Chapter 1085: Collaboration.
The sea didn’t rest after the battle. It boiled with smoke, with oil fires that licked across the waves like veins of flame. Steel wreckage jutted out of the water, the remains of warships cracked open like eggshells. Gulls screamed overhead, wheeling against the blood-stained dawn.
Cain stood among it all, one boot planted on the jagged edge of a ruined turret. His cloak clung to him, heavy with rain and smoke. His blade was sheathed again, though the metal seemed restless, humming faintly as though craving more blood. He stared at the horizon where the rest of the fleet had vanished, retreating into mist.
Susan emerged from below deck, her bandages darker, her steps unsteady but unbroken. She pulled her coat tighter around her ribs and joined him at the bow. "We didn’t win," she said flatly.
Cain didn’t glance at her. His eyes never left the horizon. "Winning was never on the table."
She scoffed, though the sound caught in her throat. "Then what the hell was this? A demonstration?"
"A reminder." His voice was as cold as the steel under their feet.
The comm crackled alive with Steve’s voice, sharper than usual. "You need to move. Now. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest. Recon drones are already sweeping. If they catch your signature, it won’t just be ships chasing you—it’ll be the whole damn grid."
Susan leaned against the railing, smoke still clinging to her hair. "Let them chase. Cain seems to like being hunted."
Cain’s silence was an answer in itself.
The vessel rocked as he turned away from the carnage, guiding Susan back toward the hatch. "We go inland."
She raised a brow. "Inland? That’s marching into the jaws of the beast."
Cain’s hand brushed the hilt of his sword. "The beast already knows we’re here. Better to cut into its heart than wait for its teeth."
Steve swore over the comm. "Cain, you’re forcing my hand. Do you even know what’s waiting inland? District Fifteen isn’t just a military hub—it’s where they bury secrets. The kind people vanish for even asking about."
"That’s why we’re going." Cain’s words were final.
Susan shook her head, though her smirk betrayed a grim respect. "You’re going to drag us straight into hell, aren’t you?"
"We’re already in it."
The engines roared back to life, carrying their battered vessel away from the wreckage. Smoke trailed across the sky, a scar that would not heal soon. Cain remained on deck until the sea swallowed the last of the burning wrecks, his eyes locked forward as though he could already see the city waiting to devour them.
Hours passed under a heavy silence. By the time the shoreline loomed, the sun was a dull smear behind clouds. The city’s spires rose jagged from the coast, glass and steel gleaming faintly through the haze. District Fifteen sprawled like a wound across the land, a place where factories belched smoke day and night, where security towers cast shadows deeper than tombs.
Susan exhaled sharply as she saw it. "You weren’t kidding. Hell wears concrete."
Cain strapped his blade tighter at his side. "Concrete cracks. We’ll make sure of it."
As they docked at an abandoned pier, Steve’s voice returned, urgent. "Cain, last warning. If you set foot in that district, you’ll trigger alarms you can’t silence. You’ll be marked permanently."
Cain stepped onto the pier, boots echoing against the hollow planks. "Then let them mark me."
Susan followed, her breath shallow but her resolve iron. She limped up beside him, squinting at the shadowed skyline. "What’s the plan?"
"The plan," Cain said, eyes narrowing, "is simple. We don’t find their secrets. We force them to reveal them. And when they do, the whole city will choke on the truth."
The gulls scattered above, shrieking as though even they knew what was coming.
The district loomed, silent for now, but Cain could already feel its gaze. Watching. Waiting.
The war at sea was only the beginning.
Cain led them into District Fifteen like a wound insisted on opening further. The streets here were narrower, lined with hulks of disused machinery and the iron bones of factories that smelled of hot metal and old oil. Shadowed terraces and service alleys threaded between towers of rusted steel. What passed for light came from flickering panels and the jaundiced glow of surveillance nodes that turned their faces as they passed, eyes hunting.
Susan walked stiffly, each step a small triumph. When she stumbled, Cain’s hand steadied her, brief and sure. She hated being steadied. The look she gave him was half-anger, half-gratitude, and entirely human. It steadied him back.
"We don’t want a war of attrition," Cain said, keeping his voice low so the distant cameras might chew the audio and spit out nothing useful. "We want a spectacle. We want the city to pull a cord and show us the hidden knots."
Susan blinked. "So we bait them, and they trip themselves?"
"Exactly. Small ruptures so they reveal the seams." Cain’s plan was surgical: a staged breach at a municipal archive, carefully timed leaks to every district node, a live feed that would drag a thousand private faces into public light. It was theater designed to expose rather than to annihilate. For now. They would respond. They always did. The key was to make them respond on Cain’s terms, not theirs.
Steve’s voice came clipped through their comm—quiet, efficient. "I’ve mapped node redundancies. If we hit archive node K-4 and cascade the failsafes into the civilian grid, the security matrix will auto-open priority channels. They’ll send clean-up teams—leadership. Cameras, conferenced. We can intercept, broadcast what they try to hide."
Cain nodded once. "Then we give them a curtain-call."
They moved like thieves in a parsonage, slipping through maintenance shafts and service ladders, avoiding the main arteries. At each junction, Steve’s ghost-eyes scouted ahead—cheap drones braided together into a single, watchful eye. Susan planted the first charge, a small EMP that would knock the archive’s external locks just long enough for a simulated breach.
Cain crouched beside her, voice close. "Remember—this is a peel, not a slaughter. We take a sliver and show the world what bleeds. If they escalate too fast, we pull back. If they hesitate, we push."
She met his eyes and, for the first time since the fleet, Cain allowed himself a smile that was not all iron. "Let them look," she said. "Let them learn who broke the sky for them."