She felt sweeps of bitter anger as she stepped off the U-Rail.

Piper felt her skin crawl as the corporate heart of Hadrian swallowed her up. The evergrind – the fucking spiv-home in all its neon glory. It was all she could do not to let the frustration bleed out further into her surroundings, jamming her hands into the pockets of her purloined jacket and forcing herself to walk towards the clustering, light-vomiting spires.

After spending some time back out in the docks alone, the sheer hum of the datastreams here made her head hurt. She blocked out the worst of it, folding her implants in on herself and trudging through the flow of opulent citizens passing her on either side.

A drone whinnied overhead, and she almost lurched into the shadow of a nearby building, before realising it was just an ad-hauler, a shimmering screen slung under its hexagonal carapace. Glowering at the machine as it buzzed on its way, Piper continued, each step taking her deeper and deeper into the jaws of Hadrian's corporations.

She sheered away from the monoliths in the centre, touching a finger to the surging datastreams and skimming for anything concerning her, her family, or anyone else she knew. At first it looked like business as usual. She teased out a few references to unexplained server shutdowns and blackouts in isolated parts of the central district – a warehouse here, a stock-data centre here, ranging across several of the major corporations.

Signs of Toran and Vinder's civil war, she suspected. Official news covered it as a series of unconnected incidents. Maybe that's what all those earnest-faced reporters actually thought, but she doubted it. So it was all well under way, so far under the radar, but sooner or later it would all spill out, and this happy, vapid facade would get washed away.

Fuck, how she would have loved to see that.

Letting herself revel in the fantasy for a little bit, Piper walked quickly through the broad, brightly-lit streets until she cleared some of the fancier buildings, and entered a section of the heart that looked altogether more utilitarian. Fewer logos, darker buildings, punctuated with bright, crisply decorated bars and restaurants filled with sharp-dressed men and woman. They looked a little less at ease than most of those you saw in the heart.

Then the logo came into sight: a with a simple, glowing white ring with a single dot in the centre. It loomed over a set of fixed above mirror-polished glass doors set into the front of a large, grey cube of a building. Several stories climbed, modest by the standards of Hadrian's skyscrapers, but still fairly imposing, glittering with windows like the portholes of the world's least practical ship.

She eased her amplifier loose, reaching into the datastreams to double check – again – that this really was where she was supposed to be. Sure enough, the coordinates matched those that Vinder had given her. She really was standing in front of Hadrian's corporate Oversight Bureau.

Piper knew of the Bureau largely by rumour. A rubber stamp body that, if you wanted to believe it, provided a guiding hand and put reigns on the excesses of the corporations. She strongly suspected that, like most things in the city, it was a token gesture to shut up anyone who questioned the order of things.

It occurred to her that the alternative was almost worse. If this was how the corporations operated with oversight, what in the hell would happen without it?

Hadrian South provided a glimpse of that, she supposed. In the aftermath of the AI incident, it seemed that Oversight had swept into action with an uncharacteristic alacrity, but when Conan Knox was the one holding the cattle prod, that wasn't exactly surprising.

The main question was why on Earth Vinder had chosen this place for a meeting. Neutral ground maybe? Distrust crawled over Piper's skin like spiders and she resisted the urge to slip into the shadows.

"C'mon," she whispered to herself. "You've come this far."

I would remain cautious, Cassie chimed in unprompted.

Piper smirked. Yeah, me too.

You're sure you want to do this?

You can feel how I feel, can't you?

Sort of. Enough.

Then you know the answer.

Be careful, Piper. If I can help, I will.

Thanks, Cassie, she said, feeling a genuine glow of gratitude for that strange voice in her head. I appreciate it.

Then she started walking. She fixed her eyes on the symbol above the door, heading straight for those slabs of bulletproof blastglass. No chances, not with her family. Not today. She would see this through, and Vinder Tovas would get his lumps another day. Letting a little more power leak into her amplifier, she swept the nearby streams for any surprises, just in case.

She found a fortress of fairly standard corporate firewalls and kill codes lathered over the structure – enough to answer most hacking attempts she knew how to deploy. Other than that, a storm of encrypted transmissions rattled in and out of the Bureau, too quick and sealed for her to really pick out any individual messages, or what they might contain.

When she was about fifty feet from the door, however, she felt something else nearby. Something eerily familiar. She stopped cold, her grip tightening around her amplifier.

What the hell was that?

Her head snapped towards the sensation. Something subtle was twisting the local datastreams, barely enough to notice if she hadn't been already hunting for it. There and not there at the same time.

Someone trying to remain unseen, Cassie prompted.

Piper nodded, slowly turning and backtracking, her brow creasing with a mix of curiosity and apprehension. She edged back towards the side of the building, craning her neck to look around. Just a side street with other buildings and people rather haggard-looking corporate functionaries shuttling from one structure to another.

Squinting, she tucked herself up against the wall, arms folded within her jacket as she tried to pinpoint the oddity any closer. Cassie's assessment seemed correct to her. Somebody was working their way through defences of the Oversight Bureau, in a manner well beyond her own capabilities. Subtle; creeping between layers of security like someone ducking and contorting through reams of barbed wire.

There was one person she knew who could pull off that kind of hacking.

You think it's them?

I can't think of anyone else who'd bother breaking into Oversight.

But why?

You're full of good questions today, Cassie, she answered wryly, and felt her passenger's good-nature buck within her implants, their equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Let's go ask.

Circling the complex, she followed the trail of warped security protocols. At the back of the building, she found one of the exterior doors was fractionally ajar. Opened without permission, it ought to have set alarms blaring through fifty city blocks, but now they remained silent, muted by the ministrations of the infiltrators. Raising an eyebrow, Piper slipped inside.

In the back of her mind, a voice said she should stop – go back to the front, talk to Vinder, like she said she would. But did she really trust that this all wasn't just some elaborate trap? For all she knew, one step through those doors would see her walk right into a Vinder's arms, carted off to an AmpCore cell of her own.

Maybe it was good to have some cards of her own.

So she carried on, doing her best to deaden her own emissions as she followed the breadcrumbs. Creeping into the dark maintenance access corridor, she moved as silently as her feet would carry her, and soon she felt more than one familiar presence lurking ahead of her, barely visible – like tremors on spider webs. Camera studs should have been tracking her progress; should have set more alarms blaring, but they were blind and deaf now, smothered by the intricate invasive code.

Slipping her amplifier loose – just in case – Piper edged around a bend in the hall, feeling the familiar AmpCore signatures shimmering just beyond. Licking her lips, she held her breath and stepped out.

An amplifier was instantly in her face, sizzling with blue-white energy. Through the haze, she saw him – Odiye's pristine, rounded features creasing his shock as he realised who he was looking at.

"P-Piper?!" Odiye recoiled in surprise, lowering his wand sharply. He stared at her, head cocked in bafflement, as though she were a ghost that had materialised right in front of him.

For her part, Piper couldn't keep a wry smile off her face. She pulled her amplifier back, holding it tight against her chest as she took in what she was looking at. It was Odiye Tambo alright, large as life, his brawny frame encased in an unmarked sheathe of black body armour and a long AmpCore jacket. Behind him, identically clad, stood Toran and Arrow, all of them looking just as surprised.

"Good to see you too," she said, cocking her head to look past him. Arrow seemed to be frozen mid-hack, amplifier blinking and pointed at a holographic data point. "What are you doing here?"

"What are we doing here?" A disbelieving smile cracked across his face. "Piper, I thought... I thought you were done with all this?"

"So did I." Sighing, she lowered her wand by her side and edged forward. "But why are you here? Why Oversight?"

"We're here because some people don't know there are lines that shouldn't be crossed," Toran rumbled, though he still managed to crack a rueful smile as he moved to stand by Odiye. "Might've known that wouldn't be the last tantrum of yours we'd see."

"Oh, get fucked," she laughed, rolling her eyes.

"Back at you."

"Piper," Arrow interjected. "Why are you here? You made it pretty clear you didn't want anything to do with us."

The hurt in their voice punched through Piper's surprise. She looked at them; found a gaze half of anger, half of relief. She had so many questions, and like a punch in the stomach, realised she actually did care about what had been happening to them.

"It wasn't personal," she said carefully, her voice low, "but I meant what I said. I needed to go out there. I needed answers."

"I am guessing you didn't find them," Odiye said as he sheathed his amplifier, "or you would not be here."

"Not exactly." She grimaced, her eyes flicking to Toran. For a moment, she considered telling him about Holly, but his expression stayed her hand. He already looked like he was about to blow the whole place to smithereens. She didn't know what had happened, but right now it didn't seem like a good idea to add another curveball. "I got a message from Vinder."

"What a coincidence," Toran grunted. He nodded to Arrow to continue their work, before turning back to her. "So did we."

"What's he done now?"

She felt Toran's implants buck with anger before he answered.

"My sister."

"Oh." Piper grimaced. "Is she...?"

"She's alive, but she's locked up somewhere in the Oversight Bureau on some bullshit administrative charges. Vinder and his people think they can keep her here as leverage over my father."

"Seems like they got that wrong," she replied. "So this is a prison break?"

"Something like that."

"What about you, Piper?" Odiye asked, his head constantly flicking from her to corridor behind him, looking for any signs their intrusion had been discovered.

"I guess Vinder only has one play left in the book." Piper gave a disgusted shake of her head. "He threatened my family. Said I should come here and talk. He wants me... off the board. Staying out of all of this till you've all finished tearing each other to bits."

"Fucking evergrind," Arrow grated, their expression darkening even further. "Alright, Toran, I'm in." Straightening up, they cast an impatient glance at him. "Ready? Once we're into the main quad we're not going be able to stay secret much longer."

Toran gave them a nod, then looked to Piper. "Well, what's it going to be, Piper? Back on the home team?"

It didn't take long for her to decide. "I guess I am."

"Good. Then all of you get behind me." Rolling his neck from side to side, Toran squared his shoulders and stomped over to the door, amplifier in hand. He nodded to Arrow. "Open it."

The lock disengaged with a petulant bleep, and the door slid open soundlessly. Toran stepped through, Odiye right on his heels. Piper followed, and Arrow brought up the rear, backing through the aperture looking for any sign of pursuit.

They didn't find anyone. Up ahead, however, it was a different story. The first guard in Toran's path got out a half yelp before the Skiltron agent flicked his wrist. The man's eyes rolled and he jerked for a second or two, before collapsing in a heap, his snub-barrelled charge rifle clattering to the ground.

Piper thought for a moment that Toran had just broken the man's neck, given the mood he seemed to be in. On closer inspection, however, she realised the guard was just unconscious. Slaughtering blameless people assigned to work at Oversight probably wasn't the way to get what they wanted.

She watched camera studs wink out of existence before their sensors could register the ongoing intrusion, Arrow's subtle witch-work in the datastreams clearing a path through the supposedly formidable security.

Another guard went down a few corridors later, his nerves quickly overwhelmed by a clenching fist from Odiye's amplifier. Piper didn't know if she had the precision to incapacitate someone like that – a molecule of pressure too much and they could easily be killing these people. So she kept her amplifier close, and waited for the confrontation she knew had to be coming.

It still almost caught her by surprise.

They rounded a bend opening out into a small open air quadrangle, an odd blend of older style architecture constructed of the sleek dark metal and smooth masonry the corporations favoured so much. Ringed with cuboid pillars, the outer square was filled with doors leading off into other parts of the complex.

And it became abruptly clear their incursion hadn't been as stealthy as they thought. The buckle in the gravity struck, too sudden for her to avoid it. She managed to wrap herself in her protective barrier as she was tossed off her feet, bouncing off the wall and falling in a heap, swearing and cursing.

Piper started rolling for cover as mayhem erupted all around her.

No bullets here. Snarling bolts of energy whipped through the air from Oversight security personnel, but among them she felt the world-bending presence of AmpCore agents. Slithering to a halt, flat on her belly, she looked and saw Vinder Tovas trudging forward, amplifier blazing as he swatted away attacks and returned bolts of his own.

A hand grabbed her jacket and wrenched her to her feet, pulling her up behind a pillar.

"You okay?" Odiye asked, the right shoulder of his jacket smouldering from a near miss.

She smiled, giving his chin a light tap with her free hand. "I'm good."

Then she whirled out from cover, dropping low to one knee as she gathered together a huge bolt of combustive energy, before blasting it out at their assailants. A searing stream of orange red rushed out, and she glimpsed the blonde hair of Lenor Karga as the woman hurled herself into cover. Guards scattered in all directions, and her attack gored a hole in the far wall, leaving molten metal and stone in its wake.

Then the alarms triggered.

"Fuck," Piper hissed as she spun back into cover.

"I think our cover was already blown," Arrow hissed, tucked in behind another pillar. They looked to where Toran stood, leaning out to let loose attacks of his own. "Toran, now what?!"

"We're not about to just walk out," he growled. "Plan's the same. We find Brogan and we get the fuck out of here."

Arrow gulped, nodded, exchanged an uneasy look with Piper, and then the fighting continued in earnest.

The walls shook and lighting circuits blew apart from the forces of the AmpCore agents. Vinder, Lenor and a handful of older agents edged forward, trying to use the cover from the Oversight security to press in.

"So that's it, Russell?" Vinder roared over the din. "This is really what you want?"

"Well, I didn't fucking start it, did I?" she hollered back, accenting the remark with a wild Logisitic eruption through the nearby data streams. It didn't have the finesse to breach the defences of the AmpCore agents, but two of the guards rifles shorted out from the backwash.

"Tovas, you fucking coward," Toran roared, and suddenly he was out and running, heedless of the storm of destructive energy immediately zeroing in on him.

"Ah, Jesus." Piper grabbed Odiye by the arm. "C'mon!"

She sprinted out after him, lashing left and right with her amplifier to try and keep the other combatants away. Odiye raced along behind her, twisting the local atmosphere to belch thick gouts of mist through the quadrangle, obscuring eyes and sensors.

Then Toran and Vinder met, and the resulting detonation of force washed out through the open space, flattening every single person within fifty yards of the confrontation. Piper was cannoned straight back into Odiye by the force, both of them crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Arrow went spinning back into the outer wall with a yelp of surprise, their barrier cushioning what would have been a bone-breaking impact.

Scrambling frantically, Piper got to her feet, hauling Odiye up alongside her by one arm. In front of them, Toran and Vinder were trading blows just a couple of meters from each other – like deja vu back when this whole shit-show had started. Their amplifiers boiled with energy, the ground around them breaking and shattering as they tried to manoeuvre around each other's defences. Wounds opened on them, seemingly from nowhere as an under-skin duel raged beyond what the eye could see.

Piper raised her amplifier, ready to tip the scales.

"Enough!" a voice thundered, coming from the corridor ahead, but simultaneously from speakers all around. It seemed to punch right into her head through her implants. Piper winced and blinked, looking around in confusion.

Everyone froze. Even Toran and Vinder, locked together in a tangle of lethal energy.

"That is enough," the voice said after a few seconds. "Stand down."

The Oversight security personnel didn't need much encouragement. They eagerly backed away from the AmpCore practitioners, lowering their weapons and exchanging worried looks. Vinder and his supporters looked less convinced, but they didn't argue. With reluctance, the young man lowered his amplifier and took a step back from Toran, the pair of them still staring viciously at one and other.

Toran remained with his amplifier outstretched, blood running down the side of his face. Spitting on the ground between them, he angled the wand back, closing his eyes for a second as he knitted the wound shut again. Only then did he step back to stand with Piper, Arrow and Odiye, his eyes flickering to where they voice had come from.

The speaker stepped into the light. He was flanked by a pair of hulking corporate bodyguards, their shoulder insignias blank, their frames absurdly bulked out by suits of powered riot armour that Piper had only seen in newscasts. She slowly turned to face them, amplifier in hand, resisting the urge to lash out as she examined the newcomer.

He was a bulky, slab of muscle crammed into a crisp grey suit with dark shirt, open at the throat. An expertly crafted cut of dirty blonde hair framed his face, the fringe forming a jagged up-turning ridge, matching the neat beard that covered the lower half of his face. His large mouth pressed shut into an impassive line, his hands clasped together in front of him as he surveyed the scene.

Piper felt his eyes lock onto her – like two lenses of vibrant sea glass.

She recognised him. She recognised the broad, sharp lines of his jaw and that bulky physique. She'd seen it on the indictment reports from Hadrian's Oversight Bureau in the aftermath of the discover of the AI core. Mugshots; arrest confirmations. All things being equal, he should not have been walking around a free man.

Mazvinar Karga.

She watched him walk, nonchalant as he could be.

"Karga," Toran said, the name grinding out from between his teeth like grit.

"Hello, Mr. Knox," Karga replied, a predatory smile splitting his face. "I think it's time for us to have a little talk."