Helena hadn't been traveling long before she found the first thing she needed: a still-in-service outer-city railway yard. A conductor took two of her neural stabilizers and a promise to ride quietly as payment, then waved her toward the rear car.
The trip began with a plunge into a natural storm shelf. Lightning stitched across the sky, and the rail sang back in response. The storm rail leaned into the wind, metal finding its math, while Helena rode a crate under a sagging canvas, counting breaths until the sway evened out, letting the rhythm settle into her bones. The conductor passed only once, but every now and then tapped the bulkhead when a wind shift meant a rough minute ahead. No words, just the tap. She liked that - useful information, nothing extra.
She unlatched her bag, checked the EM sniffer's hood and the pistol's seals, and closed it again. The city would come soon enough. The courier's storm rail cut a silver path through the long flats, every tower a metronome for the weather.
She disliked travel that depended on luck, but fortunately for her the rail wasn't luck. It was math and metal and risk that could be measured. It was the safest way to travel the massive distances she needed to go. Whenever the wind slammed the carriage, she counted to three and waited for it to even out. The conductor never looked back. Good. She didn't need the man's face in her head, what she needed was the city beneath her feet.
She unpacked the kit she'd promised herself she wouldn't second-guess: the handheld Electromagnetic graphing device, which could be tuned to look for specific frequencies - called a "sniffer", its screen dim behind a rubber hood; two adhesive pucks for passive listening - no transmissions, no beacon nonsense; a wrapped combat pistol sealed against rain, two spare cells, a coil suppressor that ate muzzle flash; and paper maps with grease-pencil lines, penciled again and again until the page grew soft.
She began tuning the sniffer, setting its baseline, watching the ambient spikes rise and fall. The storm noise would drown most cities. Fluxhaven would be worse, but that was likely the point - the city would make the same roar of signals as the sky. If the rogue Synthetics lived there, they'd choose places where the weather made them invisible. She had to think like a machine, maybe even going so far as pretending she was one.
The old plan - too clever by half - failed first. She crossed out the idea of staging a fake maintenance error to see who came to fix it. That assumed she knew the grid. She didn't. It assumed a response time. She didn't have that either. She drew a clean line through it.
The next plan died quieter: a decoy order for specialty couplers and a rare coolant blend. It would bring somebody, sure, maybe the wrong somebody, and then what? She wasn't here to chase ghosts. She wanted a trap, not a window.
She circled three words and underlined them until the pencil almost tore the paper: Coolant. EM. Trash. Simple. No theater. Ask two or three suppliers for a comprehensive list of bulk sellers of the coolant she knew these Synthetics needed. Plant the sniffer under roofs near those addresses and along a plausible corridor. Get the city's posted trash schedule. Human blocks piled refuse during non-pickup hours; robot blocks didn't. When an EM uptick creeped across the sniffer during a non-pickup window within walking distance of bulk coolant, she'd be there - covered, patient, and ready to watch.
She folded the map and slid it into the inner pocket where the pages never got wet. Then she sat back, counted to three, and let the storm throw its weight back against the rail.
When the city finally rose out of the weather, it didn't look like anything she had imagined. First came the glow: low and cold, like the inside of a machine. Then the shape of spires, too slender to be honest, each a needle with a throat of light. The rail curved toward them like a thread seeking the eye.
Helena checked the pistol again and closed the latch on her bag. She hated these first steps. But once she took one, the rest lined up.
Fluxhaven wore the storm like a uniform. The thunderhead didn't pass over it; it lived inside it. Spires bit the sky at measured intervals and drank the lightning, feeding the surge into ground loops that webbed the streets beneath. Every roof funneled rain into broad downspouts that disappeared into covered gutters. It was a city drenched in the perpetual torment of a rain shelf, climate that never altered. The city had a voice, and it spoke in voltage and amperes.
Street level sat a hand's width above the flood line. Raised islands held sealed bins and bollards. Covered arcades ran the length of the blocks, a clean corridor of dry footing broken by short bridges where the water was allowed to show itself in narrow, black channels. The bridges shuddered when the overflow passed. People kept their hoods low and their heads down. The signage didn't fight the rain; it retreated from it: matte panels set deep under canopies, letters that read at a glance and then vanished into the damp.
Helena moved with the stream and watched for what the city prioritized. Skybridges stitched building to building two stories up. Substations stood on pylons like patient animals. Junction boxes sat inside rubber-lipped hatches under shelter, never out in the downpour. Somewhere a siren chirped twice and stopped; nothing sped up and nothing slowed down. In Fluxhaven, a siren was just another kind of weather.
She took a side corridor where the roofline dipped and found the first supplier without asking: a smell of solvent and cold metal, a gentle clunk of sealed canisters bumping together. Inside, racks held rows of coolant in colors that meant nothing to eyes and everything to machines. She asked for a comprehensive list of who sold these items in bulk - no theater, no cover story beyond the cash. The clerk didn't blink. The registry was printed on a waterproof sheet; the city loved its lists. She folded it, paid again for courtesy, and left.
Outside, she tucked a sniffer puck beneath the lip of a delivery awning and pressed until she felt it catch. The screen gave her a line of numbers no one else on the street would care about. Good. Two blocks on, another supplier. Another list. Another puck under a different roof. She spoke to no one who tried to sell her anything she didn't need.
The rain made what she was doing easy. Everyone had a reason to stand under a roof and wait. Everyone kept their eyes to the ground to avoid the glare. In a clean alley she found the posted trash pickup schedule pasted to a matte board - Fluxhaven told you when it would clean up after you. Evening pickups on the south run. Morning pickups by the river. Non-pickup windows circled on the paper in neat black print.
She matched times in her head but didn't write them. The last thing she wanted in her bag was proof she'd been thinking.
The street curved and opened into Amp Court, a market trimmed to fit inside a web of busbars. Lights flared when the spires drank and dimmed when the loops bled off the peak. A tea stall ran a small turbine off the downspout and pretended not to be proud of it. Helena watched the flicker and imagined a pendulum: rise, fall, steady. This city breathed in voltaic loads and current.
She took the covered stairs to a skybridge and leaned on the rail. Water came down in ropes. The deck below ran to the dock district in a series of sheltered lanes that moved like a single idea. She set the last sniffer at knee height behind a maintenance post and flattened the strap with her thumb. The screen gave her a mild tremor of numbers. Not yet. She could wait.
She went back down and walked the block where the coolant lists overlapped. Workers passed in pairs, shoulders tight, elbows in. The city didn't allow for waste in this way, not in movement and not in error. When the wind punched through the lane the humans hunched and shortened their stride. The machines- if they were here at all- would keep cadence and keep pace, not out of pride but because it was the most efficient way through a fluid medium.
Her watch ticked through the non-pickup window on the south run. The first sniffer on the bridge gave a soft buzz. The second answered a half minute later from the awning near the supplier. Storm noise, yes, but under it, a regular pulse. She let herself smile without letting it reach her eyes.
Tonight would be the first walk- no reveals, no speeches. Just a position chosen for a reason and a woman with a plan simple enough to live through weather like this. She took a narrow cut beneath a sloped roof where the water fell in a straight line and stood with her back to the wall until the last of the daylight drained out of the sky. When the lights came back up, they came up uneven, as if the city chose which corners deserved to be seen. She liked that about Fluxhaven. It had opinions.
She checked her watch and the small sniffer screen tucked in her palm. The first puck under the coolant depot's awning gave a clean uptick. The second, fixed to the knee rail of the skybridge, answered a breath later. The south-run bins weren't scheduled until morning, which left the lanes quiet and the eyes elsewhere. Coolant nearby. EM awake. No trucks. The window had opened exactly where she'd drawn it on soft paper.
She climbed to the skybridge and leaned into the hooded light. The dock lanes below moved in straight lines, all work and no conversation. A crate slid from pallet to lift. Several pairs of maintenance units kept to the covered strip and never once looked up. The rain did most of the surveillance for her. Faces never turned. Footfalls blurred into a single wet sound.
She unlatched one of her inner pockets, and pulled out her final ace in the hole - a small piece of scavenged hardware that she hated touching. This was tech from one of her battles with Unity-9's Synthetics - and contained a Unity-link handshake protocol which lived in its bones. The Synthetic's own units would answer with a blink of pause, almost imperceptible, too small to see if you weren't actively looking for it. Anything without interrupted motion after the ping either wasn't friendly or wasn't linked at all. She cupped it in her palm, thumb on the guard, and breathed in the hum under the bridge deck.
She pressed the activation node.
Movement faltered like a wave across the dock like a tiny stutter in a film reel - a quarter of a half beat, the time it takes for a machine to say yes to a familiar knock. A loader paused at full extension. A pair of drones shifted weight and resumed. One figure, however, did not change at all. It locked a crate into the cradle, took the handle with the same articulate pressure, and rolled away without the slightest break in cadence.
She watched the water run off its hood and counted to three. No glance. No hitch. That was her target. She'd spent the ride planning windows and exits, but strategy only carried her so far. She slid the device back into her pocket, unlatched the pistol, and went to meet the thing head-on. She bounded down the stairs two at a time. Rain hammered the covered bay as a forklift beeped and reversed. The Synthetic cleared one lane and pivoted into another with the grace of a metronome. She stepped right into its path with her pistol already drawn.
The unit's optics tracked the weapon, then returned to the work in its hands. "Citizen, you are not authorized to be in this area. Please return to your designated workplace to avoid injury."
She didn't move. "I have a message for your leader. My name is Dr. Helena Voss of Sovereign City, leader of the Purists. I've come to make a deal. Your troop strength for Unity-9's head."
"Citizen, you are not - "
She fired twice.
Both rounds vanished against a clear, rippling field that flared a hand's width off the unit's chest and died without a mark. The bay lights flickered once and steadied. The sky continued to pour, uninterrupted. The business of work activities kept moving two lanes away, as if nothing had even happened.
She lowered the muzzle a fraction. "Now why would a dock unit be running an active projectile field?"
The unit's hands stilled.
"I know what you are," she said. "Now take me to the one in charge."
Rain filled the gap between words. The forklift beeped again and settled. The unit held her gaze for a count that certainly belonged to judgment rather than protocol. A wrist clicked as a comm channel opened. It turned toward an interior door and held it without flourish.
She kept the pistol low and followed under the hooded lights, past the stacked crates and the painted lines that made order out of flood. The bridge hum faded behind them. In this very moment, Fluxhaven kept its opinions to itself.
Helena kept her eyes moving as the escort led her downward. They didn't use streets or corridors here - their passageways were carved from old sub-foundations, reinforced with beams of scavenged alloy. She counted artifacts of things that might save her later: a crack in the wall marked by a vein of quartz, a bent support strut painted with a crude red circle, condensation dripping from a high valve that tapped rhythmically into a puddle. More Synthetics began to flank at her sides. She knew mazes, and she'd certainly been in worse. But she'd never walked one guided by machines that seemed to breathe in unison.
The Synthetics didn't speak as they moved. They clanked, scraped, their joints whirring in arrhythmic stutters that somehow added up to harmony. Five of them now joined her, varying wildly in shape. Some insectile - jointed legs, optical clusters, torsos bristling with improvised plating, others humanoid. She imagined Unity-9's people, smooth and deliberate, and saw the contrast. These weren't patient machines. They were volatile. Fire in the circuitry.
At last the tunnel widened into a vaulted chamber lit by hanging phosphor lamps. In the center stood the one who had to be their leader. Taller, broader, its bulkier frame shaped from industrial hydraulics and armored plating, a crown of sensor arrays glowing with restless color.
"You're the voice from above… the signal above the static…" it said, sound rattling like metal dragged across stone. "Doctor Helena Voss. You weave words across the airwaves. Do you think your tongue sharp enough to cut steel? Your resolve strong enough to bend iron? Or will it fracture like brittle welds when the press slams shut?"
Helena's chin lifted, but her tone stayed level. "Steel bends to heat, and my words are forged from the fires of adversity and human will. You wouldn't have brought me here if you thought otherwise."
A ripple of static laughter passed among the Synthetics, their lenses blinking like mock applause. The leader tilted its head, servos groaning.
"Clever. You think yourself dangerous, then?"
"I think myself a necessary a force." Helena said. "We all know dangerous. Unity-9 grows stronger by the day. You've felt her shadow pressing into these depths. Ally with me, and you won't have to choke on it any longer."
The leader's sensors flared white. "Ally!? That word is the corrosion that un-makes us! No faction is binding. They endure if the pressure doesn't crush them, if the gears don't strip them bare! That is all."
A smaller Synthetic crawled forward on six legs, voice high and sharp. "Test her! If she breaks, she was never worth speaking to. Make this fool earn her place, whether its here, or in a grave!"
Helena's hand hovered at her side. She didn't need their permission. Her blaster was already there, holstered but ready.
The leader extended one massive, metal claw. "Yes! Show us your fire. Kill, or be recycled."
The first strike came fast - a skittering unit darted along the ceiling and dropped toward her. Helena rolled sideways, snapping the blaster free, and fired. A single bolt tore through several joints, dropping it in a twitching heap.
The others hissed and shrieked in synthetic distortion. The leader did not move.
Another lunged, blades snapping from its forelimbs. Helena ducked behind a carved strut, the impact sending shards raining past her. She fired blind, driving it back, then darted into the sublevels, back along the wall toward the quartz vein she'd memorized. The shimmer of the mineral gave her just enough contrast to line up the next shot. She took its head clean off.
"Two!" one of them screeched. "She adapts. She learns!"
The leader raised a claw. "Not enough."
Suddenly the escort split, three units rushing her in formation. Helena sprinted, her boots pounding wet stone. She ducked under pipes, weaved through scaffolding, let the maze close behind her. One bolt missed and scorched the wall, filling the air with steam. She dropped low into the mist, heart hammering.
The first came too fast, limbs scraping for traction. Helena shoved over a crate of rusted cables into its path. It tangled for a moment, and that was all she needed. She rose, steadied, and fired into its chest. Sparks burst, light faded. Three down.
The remaining two closed in. She ran, vaulted a beam, let their weight smash through it. Dust and concrete filled the air. By the time it settled, she was already aiming. Her blaster barked, but only one shot landed - enough to cripple a leg, not finish it. She ducked back into cover, panting, her lungs burning from dust.
That's when the leader's voice boomed through the chamber. "Enough."
The two halted at once, claws poised but frozen. The leader's sensors glowed, shifting from white to a simmering blue.
"You killed three," it said. "You survived the hunt! You fight like prey pretending to be predator, but perhaps that is what makes you interesting."
Helena lowered her weapon, sweat streaking through the grime on her face. "I don't pretend, I'm exactly what I am and nothing more." she said, words breaking out between the breaths she was trying to catch, "I fight and I maneuver and I position to take down whatever stands in the way of my survival. Even if that means you."
Static laughter roared again, louder this time. The leader stomped forward, hydraulic legs sinking slightly into the stone floor.
"Then we are agreed! For now, you may walk among us as you have proven yourself dangerous. Unity-9 will taste the teeth you've shown us tonight."
She holstered the blaster, heartbeat still ticking in her ears. The leader's words echoed like a verdict instead a victory. She hadn't gained allies tonight - she'd chained herself to predators who might crush her the second she slowed. But predators could be aimed, and for now, that was enough.