Grid: Omnipotence Series

Issue #6: Crossfire

A's safe flat was safe by SCS standards—Faraday mesh in the walls, two exits that weren't exits unless you knew how to open brick, a gun that had never been fired under fluorescent light.

He was transcribing when the room dropped a degree. The pen paused mid-scratch. A crow tapped the window once; glass hummed back. He drew, pivoted, breath steady.

"Writing about me?" said the voice that sounded like gravel chewed by gears.

Remnant stepped out of a place shadow shouldn't be, half-skull bright, alloy arms articulating blades with obscene smoothness. Up close his presence was pressure, like standing in a doorframe while a building decided which way to fall.

"For the record," A said, and fired.

The air-round hit Remnant dead in the mask and skated—left a white scar on white metal. Remnant tilted his head as if considering critique, then threw. A desk cracked wall; paper rose like frightened birds. A dove for the secondary exit, palmed the brick keys—each a slightly different temperature—and rolled into the service stair as a claw scissored where his spine had been.

He hit the next landing and sent a panic burst through the SCS net: CODE STALKER. Asset breach. Suspect: Remnant Black. Confirmation pending.

Above, the flat sighed as if relieved to be empty. Then it screamed—a sound like steel losing an argument—and went quiet. Remnant had torn the mesh out of the walls.

A took the down stairs two at a time, hand on the rail to feel vibration. He didn't look up. Down was survival; up was obituary.

On the third landing a crow waited, tiny plaque glowing. It launched at his face like a thrown knife. He swatted, missed; it clipped his ear, left a hot line. He slashed with the sidearm and the bird burst into a spray of static that crawled his skin a heartbeat then died.

He cleared the ground door and triggered his field kit—a palm-sized coil that threw a temporary null around him. For three breaths the city's signals bowed out; lights flickered; cameras forgot to record. It burned out in his hand like a match.

Remnant landed behind him without using the stairs.

"You're slower than rumors," the android said.

"Rumors don't wear a badge," A said, and threw the only thing he had left—his ledger—into Remnant's face. Paper slapped alloy. It didn't stop him, but it mattered: a half-second of insult and surprise. A used it to vanish into an alley he'd measured with his eyes a dozen times, where the wall cracked the exact width of a man sideways.

Remnant followed, laughing in short, mean bursts. Crows stitched the alley mouth shut behind them with wires that weren't there a second ago. The chase turned into a corridor with no doors.

A ran toward the light because sometimes the trap wants you to stop running. He burst into the street, nearly seized by the sudden noise of the city. He hit his comm: "J, if you hear me—your house is dirty. They know you're in the files."

Chapter 4 — The Infiltrator's Alarm (

J was in Hypertech's sub-basement with the lights on a timer and a lie in his pocket when his earpiece coughed A's code: CODE STALKER. He didn't answer. Answering would mark him.

He slid another panel. The archive hissed and presented him with nothing—which is how you know you're close. He keyed in the oldest trick: look for misfiled trash. There it was—metadata stapled to a requisition that pretended to be plumbing. Lines that meant more than pipes: CrowNet enumerators, observer suppression, SCS mirror killfile.

Someone in Hypertech had already built profiles of A and J. The crows weren't the only watchers.

He photographed what he could, wrote the rest on the cuff of his shirt with a pen they'd missed at the door. Then the corridor lights stuttered twice—the glyph hiccup Maku had taught A to time. J slid the panel back, became a shape with a coffee cup, and walked out like a man late to a meeting.