BLOODCAPE
Chapter 153: Dead Channels and Live Bait

Chapter 153: Chapter 153: Dead Channels and Live Bait

Aya hated silence.

Not the normal kind — not the peace-after-the-fight kind — but the kind that hung too perfectly. Like someone had draped the entire corridor in a simulation-grade hush. Not even the buzz of a leaking capacitor or the drip of condensation off old rails. Just cold air and stillness.

They were thirty meters below street level, walking along what used to be an industrial cargo line before Scorpio rerouted it off the grid.

Aya’s boots moved carefully between rail splits. Her burn wound tugged beneath her sleeve — sealed, yes, but still tender. She gritted through it. Renz moved beside her like a damned shadow. Quiet, contained, balanced.

Too balanced.

"You know," she muttered, voice just above her comm mic’s static, "you breathe less than a normal person."

Renz didn’t look at her. "Efficient oxygen control. Part of Mercury’s field discipline."

Right. Mercury again.

She scanned the walls — heat residue, signal trails, boot impressions. Anything.

A ping flashed on her scanner — residual cold fusion trace. Faint. Fresh.

"We’re close," she said. "Crate drag, five meters ahead."

They rounded a bend.

Six transport containers, burnt to black shells. The fusion cores torn open. Coolant hoses shredded like entrails. Tools scattered. A scaffold melted halfway down. This wasn’t cleanup — it was abandonment under fire.

Aya crouched beside the nearest crate, ran her glove along the edge. Coolant. Blood. Human. Not old.

"Evac was rushed," she said. "Too rushed for Scorpio’s usual MO."

"No entry wounds," Renz added. "No firefight. This was a retreat."

Her hand brushed something beneath the debris — soft, squishy.

A plush toy. Faded, one-eyed, green fish. Dorsal fin frayed. Patch-stitched at the belly.

She stared at it. Her throat tightened.

"Someone brought a kid down here," she whispered.

"Unlikely," Renz replied. "Could be a decoy to confuse trackers."

She didn’t answer. Just slipped the toy into her satchel.

Then her HUD blinked red.

Three pings. Turrets.

"Contact!" she shouted, diving behind a crate just as tracer fire lit the corridor in screaming blue arcs.

Metal hissed, sparked, screamed.

Renz moved — a blur — rolling, then hurling a disc that pulsed and fried one turret in a burst of static.

But two more were live.

Aya spun to shoot — too slow.

The turret locked.

Renz dove.

He hit her like a battering ram just as a round sizzled through her arm guard, searing straight to the bone. They crashed hard.

No words. Just movement. Renz crouched. Counted down on his fingers.Three. Two—

He tossed the second EMP.

Boom. Clean.

The turrets sagged.

Silence returned — too fast.

Aya caught her breath. Then froze.

Turrets like this didn’t trigger on mass.

They keyed on tag presence — Scorpio protocols.

That meant...

"Someone keyed us in before we arrived," she whispered.

She looked at Renz.

He didn’t blink. Just offered her a hand.

"Maybe the buyer came back. Set traps."

"Maybe," she said.

But her stomach twisted.

The timing. The dive. The wait.

She couldn’t find words sharp enough to puncture him. Not yet.

By the time they reached the surface lift, she let him take point — and opened a private voice channel.

Her tone, low. Steady.

"He knew where they’d hit. He knew. I just don’t have proof yet."

The scrap market breathed in layers — hot iron, ozone, fried meat, desperation.

District 10’s south corridor was a winding mess of half-legal stalls built into dead shuttles and old power ducts. Neon strips flickered over stalls hawking spare cyberlimbs, rusted drones, and data chips labeled Asteroid Pornography Vol. 19.

Hernan moved through it like smoke.

His coat was reversed. Mask projecting a face like nobody’s. The walk, though — the walk was real. You couldn’t fake the kind of weight Hernan carried in his shoulders.

He slipped past chem vendors, into a dead-end hatch. Knocked: two taps. Pause. One tap.

Click.

"Nice of you to use the door like a polite bastard," said Luma.

She stood amid a forest of old coolant conduits turned comm-relay tech. Hero Association HUDs blinked on welded walls. Dead drones hung overhead like gutted birds.

Hernan didn’t smile. Just pulled back the hood and stepped in.

"Got your signal," he said. "Tracer came back alive."

"Yeah. Real target. Buyer went into Freight 17-C. Forty hours ago."

"Means the lab’s close."

Luma scoffed.

"Was close."

She pulled a second screen. Coordinates blurred.

"That site was scrubbed clean two days ago. No heat. No residue. Scorpio ghosted the whole thing."

Hernan’s jaw didn’t move. He scanned the timeline.

Too fast. The lab moved before the tracer was planted.

"They knew."

"They always know. But that’s not your big problem, Rook."

She tossed him a second slate. He caught it midair.

"Someone on your team’s been pinging tightband comms. Piggybacking on your safehouse loops. Encrypted. Subtle."

"How many pings?"

"Four. Four hideouts. All yours."

He scanned the data. Scrubbed IPs. Fabricated headers. But familiar patterns.

"You sure it’s not Nico?"

Luma lit a low-stick. "Nico encrypts like a terrified priest. This was surgical."

She exhaled. "Standard Zodiac sleeper pulse. Let the hive know you’re alive."

"And the payload?"

"Only thing I could decode was this."

She handed him thermal paper. He unfolded it.

"Nightborn ascend at dawn."

It hit like a knife.

He’d seen that phrase. Buried in Renz’s Mercury file.

But Mercury didn’t use poetic codes. They used coordinates. Algorithms.

That phrase was wrong.

Now he knew why.

He said nothing. Just folded the slip. Tucked it into his coat.

"Thanks."

"You gonna kill him?" Luma asked.

Hernan didn’t answer.

Outside, the scrap market still burned and buzzed with filth and neon.

He turned down a quiet alley. Tapped his private comm.

"Nico. Route echo to Op-Red layer."

"Copy. Parameters?"

"Build a killbox. Sealed perimeter. Trace-neutral. No alert."

"Target?"

Hernan’s voice was calm.

"Renz."

A pause.

"Understood."

The comm went dead.

Hernan kept walking.

No change in his face. No shift in stride. Just a shadow slipping back into shadow.

Let’s see how the traitor moves when he’s the one being watched.