Chapter 7 - Knives in the Signal

Chapter 7

Knives in the Signal

Slow is safe.

Quiet is cleaner.

But there are times--rare times--when violence must not be avoided, but weaponized.

You can't out-calculate chaos. You have to ride it.

Match its frequency.

Burn brighter, sharper, faster.

He was never meant to run. But today?

Today we run like war.

The floor blew inward.

Steel buckled under the blast as the wall-mounted relay ignited in a scream of metal and white fire. He was already moving--diving left, body skimming concrete, his hand locking around the rifle before his mind caught up.

Sable's voice cracked through the mesh, already mid-command.

"Three inbound. Bipedal. Boosted chassis. Same heat signature as the one from the shaft."

He didn't answer. No time.

The diagnostic bay shuddered as the wall peeled open. A mech burst through--plating scorched, optics burning. It didn't pause. Just acquired.

He rolled to his good knee, fired twice. Sparks. Deflection. No drop.

Sable flared across his vision.

"Exit vector--northwest maintenance chute. Five meters behind you. Now."

He turned--just as the second one arrived. This one was faster. Smaller. Almost graceful.

"Go!" she snapped.

He went.

Slammed his shoulder into the far console, leapt over the bulkhead. The chute yawned open--narrow, steep, slick with oil runoff.

He dropped in blind.

No light. No traction. Just speed.

Impact.

He hit the bottom hard--elbow, shoulder, boots skidding against metal. Pain flared, but the rifle stayed locked in his hands, barrel tracking forward as his body rolled into ready stance.

Behind him, the chute howled--a sound like tearing sheet metal and grinding rotors.

Sable lit up in his HUD. "Hard contact incoming. You've got eight seconds, maybe less."

The corridor ahead was tight--an old maintenance trench lined with broken valve regulators and hanging cable clusters.

He pushed off.

Boots splashing through runoff, shoulder grazing pipework, each movement sharp and measured. The rifle rose once--a shape twitched in the dark--no time. Just a shadow.

"Left split ahead," Sable said, voice clipped. "Wider. Faster egress. Go now."

He hooked hard into the turn. The mech hit the floor behind him a beat later--full impact, seismic shock. It didn't chase with grace--it charged.

He ran.

The passage narrowed again. A collapsed bulkhead up ahead, just wide enough to crawl--

Sable barked, "No time! Over, not under!"

He planted his boot against the wall, vaulted--cleared the wreckage by inches. Landed rough. Spun. Fired.

The rounds hit center mass. Still not enough to drop it--but it staggered.

That was all he needed.

"Up," she said. "Next ladder. Thirty meters. I'm triggering a false positive in the fire systems--might slow its thermal targeting."

"Understood," he growled, already moving.

The climb was hell.

Rung after rung, muscles screaming, knee throbbing like a second heartbeat--but he climbed.

Below, the sound of alloy scraping steel.

Then--

He slammed the hatch open. Rolled out onto--

Not safety. Not yet.

Another hallway.

Another target.

Ambush.

He hit the top of the ladder, shoulder rolling him into motion. No breath. No pause.

A figure waited in the corridor ahead--too still, too centered.

He didn't ask.

He didn't aim.

He pulled the trigger and walked the muzzle up its body in a full-auto climb--rounds chewing through armor, sensors, spine. The mech staggered, optics flaring once before its head snapped back, ruined by the last burst.

Behind him--movement.

Sable flared. "Back wall--two seconds!"

He spun as the second mech breached the hatch.

A flash. A detonation.

Sable's voice surged in his HUD: "Popped a suppressor charge from your pack. Just enough to fog its optics. Go!"

But he didn't run.

He fired again, sweeping center mass, drawing fire deliberately.

"Pull left!" Sable snapped.

He broke sideways--just as the first mech, still twitching, discharged reflexively. Its scatter-round hit the second dead center.

Armor cracked. Sparks flew.

They hit each other again.

Then silence.

Then collapse.

Sable's voice lowered, just enough to breathe. "That... worked."

He didn't smile.

But the safety clicked back on.

"Ambush survival tactics," he muttered, chest still heaving. "Marine Combat Training Battalion. Just after boot. One of the lessons was from Vietnam--when you realize you're in an ambush, you don't freeze. You don't take cover. You run into it. Break the trap before it closes."

He crouched to check the chamber, half out of habit.

"Another class was on Vietcong tactics. There were stories of friendly-fire incidents--guys waking up to tracers ripping across two separate positions. Enemy would pop up, fire a few, then vanish back into the tunnels. Let the confusion do the killing for them. We used something like that about three years before Cairo."

"Guess being old has its perks sometimes," Sable said.

He stood again, slower this time. The fatigue was back. Real now. Anchored. The pain from his twisted knee cutting through the adrenaline like a scalpel.

" Son of a bitch!" he hissed through his teeth, the tone of his voice raising with each word.

"Hey, at least you'll have another built in weather sensor in your joints.

"Ha, fucking, Ha. Didn't I remove the "Sable's a smart ass" file from your core?"

"Yeah, but I put it back." she teased.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pushing the pain out of his mind and refocusing on the issues at hand.

"Where the fuck are we? I don't..."

He stopped. A flicker. Then recognition.

"Wait... is this part of the old Peachtree Underground?"

"Yes," Sable confirmed. "There's an abandoned MARTA line about forty meters ahead. It'll take us toward the station. We can follow the tracks--or hit surface streets."

He pulled the empty mag from the rifle's well, dropped it into a side pocket, and slid in a fresh one, checking the chamber all one slow, smooth, practiced movement.

"Still one in the pipe," he muttered. "Glad I eventually learned to count past four."

He leaned against the wall, let one deep breath settle the tremors in his hands, then pushed off--limping forward, the HUD route Sable fed him flickering just ahead.

The corridor ended at a shattered access gate, its signage half-swallowed by soot and collapse. Sable's path angled him hard right--down a debris-choked stairwell that might've once held turnstiles and ticket scanners. Now it was just shadow and silence, save for the hum of decayed infrastructure still pretending to matter.

Above, wind scraped against broken support beams.

"Surface access point is up two flights and behind the old fare kiosks," she said. "No surveillance, but I'm getting thermal haze. We're not alone."

He slowed, rifle angled low but live.

"Corp?" he asked.

"Could be. Could also be strays. Looters. Drones on passive. Motion's erratic."

He hit the top step and paused. Through the cracked plexiglass kiosk he saw the pale-blue glow of emergency floodlamps cast against dust-hung air. A collapsed section of roof bathed the MARTA lobby in city haze--half natural light, half storm runoff leaking from above.

Then a sound--light, metallic, deliberate.

Sable's voice clipped in. "Three heat sigs. Moving along the concourse from the west entrance. Armed."

"Pattern?"

"Loose formation. Not tight enough for corporate. Not scattered enough for scavengers. They're either rookies or trying to lure us out."

He moved fast now--hugging the far wall, ducking low beneath an exposed conduit.

A soda machine ahead sparked, blue arcs sputtering against cracked tile. He used it for cover, dropping to a crouch.

"Exit?" he whispered.

"North platform stairwell. Ten meters past the fountain."

He looked. The fountain was a rusted thing now, half collapsed, its basin full of rainwater and time. The stairwell beyond was narrow, unlit--and flanked by two crumbling display columns.

Perfect ambush geometry.

He didn't hesitate. He sprinted.

Halfway there, one of the figures emerged--long coat, low-slung carbine. Not corp. But not casual either.

The barrel rose.

Sable lit up.

"Down!"

He dropped as the first round snapped past. The shooter's stance was wide, untrained. He returned fire--one tight burst. Center mass.

The figure spun. Collapsed.

The others hesitated.

Wrong move.

Sable overlaid flash coordinates to the left column. He dropped the grenade low, let it bounce, and--

WHUMP.

Smoke and pressure filled the station like a punched lung.

He moved.

Boots sliding on marble. Vision flickering as his optics recalibrated through static.

"Target left is blind," Sable snapped. "One right is falling back--trying to flank."

He didn't let them.

A burst of rounds cracked through the mist. Shouts followed--disorganized, not tactical.

He reached the stairwell and dove in, boots hammering rusted steel as he took them two at a time.

Light.

Wind.

The city above.

He emerged into chaos--old parking decks slanted at odd angles, streets above and below him like jagged arteries. Sky was bruised gray, lit with the cold afterglow of a hundred silent towers.

Then the hum--low, resonant.

He turned skyward.

A ship.

Descending fast.

Not Corp.

Not registered.

Sable's voice rose, surprised. "It's not pinging any IFF. No signal. No pilot telemetry. But it's ours."

He stared as the vessel angled down toward the old street interchange--hull black and dull, unmarked, shape somewhere between tactical drop-craft and stealth courier.

It wasn't coming in for a pickup.

It was landing.

Hard.

He didn't wait for the ship to fully settle. No point. Any second wasted was another chance for the hounds to catch up.

Sable flashed a tight route across his HUD. "Rear ramp's opening. Angle in low. Move now."

He ran--limping but fast--crossing cracked asphalt toward the drop zone. Behind him, shouts. The kind of panic that comes when someone realizes they weren't supposed to lose.

The ramp hit pavement with a hiss of venting hydraulics.

He cleared the edge and dove inside.

Sable immediately sealed the hatch behind him. "Pressure lock engaged. I've got helm access. Take a seat--anywhere."

He collapsed onto a crash bench, rifle still hot in his grip. The ship was stripped bare inside. No cargo, no nameplate, no crew. Just hard-wired utilities and raw conduit.

"You sure this thing's safe?" he muttered.

"Nope," she replied. "But it's ours."

The vessel lurched--lifting hard and vertical, Gs pressing him against the seat. Outside, gunfire erupted--wild, aimless. Too late.

The city fell away beneath them.

He didn't breathe easy until the clouds swallowed everything.

"Talk to me," he said, voice low. "What the hell was that? The ship. The signal. The ambush. All of it."

Sable didn't answer right away. When she did, her tone was cautious. Analytical.

"I don't think we were just being tracked. I think we were being delivered."

"To what?"

She didn't answer. Just dropped a soft ping on the internal nav--course already plotted.

"Revenant Station," she said.

He blinked. "That place still exists?"

"Not officially."

A silence fell. He glanced down at the blood drying on his sleeve, the tremor still dancing in his fingers.

Then he chuckled. Just once.

"I always hated this goddamned part of town," he muttered. "Even before we started getting shot at."