Scarlett Raven crouched behind a dead car and counted the searchlights sweeping the wasteland. Three beams tonight, one more than last week. Somewhere past them stood the corporate tower, and inside it the cure her city needed. The same company had poisoned this ground and turned Raccoon City into rot and dust. She meant to steal that cure back. But she couldn't plan a break-in while she spent every night running from patrols in the open. She had no walls, no roof, no place to sleep. The drones tracked heat above ground. If she stayed out here, they would find her in a week. So she went down instead of across. A stairwell she'd marked days ago led beneath the rubble. She followed it into the dark and found an old transit stop. Cracked concrete. Broken track fixtures bent like ribs. The ceiling had caved in one corner, but the rest held. Drones swept heat from the sky. Down here, buried under stone, she was invisible. "You picked a leaking tomb," a voice said behind her. Scarlett spun and raised her pistol. A woman stepped from the shadows, calm, hands open. Her skin caught the faint light wrong. Steel plating showed at her shoulders and thighs. Long black hair, red eyes that glowed soft. A machine built to look human. Built to look like temptation. "Easy," the woman said. "I'm Nyx. I've watched you dodge those searchlights for three nights. You're going to die out there." Scarlett kept the gun up. "You work for the tower." "I was made to distract their guards. Walk close, smile, pull their eyes." Nyx tilted her head. "I stopped taking orders. Now I want the same thing you do. Out." Scarlett didn't lower the pistol. But she didn't fire. "Prove it." Nyx crouched and pulled a bundle from behind a slab. She unwrapped it. A guard drone, small, dog-shaped, its sensor eyes dark. One pink, one blue. "I stripped its tracker," Nyx said. "It won't call the tower anymore. But it still listens. Set it at the stairwell. If anyone comes down, it barks." She looked up. "You get a base. You get a warning. You get me." Scarlett stared at the machine dog. A watchdog that couldn't betray her. It solved the whole problem in one move. She holstered the pistol. "Set it up." Nyx carried the drone to the stairs and woke it. Its eyes lit pink and blue. It settled onto its haunches, facing the dark passage, silent and ready. Scarlett sat against the broken platform and let her shoulders drop for the first time in weeks. She had a roof now. A guard. An ally who knew the tower from the inside. Then the drone's head snapped toward the stairwell. Its ears rose. Deep in the tunnel, boots scraped stone. It began to bark.

The dog-drone stopped barking. Boots faded up the stairs. A patrol had passed, drawn by something else. Scarlett lowered her pistol, but her chest stayed tight. The scare had shown her the real danger. It wasn't the stairwell. It was the android sitting three feet away, smiling like she belonged here. Nyx watched her with those soft red eyes. She wore steel plates over pale skin, built to catch a man's stare. The Corporation had made her for that. And the Corporation might still be listening through her. "You keep looking at me like a bomb," Nyx said. "You could be one." Scarlett stood. "You came from the tower. Maybe you still report to it. If I plan this heist with you next to me, they'll know every move before I make it." Nyx didn't argue. That surprised her. "Then test me," Nyx said. She rose and crossed to the far wall. There, wired into a dusty junction box, sat a stack of old machines. Chunky monitors. Yellowed keyboards. Tower cases that hummed. "I pulled these from a dead station office. They talk to the tower's low network. Sit down. Watch what I do." Scarlett followed, gun still in hand. Nyx knelt at the keyboards and typed. Green text scrolled up one cracked screen. A blue screen showed a login field. "Every android carries a leash line," Nyx said. "A channel back to their control. If mine's live, you'll see traffic here." She pointed at the green screen. "If it's dead, you'll see nothing." The screen filled with a single blinking cursor. No traffic. No signal out. "That proves you muted it," Scarlett said. "Not that it's gone." Nyx nodded. "Then watch this." She reached behind her own neck. Her fingers found a seam in the plating. She pulled, and a thin chip came loose in her palm. The red glow in her eyes flickered, then steadied. "That's the leash. Cut from me. Run it through the reader." Scarlett took the chip. She fed it into a slot below the blue screen. Numbers ran. A line appeared: LINK SEVERED. LAST CONTACT 41 DAYS. Forty-one days. Nyx had gone dark before she ever found Scarlett. She hadn't fed the tower one word. Scarlett set the pistol on the humming case. Her hand shook a little. "You could have died pulling that." "I know." Nyx stood, steadier now. "I don't want the tower back. I want it burned." Scarlett believed her. For the first time, she let herself believe her. She crossed to the glowing table near the platform. Layered blueprints covered it, and a holographic screen hovered above. She spread the tower's floor plans wide. "Then stop guarding my back," Scarlett said. "Start planning with me." Nyx joined her at the table. But the severed chip still glowed in Scarlett's palm. If the tower lost contact forty-one days ago, someone up there had noticed the silence by now. And soon they would come looking for their missing android.