Kholat’s voice cut through the clamor of the lockdown klaxons, an iron fist slamming into the spine of the Aegis Spire. “Every employee on this floor, effective immediately, will provide a DNA swab.” The mandate sealed the room like poured concrete. Grease still coated Yashira's skin, and the grit from the maintenance deck ground beneath her nails. Her mind raced, a frantic data-stream. A DNA sample would tie her genetic code to the ion burns in Kholat’s private quarters, to the scuffs on his floorboards, to Vektor’s snapped neck. Discovery meant either the commander's firing squad or chains back to her family's compound. “You heard the commander!” a burly security enforcer barked, his augmented arm sweeping toward the queue already forming by the temporary bio-station. “Move it! Samples, now!” Yashira scanned the chaotic scene. Dozens of data-jockeys, cargo handlers, and junior techs shuffled toward the scanner. Jibbs stood three places ahead, chewing raw skin off his lip. He caught her eye, twitching toward the guards. She pushed through the crowd, deliberately stumbling, bumping into a technician and murmuring a clumsy apology. Her hand brushed his datapad, swiftly installing a silent, single-use encryption bypass. She reached Jibbs just as he was handed a sterile bio-vial. “Jibbs,” she hissed, her voice low, strained. “You’re clean, right? No augment scars, no weird gene therapy from your scrap-heap deals?” Jibbs blinked, his jaw working. “Clean? Lady, I can barely afford street noodles. My DNA’s pristine, unless you count a lifetime of synth-junk food.” “Good.” Yashira snatched the vial from his trembling fingers. “I need yours. I’ll make the switch.” “What?” Jibbs hissed under his breath. “Switch? They’ll skin us alive, Yashira! Kholat’s got eyes everywhere!” “He’s distracted, and his bio-techs are rushed. It’s a temporary station, not a full-spectrum lab,” she murmured, her gaze flicking to Kholat, who stood a dozen meters away, watching the bio-station with unnerving intensity. “We swap vials. I’ll use yours. Your sample is clean. You take mine. I’ll make mine look… compromised. Contaminated.” She held up the vial without a tremor. “Hold this for me. Just for a second. I need to… adjust something.” Jibbs looked ready to faint. “But… what about the… what about the system cross-reference? They’ll know it’s not me!” “They’ll know it’s not *her*,” Yashira corrected, lowering her chin. “But it won’t be *you* they find. I can spoof the read, but I can’t change the biological marker on the fly. It has to be a real, living sample. And yours is the only one guaranteed clear of underworld markers.” She nudged him closer to the front of the line. “Just cooperate. Look normal. And don’t touch my vial until I tell you.” Before Jibbs could stammer another protest, a violent tremor shook the Aegis Spire. A dull boom echoed from below, followed by the shriek of tearing metal. The lights flickered, casting long, dancing shadows across the panicked faces. A piercing, multi-frequency alarm blared, different from the lockdown klaxon, signaling an external breach. The air crackled with static. “Breach! Lower-level access point compromised!” a voice boomed over the comms system. “Biological containment failure detected! Activating neuro-gas protocols!” A split second later, a sickly green vapor began to seep from the ventilation shafts, swirling into the cavernous logistics bay. A collective gasp rose, quickly stifled by choking coughs. The air grew thick, acrid, burning. Eyes watered, throats constricted. People stumbled, clawing at their faces. It wasn’t a sedative; it was a neuro-toxin, designed to disable and paralyze. From the far end of the bay, a section of the reinforced wall exploded inward, showering the floor with shrapnel and sparking conduits. Figures cloaked in dark bio-hazard suits swarmed through the breach, their particle carbines chattering. The gang insignia painted across their chestplates was a snarling, mutated orchid—the Viridian Weavers. Jibbs backed into a stanchion, whimpering. Chaos erupted. The Aegis security detail, caught off guard, returned fire. Superheated bolts crisscrossed the air, carving white-hot trails through the noxious gas. Desk partitions shattered, screens exploded, showering sparks. A deafening roar filled the space, a symphony of destruction. “Get down!” Yashira screamed, shoving Jibbs behind a damaged cargo loader. The bio-vial, still clutched in her hand, suddenly felt insignificant. A senior accountant named Parnus, who usually audited her billing sheets, crawled toward an overturned crate. A stray slug caught him squarely across the throat. He gurgled, fingers clawing at the tear in his flesh. Dark arterial spray bubbled between his knuckles and soaked his collar as his heels drummed the floor. Yashira froze. Her escape, her carefully constructed plan, the bio-vial, Jibbs’s life – it all faded, replaced by an instinct honed in a thousand back-alley skirmishes. The clerk was drowning on his own severed windpipe. The Ashfallen code dictated swift resolution over hesitation, and heir training demanded mastery over field trauma. “Stay here!” she yelled at Jibbs, tossing her bio-vial to him without a second glance. “Don’t move!” She dropped low, sliding beneath a volley of fire and leaving her hunched intern posture behind. She snatched a hollowed-out thermal torch from a technician’s belt, the slender tool meant for precision solder repairs. It was crude, but it would have to do. She dropped beside the wounded clerk in the swirling green mist, ignoring the acid sting in her throat. His gasps were weaker now, his body convulsing. His eyes were already glazed. There was no time for sterile fields or proper tools. This was raw, desperate field trauma. With a flick of her thumb, she thumbed the torch to a low focal beam. She didn't hesitate. She plunged the pen into the man's neck, just below the cricoid cartilage, a perfectly angled, surgically precise incision. The smell of burning flesh, the gurgle of air, the spurt of blood – she ignored it all. Her grip stayed firm as she twisted the nozzle, wedging a tiny, open passage into the trachea. Then, with a practiced hand, she secured it, fashioning a makeshift seal with some discarded wiring she found on the floor. The clerk gagged, coughed wetly, and dragged air down into his chest. A specialized combat tracheotomy, executed in seconds amid toxic fog by an unarmed data-entry clerk. As the neuro-gas thinned across the wreckage of the logistics bay, Yashira pulled her red-stained hands back from the clerk's throat. She looked up, her face streaked with grime and blood, her hair wild, her missing glasses leaving her vision slightly blurred. Standing directly over her, his assault rifle gripped low, was Kholat. His expression was no longer one of cold assessment, but of absolute, terrifying comprehension. He had seen it all. The precise cut, the steady hands, the impossible calm. He lowered the barrel, metal clattering against the deck plating. Dropping to one knee, he caught her blood-slick wrists with brutal precision. His voice, a low snarl, was laced with fury and disbelief. “You’re no intern. Who are you?”

Breach and Bleed