Rainier Square was alive with noise. The rain muffled the worst of it, but the city never went silent. Neon buzzed overhead, reflecting off rain-slick pavement. Holo-ads flickered along the high-rises, pushing Corpo-finance loans, limb replacements, and neural upgrades. The crowd moved in clusters. Workers just finishing shift rotations, tech-rats and corpo kids slumming it for the thrill, black-market brokers exchanging quiet words in the shadow of blinking LED storefronts. Everything here had a price. You just had to name it.

Kim hated this place.

She kept her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched under her coat. She barely noticed the rain anymore, but the feeling of being here sat heavy in her stomach. This was where people sold pieces of themselves just to stay ahead. Where enhancements weren’t just a luxury but a necessity. The real Seattle-9 wasn’t polished corporate towers and government contracts. It was here, in places like this.

And it wasn’t where she belonged. But somehow, it was where she always ended up.

She thought of Mercer Island - of clean streets, private security, high-rise condos with filtered air and flood-proof reinforcements. Her family still lived there, insulated from the city’s grime. They barely acknowledged places like this existed outside the occasional Corpo-approved news cycle. Kim had left that world behind, but that didn’t mean she fit in here either. She wasn’t one of these people. She just kept getting dragged into their lives.

Kim barely glanced at the aug vendors pushing their wares. Black-market optics, illegal neural uplinks, secondhand limb replacements stripped from whatever backroom altar some desperate soul had to bargain at. The sight of it turned her stomach, but she didn’t let it show.

She’d seen these markets before. Watched men and women walk in whole and leave in pieces. Watched a body disappear into an unmarked car, its augments sold before the heart even stopped beating.

That was a long time ago. But the feeling never left.

Bishop walked beside her, relaxed as ever. He fit into this world better than she did. Not because he liked it, but because he accepted it for what it was. She envied that, sometimes.

“You gonna tell me what’s got you so wound up?” he asked, scanning the street ahead.

Kim exhaled sharply. “I don’t like being here.”

Bishop smirked, flicking his spent cigarette into the gutter. “That makes two of us.”

They turned down a side alley, slipping past a cluster of street vendors hawking knockoff wetware and cheap stimulants that were as likely to get you high as they were to leave you blind. The door they were looking for was marked with a flickering orange glyph - a stylized eye with jagged lines through the pupil. Kim recognized it immediately.

A sign for those who needed work done quietly.

She stopped, hesitating. This was a mistake.

Bishop shot her a look. “You bringing me here just to stand in the damn rain, or are we going inside?”

Kim clenched her jaw and pushed open the door.

The inside smelled like burning plastic and cheap alcohol. A workbench lined one wall, cluttered with precision tools, half-assembled cybernetics, and aug-grade coolant. Screens flickered with diagnostic data, lines of code rolling across the displays. Despite the late hour, a man was busily hunched over the bench, arms buried to the elbows in the exposed circuitry of a detached prosthetic limb. He didn’t look up.

“I was wondering if you’d ever show your face in here again,” the man muttered, voice laced with static from an old throat implant. “You got some fuckin' nerve coming back.”

Kim tensed. “Not here for a raid, Rhys.”

Rhys finally looked up, eyes reflecting sharp blue light from his augmented lenses. He was older than she remembered. Deeper lines in his face, more gray streaking his short-cropped black hair. But the hostility in his eyes hadn’t changed.

“Then what are you here for?” he asked, wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag. “Because the last time you walked in here, you torched half my operation. Or did you forget that part?”

Bishop leaned against the doorframe, letting Kim take the lead. She hated that. And he knew it.

She took a slow breath. “I need to know about a material we found. Biopolymer. Doesn’t match any standard medical-grade aug plastics.”

Kim tapped her wrist display, casting a holo-image onto the nearest flat surface. The crime scene flickered to life - a grainy, rain-drenched snapshot of the latest vic. The corpse lay sprawled in the alley, hands severed, eyes cleanly excised, the tissue cuts too precise for street work. The usual butchery from back-alley rippers wasn’t there. No jagged tears, no burn marks from cauterization, no rushed amputations for fast cash. This was surgical.

Rhys's smirk faded as he studied the projection. His fingers twitched like he wanted to turn it off, but he couldn’t. "Yeah," he muttered. "That ain’t no chop-shop hack job. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."

He exhaled through his nose, rubbing his temples. "Shit."

His eyes lingered on the exposed tissue in the holo-image, the precision of the cuts, the lack of hesitation. "This ain't some street butcher looking for a quick payout. You don’t get cuts that clean with a bone saw and a stolen med-scanner. This is high-grade work. Mil? Corpo? Merc? I don’t know. But it’s pro."

Kim's pulse kicked up. She didn’t let it show, but his words stuck under her skin.

"Wait up,” Rhys continued. “You're fucking cops. Run it through the BOCO database. Don't you got all that preem data on there?"

“We already did,” Bishop said. “It came back as nonexistent.”

That got Rhys’s attention. His posture stiffened slightly before he forced a laugh. “Then I guess you found a ghost.”

Kim stepped forward. “Rhys.”

He stood up from his workbench. “Nah, nah, nah. See, that’s how it starts. First, it’s just a question. Then, it’s surveillance. Then, next thing I know, I’ve got a full sweep on my shop and half my clients are on a watchlist. So no. I don’t know shit about your bullshit ghost material, and I don’t want to.”

Bishop exhaled through his nose. “You’re scared.”

“Damn right I am.” Rhys leaned on his workbench, eyes sharp. “And if you two had any sense, you’d be too.”

Kim crossed her arms. “Look, you’ve got every reason not to trust me. But this isn’t just another raid. This isn’t Vice knocking down your door for smuggling half-rate implants. People are getting wiped out, Rhys. Not just killed. Erased. You think that’s coincidence?”

Rhys studied her for a long moment. Then, begrudgingly, he muttered, “What’s in it for me?”

Bishop pulled a small drive from his coat and tossed it onto the workbench. “A clean slate. One-time immunity on anything we find tonight. We walk out, you get back to business. No eyes on your operation.”

Rhys stared at the drive, then at them. He muttered a curse under his breath before finally snatching it up. “You two are gonna get yourselves killed.”

Bishop smirked. “Not if we find the right people first.”

Rhys grunted, turning back to his console. “Give me a minute.”

As he worked, Kim drifted toward a cluttered shelving unit, scanning the augments scattered across it. Artificial hands, dermal weaves, ocular replacements. Parts of people stripped away and sold like scrap. She picked up a sleek cybernetic forearm, turning it in her hands. The weight was unnatural, too light for something meant to replace flesh and bone.

“This used to be illegal,” she murmured. “Full synths. No one wanted machines walking around looking just like us.”

Bishop glanced at her, expression unreadable. “Still is. You won’t find a legit corpo selling full-body replacements.”

Kim scoffed, setting the arm back down. “Like that ever stopped them. Someone’s making them, and someone’s buying. Doesn’t matter what the laws say.”

Bishop shrugged. “It’s just the way things are, Kim.”

She frowned, rubbing her thumb against her palm like she could wipe the thought away. “Doesn’t mean we have to like it.”

Rhys exhaled sharply, breaking the moment. “Alright, got something.”

They turned toward the screen as he pulled up a grainy image. A facility schematic.

“This place doesn’t officially exist,” Rhys muttered, fingers tapping rapidly on the console. “Deep shell company. Layered protections. But the material you brought me? It’s tagged in some old system logs. Some kind of bio-synthetic polymer, some proprietary compound type shit. Name pops up in fragments of erased data, but one name keeps surfacing alongside it: Horizon Biotek.”

Kim's heart skipped a beat. She frowned, forcing her voice steady. “Never heard of it.”

But she was lying. She had heard of it. Not by name. But in passing. Buried in a report she wasn’t supposed to read.

Rhys let out a dry chuckle, snapping Kim back to the present. “Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Whatever Horizon Biotek was, it doesn’t exist anymore. At least, not on paper. Wiped from public record, no corporate ties, no past transactions. But I dug deeper. The last facility listed under that name? Off-grid. No licensing, no permits, nothing. Just a coded entry buried under layers of dead shell companies.”

He zoomed in on the schematic. The layout was precise, too precise for an abandoned research lab. “See these reinforced corridors right here? Biometric checkpoints. This ain’t some abandoned shell… they kept this place running long after it was ‘shut down.’ If that biopolymer came from here, someone’s been operating in the dark for years.”

Kim exchanged a look with Bishop. He exhaled, rubbing his jaw. “Think they’re still using it?”

Rhys shook his head. “That lowbie you found geeked in some alley probably means they never stopped.”

His fingers hovered over the console before he turned to look at them, his voice dropping lower. "Look… you two think you're chasing ghosts. But you're not. You're tripping alarms on a system built to wipe itself clean. Keep pushing, and someone’s gonna flip the switch on you next."

Kim shifted, uneasy. “Then I guess we better move fast.”

Bishop grabbed a pack of smokes from his coat, tapping one out. “We’re done here.” He turned, pushing open the door. Kim followed.

The cold air hit like a slap. The rain hadn’t let up. The streets shimmered under the city’s glow, streaks of light cutting through puddles. Kim pulled up her collar, glancing back for just a moment. A man in a long coat slipped past them, moving toward the shop entrance. His face was a blur of shadow and neon reflections, nothing remarkable. She heard Rhys’ voice carried faintly from inside before the door closed shut.

“Hey, I already told you no refunds. What are you doing back-”

Kim’s steps faltered. There was something in his tone. But before she could turn back, Bishop nudged her forward. “Focus up, partner. Someone upset about their back-alley chopjob is his problem. Not ours.”

They reached their car a block over on Third and Lenora, right on the edge of the old Denny Reclaim. The neighborhood was half corpo expansion, half slum. It was a battleground of gentrification where polished glass high-rises stood awkwardly beside crumbling pre-Collapse buildings. The Bureau-assigned Hirano AXV sat waiting, all matte-black plating, low-profile frame, corporate-standard tracking baked into the chassis. A car built to blend in. Forgettable. That was the point.

Bishop slid into the driver’s seat, Kim in the passenger side.

The moment the engine hummed to life, Bishop felt it. That itch at the back of his skull. The one that said they weren’t alone.

He glanced at the mirror.

A pair of low-slung headlights hovered in the mist, too far back to be obvious, but close enough to be intentional. The deep electric hum of a high-end engine barely carried over the city noise. Not a standard fleet vehicle. Something heavier.

Kim noticed it too. “You seein’ this?”

Bishop kept his voice level. “Yeah.”

He eased the AXV onto the main drag, merging into the late-night flow of delivery drones, beat-up rideshares, and corporate black-badges cruising toward the northern checkpoints. The tail followed. Not rushed. Not reckless.

Deliberate.

Bishop took a casual turn onto a side road. The car mirrored them. No hesitation.

Kim’s pulse quickened. “Shit.”

Bishop exhaled, flexing his grip on the wheel. “Let’s see how serious they are.”

He took a sharp left. An unexpected detour down a narrow service lane behind the old Magellan Freight Yards. The kind of road only locals knew, packed with derelict loading docks, unlicensed shops, and waste-processing units running on borrowed time. The headlights followed.

Kim muttered a curse under her breath. “They’re serious.”

"Yeah," Bishop said, tightening his jaw. "And they're not in a hurry."

That was worse. If they were here to kill them, they’d have already opened fire. But this was pressure. Control. Whoever was behind that wheel wasn’t some street-level enforcer.

Kim flicked her wrist display to life, running a quick BOCO plate scan. The results came back blank. No registration. No flagged ownership. Like the car didn’t even exist.

Her stomach twisted. This wasn’t some street gang. Or some pissed-off client of Rhys’.

This was real. She glanced at Bishop. He already knew.

Another turn. Then - a second set of headlights appeared ahead.

A block up. Pulling into position.

Kim’s breath hitched. They weren’t being followed. They were being funneled.

Bishop’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Hold on.”

The car lunged forward.

He cut left - onto the Aurora Skyway overpass. The industrial bridge stretched over old South Lake Union, a relic of a failed infrastructure project back when Seattle-9 was Seattle-7. Steel beams, slick with rain, low visibility from any aerial patrols. A natural choke point. A bad place to be cornered.

The car followed. But now, they were moving faster.

Kim’s gut twisted. “They’re closing.”

Bishop rolled his neck. “Good.”

He dropped gears, slamming the accelerator. The AXV surged forward. Kim braced against the dash as the engine growled, the city lights blurring past.

The lead pursuer kept up, easily. Kim caught a glimpse in the mirror. A GenSec Hound, armored chassis, reinforced bumper, corporate-grade acceleration mods. Expensive. A vehicle built for enforcement.

But Kim barely had time to process that before the second car flashed into view again. A Takimoto Striker. Mil-spec. High-speed.

Kim’s stomach clenched. Not a chase. A killbox.

Bishop gritted his teeth. “Hold on.”

He yanked the wheel hard, throwing them into a high-speed drift. A last-ditch escape maneuver, trying to break the funnel before it snapped shut.

Too late.

The first car rammed their rear bumper.

The Hirano AXV lurched sideways, tires skidding across slick pavement.

Kim’s stomach flipped as Bishop fought the wheel. Another hit.

The second car cut in from the side.

“FUC-,” Kim barely had time to curse before the world flipped. The impact sent them spinning off the road. Metal screamed. Glass shattered.

Then, darkness.