[
The hidden room behind the café’s storage door felt more like a compact war room than a basement. Banks of equipment hummed softly, blue and green LEDs blinking in uneven rhythms that painted the concrete walls in shifting color. The air smelled of dust, coffee, overheated plastic, and under it all, the faint sweetness of syrup leaking from somewhere upstairs.
Three tower PCs were lined up against the far wall, each wired to dual monitors that overflowed with Vyra’s feeds: camera grids, scrolling code, live overlays of the city’s districts. Under the desk, cables tangled like roots, running to routers, signal boosters, and a jury?rigged power strip that absolutely was not fire?safe. On metal shelves nearby, gadgets were stacked in careless abundance: AR glasses, palm?sized jammers, micro?drones in various states of repair, magnetic keycards, slim data drives, printer?warm fake badges, and a tray full of lockpicks that looked more artisan than legal.
In the corner, a sagging sofa tried to pretend this was just a chill spot and not an operations center. A threadbare blanket had been thrown over one arm, half hiding a burn mark in the fabric. The low table in front of it was crowded with empty mugs, cans, crumpled snack wrappers, and a single notebook opened to a page full of arrows and underlines. Against the adjacent wall, a small fridge vibrated with a constant low buzz, packed with energy drinks and whatever counted as food on short notice.
Maps papered the longest wall: Vyra in the center, then larger regional charts showing Karth, Naelis, and Elyn clustered around it like encroaching fronts. Fluorescent markers traced borders, transit lines, and choke points. Colored pins and sticky notes clustered around certain zones, forming dense knots of risk and interest. A long table stood beneath the maps, covered in printed floor plans and wider layouts of the district, dotted with simple plastic pieces standing in for patrols, checkpoints, camera arcs, and possible exits.
Jax leaned both hands on that table, staring at the mess of lines and pions like he could will them into a victory screen. The cheap plastic dug into his palms; the paper smelled faintly of ink and the solvent from the printer upstairs.
“So,” he said, breaking the silence, “we’re all here to save one fox, right?”
The word save seemed to land harder than the rest of the sentence, hitting the room and sticking. Near the shelves, Kai’s fingers curled tighter into his sleeves, the knuckles whitening for a second. His gaze dropped to the floor plans, tracking the line toward the gala entrance without really seeing it.
Nobody answered right away. The humming machines filled the gap, a soft, accusing static.
Mara, perched on the arm of the sofa, finally clicked a pen closed and tossed it onto the notebook. The tiny snap sounded too loud in the tight space.
“He’s right,” she said. “This isn’t just another in?and?out. Not this time.”
Ivo, sitting at one of the terminals, did not bother to turn around. The glow from his screens etched the edges of his profile in cold blue.
“It is another mission,” he replied. “Objective, constraints, risk. Same pattern, different name.”
Mara narrowed her eyes at the back of his head.
“Except this time, they’re expecting you,” she shot back. “Not me.”
Ivo’s fingers paused briefly on the keyboard, then resumed their steady rhythm. On his monitor, a row of access profiles kept updating, lines crawling, little green checkmarks blinking in sequence.
Before the tension could unspool further, Aren cut in. He stood near the maps, sleeves rolled up, a marker still uncapped in his hand. A faint ghost of ink stained the side of his thumb where he’d been tapping it.
“Enough,” he said. “Zera is already working on the fake IDs. All three of you get new profiles for tonight. We know the system has your faces logged and flagged.”
The word flagged made the air feel thinner.
Elian, who had been trying to stay small on the edge of the sofa, blinked.
“Wait,” he said before he could stop himself. “You just… make IDs? Like that?”
His bracelet pulsed a faint amber, picking up the spike in his pulse. He turned his wrist in, trying to hide it out of habit.
Mara tilted her head toward him, finally taking the time to really look. Her gaze moved over his too?neat collar, the clean nails, the way he sat like he was afraid to touch anything.
“Right,” she said. “And who exactly is he?”
Aren glanced over.
“Elian. Med student,” he said. “Top of his year in being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Mara’s mouth curved.
“Perfect,” she said. “We finally have someone to stitch us back together when Jax decides gravity is optional.”
Jax straightened, hand to his chest.
“Hey, I only break important bones,” he protested. “For dramatic effect.”
Mara didn’t miss a beat.
“Exactly,” she said. “If you’re going to traumatise the medic, at least give him something interesting to look at.”
Elian blinked. “Is… is that your safety plan?”
Jax grinned. “Relax. I have a very strict policy.”
He held up a finger.
“Number one: I don’t die.”
A second finger.
“Number two: if I do, it’s off?screen so it doesn’t mess with the rating.”
The joke landed crooked, half a smile from Mara, nothing from Ivo, a quiet exhale from Elian who was not sure if that was supposed to be comforting. The tension in Kai’s shoulders didn’t shift.
Aren uncapped the marker again and circled a section of the gala’s floor plan. The pen squeaked against the laminated paper.
“We are on a clock,” he said. “Ivo, I need server uniforms. The ones for tonight’s gala. Right size range, right catering company. If they wear badges, I want samples. If they use QR codes, I want the template.”
Ivo finally pushed his chair back a little, enough to glance at the map. His chair wheels rolled over a discarded power cable, making it jump.
“How long?” he asked.
“Less than two hours before doors open,” Aren replied. “We need you inside the building before the guests start streaming in. I want entry while security is still in setup mode.”
He turned to Jax.
“You handle the car,” he continued. “Fuel, plates, route. I want at least one primary exit and one backup. No main checkpoints, no major arterials. If something goes wrong, nobody gets funnelled into a bottleneck.”
Jax could already see the city grid in his head: the clogged main arteries, the narrower streets that smelled of oil and fried food, the alley with the cracked pavement he knew he could take at speed.
“On it,” Jax said. “I’ll run a path that looks like a delivery route, then a ghost route if we have to vanish.”
Aren nodded.
“Elian, you’re going in with us,” he said. “You put on a server uniform like the others, but you’re not just there to carry trays.”
He tapped a spot on the floor plan near the service corridors.
“You’re our on?site support. If someone goes down, you’re the first one there. If a guest looks too interested in us, you ‘check on them’ and listen. If security gets jumpy, you’ve got the best excuse in the room to be anywhere.”
“So I’m… what, a mobile first?aid station?” Elian asked.
“A mobile first?aid station with ears,” Aren replied. “You keep a kit on you, you know the basics, and you follow whoever is most likely to get stabbed or do something stupid.”
Jax pointed at himself. “Hi.”
Elian’s bracelet buzzed at the jump in his pulse. He tried to ignore it. Being useful was better than just being bait.
Finally, Aren faced Mara.
“You,” he said, “give us a way in that doesn’t raise alarms. You know the building. Service entrances, staff corridors, maintenance shafts, anything. I want angles the cameras don’t cover and choke points we can use.”
Mara’s expression sharpened. Somewhere behind her eyes, a layout lit up, lines and doors and blind corners, half?remembered from staff shifts and half stolen from leaked schematics.
“I’ve got something better than angles,” she replied.
She crouched beside one of the shelves and pulled out a compact case the size of a lunchbox. The plastic was scuffed, edges spider?cracked from older runs. With a click, it unfolded into a black, bird?shaped frame. The drone’s body was made of matte composite plating, its wings folded tight, feathers replaced by layered adjustable panels. A soft tone pulsed as its internal systems woke; two small lenses in its head brightened to a cold electric blue.
The drone flexed once, wings shivering, then settled on the tabletop, clawed feet gripping the edge. The claws made a faint scratching sound on the cheap laminate.
On the nearest screen, a notification flashed briefly:
NEW DEVICE REQUEST → ACCESS DENIED
Zera, hunched over another terminal, snorted under her breath and killed the alert with a quick flick of her fingers.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Kai’s gaze flicked to the message and away again. His jaw tightened for a heartbeat, a pulse jumping in his cheek, then smoothed out. He shifted closer to the wall, as if the concrete could steady him.
Elian stared.
“Is that alive?” he asked, voice low without meaning to.
Mara did not answer right away. She tapped a command on her wristband. The drone responded instantly, hopping forward in a precise, bird?like motion, then launching itself into the air with a smooth, mechanical beat of its wings. It glided in a slow arc over Elian’s head, so close he felt the faint displacement of air and heard the quiet whirr of its rotors.
“Elian,” Mara said with a straight face, “if it lands on you, don’t move. It can smell fear.”
He jerked his shoulders up, eyes widening, fingers tightening on the sofa edge. For a second, his bracelet spiked his stress metric into a sharp, accusing red. He realized she was watching him too closely, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“You’re joking,” he muttered.
The drone let out a brief synthetic click that almost sounded like amusement and veered away, circling the room once before perching on a metal pipe near the ceiling. Dust puffed down in a thin halo. From there, its lenses refocused with a soft tick, sending a new perspective of the room to one of the screens: everyone rendered in cool grayscale outlines, skin temperatures tagged in faint color.
Jax glanced up at the live feed and saw himself as a pulsing outline, hands braced on the table. Next to him, Kai’s silhouette burned a little hotter around the shoulders and throat, like someone standing too close to a fire.
“It’s a scouting rig,” Mara said. “Crow chassis, custom firmware. I can route it through the gala’s upper levels, check for blind spots, count uniforms, log guard rotations, and map every door that isn’t supposed to be used.”
“Better eyes than ours,” Aren agreed. The marker in his fingers clicked against his palm. “You’ll run it live?”
“Remote,” she nodded. “If it gets tagged, it drops the feed and plays dead. Worst case, they think it’s an art piece someone broke.”
Jax smirked.
“Imagine the review. Security: zero stars. Murder crow: ten out of ten.”
Mara rolled her eyes, but did not entirely suppress a laugh. The sound broke some of the static in Kai’s chest; his shoulders dropped half a centimetre.
“Listen up,” Aren said, raising his voice enough to pull everyone’s attention. The word snapped through the humming room like a small charge. “From now until we move, every minute counts. Ivo, uniforms and access. Jax, car and routes. Mara, entry strategy and drone sweep. Elian, you’re on support inside the gala. Zera, keep the IDs clean and synced.”
He capped the marker with a sharp click.
“Fox doesn’t get a second chance tonight,” he added. “Neither do we.”
Chairs scraped back and keys began to clack. The drone’s lenses narrowed, recording, while a countdown timer appeared on one of the screens and began its slow fall from just under two hours, digits flipping with soft, steady ticks.
[ 55 minutes before the gala]
The suit itched.
I had worn uniforms before, but never one this expensive. The fabric was smooth under my fingers, too smooth, like it was trying to convince me it belonged here more than I did. The collar pressed against my throat as if it had opinions about who Nolan Cole was supposed to be. I tugged it looser for the third time and watched the knot of the tie jump with each swallow.
“Okay,” I told my reflection quietly. “We can pretend to be a person for one night.”
SELF?ASSESSMENT:
CORRECTION:
The apartment looked exactly like a mid?tier lifestyle brochure promised it would. Neutral grey walls that never showed dirt on camera, smart flooring that hid scuffs unless you stared too long, light strips that faded up when you moved, bright enough for recordings but never quite warm. It all smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and already?cold coffee, the official scent of “we’re doing our best.”
Behind me, the hallway lights turned my hair into a mess of pale brown and gold. No amount of water or combing had convinced it to lie flat; it kept springing back up in soft, stubborn spikes, like it had missed the memo about tonight being important. My shoulders were a bit too narrow under the structured jacket, my limbs a bit too long for the frame the tailor clearly had in mind. The half?awake grin slid into place by muscle memory, crooked and lazy, my default patch whenever the system hovered a cursor over me too long.
PUBLIC IMAGE: 92%
“Chin up,” Dad said, close enough that I could smell his aftershave, sharp and clean. “You’re slouching.”
“Just pre?emptively bowing to the elites,” I said. “Efficient, right?”
His hand landed on my shoulder in the mirror, fingers firm, nudging my spine straighter by a few obedient degrees. His suit was the same navy as mine but somehow it looked like it came preinstalled: broad back, precise lines, the small gala pin catching the light with every slow, controlled breath. His reflection studied mine, making silent calculations that ended in numbers, not words.
From the living room, the murmur of the news feed leaked through. A calm voice announced fluctuations in something that probably mattered more than we did. A soft theme hummed under it, then the subtle tick of numbers sliding along the bottom of the screen, scores and markets and metrics. There was always some ticker running in this house. Tonight, it blended with the faint rustle of fabric as Mum shifted on the sofa, the tiny tap tap tap of her nails on the tablet frame.
“Check the event app,” she called. “They updated the entry schedule. The invitation should be synced to your bracelets by now.”
Right on cue, my bracelet buzzed against my wrist.
[NOTIFICATION:Digital Pass received]
ACCESS:CONFIRMED
ENTRY:
“They’ll stream arrivals this time,” Mum added. “So no glitching the pass, please.”
Streaming. Of course they would. Why just feel judged in person when you can do it live, with your access level glowing on your wrist.
My gaze slid to the holographic household display above the hall console, our score hanging there like a polite threat while my bracelet still tingled against my skin. The white digits on the wall and the tiny icon on my wrist seemed to pulse in the same rhythm, both waiting for tonight.
HINT: +2% Social Impact when smiling sincerely
ERROR: sincerity not found
I bared my teeth at the mirror, then let it melt into the familiar half?smile, the one that turned everything into a joke before anyone could look too closely. The boy looking back at me seemed laid?back, the kind of guy who would make fun of himself first to save everyone else the effort.
Inside, my chest felt hollow and heavy at the same time, like something important had been scooped out and replaced with a weight.
The living room matched the performance. The usual scatter of mugs, my hoodie abandoned on the arm of a chair, a pair of shoes exiled in the middle of the floor, all gone. Cushions lined up like they were waiting for a surprise audit; the table gleamed. The big screen, usually full of serials or commentary, played the gala’s promotional loop: light?drenched halls, slow pans of glass and steel, beautiful people moving through them like they had never had to check their balance before buying anything.
On the wall, our life was pinned in rectangles: me in school uniforms and festival outfits and a too?big jacket at twelve; Kai, younger, his laugh caught mid?movement, always slightly blurred because he never knew how to stand still; Dad and Mum at work events, their smiles a little tighter, holding glasses in rooms that were always, somehow, one tier nicer than ours.
In the photos where I wasn’t alone, I was almost always at the edge of a group, like the teacher had nudged me into frame at the last second. Over some of the frames, translucent overlays floated, screenshots of score jumps and Best Day Yet banners, printed like other people printed sunsets.
Mum stood, smoothing her dress over her hips. The fabric whispered as it settled. Her heels tapped on the floor, sharp staccato against the muted hum of the apartment. On normal days, her shoes were flat and practical; tonight, every extra centimetre was a small weapon aimed at perception. Her hair was pinned up tight enough that I could almost feel the phantom headache gathering behind her eyes.
“Let me see you,” Mum said.
I stepped into the living room light.
“There you are, my bright point,” she said, standing on her toes to adjust my tie. “Brighter than any of those numbers.”
She said it like a joke, but her eyes checked the console over my shoulder anyway.
I stepped fully into the room and gave a small spin, jacket flaring an inch. “Ta?da. Discount NPC turned main character. Limited time only.”
Mum huffed a laugh that sounded more like an exhale that got lost.
The light from the screen brushed over my tie, making the navy flash almost electric, an echo of the gala promo looping behind me. In the dark glass of the balcony door, I caught our reflection: Dad, Mum, me, three figures lined up like a before?and?after ad that hadn’t decided which stage I belonged to yet.
Her gaze swept over me, tie, shoulders, shoes, posture. Her fingers twitched, the instinct to fix something, then stopped halfway, like she remembered she was supposed to trust me with this and did not quite manage it.
“You look good,” she said at last. The polish slipped on the last word. “They’ll notice you.”
My mouth tried to smile; my stomach did something else. The taste in my throat was mint and metal and the ghost of burnt toast from this morning, when I’d watched the score graph instead of the toaster.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
For a second, her expression shifted, like she might ask a real question. Then the moment smoothed itself out, pressed flat by habit.
Dad stepped closer to the console by the door and lifted his wrist. The bracelet around it lit up with a faint ring of blue. He tilted it toward the household display.
Social: Talent:Visibility:Impact:
R: 5.2
He watched the numbers like they might suddenly change out of respect.
Mum stepped up next, raising her wrist. Her bracelet light flickered green.
Social: Talent:Visibility: Impact:
R: 4.87[STATUS: Improving | Last 30 days: +0.12]
She exhaled slowly, shoulders loosening by a fraction. “Good. They’ll see we’re trending up.”
Then both of them turned to me.
I didn’t move immediately. My body ran a quick cost?benefit analysis of forget to go versus disappoint them, and, like always, the second one won. Autopilot kicked in and I stepped forward, arm out, like I was handing the system my wrist on a small, invisible plate.
My bracelet woke with a soft buzz, a ring of pale white circling my skin before projecting my number toward the console.
Social: Talent:Visibility:Impact:
R: 4.23
There it was. Not terrible. Not impressive. The numerical equivalent of yeah, he’ll do.
“Four point twenty?three,” Dad repeated, not loud, not quiet. His mouth tightened for a heartbeat. “If you were a bit more consistent at school, you’d be over four point five by now.”
“Look at us,” I said. “Almost a functional family if you squint at the decimals.”
Mum’s eyes flicked from the display to my face and back again, like she was trying to overlay the two and check for bugs.
“You’re in the right band for this crowd,” she said. “That’s what matters.”
Right band. Sure. If you ignored the part where my insides felt like they were busy falling through the floor.
Dad’s gaze lingered on my bracelet. “Try not to make remarks that are too… Nolan tonight, okay?”
“You mean, try not to be me?” I said. “Super motivating.”
“I mean,” he corrected, “don’t give people a reason to underestimate you.”
I pulled my arm back, the bracelet still faintly warm against my skin, and shoved both hands into my pockets so they wouldn’t shake. The 4.23 hung in the corner of my awareness like an afterimage I couldn’t blink away.
“Can we go before the system decides I’ve dropped to a three for bad posture?” I asked. “I’d hate to ruin the family average.”
“That’s not funny, Nolan,” Mum said too fast, too sharp. Then she pasted a smile over it. “Just… be careful tonight.”
I did what I always did when the air got too tight: I made it easier for them.
“Relax,” I said, half?smile locked in place. “I’ll stand where you want, smile at whoever you point at, and do my best impression of someone who deserves a five.” She let out a small, unwilling laugh. Dad’s mouth twitched into something almost like approval. Their shoulders squared, faces sliding into their public versions.
For a heartbeat, I wanted to say I’m tired or I don’t want to do this or can we just stay home and watch something stupid instead. The words lined up behind my teeth.
ATTEMPT:
RESULT:cancelled by user
“Ready?” Dad asked.
I swallowed the words, felt them sink somewhere under my ribs, and nodded with the lazy grin everyone liked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go show them how above?average mediocrity looks.”
