The signal was weak, fractured, but it led them on. Elias decoded it bit by bit, the corrupted data echoing with an odd urgency that bordered on alarm. Kyra's control remained frustratingly unpredictable, bursts of blazing magic followed by sputtering frustration. Hunger gnawed at their bellies, and every whisper of wind carried the promise of pursuit.
He pressed his ear to the ground, listening not for footsteps, but for the distant thrum of corporate transports, the almost-organic whir of those abominations they whispered about in the undercity: Grid-linked drones, sleek as carrion birds.
"Nothing yet," he muttered, more to himself than Kyra.
"We can't keep doing this, Elias. We'll never reach it…that place…" She sank down beside him, the despair he sensed in her was a chilling reflection of his own. The dome had been a fluke, a beacon they'd stumbled upon. This signal… it was thinner, the promise at the end of it less defined.
"Almost there," he lied. Hope was a weapon too, even if it was starting to feel brittle in his hands. The next set of coordinates pulsed on his jury-rigged receiver, the numbers stark against the cracked screen. Closer. And that meant the risk of discovery multiplied with every step.
The flicker at the edge of his vision resolved itself into a figure: hunched, cloaked, moving towards them with the desperate gait of the hunted.
"Hold," he snapped at Kyra who had already sprung to her feet, emerald light dancing along her fingertips.
The figure froze, raising their hands in a gesture of supplication or surrender – too slow to be a trap, too purposeful to be a random wanderer. "I mean no harm," the voice rasped, androgynous beneath the thick layers of protective cloth.
Elias exchanged a glance with Kyra. "Who are you?" he challenged, his words carrying the hard edge of the undercity where trust was a currency more precious than water.
"A…traveler," the figure coughed, lowering their hands cautiously. "I saw the flares. The signals you broadcast."
Kyra gasped. "How? No one else should be able to…"
"The Grid," the figure said, the word laced with a disgust that mirrored their own. "It bleeds where you walk. I followed the distortion."
Another anomaly. Elation warred with wariness within him. They weren't alone, yet each new person like them was another potential target painted on their backs.
"What do you want?" Kyra demanded, stepping forward. Even shrouded in worn synth-cloth, the newcomer was slender, smaller than either of them. A survivor, clearly, but not a threat.
"Sanctuary," came the plaintive reply. "Rumors travel, even out here. A place, maybe, where those like us…" The figure trailed off, uncertainty lacing their words.
It was the confirmation he hadn't dared hope for.
"Coordinates," he said curtly. "If you want to earn your keep, you'll guide us."
Desperation flickered in the figure's shrouded eyes, but then a desperate sort of courage hardened their stance. "Agreed."
The journey turned into a grueling mission. The newcomer – they called themselves Finch – possessed an uncanny knowledge of the wasteland, weaving them through the poisoned maze with the surety of someone who had spent far too long on the run.
Finch's presence eased some of the pressure, their ability to track the Grid's fluctuations served as an early-warning system they lacked. Yet, there was a distance beneath the wary cooperation. Elias recognized the look in Finch's eyes – a haunted echo of his own reflection.
They bartered in scraps of food and whispered information during the brief rests. The dome, it turned out, was one of several nodes of ancient power scattered throughout the wasteland. Finch knew their locations but had wisely avoided them. "Storms of magic," they called the structures, "unsafe for those like us."
Their words only fueled Elias's gnawing certainty: they had only scratched the surface of what they had become.
The third night, Finch collapsed with a muffled cry. Their leg was a mess of torn cloth and angry, blistered skin. "Acid seep," they choked out. "Didn't see it in time."
Kyra knelt beside them, her hands glowing. But the emerald light that could blast through reinforced metal seemed useless against the chemical burn eating into Finch's flesh.
"Easy," Finch gasped, swatting weakly at her. "The Grid…it reacts."
Kyra drew back, the light sputtering out. Dismay twisted her face. "I-I'm sorry."
Elias shoved the memory of the scavengers back with brutal force. Survival often meant making the kind of choices that left scars on the soul deeper than any acid.
He dug through their meager medical supplies. "This will hurt," he warned, pouring disinfectant over the wound. Finch let out a choked scream but stubbornly swallowed back any pleas.
He worked quickly, efficiently. Finch might be another mouth to feed, a liability as much as an asset, but leaving them to die would diminish them all. Besides, hurt as they were, Finch still held knowledge they desperately needed.
Through gritted teeth, Finch gasped out another set of coordinates – the supposed sanctuary. It was heartbreakingly close
The frantic pace didn't ebb. With Finch's injury slowing them, the pressure of pursuit seemed to increase. The glitches in the Grid intensified, the corrupted warnings on Elias's receiver growing more erratic with each transmission. They were pushing their luck, their ability to mask their trail, to the absolute breaking point.
He made the call during one of the rare, quiet moments when Finch drifted into a fitful, pain-wracked sleep. "Kyra," he said, his voice low in the toxic twilight, "we take shifts."
Her eyes flared with defiance. "Shifts doing what? We can't just conjure rest when we need it."
"Using it," he clarified, nodding towards their sleeping companion. "Finch senses the Grid going haywire because of us. They know, but not exactly where. If we focus, maybe we can mask it. Buy hours, instead of minutes, before they're right on top of us."
Kyra regarded him warily. "I don't like it. What we did back in the dome…it wasn't control, not really. It could backfire."
She was right. The dome's raw knowledge still burned in his mind, a chaotic language he couldn't fully decipher. But running blind was no longer an option.
The decision hung heavy in the corrosive air.
Then, Kyra sighed, the tension bleeding from her shoulders. "Fine," she conceded. "But if I even feel a flicker of losing control…"
He didn't need her to finish the threat. "We stop," he agreed, the promise laced with a bitter certainty that they might not have the luxury of a controlled shutdown.
The first shift was his. He settled cross-legged on the wasteland earth, eyes closed, mind desperately seeking that tenuous thread of connection to the volatile energy within. Fragments of images from the dome flickered through his thoughts: warriors wreathed in flame, the hooded figure with pitying golden eyes.
Then, something else: a grid, not unlike the one that underlay Neo-Tokyo, but vaster, grander. And within it, points of disruption, echoing the chaotic pulse of his and Kyra's uncontrolled power.
Focus. He pulled on that awareness, mirroring the patterns within himself, forcing them to dim. His own internal beacon flickered within his mind's eye, then guttered out.
When he opened his eyes, the Grid distortion on his receiver had abated slightly. Elation flared, quickly tempered by exhaustion. This wasn't a solution, merely a way to buy precious scraps of time.
He woke Kyra gently. She blinked the sleep from her eyes, then let out a startled gasp. "It's less," she whispered, peering at the battered device. "You did it."
A surge of triumph washed away some of the fatigue. Then, she frowned. "My turn will be harder. I'm not…"
"…precise," he finished for her. He couldn't deny it. Her magic was wilder, its outbursts more potent, but also more unpredictable. "We risk it," he said, already dreading the moment the control might slip from her grasp.
They survived the shift change, and another two after that. Hunger gnawed at his gut, exhaustion made every step a battle, but the glitches, their trail on the Grid, faded slightly with each rotation. It was a desperate gamble, and the odds felt stacked against them.
But dawn broke, not with the shriek of corporate drones, but with an eerie silence. They had outsmarted their pursuers, for now.
A flicker of movement resolved itself into Finch, awake and alert despite their injuries. "Close," they rasped. "The beacon's…just ahead."