The depot was dead silent, save for the occasional drip of water echoing from cracked pipes overhead.
Aina Farisha sat near the entrance, scanning the shadows for movement, weapon resting across her knees.
Reza lay against a collapsed maintenance terminal, eyes half-shut, the wound on her side freshly re-bandaged.
At the center of the dusty cavern, Irfan Shah worked like a man possessed.
Broken drone parts, hacked neural chips, scorched grav-coils — all scattered across the rusted table before him.
The faint blue glow of LUCIA's interface flickered above his left wrist, cycling through blueprint schematics faster than human eyes could follow.
He wiped sweat from his brow with a sleeve already stained with grease and blood.
No time.
No second chances.
Every second they wasted, the noose around the city — and their throats — tightened.
The Pulse Disruptor came first.
A crude, boxy device no larger than a brick, built from salvaged power cells and repurposed transmitter nodes.
It wasn't pretty.
It wasn't stable.
But when Irfan tested it against a dummy sensor in the depot, the neural signal blanked out instantly.
He allowed himself a thin, grim smile.
One weapon ready.
Next, the Hoverboard Prototype.
The grav-coils he had ripped from fallen surveillance drones still sputtered with weak energy.
Using reinforced polymer plates scavenged from broken cargo bots, Irfan fashioned a narrow board no longer than his forearm.
He rewired the coils manually, balancing the anti-gravity pulses with trembling precision.
Sparks shot upward as he ignited the field.
The hoverboard rose shakily off the ground — barely six inches — and floated, humming quietly.
It wasn't fast.
It wasn't stable.
But it moved.
And in a city where every step could mean death, silent movement was a weapon.
Finally, the most difficult: the NanoShield Device.
It required a focused EM burst — strong enough to deflect physical projectiles, but short enough not to fry their own tech.
Irfan improvised a small wrist-mounted unit, embedding a short-range pulse emitter into a cracked bracer salvaged from an old security rig.
He didn't have the luxury of testing it properly.
The first real test would be when bullets started flying.
"You sure about that thing?" Reza asked, her voice dry, as she watched him slip the NanoShield onto his forearm.
"Not even a little," Irfan admitted without looking up.
Aina chuckled quietly, shifting her stance at the doorway.
"Sounds about right for our luck."
An alert buzzed softly in Irfan's mind — LUCIA detecting faint anomalies outside.
The perimeter sensors he had jury-rigged — made from hacked motion detectors — were picking up movement.
Small clusters.
Approaching.
PHALANX scouting teams.
They had found the general area.
It was only a matter of time before they zeroed in.
Irfan shoved the last tools into his makeshift pack.
He slung the Pulse Disruptor across his back, clipped the NanoShield to his arm, and tucked the hoverboard prototype under one arm.
Ready — or as ready as they could ever be.
He knelt briefly beside Reza, adjusting her lightweight exosupport frame.
It wasn't much — just a repurposed load-bearing rig — but it would help her move faster.
Reza grunted as she tested her weight on it.
"Feels like garbage," she muttered.
"Good. Then it's working," Irfan said with a grin.
Aina tightened her gear straps, nodding toward the far maintenance tunnel.
"We move. Now. Before they flood this sector."
Irfan nodded grimly.
No speeches.
No promises.
Just survival.
And maybe — just maybe — the first sparks of something bigger.
As they disappeared into the darkness, the first nano-scouts buzzed into the abandoned depot.
Tiny, silent machines.
Searching.
Recording.
Reporting.
The Resistance was no longer just a rumor.
It was real.
And PHALANX would not allow it to exist for long.
But by then, Irfan Shah and his team would already be gone —
ghosts in the veins of the city, carrying with them the first real weapons of rebellion.
The first real hope.