Operation: Redacted Chapter 1 - A Bug in the Plan

Scene 1: A Cliff, Hangar

  “Hands and eyes where they belong? You’re too naive for this line of work don’t you think, Sugar?” Foxglove’s words flowed into the young medic’s ears like monsoon rain to the eager, fertile soil. Agent Foxglove, or Foxglove as she’d introduced herself on their first assignment offered as many pleasures to the senses as a fine glass of chardonnay. Crimson curls coiled flirtatiously atop her head, normally matching her lipstick and nails in precise, alluring fashion. When she wasn’t dressed in something skintight -leaving little to the imagination of her unfortunate mark- she found the deep color of ruby appealing and made every effort to ensure its hue was well represented in anything appropriate enough to emphasize her figure. Stunning, seductive, eye-catching all described the young woman before Kaelis whose midsection was mere inches away from his face smelling of sweet summer fruit and ecstasy. But Foxglove’s appearance, enticing as it may be, was calculated and intentional; a distraction from the poison already coursing through your veins.   “Hah!” Kaelis retorted, his focus unwavering and his hand steadily healing weeks worth in mere seconds. “After what you did to Gigantatortoise back there I wouldn’t-”   “Gigatronis.” Ella corrected coldly from across the hangar-turned-medical ward.”His name is Gigatronis and he’s not dead he’s just… occupied.” The elf’s fiery eyes remained glued to the part-plant, part-machine, part-man monstrosity bound in manashackles across the room. The rest of the unit hadn’t dared to ask about her eyes yet, how they seemed to resemble the Sol with slits that narrowed like razors nor what they saw. All they knew is they saw more than anyone else or at the very least something else than the others saw. Ella was hardly the strangest one in this new unit though she was certainly the most unconventional. Every carefully calculated plan was a mere suggestion and any Blackaxel code words a contingency she was confident would never encounter.   “Sure... whatever that means.” Kaelis didn’t offer enough thought to correct himself. The sea elf was accustomed to diving head-first into danger and the last mission offered little variety to the scenery he’d surrounded himself in since birth. Water-bound? Check. Injury? With Foxglove’s wound now days away from unnoticeable due to his extensive training, Check. Extraction with some unfortunate bastard the sea rejected and HQ wanted? Check.   “All set Foxglove. Sorry again about that, I’ve never seen anyone bend that way and I-”   “It’s fine Sugar.” The gardener interrupted politely, “Next time just stick to your gun and let me do the rest.” A wink ended the conversation like an exclamation point following a whisper. Foxglove, one of the gardeners, offered flexibility, speed and agility that Kaelis now recognized came with observation and purposeful movements. It was her first time working with an Urchin but Prophet offered no additional detail about them. Sharp, prickly and intoxicating, she noted mentally.   The five, including their prisoner, felt the stifling silence of the abandoned hangar return with only the uncomfortable twisting of Gigatronis disrupting it. The hangar itself sat suspended like a private thought deep within Beaumont’s underbelly: an infirmary stitched into the ribs of a reclaimed zeppelin hangar where the city’s utopia thinned into the skeleton of abandoned architecture and forgotten craftsmen. Outside the elevator shaft and up the mid-city canyon, millions of lives moved in harmony: airships with mighty brass keels belching pearlescent steam-trails glided between glassy needle-towers; warforged in tailored uniforms ferried crates of rune-ink and condenser coils; and lantern-laden streets cast honeyed light over the canals that fed the lower engines of the metropolis. Somewhere above, the magnorails sang on their tracks like harp strings in an endless, humming hymn of arrival and departure.   But inside, the Blackaxel held their quiet.   Everything about the place was clean in the way a scalpel was clean: precise, sharp and meant for work. Miles of polished rails ran along the walls like lines of sheet music waiting to be stippled with the notes that would turn it into music while manalamps burned behind smokey glass with glow tinted cool as deep water. Every wall was interrupted by storage containers, some opening forward with diamond-grated doors and others barricaded shut with metal roll-up doors, all of which bore scars of heavy work but remained clean and ready-to-use like the plates of a buffet. Whoever worked in this hangar before them cared as deeply for its upkeep as its current inhabitants care about their mission and its current prisoner: Gigatronis.   He was bound to the rails with reanimated cables and wires and his body wrapped in a straitjacket reinforced with layered sigil-plates, each plate etched in a language so old it felt like the memory of a root. Thick manashackles locked his wrists and ankles, their runes pulsing in slow, disciplined intervals like a heartbeat under command. His torso was a grotesque marriage of muscle braided with vine, bone threaded with cable and bark fused with a greenish alloy. One shoulder rose in the curve of a mechanical housing with vents breathing out the faintest exhale of warm, damp air. Where a human throat should have been, there was a lattice of plant-fiber and metal rings that looked almost like a speaker diaphragm. His entire being looked like it had been built, grown and built again. Even unconscious, he seemed to be listening. Where his monstrous body ended and Jainora’s Neodruidic bindings began was knowledge only she knew and she preferred to keep it that way. Every cable, wire, plate and hose seemed to connect him to the wall and the wall to him; if there was any escape the hangar was a passenger alongside him. Lanterns weren’t new to Blackaxel’s arsenal but neither the Gardener, Urchin nor Jumper had ever worked with one and their first impression -that of treating Beaumont’s finest tech like the very grass outside- was enticing and oddly eerie.   Operation: ████████ had ended hours ago but the adrenaline of it lingered like a storm refusing to leave the horizon. The four of them carried its aftermath differently. Each a distinct kind of quiet held behind the same smile.    

Section 1: Gardeners

  Foxglove stood near Kaelis with the practiced ease of someone who never truly stood anywhere; she occupied space, curated it and made it hers. Her silhouette was all soft lines and hard intention. A skintight suit tailored to move without sound with ruby accents catching the lamp-glow only when she wanted them to. Even the way she leaned suggested an invitation while offering none. She was a rumor made flesh, trained to be desired, underestimated but not survived.   The Gardeners were Blackaxel’s cultivated cruelty: infiltration artists and covert operatives trained for breach, sabotage and silent exits. They were social engineers who could easily seed a lie and watch it bloom in someone else’s mind. Foxglove wore that lineage like perfume. She smelled like summer fruit and candy with a hint of something sharper underneath; an herb you couldn’t name until it was already on your tongue and down your throat. When harvest time arrived, it was the Gardeners who had already pulled the weeds letting the rest of society thrive without the invasiveness of the undesirable.   Her hands were immaculate, nails lacquered crimson and yet there were faint bruises at her knuckles. The kind that didn’t come from punching walls but from striking cartilage and pressure points with surgical devotion. There was a micro-blade tucked into her sleeve seam, a wire garrote disguised as a strand of hair ribbon and a ring that, when twisted, could fog a room with a contact sedative measured in seconds. She was elegant because elegance was camouflage. She was charming because charm was leverage. And she watched Kaelis the way a predator watched a new kind of prey:curious, amused and already categorizing him into strengths and liabilities without malice, simply because that was how she stayed alive.   For all her theater, she never once looked directly at Gigatronis for more than a blink. It wasn’t avoidance, it was calculation. Monsters distracted the naive. Foxglove’s attention was currency and she spent it only where it bought control.  

Section 2: Urchins

  Kaelis was the hangar’s contrary warmth: a sea elf with storm-dark hair pulled back in a medic’s knot and his skin carrying the faint iridescence of deep ocean scales when the light caught him just right. His uniform was Blackaxel practical, with dark fabric and reinforced seams bearing the Cartel’s palette subdued into steeled blue and carmine. A quiet stripe of teal circled his collar like a whisper of his sector, easily lost if his hair was allowed to fall onto his uniform. A harness beneath his coat held rescue tools as naturally as a snake oil salesman’s held tonics: a spool of silkline that could harden into a splint, several runeflares for murkwater visibility and a compact pressure valve used to equalize lungs during rapid ascents.   The Urchins were the ones who went where breath failed: deep-sea search and rescue and oftentimes extraction from places the world pretended didn’t exist, or at least didn’t exist for its benefit. An Urchin’s compassion wasn’t soft, it was muscular and Kaelis fit the specs with surgical precision. He had hauled bodies from wrecks, stitched sailors back together in the belly of a sinking ship and often prayed over the living and the dead with the same steady hands.   Kaelis’ palm hovered over his own torn midsection but the magic he worked looked nothing like the fireworks of a traditional Blastcan. It was a quiet restoration drawn from salt-sweet mana like tidewater into a wound knitting muscle as if mending netting. Every pulse of healing carried a faint scent of brine and clean rain. His jaw stayed set not from pain, but from focus. He treated injuries the way some priests treated confessions: without flinching, without judgement or condescension simply because someone had to.   There was youth in him, an earnestness that hadn’t yet been fully sanded down by Blackaxel’s edges. But there was also the deep-sea calm that only came from learning how to move when the pressure threatened to crush you. Kaelis did not shake, did not hurry, he simply did the work. And even as Foxglove toyed with him playfully like a cat with a ribbon Kaelis remained stubbornly anchored to his purpose: stabilize the team, prepare for transfer and keep the mission from bleeding into tragedy.   His eyes flicked once toward Ella, carefully and respectfully, as a medic assessing another kind of wound. He didn’t ask what burned behind her gaze -he didn’t want to know- he only made a mental note that whatever it was, it watched Gigatronis like hunger. “You alright over there, darkness?” The elf’s voice drifted across the room, loud enough to capture the attention of Ella but soft enough to avoid the metal walls that seemed to exist to reverberate every sound offered to them.  

Section 3: Jumpers

  Ella’s ears twitched slightly but noticeably, sending a clear message that they’d received Kaelis’ message but discarded it all the same.   “I told you I’m fine, I can take care of myself.” Her words rang back cold and remorseless like an admission of guilt. She did not speak unless she had to and the few words she had offered landed like thrown knives. Even now after correcting Kaelis with clinical coldness she fell back into silence with a discipline that felt ritualistic. Gigatronis' manashackles pulsed and Ella's gaze tightened.   Ella existed at the end of the hangar the way night existed at the end of a streetlamp's reach. She was an elf but not the kind painted on airship station ceilings or found on the cover of beauty magazines. Her beauty was severe and sharp, the kind that made you think of thorny vines and winter branches. Her attire lacked Blackaxel colors and clearance but neither seemed to bother the layered elf. Black and yellow leather sleeves and shoulders presided over her matte and dark top, the fabric drinking light rather than reflecting it and her boots picked up the tab from the top.The Jumpers were Blackaxel’s unpredictable line, those whose loyalty appeared questionable but results defined it; they could act alone or in groups, under extreme pressure or controlled environments and consistently deliver. They were called Jumpers not because they leapt recklessly but because they knew exactly where to land.   Ella’s eyes were the first thing that unsettled strangers, especially those who steered clear of Solusi Simoli. fiery, slit like a cat’s and bright as Sol caught in glass. They didn’t glow with simple magic, they examined, they cut. When she looked at Gigatronis it wasn’t fear or fascination, it was ownership of attention like she had decided he belonged to her field of view and would not be allowed to escape it.   Her magic clung to her in subtle ways, recognizable by others like her but foreign to the rest of the confederacy. The air near her felt cooler as if the hanger’s warmth had to negotiate with her presence. Earrings hung from her ears thrumming with slow, dark vitality. Their shape was recognizable but unspeakable, appearing to have been reclaimed from something that might once have been plating, detailed into intricate feathers that only provided more questions than answers. There was something else in her stillness, an agenda that didn’t belong to Blackaxel’s paperwork. She had a personal gravity. It was a kind of purpose that didn’t announce itself, it was the kind that waited  

Section 4: Lanterns

  “He’s not going anywhere and your staring at him isn’t going to tighten the bindings any more. Blink and relax for a second, Ella.” The human’s words rang like permission but smelled like a trap begging to be sprung.   Jainora moved like a question still forming, gliding across the hanger floor like her feet gave the metal-plated floor permission to move beneath her.   She was a technodruid, young enough that her confidence sometimes lagged behind her capability but old enough that the world’s machinery had already shaped her hands. Her hair was pulled back and held in place with thin copper filaments that clicked softly when she turned her head. Bits of salvaged circuitry hung like jewelry at her ears and belt: not decoration, but components waiting to be useful. Her uniform bore small luminous thread-work at the cuffs and hints of smart fabric and plating beneath, cleverly disguising the reclaimed attire she masked with nondescript coats and gloves. To the trained eye, Jainora appeared like she’d grown up in a metropolitan hellscape and scraped its floors for abandoned tech, hiding it beneath whatever she found comfortable at the time.   But where Kaelis’ magic was tide and prayer, Jainora’s was adaptive and translated.   She saw the city not as steel opposed to nature but as nature wearing a new skin: Pipes were veins, steam was breath, wires were roots and hydraulic fluid was river water forced through muscle. She had grown up in a utopia that pretended its wonders were effortless with airships docking like swans, warforged polishing streets with smiling “faces” and she had learned, privately, that nothing so grand stayed afloat without something unseen holding it up. And it was the unseen that was cruel, heartless and devoid of value and purpose. Somebody mistook nature for their own, forging tools from the death of the once-living and charging citizens to observe the once-natural beauty that corporations stole.   In the hanger she kept close enough to Ella to be useful but far enough to not intrude. Her eyes took inventory: the manashackles, the storage locker’s reinforcement plates and the wall’s emergency steam-valves. She flexed her fingers once, causing a thick bundle of cables wrapped around Gigatronis’ neck to respond as if they were alive, coiling and uncoiling, eager to follow her command.   Jainora had the nervous energy of someone newly initiated into Blackaxel’s true work. Operation: ████████ had been her first taste of what it meant to subdue someone like Gigatronis. Their captor was a Class-1 undesirable, the kind that harvested mana by draining the life out of mana-blooded people then bottling it and selling it to the highest bidder. She hadn’t yet built the calluses for that kind of evil and it showed in the way her gaze kept returning to the prisoner with a mixture of awe and disgust. But she did not falter, even uncertainty can be loyal if it stays standing.   Foxglove finally peeled herself away from Kaelis with a slow, satisfied grace like a curtain falling at the end of a performance. Her wound was sealing and her skin was smoothing as if it had never been torn. The hanger’s instruments hissed softly like a calculated, tone-deaf symphony while outside, the city’s grand machinery continued its repetitive song.   Gigatronis remained ‘occupied’ as Ella had said, yet the air around him felt crowded, as if his unconsciousness didn’t mean absence. As if something inside him was dreaming with its eyes open.   And all four of them, the Gardener, the Urchin, the Jumper and the Lantern held their positions in the hanger like pieces on a board, each understanding in their own way that their first mission together was almost over.  

Scene 2: Taking the sub-a-way

  Time did not announce itself between the hangar and the railworks beneath Beaumont. Abandoned was the best word to describe what the unit sought and what they found matched as closely as it could. Sol light, passerbys, even transients were absent from their path, a critical calculation necessitated by Blackaxel’s highest authority for the transfer of a Class 1 criminal. The unit moved through maintenance corridors that were never on public maps, passing steam mains whose insulating cloth had long since foregone its tight-wrapping and succumbed to tatters the way one’s favorite shirt eventually does. They passed junctions boxed behind brass grille, and emergency stairwells that smelled of oil, wet stone and rust. The sounds of Skyreach were still present but reduced to a steady vibration that traveled through the soles of the unit’s boots.   Gigatronis traveled between the four of them wrapped tightly in cables, wires and electricity-neutralizing conduits along with anything else Jainora could command to keep him secured and silent. A commandeered streetsweeper bot hovered nearly an inch above the littered ground, carrying the weight of the slumbering monster with presumed ease. The manashackles held the prisoner’s wrists and ankles, the runes on those restraints pulsing at a measured pace that suggested a controlled drain of mana rather than a simple lock. Even in unconsciousness his body resisted categorization, the amalgamated parts did not behave like separate materials. Plant fiber flexed and tightened where it met alloy, bark plates lifted and settled with the rise and fall of breath and thin metal filaments beneath the skin shifted as though responding to signals that were not purely muscular. There were places along his collarbone where greenish residue had dried into a lacquered sap and other places along the ribs where heat gathered without the presence of an engine. Every few minutes his handlers checked the runes, shackles and ties not because they doubted them but because complacency with a creature like this was how people ended up missing.   The subway line Blackaxel selected for the transfer sat beyond a locked service gate marked with municipal warnings that no one in the unit needed to read; shapes, words and colors were in perfect place to verify this was the correct location. Beyond it a decommissioned platform stretched into darkness and an empty subway car waited on the track like a tool left out between shifts. Its exterior was polished and unadorned and its windows were treated with a one-way film that caught the low light and returned it as a flat, dim sheen. Overhead in the tunnel ran tidy rows of tired brass conduits and pipes, the latter dripping into a condensation channel that carried the water into a grated gutter and out of sight. The air down here carried a controlled chill created by ventilation fans and coolant pipes that ignored any outdoor weather, making every breath visible for half a second before it vanished. The hum of subway cars above offered a boring, dull tone like music that played endlessly from a hundred-year-old speaker; defeated, toneless and mundane.   Ella entered the subway car first and took a position that gave her the longest, clearest line of sight to a gurney-like table that Blackaxle installed for extraction. To Ella, visibility was a form of custody and she would be the only one giving it away and only on her own terms, if she deemed it. Her cloak hung still, her posture balance and her eyes never lingered on the platform's shadows longer than they had to; her attention belonged to the prisoner and whatever he might attempt. That focus did not soften when the streetsweeper bot lifted Gigatronis into the car nor when the gurney locked into floor brackets with a heavy metallic click. She watched the manashackles, straps, sigil plates and points where tissue met metal met plant matter, clearly tracking more than simple movement. She was watching for patterns, for timing and for any change in rhythm that would indicate intention.   Kaelis remained near the door positioned so that he could reach the prisoner quickly if the restraints failed, and so that he could also reach any of the team if something tore, burned or ruptured. His hands and sidearm both carried a faint residue of restorative mana that did not dissipate immediately after healing and the smell of brine and clean raid lingered around him in a way that was subtle but noticeable in the enclosed subway car. His expression held the steady seriousness of someone used to injuries that happened fast and demanded faster decisions. He studied Gigatronis with the caution of a rescuer confronting a hazard that did not care about intentions, good or bad. Catastrophe struck often and without warning and Kaelis carried the burden of fearlessness as effortlessly as the streetsweeper bot carried their prisoner.   Foxglove took the opposite end of the subway car near the back windows, close enough to see the platform outside and the tunnel mouth beyond it and far enough to avoid becoming the first target in case of a sudden lunge. She looked relaxed but the set of her shoulders and the placement of her feet suggested she was prepared to move without hesitation. Her clothing reflected almost no light but the ruby accents on her suit and accessories provided small points of color that could serve as signals to allies if the light failed; choices not made by accident. She watched the environment as much as she watched the prisoner because in her experience the environment was the part of the operation most people forgot to guard.   Jainora stayed near Ella, close enough to act as backup without crowding her. Her attention moved constantly between the prisoner and the subway car's infrastructure, studying it intently, building contingencies silently and methodically. She kept her hands near a bundle of cables and connector lines attached to the car's wall, grasping them not as weapons in the conventional sense but instead as raw material that could become binding, grasping or obstructing shapes when pushed by her technodruid craft. She studied the ceiling conduits as if they were trellises, the handrails as if they were structural limbs, door actuators as if they were joints that could be seized and forced to obey and the benches like they were a portable prison with some assembly required. Her breathing was controlled by the subtle tension in her wrists and fingers suggesting she was running through possibilities and rehearsing responses.   "Thank you Dusty, we got it from here." Her friendliness with the streetsweeper bot was an unexpected break in the quiet but not unexpected coming from the enthusiastic druid whose eyes never left their study but her smile somehow still warmly thanked their assistant. With the acknowledgement of spinning bristle-brushes and what could only be described as a mechanical fart of old dust, Dusty departed the subway car to continue his conquest of abolishing the abandoned tunnel's dirt and grime.   For several minutes after the doors sealed nothing happened that would satisfy the shape of a threat. The car's internal manalamps maintained a cool, regulated glow. The ventilation fans moved air in a consistent pattern, the platform outside remained empty and a distant rail line somewhere deeper and above them produced a low hum that traveled through the metal of the car before fading as the passing car moved away. If someone had walked into the car at that moment without knowing the details they might have assumed a traveling group of surgeons choosing the most challenging vehicle imaginable for surgery on an unconscious training dummy intended to teach multitudes of surgical techniques across a variety of races. And that assumption would have been their first mistake. Because Gigatronis was not unconscious or inert even when his body appeared to be.   The first sign did not come as a dramatic movement but as a small change in the way the air behaved around him. The humidity rose close to the gurney, enough that the nearest window began to fog at its lower edge while the rest of the glass remained clear. The scent that followed was faint at first, a mix of sap and warm metal and then became more distinct as it gathered as if his breathing carried it into the car with every slow exhale. The manashackles responded with slight brightening of their runes, an automatic adjustment that suggested the restraints had detected an internal surge rather than a physical struggle. Ella noticed the change immediately. She didn't react outwardly but her eyes shifted to the runes and stayed there until the pulse steadied. Jainora's gaze dropped to the gurney's locking brackets, then to the floor seams beneath the gurney, then to the baseboard conduit that ran along the car's inner wall. Kaelis' posture tightened in a quiet way as if he'd felt pressure change in his own lungs and Foxglove moved one hand from resting to ready, her fingers settling near a concealed weapon, without drawing attention to the motion.   Gigatronis' eyelids fluttered once, the movement was so slight it could have been dismissed as residual reflect but the next breath he took carried more heat than the one before it. His chest expanded and the seam where bark met metal along his ribs flexed as though the structure beneath it was re-configuring, testing the limits of the shape. A thin filament beneath his jawline shifted and there was a soft, wet sound not of speech forming but of tissues adjusting around something mechanical. His eyes opened partially revealing a green-gold glow that did not behave like normal reflection. The car's lights held steady for a moment then they dimmed and returned with a slightly different intensity, as if a sensor had re-calibrated. He did not look at the operatives but instead looked past them toward the back of the car itself, toward the ceiling conduits and windows and the seams where the car's outer shell met its inner skeleton. The manashackles tightened again and the runes flared, though the tightening did not appear to cause him pain in the way it would a human captive. His muscles did not spasm and his breath did not hitch. Instead, his gaze remained fixed on the infrastructure and his attention held a slow, deliberate quality as if he were taking measurements.   Ella kept her body still and allowed only her eyes to follow the direction of his focus knowing that the prisoner's intentions mattered more than his strength. The hint of purpose in his stare made her more dangerous than any visible weapon because she treated purpose as the root of every escape. Ella's expression remained controlled but the intensity behind it suggested she was seeing more than movement, more than physical preparation; she was reading the direction of a plan.   The technodruid's fingers flexed around the cables in her grasp and they responded with a slight switch signaling they were ready, already half-imagined into something else. Her mind had turned the subway car into a toolkit. She'd already evaluated where each door actuator could be seized and where the ventilation fan housings could be jammed, where the overhead rails could be pulled and bent into a net and where the internal hydraulic lines could be forced to rupture into slick sprinklers that would slow a charge. But Jainora didn't act yet knowing that acting too early could turn a contained situation into a chaotic one and she was disciplined enough to understand that restraint was a powerful form of control.   Kaelis watched the prisoner's chest and throat, measuring breath and pressure. He watched for signs of a seizure, of a toxin response or a sudden internal rupture that would demand his intervention. All were possible options and his narrowed focus failed to rule out any -or all- of them. Something was happening and their mission, like many of his prior missions, required extraction with living passengers. His healing sidearm was a well-crafted tool of preservation but even he knew preservation could quickly become a liability when the thing being preserved was the very threat they were transporting. He held the line between duty and caution in his posture and it showed in the way he kept his hands ready but did not yet reach.   Foxglove's gaze remained dutifully bound to the car's windows and the tunnel mouth beyond them, to the overhead lamps running down the abandoned track and to the emergency doors dimly lit and rusted shut. She was trained well and knew the moment of failure rarely came from the obvious direction. She remained composed, the faint curve at the corner of her mouth suggesting she was already anticipating the specific kind of trouble this would become. Another scan of the still tunnel-way around them revealed nothing new but until they began moving her attention would stay outside; everywhere anything else could be.   Another small shift occurred, this one originating from the floor. But the subway car wasn't the cause, it sat still and ready like it was sharing the tension of its inhabitants, also biding its time to make a move.   A vibration traveled through the gurney into the brackets and then into the car's metal ribs. It didn't match the rhythm of any distant subway car. The manalamps flickered once, then steadied. Condensation on the ceiling pipes began to bead more quickly and drops fell with increasing frequency. The smell of sap sharpened and beneath it a different smell emerged - the oily sting of overheated insulation.   Gigatronis exhaled with a layered, soft mechanical undertone like valves within his body had opened and closed. At the same time a thin, vine-like filament slid from beneath his strapped forearm, narrow enough to be missed by an untrained eye and quick enough to be mistaken for a loose cord. Except, it moved with intention, reaching down the edge of the gurney finding a seam in the floor plating and slipped inside with the smoothness of something accustomed to finding entrances. Jainora saw it and her breathing altered slightly. She recognized this was not a brute attempt to break restraints, this was a connection. Her eyes traced the filament's path, following the line of the floor seam to where it ran along the baseboard conduit. If Gigatronis could reach the car's systems he would not need to free his limbs in any traditional way.   Ella's gaze narrowed watching her companion's trained eyes moving with purpose. Behind her eyes was not fear but precision and for a brief moment there was a subtle shift in her focus, suggesting a thought passed through her with the weight of private intention. Her face and expression dared not speak it but there was a change in the way she watched the prisoner's connection to the car as if the possibility of movement, of departure, of being carried somewhere had become relevant in a way that went beyond containment. The manalamps dimmed again and returned and then the ventilation fans stuttered as if the power feed has been interrupted briefly and reestablished. The car remained sealed and unmoving. The platform outside remained empty. The tunnel mouth beyond the platform looked unchanged but the darkness within it seemed deeper now that the interior lighting was proving to be unreliable.   Gigatronis' fingers flexed beneath his bindings as they creaked but not just from strain alone. They creaked as the gurney's frame shifted slightly like the metal beneath him had softened and then tightened again. The manashackles pulsed brighter causing the runes on the restraints to cycle faster, not in panic but in a quickened attempt to maintain a lock on something that was changing shape. The unit held their positions. They were all trained enough to know that moving without purpose would only feed chaos and control meant they determined the sway of events and its outcomes. Jainora prepared her cables in her mind and let them remain physically still, refusing to give Gigatronis a reason to accelerate. Kaelis monitored breathing and muscle responses with trained discipline; something was happening and he wasn't sure if Gigatronis was in control of it or not yet. Foxglove kept her eyes trained on the exterior lights and rusted emergency door panel, passing briefly to the tunnel mouth before repeating her circuit. Ella's focus remained on the filament's presumed unseen progress, tracing likely paths into the subway car's body.   Then the lights failed completely.   The blackout was immediate and total both inside and out without the warning of a flicker. The manalamps died in a way that suggested far more than a standard outage, the ventilation fans stopped and the low hum of the car's systems vanished. In the sudden silence, the sounds that remained were the smallest ones: the drip of water into the condensation channel outside, the faint shift of fabric following the unit's breaths and the wet, layered sound of Gigatronis' respiration. A soft, internal clicking began near the gurney as if something was engaging, aligning and locking into a new configuration. In the darkness there was a brief pulse of green-gold light from the prisoners eyes, then a second pulse that did not match the first, as if the signal had been answered by something in the car. Jainora felt a faint vibration in her cables and the sensation was not simply mechanical, it was responsive. She tightened her grip and the cables mirrored her actions, holding steady with palpable anticipation.   But when the lights returned, they did not return as they had been.   The car’s lamps came back with a tinted hue: not bright, not dim, but wrong in a way that made skin look sickly and metal look damp. For a moment the interior appeared unchanged and that false normality held just long enough to mislead the eye. The seats were still seats. The rails were still rails. The floor plating looked intact. The gurney appeared to be locked in place, and Gigatronis appeared to be strapped down exactly as before. Kaelis’ gaze moved across the prisoner’s chest and limbs and he registered what looked like a steady breath and restraints that still held. Foxglove’s attention flicked to the door panel and the emergency override, noticing that the indicator lights were active again. Jainora’s eyes scanned the baseboard conduit seam where the filament had vanished and she saw no visible vine, no outward growth, no obvious corruption. Ella did not relax, choosing not to trust the first impression. She focused on the manashackles knowing the manashackles were the one piece of truth that did not depend on lighting. The runes still glowed but the cadence had changed and the pattern was now synchronized with the subway car’s lighting pulse rather than Gigatronis’ breathing. It was subtle, but it was consistent. The restraints were still doing their job, but the job had shifted.   Jainora noticed it next being sensitive to systems and patterns and she saw the same synchronization in the conduit lights along the car’s edges. The glow was not random, it was cycling in the same rhythm as the manashackles. The car’s systems were responding to the restraints, not merely powering them. A soft, mechanical hiss rose from beneath the floor plating near the gurney followed by a faint release of warm, damp air, and the smell of sap returned with greater strength. The metal around the gurney brackets began to show thin lines of condensation not from cold, but because the air around it had warmed. It looked as if moisture were being pulled out of the environment and redistributed along specific seams.   Gigatronis opened his eyes fully and the green-gold glow held steady. At last he finally looked directly at the operatives with a gaze that did not suggest rage or panic. It suggested attention, suggested recognition. The plant fiber along his throat shifted and the speaker-like rings beneath it vibrated without producing speech as if he were generating something that did not need a voice or did not have a voice. Ella held his gaze and her expression remained controlled, but there was now a thin, unmistakable tension at the corners of her eyes that suggested she was recalculating. Her earlier focus had been custody, now it was assessment of a change to the rules. Jainora’s cables began to lift slightly from the wall without her fully commanding them as if the car’s altered field was tugging at their potential. She forced them down again with a tightening grip and they obliged. She could feel the handrails overhead vibrating faintly and the door actuators humming with a pressure that did not belong to normal cycling. The car was not merely powered any longer, it was awake.   Foxglove stepped closer to the door panel and placed her hand near the emergency release without activating it. Her posture remained elegant but the readiness in it sharpened. Kaelis moved his weight forward and prepared to intervene. Then the platform outside the windows shifted slightly; the subway car began to roll forward. There was no warning chime, no signal, no external engine engaged to pull it and the movement started with a smoothness that suggested the car had been waiting for permission. The wheels engaged with a quiet, heavy rotation. The vibration in the floor increased rapidly then stabilized. The car’s interior lights remained tinted now an oozy green and the ventilation fans resumed with a soft, controlled whir. The doors remained sealed. Foxglove’s eyes went to the door panel again taking note of the indicator lights displaying active, but the controls did not respond to her proximity in the way they should have. The door seam revealed the locking bolts seated deeper than normal as if the car had reinforced its own closure. Jainora felt the conduits beneath the floor draw power in a new pattern, recognizing that the system was no longer responding to municipal control. Ella’s attention snapped to the gurney and then to the runes again and she realized with a cold clarity that the manashackles were not only binding Gigatronis but were now binding the subway car. The restraints had expanded their definition of “containment” to now include the vehicle, the doors and the route itself, as though Gigatronis had turned the car into a sealed chamber that traveled with him rather than a container that held him still. He had not needed to escape the gurney in the way everyone expected, instead he seemed to redefine the gurney as the center of a moving system.   The tunnel ahead swallowed the platform’s light but the car continued forward into darkness that belonged to the older railworks. Ahead of them the service lines were rarely inspected and the city’s hum grew deeper and more distant, eventually waning to silence and the quiet hum of the tracks beneath them. The lamps inside maintained their wrong hue and the subtle synchronization between the manashackle runes and the conduit glow continued with perfect consistency.   Without warning the destination display above the door changed, interrupting the harmony of the lights and manashackles and the soft shudder of the subway car. It was disruptive and intentional, demanding everyone's attention but commanding none of it. If it was a distraction then the unit wasn't falling for it. But eventually Ella folded and diverted her attention to the orange-yellow text scrolling across the too-small housing of warm glowing lights unknowingly spelling their fate. The text that formed was not a municipal station name nor was it a coded Blackaxel designation. It was a single word rendered in clean, official transit font, bright against the dark panel.   Hexpistal   The destination was impossible and Ella's expression was riddled with confusion and a hint of guilt. One by one the unit turned to read the scrolling text, all eventually displaying the same incredulousness as Ella at what was either a misdirection, mistake or trap. But Gigatronis remained strapped to the gurney, his eyes fully open, his breathing steady and the faint vibration in his throat rings suggested ongoing transmission rather than strain. Nothing about him seemed in control and try as he may have, the manashackles and various bindings held tight against his body keeping the unit in control. Of him at least. But the subway car carried all of them toward a destination none of them had authorized and the manashackles and manalanterns pulsed in perfect agreement with the rails beneath their feet.   Somehow, on a track they all knew didn’t exist, they were going to Solusi Simoli.