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Chapter 3 of 12

The city learned my face before I could remember my own.

By morning it was everywhere.

Tower screens the size of cathedrals. Transit walls sweating static. Corner kiosks flickering between detergent ads and state-sponsored fear. My reflection in puddles, interrupted by crimson glitch lines. Even the fog seemed to carry me.

A woman can disappear in a city.

An image cannot.

My face burned red across the skyline like a public confession.

WANTED
CLASS: 0H-7
REWARD: 50,000,000 CR

No mention of my name.

No mention of what I had sacrificed.

No mention of the child whose hairclip still sat in my pocket like a tiny accusation.

Just a category. A price. A problem someone wanted solved.

I ran because stillness had become expensive.

Rain came down in hard silver lines, needling the human side of my face while sliding harmlessly from steel and synth-fiber. It smelled of wet concrete, burnt wires, gutter oil, and the strange sweet rot cities grow when nobody loves them anymore. Neon signs bled across puddles in bruised reds and dying whites. Somewhere above, engines whined with insect precision.

Drones.

Three at first.

Then six.

Then more.

Their search beams swept the alley behind me in clean red bars, carving the rain into geometry. Corporate angels with gunmetal wings and no interest in mercy.

I cut left through a market lane where vendors were already slamming shutters down. Metal doors rattled like teeth. Fear travels fast when money is involved.

A woman selling counterfeit medicine looked up as I passed. Her eyes met mine for half a second.

Recognition.

Pity.

Then she looked away.

That hurt more than it should have.

My boots struck water, glass, and old cigarette filters. Coat snapping behind me, breath measured, optic mapping routes faster than panic could form. Every corner offered options. Every option smelled like a trap.

I used to think freedom was the absence of walls.

Turns out it’s the absence of hunters.

Two retrieval agents stepped from a side passage in matte black armor, rifles already rising. Their visors reflected me back in fractured slivers.

“Unit identified,” one barked.

Unit.

Always easier to murder machinery than a woman.

I hit the first before he finished the sentence.

Palm to throat.

Cartilage gave with a wet crack that sounded too intimate. He folded, clutching at air like it had betrayed him. I took his rifle in the same motion and fired twice into the second agent’s knee.

Bone shattered.

He screamed like someone raised to believe suffering was for other people.

I kept moving.

There’s no triumph in violence when it becomes routine.

No swelling music.

No righteous heat.

Only efficiency.

Only arithmetic written in blood.

Above me, the nearest drone opened fire. Concrete burst beside my shoulder, spraying sparks, dust, and stone chips across my cheek. Something sharp sliced the flesh side of my neck. Warm blood mixed with cold rain and slid beneath my collar.

My optic flooded with warning text.

STRUCTURAL STRESS
POWER DRAIN
RUN

“I’m aware,” I muttered.

Even half-machine, I still argued with things trying to save me.

I vaulted a barricade and entered a maintenance corridor lit by flickering strips that buzzed like dying flies. For three blessed seconds I had darkness, my own footsteps, and the ragged sound of my breathing.

Then I saw her.

Human me.

Standing at the far end of the corridor in a black dress, dry as prayer.

Hair untouched by weather. Skin untouched by revision.

She said nothing.

Just raised one hand and pointed upward.

I dove without thinking.

The ceiling exploded as a drone punched through it in a storm of concrete, rebar, and screaming metal. Gunfire stitched the wall where my chest had been a heartbeat earlier.

Dust filled my mouth with chalk bitterness.

When I looked back, she was gone.

I hate being helped by ghosts.

The drone twisted to reacquire target lock. I drove my hand into its undercarriage, fingers punching through heated casing. Wires lashed my wrist like nerves refusing death. I tore free the power core.

Heat blistered the skin of my palm.

Blue-white sparks lit the corridor in epileptic flashes.

I jammed the core into a junction box and the whole passage erupted in shrieking electricity. Lights blew out in rapid succession. Somewhere beyond the walls, an entire block went dark.

Men shouted.

Systems failed.

Good.

Darkness makes everyone honest.

I emerged into the open avenue as emergency grids tried to wake. The skyline pulsed black-red-black-red. Tower screens glitched, multiplying my wanted image until ten versions of me stared down at the street.

Copies hunting copies.

Fitting.

Then I saw something worse than drones.

Bodies.

Three women laid beneath a transit overhang, rainwater pooling around them and carrying thin ribbons of blood into the gutter. Same bone structure. Same dark hair. Same surgical seams beneath the jawline.

Failed Takis.

Execution shots centered cleanly between the eyes.

Fresh enough that the blood still looked undecided.

Someone had arranged them carefully, shoulders aligned, hands folded. Not disposal.

Presentation.

One had my green eye.

My stomach turned in a way machines cannot explain. Something primal rose beneath the implants and armor and borrowed parts.

Grief, maybe.

Rage wearing grief’s coat.

I crouched beside the nearest body. Rain ticked softly on dead skin and exposed metal.

Her lips were parted.

As if she’d almost said something useful.

A scrap of paper rested on her chest, pinned beneath stiff fingers.

I pulled it free.

YOU ARE NOT THE LAST.
YOU ARE JUST THE ONE STILL MOVING.

The handwriting was elegant.

That somehow made it worse.

Slow applause echoed from the alley mouth behind me.

Measured.

Confident.

The kind of applause given by someone who already knows how this ends.

I turned.

A tall woman in a crimson coat stood beneath the rain, untouched by hurry. Gloves black as confession. Hair streaked with silver at the temples. One human eye, sharp and amused.

One glowing red optic.

Older than me.

Sharper than me.

Composed in ways I had never been.

Her smile was thin as wire and twice as dangerous.

“Hello,” she said.

Her voice sounded like mine after years of learning patience.

“I’m Version Four.”