Parisa’s triumphant sneer stretched, reflecting the dying light. “I knew you’d try to steal my destiny again, cousin.” Her thumb slammed down on the detonator, a hard, definitive click that echoed in the sudden silence. Zarrin braced, every muscle tensing, waiting for the concussive roar, the splintering wood, the rush of superheated air that would tear their world apart. Bahram, still in his harness, a smear of grease on his cheek, didn’t flinch. He merely raised an eyebrow, a flicker of something close to amusement in his eyes. Nothing. No explosion. Only the distant whine of a lone sand-skimmer cutting through the arid air. Parisa’s smile faltered, replaced by a confused frown. She stared at the small device in her hand, then back at the intact hull of their aero-skiff. She pressed the button again, harder this time. Another impotent click. “What… What is this?” Her voice, usually so saccharine, grated with an edge of panic. Bahram sighed, a theatrical puff of air that dislodged a speck of dust from his brow. “Did you really think I wouldn’t anticipate the obvious play, cousin?” He gestured with his chin towards the entrance of the workshop, where the skeletal remains of scavenged engines formed a jagged archway. “Jiveh.” The scaled hound, who had been sitting patiently at Bahram’s feet, let out a low, rumbling growl. With a wag of its segmented tail, Jiveh trotted past Parisa and her two hulking bodyguards, disappearing around a towering pile of rusted plating. Seconds later, a guttural yelp of surprise, followed by the clatter of dropped weapons, drifted back. Parisa flinched, her head snapping towards the racket. Just as she began to turn, a searing, orange bloom erupted from beyond the junk piles. A thunderous CRUMP shook the very ground under their feet, rattling loose a shower of rust flakes from the workshop’s corrugated iron roof. Heat washed over them, hot and acrid, carrying the scent of burning fuel and expensive synthetics. A twisted column of black smoke began to snake its way into the bruised afternoon sky. Parisa’s face drained of color, her mouth hanging open. “My… my transport! My luxury sky-sander!” Her voice rose to a hysterical shriek. “My hardened alloy plating! My imported synth-leather seats!” Bahram’s lips twitched. “Quite explosive, aren’t they? Plasma-cells. Very volatile.” He gave a small, apologetic shrug. “Figured your ride was a safer place for them than my work-in-progress. Don’t want any accidents, do we?” One of Parisa’s bodyguards, a brute with a scarred eye and a heavy wrench clutched like a club, surged forward. “You crippled bastard! You’ll pay for that!” He lunged, aiming for Bahram’s head. Zarrin moved, a blur of motion, her scav-knife already in her hand. But Bahram was faster. A glint of polished metal flashed from beneath his tattered tunic sleeve. His stump, where the crude scrap-metal prosthetic had been, was now encased in a sleek, obsidian limb. It pulsed with a faint, internal light, and as the brute closed the distance, Bahram extended his new arm. The air shimmered. A sickening *THWACK* echoed as the brute was slammed against the back wall of the workshop, wrenching his arm at an unnatural angle. He hung there, pinned, his feet dangling inches from the ground, the heavy wrench clattering uselessly to the floor. An invisible force held him fast, pressing him against the metal sheeting like a fly against sticky paper. The second bodyguard, a leaner, quicker man with a coil of garroting wire, froze, his eyes darting between his suspended comrade and Bahram’s unblinking stare. The obsidian arm pulsed brighter, humming with a low thrum. The wire man found himself suddenly pressed against the wall beside his partner, struggling for breath, both men held captive by an unseen magnetic field. Parisa stared, her face a mask of horrified disbelief. “What… what *is* that? You… you can’t have that! That’s future tech! That’s not supposed to be built yet!” She stumbled backward, tripping over a discarded fuel line, landing hard on her backside amidst a pile of corroded gears. Her voice cracked, bordering on a wail. “You were supposed to be the doomed one! The cripple! You were supposed to be stuck here, a forgotten relic!” Zarrin slowly lowered her knife, a cold, predatory smile spreading across her face. “Forgotten relic? Is that what the broadsheets called him, cousin? Dispatches.” She knelt down, her face inches from Parisa’s. “Tell me, dear Parisa, did your precious future-headlines mention an EMP? Did they bother to detail how the elites were planning to disable every civilian vehicle, every scrap-skimmer, every *transport* in the city, leaving the poor to drown in the coming storm?” Parisa flinched, her eyes wide and unfocused. “EMP? What… no! Just… just a city-wide evacuation for the wealthy! The bulletins said Qizil-Kum was doomed! They told me to buy up land outside the city! To invest in… in Kaveh’s family’s mining ventures! They said *he* would be rich!” Her voice escalated into a desperate shriek. “They said *I* would be rich! They said you would be nothing!” Zarrin laughed, a short, sharp bark that held no humor. “So, you only read the headlines. Didn’t bother with the footnotes, did you? The fine print about the fake dreadnought tickets? The part about how Kaveh’s family was going to be bled dry by your brilliant investments, leaving him with nothing but a worthless tract of desert?” She stood, kicking a small, rusted cog near Parisa’s head. “You truly are a special kind of stupid, aren’t you? So eager to steal a ‘destiny’ you couldn’t even bothered to understand.” Parisa scrambled backward, tears streaming down her grime-streaked face. “No! You’re lying! You’re always lying! You just want what’s mine!” “What’s yours?” Zarrin’s voice dropped, ice-cold. “You mean the inevitable oblivion you’ve so diligently built for yourself?” She turned to Bahram, who had released the thugs from their invisible prison, leaving them to collapse in groaning heaps. “Let’s not waste any more time on this walking disaster. We have a vault to crack.” Over the next few hours, Zarrin moved through the Rust-Yards, her voice cutting between the rusted hulls. She visited every ramshackle hovel, every scrap-den, every hidden lean-to in Sector Four. Bahram, moving with a newfound grace, his obsidian arm humming softly, provided proof of concept, showing off the nascent aero-skiff. Jiveh, sensing the urgency, darted between them, a silent, scaled ambassador. “A fleet of flying scrap-piles!” Zarrin roared to a gathering of hardened junkers, their faces etched with the dust and grit of a dying city. “Passage for every single one of you who wants it! For your families! For your kin!” She swept her arm towards the horizon, where the smoke plume from Parisa’s transport was slowly dissipating. “But it won’t be free. We need an EMP core. And it’s sitting inside the Shirazi family vault, guarded by every mercenary Kaveh could afford.” The scavengers murmured, their eyes alight with a dangerous hope, a flicker of defiance Zarrin had almost forgotten how to inspire. They were downtrodden, but not broken. Not yet. “They think they can leave us behind, drown us in their sand-storm,” Zarrin continued, her voice ringing with steel. “They think they can sweep us aside. Let’s show them what a few hundred desperate rats can do when their backs are against the wall. We fly out of this hell, or we die fighting for the sky. Who’s with us?” A ragged cheer rose from the crowd, a mix of desperation and a burgeoning, fierce loyalty. Hands, gnarled and scarred, shot into the air. Just then, a long, low wail echoed from the distant Scourge-Wastes, a sound that made even the toughest wrecker blanch. The sky, which had been a harsh orange-yellow all day, began to shift. Great, bruising streaks of purple bled into the horizon, mixing with a sickly, bruised magenta. The air grew heavy, thick with static. Bahram’s gaze snapped to the sky, his eyes narrowing. His prosthetic limb pulsed, the internal light flickering erratically. “That’s… that’s not right.” His voice was low, strained. “The storm. It’s mutating. It’s… it’s coming faster.” Zarrin felt a cold dread claw at her gut. “How fast?” Bahram slowly turned, his face grim. “Forty-eight hours. Maybe less. We have forty-eight hours until the sand-tsunami hits.”

The Saboteur's Folly