"What we have here is a classic Helstalgian Hexlock. No backdoors and most definitely no clean exits. Just three players in a frozen system, waiting to see who rage quits first." The stranger's voice was deliberate, as if he knew how it would end.

  My grip tightened on the blaster. No one moved. No one else spoke.

  We all knew he was correct.

  No one escapes a hexlock unscathed.

  "You were just sitting there. Mumbling." My blaster remained locked on him. The merchant wasn't the issue, not yet, anyway. The newcomer was.

  The stranger locked his eyes on the merchant but nodded in my direction. "Check your inventory, kid."

  My inventory window remained open. My blaster stayed locked on the target with the safety off, my finger on the trigger. My eyes darted to my inventory, scanning through my items. Everything appeared intact. My Neon and all the items I had brought into the Undernet were there. It was all there.

  What the Hel was he talking about?

  Then I saw it.

  The strangely encrypted data drive from Milo was gone. It's taken and ripped from my inventory. Right out from under my nose. There was no trade, no prompt. Just gone. Ninja-looted straight out of my inventory like a raid boss drop snatched by some bottom-feeding scum-sucker in an old open-world MMO where that was still possible. My mouth dropped at this—an action I had never seen before.

  "Quantum exploit skill. 'Gone in a Glitch,' it's called," the stranger said, noticing my reaction. He gestured with his open palm, and a public access skill icon appeared, visible to all three of us.

  SKILL: Gone in a Glitch

  DESCRIPTION: Initiate a trade, peek into their inventory, and snatch! Like a glitch in the system, the item's yours as long as it's unequipped. Choose wisely. Move fast.

  1 item stolen per use

  24-hour 'Stolen Goods' flag

  72-hour skill cooldown

  Holy shit. I knew exploit skills existed from the hushed voices that whispered about them within the Flux Jackals. The way they spoke of them, you'd think they all had one, but no one in the faction ever confessed to possessing one. That secret would be locked down tighter than a corpo vault if anyone did. I had never seen one used until now.

  Unsurprisingly, the merchant in a place like this possessed such a skill. A wormhole where items vanished from one pocket and surfaced in another, tagged with a price. How much of this merchandise around us has been snatched from unsuspecting patrons only to be resold? This shop made sense now. The whole goddamn system did. My vision tunnelled for half a second. The drowning clawed at me: Milo's burned-out throat, the holo-train, the kid.

  Not now, I thought as I suppressed the panic, the weight of my blaster anchoring me.

  Fools. Anyone who entered this bazaar risked appearing foolish.

  The data drive proved to be much more critical than I initially thought.

  Two sounds followed, pulling me back to reality.

  The first was the smooth sound of a second blaster the merchant drew, this time aimed square at my head. The second was the synced clicks of both blasters switching to high-velocity mode—insta-kill shots. He would splatter our brains across the shop.

  Game over.

  "That data drive. What the Hel is it?" I demanded, unfazed by the fact that he had just pointed his extra blaster at me. My blaster remained trained on the stranger. It couldn't move. If it did, I'd reveal my hesitation and be dead.

  The stolen data drive struck the counter in a flash of cold neon, falling from the merchant's inventory as if it meant nothing. It gleamed against the worn metal—too pristine, too intentional. Heavier, somehow. Not in weight but in what it signified. A dead man's parting gift dropped in the middle of a hexlock like some kind of final word.

  "This?" The merchant's voice was calm and effortless. "You Jackals really had no idea what you were holding, did you? This isn't just a key. It's a map. And you would've just traded it away for scraps."

  His eyes followed a path between the stranger and me; his smile etched onto his face like a knife slipping between ribs. "I know what it's worth."

  I gazed at the drive.

  Milo had his throat burned out because of this.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And there it was, resting between us like a fuse, poised for someone to ignite it. Now in the hands of the merchant.

  "If you know what it's worth, you also know how many people will come looking for it." My voice remained steady, testing the true potential of my new neural mod. "And how many will die trying?"

  The door slid open, and everything unravelled.

  "I know you're in here! Show your face!" A voice. Sharp. Synthetic. Distorted through a voice scrambler.

  I could tell it was malfunctioning as it warped between registers. The kind of voice you heard right before a deal went sour.

  "We blasted Milo, and if you do something stupid, you're next!"

  They let the words linger like an unclaimed loot drop in a PvP zone—just waiting for someone to make a move for it.

  "We've been following you. You've got stolen goods. We want it back."

  The ring of metal against metal echoed as footsteps on the floor pierced the silence of the hexlock. Slow. Steady. No need to rush. They were enjoying this.

  A woman stepped into view.

  "Isn't this interesting?" she said, letting her gaze drift over the three of us. Her voice was normal now. She had deactivated her voice scrambler.

  Veyla Atris.

  She had shoulder-length blonde hair streaked with grey, shaved high into an undercut that revealed cybernetic enhancements crawling beneath her skin. The circuitry was woven into her flesh. Her Flux Jackal insignia pulsed faintly through the fabric of her shirt—cyan-lit, alive, wrapped snugly against her toned frame beneath the open cut of a leather jacket.

  Familiar. Too familiar. Too close. It was the same implant that had once been buried in my chest.

  Cut from the same cloth. At least we had been.

  The way she carried herself told me everything I needed to know. She recognized us and wasn't surprised.

  She held a high rank within the Flux Jackals—high enough that I'd heard the name but had never met the individual. Our first encounter wasn't meant to unfold this way; at least, I hadn't envisioned it like this.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the merchant's expression twist into a scowl. "You," he spat—his voice dropping, rough and sharp with hate. "You were never welcome here."

  Veyla ignored the merchant's comment in silence, her gaze drifting past him to the stranger and then to me.

  "Well," she said with a dry chuckle, "look at this little reunion."

  She moved in a slow circle around the shop, allowing her presence to settle like static. Her eyes skimmed the hexlock before dropping to the data drive on the counter as if she were merely browsing.

  She picked up the drive, casually brushing away invisible dust from its gleaming surface. It was still bound to Kalen—there was no way she could lift it. Not with all three of us watching.

  "Kalen, still skimming like a gutter rat. Dante is chasing that Cybercobra payday like some delusional street thug. And you…"

  Her gaze found mine and held it a little too long. "Unlike Milo, you're still alive. That's... unexpected."

  No one spoke; no one even stirred.

  My grip tightened on my blaster, still aimed at the stranger: Dante, now.

  I allowed his name to settle in my mind. "Cybercobras," I said, not asking. "What's their play here?"

  Dante assessed the situation before breaking the silence. "Milo reached out to me. He said he was done running and had something to trade to buy his way out."

  Veyla scoffed, cutting him off before he could continue. "The truth is that he stole it." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "This drive belongs to us; he had no business running off with it."

  She shifted her weight, sizing up the room and our silent responses before continuing. "But that's not the only reason I'm here."

  She placed the data drive on the counter, casually demonstrating how little this whole situation meant to her.

  "There's something else missing. Something more important than whatever scraps he thought he could cash out on." Her eyes locked on me, a knowing look buried behind them. "And I think you already know what it is."

  Dante looked at me, his blaster still trained on Kalen. "He mentioned a partner. I knew something went sour when you passed through the door alone and missed the code phrase."

  The corner of Veyla's mouth twitched into a faint smile.

  "Milo was a liability," she said casually like a dealer laying down a losing hand.

  She turned to me. "You know how it works. Milo ran, got caught, and paid the price while trying to make a deal that wasn't his to make."

  Veyla wasn't wrong; that was precisely how the Flux Jackals operated. Liabilities were eliminated without hesitation.

  Dante has invited you to his party!

  I said nothing and accepted the invitation to the party. Something told me I needed to keep this guy close.

  Dante: "Shit is about to go down. Get ready."

  Veyla took a slow step closer, eyes locked onto mine. "We knew where he was. We knew what he had. We knew he wasn't alone. But most importantly, we knew you had stolen the fragment. Your insignia going dark confirmed it. So when you suddenly surfaced in the Undernet, and Milo conveniently made contact, we made our move."

  She slowly exhaled and turned to look at Dante. "You should always expect me to show up. And now? I get the honour of killing all three of you, taking back what's ours, and walking away with this entire shop."

  Her Jackal insignia pulsed beneath her top.

  Flux Jackals run in packs when they sniff out blood. It's not loyalty; it's survival. Alone, the weak don't last, and the strong don't stay strong for long.

  Without the pack, you're merely another stray awaiting a fate like Milo's.

  If I still had the implant—if I were still one of them—I would've sensed this coming.

  The edges of my HUD flashed red, and at least a dozen red dots showed up on my minimap.

  LOCAL MESSAGE: Unauthorized Invite Attempt Detected.

  Security protocols engaged.

  404 Bazaar access layer compromised. Monitoring for additional intrusion vectors.

  A loud crack and a white flash erupted from the main entrance. The door flickered for a moment before vanishing entirely.

  Shit. She triggered a system breach, opening the floodgates.

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