The Caliburn pulled way too much attention, and the closer I got to City Center the more I felt that drag in people’s eyes, their heads turning a fraction too late as the paint caught neon and threw it back. I kept the speed steady, stayed off the obvious arteries, and followed side streets until I found a business hotel with an underground garage, cameras aimed at the ramp.

  I paid forty-eight hours up front and parked in a corner slot under a light that didn’t flicker, then sat behind the wheel with my fingers resting on the leather, listening to the engine settle and the faint tick of cooling metal. Walking away took effort in a way I didn’t expect, and I gave the dashboard a small, stupid salute before I stepped out and shut the door carefully, as if the sound carried meaning.

  Dino Dinovic wasn’t a rumor you chased through bars; his name sat in public feeds attached to glossy vehicle shots and curated client stories, City Center polish wrapped around luxury metal, and Rayfield was stamped all over his domain. The game had trained me to wait for a trigger and a message, but reality offered a cleaner path: a public acquisition portal, an intake form that asked for make, model, year, condition, and proof you weren’t wasting time.

  I sent sanitized data, kept the origin vague, and added a short line about needing cash, fast.

  The answer came within an hour.

  Inspection scheduled. Acquisition partner will handle evaluation. Location attached. Bring keys.

  The attached address led to an underground level beneath a bland building with filtered air and warm vents, the kind of place that paid extra for quiet. The acquisition partner waited near the ramp in a pale jacket and polished shoes, posture trained to project calm; two men hovered behind him at a distance that read as professional, broad shoulders and heavy wrists, hands relaxed in a way that promised speed.

  He introduced himself with a name built for paperwork and circled the Caliburn slowly, scanning panels, checking seams, running a handheld unit along the undercarriage before plugging a diagnostic cable beneath the dash. His slate filled with lines I couldn’t read from where I stood, and his eyes tightened for half a second at something in the handshake before smoothing back into neutrality.

  “Unverified chain of custody,” he said. “Documentation gap.”

  “We agreed on a figure,” I answered, keeping my voice flat.

  “We discussed a range,” he replied, and he said it with the finality of a person who’d never needed to repeat himself.

  He quoted a number. Low enough to turn the whole meeting into a joke.. My cheap cyberhand clenched without permission, synthskin pulling at the wrist seam, tactile feedback arriving dull and late, and I kept the keys closed in my fist.

  “Wire the original,” I said.

  He didn’t argue. He glanced over his shoulder, and one of the men moved.

  I kept the keys closed in my fist until the first hit knocked them loose. It landed close, a forearm driving into my chest and pinning me against the car’s side with controlled force, enough to steal a breath and lock me in place without breaking anything. For a second I couldn’t tell if the ringing was the lights or my skull.

  The second man stepped right with a baton already up, the tip sparking blue—no.

  “Fuck,” I rasped.

  The shock scraped across my shoulder and down my back, heat blooming under skin, jaw clamping hard enough to taste metal. Sound thinned. Distance became angles. The Drift pushed at the edges of my perception and something colder slid under it.

  I broke the pin with a shoulder jerk and drove the cyberhand up under the first man’s chin, the strike landing harder than it had any right to because the hand didn’t care about its own bones. His head snapped back into the Caliburn’s window with a sharp crack, glass holding while his knees tried to remember how to work.

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  The second man adjusted fast, abandoning the baton for a straight punch meant to fold me into concrete; it clipped my cheekbone and threw stars across my vision, and my feet slid on a thin film of moisture on the floor. For half a second I felt the whole thing tipping toward a pile of limbs and panic and then timing tightened again.

  I stepped inside his guard, caught his wrist with the cyberhand, twisted until his balance broke, and drove my knee into his thigh to steal his base. He grunted, tried to headbutt me, and I took the edge of it before I grabbed his collar with my organic hand and slammed him face-first into the Caliburn’s side. The sound was ugly. He sagged, tried to spit, and I used the moment to breathe.

  The first man recovered enough to reach under his jacket, steel flashing under the strips. He came in with a short stab aimed for my side, and I shifted late; the blade cut cloth and skin, shallow, heat opening across my waist.

  I caught his wrist with the cyberhand and squeezed until tendons complained, then drove my elbow into his throat hard enough to turn breath into a wet cough. He stumbled, tried to pull free, and I shoved him backward with everything I had. He went down awkwardly, shoulder striking concrete first, head following, and his body settled into stillness.

  The second man reached for his waistband. I closed the distance, drove the heel of my hand into his wrist, felt bone give, and rode him down onto his stomach, pressure on spine and neck until resistance degraded into twitching.

  The ventilation carried blood and ozone outward in a thin current. The acquisition partner stayed where he stood, expression tight around the eyes, then looked down at his slate as if he’d been waiting for the moment the math became clear.

  “This was preventable,” he said.

  “You changed the number.”

  His thumb moved once. A transfer notification blinked at the edge of my vision.

  45,000 eddies.

  He watched my face while the money landed.

  “Risk premium,” he said. “Educational surcharge.”

  He sounded pleased with himself, and that was almost the funniest part of the night.

  A second notification followed, encrypted, unsigned except for a stylized D that appeared for an instant and vanished. Acknowledgment?

  Dino had seen enough.

  I picked the keys off the floor and slid into the driver's seat, leaving a faint smear on the leather. The Caliburn started with smooth indifference, and I drove out of the garage without rushing, because rushing made cameras remember you.

  I looped back to the hotel garage where I’d paid for time and pulled the Caliburn into its corner slot under the steady light, the engine ticking down into quiet again. Sitting there with the city’s hum muffled by concrete, I felt something I didn’t want to name settle in my chest, an attachment grown out of distance and survival rather than sentiment.

  I rested my palm on the wheel and held it for a second.

  I’ll come back for you.

  The goodbye stayed inside my skull. I locked the door, walked away, and forced my feet to keep a steady pace until the garage swallowed the car’s shape. By the time I got out, I realized I was breathing through my teeth.

  Kabuki covered you in noise the moment you stepped into it, neon slicing through damp air, fry oil and cheap incense mixing under hanging cables, vendors barking prices that changed mid-sentence depending on your shoes. I kept moving, followed public listings, found a building that had survived by refusing to improve, and climbed stairs that smelled of detergent and old water damage.

  The landlord sat behind reinforced glass with a cracked corner and a cheap fan spinning on his desk, and he watched the transfer hit his account twice before he slid a keycard through the slot without asking questions. I took it, went up to the fourth floor, and opened a narrow unit with a bed bolted to the wall, a desk scarred by knives and cheap solder burns, and a window that looked out over wires draped between rooftops.

  I locked the door, set the keycard on the desk, and peeled my shirt off slowly. The cut at my side wasn’t deep, but it was real, and it reminded me that the next time I got sloppy, it would likely be the last. I cleaned it with water and pressure, wrapped it tight with a strip torn from an old towel that smelled of bleach and someone else’s sweat, then flexed the cyberhand and watched the synthskin pull at the wrist seam.

  Tomorrow Viktor Vektor would see it, and he would tell me what part of my shoulder was paying the price for a cheap install and a cheaper cover.

  I lay back on the bolted bed with my boots still on, eyes fixed on a ceiling stained by old leaks, and let Kabuki leak through the walls in muffled arguments, cheap music, plumbing coughs, and the occasional hard footstep that suggested somebody was proving a point to somebody else. The towel strip around my waist pulled every time I breathed too deep, the synthskin at my wrist tugged at its seam when I flexed the cyberhand, and the room held that sour mix of detergent, cooked grease, and damp concrete that passed for home when you paid three months ahead.

  My eyelids stayed open longer than they should have, and the overlay surfaced the way it always did when it felt entitled to my attention.

  LEVEL: 2

  DRIFT: LOW