The inky darkness swallowed them, punctuated by the clatter of alloy skids hitting the polished stone. Kenza didn’t wait. Her carbine, fitted with a low-light sight, swept the doorway, painting the lead drone’s targeting lens with a faint red dot. She squeezed the trigger. The burst ripped through the air, carving a jagged path into the machine's chassis, sending it spinning into its compatriots with a shriek of tortured servos. “North wall!” Dastan’s voice, a low growl in the black, cut through the din. He moved like a shadow beside her, a heavy-gauge pulse rifle spitting emerald light. Each shot tore through the squad, not merely disabling them, but vaporizing their chassis in showers of superheated fragments. He covered the lower sector while she swept the vents, their crossfire intersecting with clockwork rhythm. Boz, a frantic bundle of nerves and stolen tech, fumbled with a loose panel near Kitt’s cot. “I’ve got… I’ve got an idea! Just need… a few more seconds!” Kitt, oblivious to the chaos, hugged his glowing toy robot, its green light casting a surreal halo around his small form. A heavier drone, its chassis thick with combat plating, rumbled past Kenza’s position, its targeting lasers sweeping the nursery. Its glass eye fixed on Kitt. “Kitt, down!” Kenza yelled, but the drone was already advancing. Its multi-jointed arm extended, a grappling claw unfurling with a sinister *click*. Kitt, startled, looked up. His eyes, the startling dual colors of Moray and Varel, met the drone’s predatory gaze. He didn’t scream. Instead, a tiny frown creased his brow. His small wrist-pad, a birthday gift from Boz disguised as a watch, flared with a soft blue luminescence. He tapped its surface twice. The heavy drone froze. Its sensor turret spun wildly, then inexplicably turned, its grappling claw retracting. A new, higher-pitched whine filled the air—a sound Kenza recognized. Not Viper. This was the Apex Construct's automated perimeter grid. From hidden apertures in the ceiling, a dozen interceptor units dropped, their weapons humming with charged ionization. They swarmed the heavy Viper unit, lashing out with focused energy bolts. The Viper drone, caught off guard, buckled and then exploded, its scorched scrap showering the floor. Kitt merely adjusted his toy robot, a small, satisfied smile playing on his lips. The point commander, a hulking figure in reinforced battle-plate who had just breached the threshold, stopped dead in sudden bewilderment. “The child… you… you *mock* me!” “Less talking, more dying,” Kenza clipped, a burst from her carbine forcing the intruder behind a workstation. Boz saw his opening. The traitorous vice-chair, Nerva, was visible through a cracked door, frantically trying to interface with a disabled control console, his face lit by the faint glow of his personal data-core cradled in his palm. A massive bipedal mech armed with twin auto-cannons had just cleared the main corridor, its targeting cameras scanning for targets. It stood between Boz and Nerva. Boz gulped, his eyes fixed on the precious data-core. “This is it,” he muttered, his voice barely a whisper. He knew this model of mech. Heavy plating, but a blind spot. A very specific blind spot. He pulled a compact stun-grenade from his belt, its shape oddly familiar, almost homemade. With a grunt, he hurled it, not at the mech, but at a cluster of exposed power conduits high on the wall, just behind the mech’s head. The grenade detonated, not with a flash, but with a high-frequency pulse that scrambled the walker's balance gyros. The colossal machine shuddered, emitting a pained electronic scream, and began to list, its auto-cannons firing wildly into the ceiling. Before it could re-stabilize, Boz was moving, a blur of motion. He yanked a discarded utility cable from the floor, a thick coil of heavy-duty fiber. With surprising agility, he leaped onto the mech's back, a desperate, scrambling climb. The mech thrashed, a dying titan, but Boz held on, gritting his teeth. He found the access port he remembered from schematics he’d scavenged years ago – an emergency maintenance port designed for manual overrides. He jammed the cable in, bypassed the scorched wiring harness, and punched the emergency overload sequence. A sharp, clear alarm blared, followed by a countdown: *3… 2… 1…* The mech detonated in a controlled implosion, blowing shrapnel and superheated air down the corridor. When the dust cleared, Boz picked himself up, singed but grinning, Nerva's glowing core clutched in his grip. He held it up, a triumphant roar escaping his lips. “Debt wiped! And *that*,” he added, kicking a charred piece of plating, “was for all those late fees!” Kenza, momentarily distracted by Boz’s unexpected heroism, found herself pinned. Nerva had recovered from the mech's blast. He crouched behind an overturned server rack, leveling a sleek, silenced pistol directly at Kenza's head. His expression, usually oily with false charm, was now twisted into a snarl of pure malice. “No more games, data-runner. You humiliated me. My network… I built it!” A shot rang out, not from Kenza’s carbine. It wasn’t a loud bang, but a sharp, metallic *ping*. Kenza felt a sudden, rough shove. Dastan, having disengaged from a skirmish with two more drones, had thrown himself in front of her. The bullet, meant for her, grazed his forearm, tearing a shallow furrow in his skin. He didn’t flinch. Dastan's gaze locked onto Nerva. Dastan surged forward, smashing the stock of his rifle into the server rack, shearing the bracket and exposing the turncoat. Before the man could raise his arm, Dastan had him by the throat, lifting him clear off the ground as the pistol clattered to the floor. “You target *her*,” Dastan hissed, his voice dangerously low, “you target my son. You target *everything*.” Dastan threw the executive against the concrete partition. Nerva slumped, unconscious, breath wheezing through broken ribs. Dastan turned, his gaze sweeping Kenza, checking for injury. His own wound was weeping, but he ignored it. His hand, warm and firm, gripped her arm. “You alright?” he asked, his voice rough with concern. Kenza simply nodded, a complex swirl of emotions churning within her. Tactical threat, he always was. But now… now he was also the wall she leaned against, the shield that absorbed the blow meant for her. Her hyper-paranoia, usually a constant hum, had quieted to a stunned silence. The remaining Viper automata, their route compromised by the Apex Construct's automated guns, broke formation and fell back into the rain-slicked courtyard. Kenza dropped beside Nerva, pulling the secondary storage module from his tunic and slotting it into her portable reader. The small device whirred, then projected a holographic interface. Her eyes scanned the lines of code, looking for the backdoors, the sabotage, the reason he’d betrayed Dastan. The readouts spiked. It wasn’t just a simple backdoor. It was an entire framework. A foundational blueprint. It was the master key, the underlying architecture, the very origin code of Moray Synthetics’ global security network.

The Billion-Dollar Bait