The city had rebooted, but the textures hadn’t finished loading.

  The sky hung overhead like a frozen error state flat, grey, unmoving. Shop signs flickered with placeholder certainty: STORE. FOOD. CLOTHES. Everything reduced to labels. Everything stable enough to function.

  Safe Mode.

  Low resolution. High reliability.

  Kam walked straight down the center of the high street.

  He looked wrong in the environment, like a late?loaded asset. The armor Silas had welded during the downtime wasn’t hidden anymore. No hoodie. No pretense. Matte black plates bolted over a heavy canvas jacket, scarred and ugly and unmistakably functional. Industrial. Brutal. Less outfit, more roll cage. A human reinforced for impact.

  He stepped into a puddle.

  Water splashed outward, clean and correct.

  Physics had come back online.

  Taylor walked backward ahead of him, eyes scanning the crowd with twitchy precision. People drifted aimlessly along the pavement, stopping, turning, restarting without intent.

  “The NPC AI’s dumbed down,” Taylor said. “Look at them. No pathfinding. They’re just… wandering.”

  Marcus cracked his knuckles, unimpressed. “I don’t care about all that.”

  They stopped outside a tech store.

  The glass front had been smashed inward. Jagged teeth of safety glass littered the pavement.

  Inside, a looting crew was tearing the place apart.

  Not drones.

  Not system constructs.

  Local boys.

  Scavengers.

  They shouted over each other, shoving, fighting for boxes of graphics cards like they were lifeboats. Emotions ran hot. Elbows flew. Someone laughed too loudly. Someone swore.

  Messy.

  Unfair.

  An old man stood near the counter, clutching a packet of batteries like it mattered. One of the looters—a lanky kid with too much adrenaline and not enough sense—shoved him aside without even looking.

  The old man went down hard.

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  Kam stopped.

  “Not today.”

  He stepped over the threshold.

  He didn’t glow. Not yet.

  He just brought the mass with him.

  Inside, the air smelled like dust, plastic, and broken promises.

  “Put it back,” Kam said.

  The lanky kid—Lewis—turned. His balaclava was rolled up like a beanie, face flushed, pupils blown wide.

  “Who are you?” Lewis snapped. “The police? Police are offline, bruv!”

  He swung the crowbar.

  Sloppy. Panicked. All force, no thought.

  Kam didn’t dodge.

  He caught it with his forearm.

  Metal screamed against armor. The impact rang through the store.

  Kam ignored the pain and grabbed Lewis by the jacket.

  Heat surged.

  Orange light flared under the plates. Steam hissed from Kam’s collar.

  “Drop it,” he said, voice low and wrong, carrying weight.

  Lewis dropped the crowbar.

  He shook.

  But his friends weren’t thinking.

  Three of them rushed in at once.

  The store exploded into motion—fists, shouts, shelves tipping and crashing. Marcus barreled in laughing, throwing a right hook that sent someone sprawling into a display of smart fridges. Glass shattered. Alarms wailed.

  Street?level chaos.

  Kam was winning, but the store was losing.

  And then the bell rang.

  A small electric chime above the door.

  Ding?dong.

  The sound cut through the fight like a hard edit.

  A boy stepped inside.

  Fourteen. Same age as the others. Same generation.

  But not the same world.

  He wore a white technical windbreaker—pristine silk?nylon, asymmetrical black patches arranged like stylized burn scars. Expensive in ways that didn’t hide themselves. Battle?chic. Cosplay of hardship, immaculately maintained.

  He stepped over broken glass like it was a minor inconvenience.

  He didn’t shout.

  He waited.

  Movement in the room slowed—not because he commanded it, but because his stillness made everything else feel excessive.

  Lewis stopped mid?swing.

  Kam released the boy he was holding.

  Silence settled awkwardly, like a classroom when the smartest kid walks in late.

  “You’re making a mess, Lewis,” the newcomer said, mildly disappointed.

  Lewis froze. Recognition hit him harder than any punch.

  “They were guarding the loot, H!” Lewis blurted. “I had to escalate!”

  “You didn’t,” Harry replied. “You’re just being sloppy.”

  His gaze shifted to Kam.

  “You tried to hit a tank with a stick,” he said calmly. “The math doesn’t work.”

  Harry turned toward the group.

  Not Kam first.

  Leo.

  His eyes flicked to the tablet in Leo’s hands, then to the duct?taped sensor rig wired together with copper and stubbornness.

  “Nice rig,” Harry said. “Custom kernel?”

  Leo blinked. “Uh. Yeah. I bypassed the TPM module to—”

  “Forces a local handshake. Smart.” Harry smiled—easy, genuine, devastatingly confident. “But you’re choking your own data stream. You routed the sensor array through USB?C?”

  “It’s the only port with enough bandwidth!”

  “For raw data, sure. But thermal?” Harry shook his head. “Lagging. That’s why your readings on Kam are always two hundred milliseconds behind reality.”

  He tapped the sleek earpiece at his temple.

  “I run mine through the audio jack. Analog. Zero lag.”

  Leo stared.

  Because Harry was right.

  “Did you just get patch?noted by the villain?” Taylor whispered.

  Harry ignored him and turned back to Kam.

  “Leo’s brilliant,” Harry said. “You’re lucky.”

  He extended a hand. “I’m Harry. And yes—the e?bike rider from earlier? My intern. He said you hit like a bollard.”

  Kam felt the heat coil tighter under his skin.

  “You testing me?”

  “Just checking something.”

  Harry waited.

  Kam hesitated, then took the hand.

  He pushed heat into the contact—a controlled thermal dump. A test.

  The white armor didn’t blister.

  Vents snapped open along Harry’s shoulders.

  Cool blue vapor blasted out—liquid nitrogen misting the air.

  Kam’s heat vanished.

  Cold bit deep. Frost crept over his knuckles. His hand went numb.

  Harry wasn’t overpowering him.

  He was balancing the load.

  “I’m not fighting you,” Harry murmured, leaning close. He smelled like expensive soap and ozone. “You’re doing good work. But you’re running hot.”

  He released Kam’s frozen hand.

  “I’ll handle the cooling,” he said lightly. “You just… idle for a bit.”

  Harry turned to the looters.

  “Go home,” he said. “Before we have to calculate your kneecaps against the insurance payout.”

  They didn’t argue.

  They ran.

  Harry walked out.

  Outside, a pristine white SUV waited at the curb. The driver—recognizable now as the e?bike kid—wore a chauffeur’s cap like it was normal.

  The vehicle pulled away, clean and quiet.

  The squad stood in the wreckage, watching it disappear.

  Kam flexed his fingers. They tingled painfully as the feeling returned.

  “That was weird,” Leo said, staring at his tablet.

  “What?” Taylor asked. “That he handled them without throwing a punch?”

  “No,” Leo said. “I scanned him when he grabbed Kam.”

  He turned the screen.

  THERMAL OUTPUT: 0.

  “He has no engine,” Leo said quietly. “He’s room temperature.”

  Marcus spat on the floor. “Fake.”

  Kam kept watching the empty street.

  “No,” he said.

  He clenched his still?cold hand.

  “He’s optimized.”

  FADE OUT.

  FADE OUT.