Chapter 8_ The Bait That Bites Back

The captured Syndicate operatives were ghosts with amnesia. Secured in a DA black site, they revealed nothing—not under standard interrogation, not under sophisticated truth serums administered by Kurumi’s remote systems. Their neural implants had fried the moment they lost consciousness, scrubbing all mission-specific memory. All they offered were serial numbers and the same vacant, trained silence.
“They’re organic drones,” Kurumi reported, her voice crackling through the café’s speakers. She was remotely monitoring the interrogations from her nest. “The tech is a step beyond anything I’ve seen. It’s not just memory wiping; it’s a synaptic lock. Asking them about their mission is like asking a toaster about philosophy.”
The victory from the tunnel felt hollow, sand slipping through their fingers. They had bodies, but no intelligence.
Mika, ever the strategist, saw a different angle. “They’re tools. Expensive, sophisticated, but disposable. The Syndicate will want them back, if only to prevent a full teardown by DA engineers. Or,” he added, his gaze settling on Raze, “they’ll want to clean up loose ends.”
A new plan formed, colder and riskier than the last. They wouldn’t wait for the Syndicate to act. They would force their hand, using the prisoners as the ultimate bait.
“It’s a trap even they’ll see coming,” Takina stated, her arms crossed as they gathered around the main table. A map of the DA’s logistical network was displayed. “They’ll know the prisoners are being moved to a more secure facility.”
“Exactly,” Mika nodded. “But they’ll have to act. Letting their enhanced soldiers fall into DA’s deep analysis is a risk they can’t take. The move is tomorrow night. The route is here.” He pointed to a long, isolated stretch of elevated highway on the city’s outskirts. “Minimal civilian cross-traffic. Good sightlines. A perfect place for an ambush.”
“And we’ll be waiting in their ambush,” Chisato concluded, her eyes gleaming with a competitive fire. “A counter-ambush! I like it!”
Raze felt a knot of unease. “They’ll be expecting a Lycoris escort. They’ll bring overwhelming force.”
“Which is why you won’t be with the convoy,” Mika said, looking at him. “You, Chisato, and Takina will be here.” He pointed to a maintenance access tower overlooking the highway. “You’ll have the high ground. Mizuki will be in the chase vehicle, ready to box them in. The official DA transport will be a hardened shell with a skeleton crew. We let the Syndicate take the bait, then we spring the trap.”
The plan was set. The tension in the café in the following hours was a tangible thing, a low hum beneath the usual routines. Mizuki was outside, performing a meticulous, pre-mission check on the van, her demeanor all focused professionalism. Takina was meditating, her breathing slow and even. Chisato was, inexplicably, trying to teach K-1 a complicated hand-clapping game.
“Your reaction time is adequate, but your lack of physical limbs puts you at a permanent disadvantage,” K-1 droned as Chisato’s hands blurred.
“You’re just a sore loser!”
Raze watched them from the counter, where Mika was preparing a final round of coffee before they departed.
“You’re quiet,” Mika noted, sliding a mug toward him.
“I’m calculating,” Raze replied. “Stalker said the ‘real conversation’ was coming. This feels like it could be it. He’s not going to send more grunts. He’ll come himself.”
Mika’s expression was grave. “I’ve considered that. It’s a possibility we must prepare for. But remember the tunnel. You faced a choice between the weapon and the man. The man saved Chisato. Trust that man again tonight. His instincts, combined with your capabilities, are what will see us through. Not just the chip. You.”
The vote of confidence was staggering. Raze simply nodded, holding the warm mug between his hands.
Night fell, a blanket of deep indigo over the city. The maintenance tower was a skeletal finger of rust and concrete against the sky. From its top platform, the elevated highway stretched out like a lit ribbon below them. The air was cold and carried the distant, Doppler-shifting whine of traffic.
Chisato leaned against a railing, her eyes scanning the highway through high-powered binoculars. “Convoy is five minutes out. Right on schedule. Our DA friends are playing their part.”
Takina was assembling a compact, high-caliber sniper rifle with chilling efficiency. “Remember the priority. Disable vehicles, then hostiles. We want to capture, not just repel.”
Raze crouched beside K-1, who was running a full-spectrum sensor sweep. “Anything?”
“Passive scans are clear. Active scans would give away our position. If they are here, they are employing superior cloaking technology or are outside my current sensor radius. I don’t like it. The absence of data is… suspicious.”
Then, the convoy appeared—two sleek, armored vehicles moving at a steady pace. The trap was rolling.
For a long minute, nothing happened. The only sound was the wind whistling through the tower’s girders. The tension was a wire pulled taut.
It broke with shocking violence.
There was no roar of engines, no warning. One moment the highway was clear. The next, two black, angular vehicles with no visible headlights seemed to materialize from the shadows of an on-ramp, cutting off the convoy’s path. Two more dropped from a higher level of the highway behind them, sealing the escape. They moved with a silent, electric hum.
“They’re here,” Takina whispered, her eye pressed to her scope. “Four vehicles. No standard markings. I see eight… ten hostiles deploying. Advanced gear.”
“Mizuki, hold your position,” Chisato said into her comms, her voice all business. “Wait for the signal.”
They watched as Syndicate soldiers, clad in the same light-absorbent armor, moved with terrifying coordination. They didn’t rush. They flowed toward the DA vehicles, deploying shaped charges on the doors.
“Now!” Mika’s voice came through the comms.
The moment the charges blew, the nature of the fight changed. The doors of the DA vehicles didn’t just open—they were blown outward by the DA operatives inside, who were not a skeleton crew but a full squad of heavily armed Response Team members. Gunfire erupted, brilliant muzzle flashes cutting the darkness.
The Syndicate squad was momentarily staggered, but they adapted instantly, taking cover and returning fire with disciplined, punishing accuracy.
“They’re good,” Takina muttered, tracking a target. “Too good. They’re pinning down the Response Team.”
“Time for the counter-punch,” Chisato grinned. She slung her binoculars and hefted her custom pistol. “Takina, pick your targets. Ren, you’re with me. We drop down, hit their flank. Mizuki, come in hot on my mark!”
“Ready when you are!” Mizuki’s voice was tight with adrenaline.
Just as Chisato moved toward the access ladder, K-1’s sensors screamed a warning directly into Raze’s neural link. “INCOMING! Elevated energy signature! Above us!”
Raze’s head snapped up. Silhouetted against the moon, hovering with a predatory stillness, was a drone. But it was nothing like K-1. It was larger, armed with twin, humming energy cannons, its hull shimmering with an active camouflage field that made it waver like a heat haze. And standing calmly on a small platform attached to it, looking down at them, was Stalker.
“A counter-ambush to your counter-ambush, Zero,” his amplified voice boomed down. “Predictable.”
He raised a hand. The drone’s cannons glowed with a malevolent blue light, not aiming at them, but at the support cables anchoring their tower to the highway below.
“He’s going to drop the tower!” Raze yelled.
“Scatter!” Chisato cried.
The world dissolved into noise, light, and falling steel. The energy blast severed two main cables with searing flashes. The tower lurched violently, groaning like a dying beast. Concrete cracked and metal shrieked.
Raze’s nanites kicked in, stabilizing him as the platform tilted. He saw Takina grab a railing to stop her slide, her sniper rifle clattering away into the darkness. Chisato used the tilt to launch herself towards a lower girder, grabbing on with one hand.
K-1 shot forward, not to attack, but to intercept a falling piece of debris the size of a manhole cover that was heading straight for Chisato. He slammed into it, knocking it off course with a shower of sparks, but the impact sent him spiraling, his systems flickering.
“K-1!”
“I’m… functional,” the drone buzzed, righting himself with a strained whir. “Combat efficiency reduced by 30%.”
Stalker watched from his perch, a silent conductor of chaos. His drone turned its cannons toward the highway battle below, firing precise shots that disabled the DA vehicles without harming the Syndicate soldiers. He was systematically dismantling the entire operation.
Raze felt the cold fury rise, but also Mika’s words. Trust the man.
He didn’t look at Stalker. He looked at his team. Takina, stranded. Chisato, dangling. K-1, damaged. Mizuki, waiting in a van that was now useless with the highway blocked.
The weapon in his head offered no solutions for this. Only the man could.
“Chisato!” he yelled over the din. “The girder you’re on! Can you swing to the next pylon?”
Chisato looked, calculated with her own impossible instincts, and grinned. “Yeah!”
“Do it! Takina, I’m coming for you! K-1, can you give me a distraction? One small, bright flash right in Stalker’s optics.”
“With pleasure.” K-1 wobbled, then a tiny, concentrated flare burst like a camera flash directly at Stalker’s helmet.
The Syndicate commander flinched, his helmet auto-polarizing. It was only a second.
But a second was all Raze needed. He leaped, not with superhuman grace from a Contingency, but with the trained, enhanced power of his own body. He landed beside Takina, grabbed her around the waist, and jumped again, pushing off the crumbling concrete as the section they’d been standing on gave way. They landed hard on a more stable crossbeam below.
At the same moment, Chisato used her momentum to swing like a pendulum, releasing at the apex to fly through the air and land cat-like on the next pylon over, now with a clear line of fire.
Stalker, his vision cleared, saw his prey had escaped. He looked from Chisato, aiming her pistol up at him, to Raze, who was shielding Takina. He didn’t seem angry. He seemed… interested.
“The human variable,” his voice echoed. “More resilient than projected. A note for the final analysis.”
His drone spun and ascended rapidly, its camouflage re-engaging as it vanished into the night sky. On the highway below, the Syndicate soldiers, receiving some unseen signal, began a fighting retreat, dragging their wounded with them, leaving the stunned DA response team in disarray.
The trap had been sprung. And they had been the ones caught in it.
Silence descended, broken only by the creak of the damaged tower and the distant sirens approaching. They had survived, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Stalker had seen them work, seen their bonds, and had effortlessly turned their plan to ash.
Helping Takina to her feet, Raze looked at Chisato across the gulf of broken steel. Her smile was gone, replaced by a hard, thoughtful look. They had learned a brutal lesson tonight: they were not just fighting an organization. They were fighting a mind like Stalker’s—a mind that saw people as variables to be controlled, and bonds as weaknesses to be exploited.
And he had found theirs.
End of Chapter 8