You deliver it yourself." Riley's mouth goes dry. He could say yes. Go back to the workshop, to the applause, to feeling like he matters. All he has to do is become the thing Marcus saw when he walked away. Riley stands up. The words come out quiet but clear. "No." The Rat's expression doesn't change, but something shifts in his posture. Riley keeps talking, even though his hands are shaking. "I built a lot of things I shouldn't have. Told myself it wasn't my problem what you did with them. But I can't—I won't do this." The Rat spits on the ground near Riley's feet. "Then you're done. Don't come back to the workshop. Don't use our tags. You're nothing." He covers the device again and walks away without looking back. Riley stays there, alone in the loading zone, waiting for the panic to hit. But instead there's just silence. Not the screaming noise of guilt he's been running from, but actual quiet. He's lost the Rats. Lost his brothers. Lost everything he built his life around. And for the first time since Marcus found his workshop, Riley feels like he can breathe.