The rusty maintenance door of the old freight depot groaned against its tracks as Bhas pried it open with a blunt screech of protesting iron.
Arkan stepped inside first, keeping his left side low, his dead arm still tucked deeply away like a broken wing inside his ruined school sweater. The air inside the hangar was frigid and dense, smelling heavily of ancient diesel fuel, dry rot, and grease that had hardened into black glass over the two years since the 2024 grid failure. High above, the corrugated tin roof rattled softly against the cold Novara wind, letting tiny, jagged splinters of moonlight cut through the darkness.
"Stay down," Arkan muttered, his voice gravelly and sharp as he looked back over his shoulder.
Chan was practically vibrating behind him, his fingers white where they gripped the straps of his school bag. His uniform trousers were caked in dry embankment mud up to the knees. "It's too quiet, Kan. Seriously. This place looks exactly like the kind of abandoned yard where people get found in pieces. What if those drones didn't actually buy the null-sector spoof?"
"They bought it," Arkan snapped, his tsundere armor snapping into place before Chan's paranoia could drag the group's focus down. He leaned his right shoulder against a crumbling concrete pillar, his chest heaving as the residual feedback from Ela's override continued to buzz in his ears like a dying cicada. "If the Logistics Branch still had a live trace on my barcode, we wouldn't have made it twenty yards into the pines. The network registry logged a complete terminal drop. To the central tower, this entire grid sector is empty."
"Empty of data, maybe," Bhas said, his boots crunching softly on a layer of shattered window glass as he moved further into the warehouse. He kicked a rusted tin can out of his path, his sharp eyes scanning the rows of tall, dark lockers lining the far wall. "But we aren't data yet. We’re still three idiots in recognizable high school blazers, and the local neighborhood watch has probably already downloaded our faces onto their morning news feed."
Ela drifted down through the rafters, his silver hair casting a pale, unnatural luminescence over the rows of decaying industrial equipment. He hovered a few inches above a rusted forklift, his silver eyes tracking the slow, rhythmic rising of Arkan’s chest. The ghost boy’s face was free of the digital lag that had plagued him in the tunnels, but he looked incredibly fragile, his silhouette slightly thinner against the dark.
"There are no active relays inside the locker bay," Ela whispered, his dual-layered voice carrying a soft, apologetic ring that made Arkan’s jaw clench in annoyance. "The main breaker was physically severed during the evacuation. The system can’t see us here, Arkan. I... I made sure of it."
"Stop looking at me like I'm about to break, Kir," Arkan growled under his breath, turning his back on the ghost boy as he limped toward the lockers. He reached out with his right hand, forcefully yanking the rusted handle of the nearest metal door. "I told you, the mask worked. Now drop the guilt."
The locker door gave way with a sharp, metallic pop, revealing an oversized pair of canvas maintenance overalls, a thick high-visibility vest covered in decades of coal dust, and a heavy wool watch cap.
Bhas walked up behind him, reaching past Arkan's shoulder to grab the heavy canvas material. "Looks like Christmas came early for the zero-percent-muscle squad. Get changed, Chan. The school uniform goes in the incinerator chute before the sun comes up."
Chan practically tore his charcoal-stained blazer off, his breath hitching as he wrestled his way into a thick, dark navy mechanic’s jumpsuit that was three sizes too large. The heavy fabric swallowed his small frame, the sleeves bunching up dramatically around his wrists.
"I look like a toddler wearing his dad's work clothes," Chan whimpered, pulling a thick orange beanie down over his ears until only his wide, bloodshot eyes were visible. "But... I guess my school crest is gone. That's something."
"Stop complaining, Chan. It covers the uniform. That’s the only metric that matters right now," Arkan said. He used his teeth to pull at the heavy zipper of a dark, oil-stained canvas coat, forcing it up with his right hand.
His left arm remained a dead, burning weight tucked firmly inside the left pocket of the work jacket. The thick canvas provided an excellent physical mask, hiding the rigid, unnaturally frozen shape of his limb. Beneath the fabric, he could feel a dull, rhythmic throb—not a pulse of blood, but a steady, cold vibration that felt like a localized hard drive spinning at maximum capacity under his skin.
Bhas shrugged into a faded gray utility jacket, the fabric tight across his shoulders. He didn't bother with a hat, instead running a hand through his messy hair to shake loose the bits of dry moss from their slide down the embankment. He walked over to the incinerator chute set into the concrete wall of the locker bay, throwing the heavy metal lid open.
"Hand them over," Bhas said, extending his hand.
One by one, the charcoal blazers of Novara Advanced Academy were dumped into the dark, vertical shaft. The heavy iron lid slammed shut with a definitive, ringing CLANG that echoed through the empty hangar like a gunshot.
"That's it," Chan whispered, staring at the closed chute. "We can't go back. Even if the gas leak story clears up... we just threw away our identities."
"Good riddance," Arkan muttered, his face perfectly impassive. "A school that runs heavy fiber-optic trunk lines through its drainage system to track its students isn't exactly an institution I wanted on my resume anyway."
Ela drifted closer to the incinerator, his translucent silver feet hovering over the soot-stained floor. He looked down the length of his own body. He was still wearing the standard white shirt and charcoal trousers of the Academy—the exact clothes he had been wearing the day he disappeared. Unlike the others, he couldn't change. The clothes were a part of his manifestation, a permanent digital imprint of his final day.
"I... I can't put on the overalls, Bhas," Ela said, his voice dropping into that small, fragile tone that always triggered Arkan’s irritation. He reached out to touch the sleeve of a discarded work shirt, but his hand passed straight through the canvas, leaving a brief trail of pale silver pixels in the fabric before it snapped back into shape. "The system... it didn't log me with a physical mass inventory. If we go out into the streets, people won't see me, but the surveillance lenses... what if they register the optical distortion?"
Arkan turned his sharp, icy gaze toward the ghost boy. "Then you stay close to me. My coat is big enough to act as a physical block if we pass a public lens. Stop overthinking the framework, Kir. You’re an unmapped error. As long as you don't actively ping the tower, you're just ambient background noise."
"He's right," Bhas said, stepping away from the chute and adjusting the heavy strap of Chan’s salvaged backpack over his own shoulder. "But we still need a destination. We can't stay in this frozen hangar forever. Where to, Kan?"
Arkan looked toward the cracked window of the depot, his eyes reflecting the dark, featureless gray of the morning mist. "The old printing district. My dad’s old workspace is three blocks from the western switching yard. The power grid there was completely decommissioned after the 2024 accident. It's a total blind spot."
Bhas paused, his hand still resting on the heavy metal lid of the incinerator chute. He turned his head slowly, his sharp eyes pinning Arkan against the crumbling concrete pillar. "Your dad’s old printing workspace? The one near the canal? Kan, you haven't stepped foot in that district since we were fourteen. You told us the lease was terminated after the bankruptcy."
"The lease was," Arkan said, his voice flat as he pulled his wool watch cap lower over his forehead with his right hand. He kept his left arm completely rigid within the deep pocket of his canvas coat, refusing to let even a micro-tremor show. "But the property belongs to a defunct subsidiary of Novara Printing Holdings. The liquidation files are stuck in an archival limbo because of the 2024 server crash. The physical keys are still in my desk drawer at home, but the rear basement window has a broken latch."
"So we're breaking and entering," Chan whispered, his orange beanie sliding slightly down his forehead as he looked between them. He swallowed hard, his knuckles white as he clamped his arms around his oversized mechanic's jumpsuit. "Great. First we're fugitive anomalies, now we're common burglars. If the police don't get us, the neighborhood watch will beat us with iron pipes."
"There is no neighborhood watch in the printing district, Chan," Arkan snapped, his tsundere armor locking into place to drown out the smaller boy's frantic breathing. "The entire sector was evacuated during the chemical coolant spill two years ago. The municipal council never re-authorized the residential zoning. It’s an empty perimeter. No smart-lenses, no automated grid patrols, nothing."
"And more importantly, no Jati," Bhas added, his mouth twitching into a grim, joyless line. He adjusted the heavy straps of Chan’s salvaged backpack, checking the weight before nodding toward the exit. "It’s a three-block sprint across the lower shunting tracks. If we move through the drainage ditches parallel to the gravel line, we can stay beneath the line of sight from the main highway bridge."
Ela drifted lower, his silver hair brushing against the cold canvas of Arkan’s shoulder. He looked out through the cracked pane of the warehouse window, his pale fingers tracing the outline of the distant, fog-shrouded cranes of the industrial district. "The fog is getting thicker, Arkan. The system... it’s trying to increase the moisture density to improve the thermal resolution of the highway cameras. They know the asset dropped out of the registry somewhere near the switching yard."
"Then we don't give them time to narrow the search matrix," Arkan muttered. He forced his legs forward, his boots making a hollow, scraping sound against the grimy floorboards as he headed for the exit. Every step felt like dragging a block of wet stone, the cold vibration in his left wrist sending a dull, sickening ache straight up to his jawline.
Bhas caught the rusty handle of the main hangar sliding door, slowly pulling it back just enough to leave a narrow, two-foot vertical slit. The freezing morning air rushed inside, carrying the bitter scent of wet pine and industrial ash.
"Single file," Bhas ordered, his voice dropping into a hard, disciplined whisper. "Chan, stay behind me. Kan, you take the rear with Ela. If I drop flat, you don't look back to see why. You just hit the mud."
They slipped through the narrow gap in the hangar door, instantly swallowed by the dense, freezing fog of the railway bypass.
Bhas led the line, keeping his torso hunched so low his gray utility jacket almost brushed the tall weeds growing between the rotting wooden ties. Behind him, Chan was a shivering ball of dark canvas, his oversized mechanic’s jumpsuit swishing softly with every frantic stride. Arkan brought up the rear, his teeth clamped shut to fight the rhythmic, icy spikes of pain shooting up from his left pocket.
Ela drifted inches above the mud parallel to Arkan, his white shirt and charcoal trousers flickering like a faulty fluorescent bulb whenever they passed beneath the silhouette of the dead overhead power lines.
The drainage ditch alongside the tracks was choked with frozen sludge and industrial runoff, but it provided a solid three feet of structural cover. Above them, the massive concrete pillars of the northern highway bridge loomed out of the mist like the legs of a stone giant.
"Stop," Bhas whispered, throwing his right hand back to catch Chan by the chest.
They dropped flat against the frozen slope of the ditch, the wet mud instantly soaking through the knees of their canvas overalls.
High above, on the concrete span of the bridge, a slow, low-frequency hum vibrated through the air. A massive, industrial-tier logistics truck—painted the same matte black as the vans from the garden—rolled slowly across the overpass. It wasn't using its headlights, but a large, rotating array on its roof cast a sweeping, fan-shaped beam of pale indigo light down into the ravine.
The light sliced through the pine canopy, illuminating the swirling fog with a cold, geometric precision.
[WARNING: PASSIVE MONITORING ARRAY DETECTED]
[GRID MATCHING: ATTEMPTING TO RE-ESTABLISH LOCATION MATRIX...]
[SPOOFING STATUS: HOLDING — NULL_SECTOR_2024 ACTIVE]
Arkan squeezed his eyes shut as a sharp, metallic tang flooded his mouth. The gray text in his peripheral vision flared slightly, the characters wavering as the indigo beam swept directly over the drainage ditch, turning the wet ferns around his watch cap into glowing, translucent wires.
Beside him, Ela froze, his silver eyes wide with terror as the edges of his pale hands began to break down into tiny, pixelated blocks of floating code. He didn't scream, but his dual-layered voice let out a tiny, high-pitched whistle of static that made Chan press his face deeper into the mud.
Don't move, Arkan thought, his right hand digging into the frozen earth until the dirt jammed under his fingernails. He forced his body to remain absolutely still beneath the heavy canvas coat. It's a passive sweep. If you don't validate the packet, it's just an unmapped reflection.
The sweeping indigo array completed its rotation, the cold light moving away from the ditch and focusing on the far side of the switching yard near the abandoned shunting terminal. The heavy rumble of the truck’s engine slowly faded into the northern distance, leaving only the quiet dripping of condensation from the concrete pillars.
Bhas pushed himself up, wiping a smear of black sludge from his cheek. He shot a grim look back at Arkan, his eyes checking the dead weight inside the MC's left pocket. "That wasn't a standard patrol sweep. They’re increasing the signal density. Your null-sector trick is shedding pixels, Kan."
"The script is holding," Arkan rasped, pulling himself out of the mud with his right arm, his voice a low, defensive bite. He refused to look at Ela's shivering form, keeping his tsundere walls up to prevent the panic from spreading. "The truck logged a zero-return. It’s moving toward the depot because that’s where the logical trajectory ends. The printing district is the opposite way. Move."
The iron-shod wheels of the logistics truck ground against the concrete expansion joints of the bridge far above, the sound fading into a rhythmic, mechanical click before the mist swallowed it entirely.
Bhas didn't wait for the echo to die. He vaulted over the slippery lip of the drainage ditch, his boots slishing through the freezing, ankle-deep water as he kept his head low against the reeds. "Keep moving," he breathed, his voice a tight vibration. "Fifty yards to the perimeter gate. Chan, don't look at the ridge."
Chan scrambled up the muddy bank behind him, his oversized mechanic’s overalls making him look like a dark, stumbling shadow against the grey backdrop. He didn't look at the ridge. He didn't look at anything except the bright orange fabric of Bhas’s beanie, his hands shaking so violently he almost dropped his salvaged backpack into the sludge twice.
Arkan followed, his right hand gripping the rough, frozen canvas of his pocket to keep his dead left arm from swinging like a pendulum. Every stride sent a fresh, nauseating pulse of code-fever from his wrist straight behind his eyes, but his expression remained a stubborn, frozen slate.
[LOCAL INTERFACE STATUS: ISOLATED]
[ALERT: SIGNAL DENSITY IN ADJACENT BLOCKS INCREASING]
Beside him, Ela’s silver form glided through the decaying briars, his translucent feet never touching the black mud. The silver boy was completely silent now, his large eyes fixed onto the dark, rusted expanse of the printing district’s chain-link fence looming through the fog ahead. The top of the wire was tangled with dead ivy and old insulation tape, looking like a row of jagged teeth against the morning sky.
Bhas reached the perimeter gate first. The padlock was a heavy, rusted lump of iron from the pre-2024 era, but the chain itself had rusted through where it wrapped around the main stanchion. With a muffled grunt, Bhas jammed the heel of his shoe against the weakest link, snapping it with a sharp, metallic clink that felt entirely too loud in the dead air.
"In. Now," Bhas hissed, throwing his shoulder against the chain-link to create a narrow, triangular opening.
Chan dived through first, tearing a tiny hole in the thigh of his oversized jumpsuit but not even slowing down until he was crouched beneath the shadow of a decaying loading dock. Arkan stepped through next, his right hand catching Ela’s translucent shoulder to pull the ghost boy close against his side as they crossed the threshold.
The moment their boots hit the cracked, weed-choked asphalt of the old printing district, the heavy, high-frequency ringing in Arkan’s temples dropped by an octave.
The grey text in his peripheral vision stabilized, the characters losing their jagged, pixelated edges and settling into a quiet, dormant state.
[ENTERED SECTOR: UNMAPPED PERIMETER]
[SIGNAL LEVEL: ZERO]
[LOGISTICS TRACKING: INSUFFICIENT RELAY DENSITY]
They had crossed the border. The printing district lay before them like a ghost town of rusted corrugated iron, shattered glass, and rows of empty, black-windowed brick warehouses that smelled of long-evacuated chemical solvent. There were no smart-lenses on the lampposts here; no automated fiber trunks running through the gutters. It was a dead zone—a piece of old Novara that the central network hadn't bothered to index yet.
Bhas let the rusted chain-link fence rattle closed, his shoulders dropping two inches as he let out a long, ragged exhale. He looked down the empty, fog-shrouded alleyway toward the brick facade of Arkan's father’s old workspace, then back at Arkan's pale, tight face.
"We're off the grid," Bhas said, his mouth twitching into a small, humorless line as he wiped the cold condensation from his forehead. "For now."
Arkan didn't look at him. He adjusted the watch cap over his brow with his right hand, his eyes cold and defensive as he stared down the dark alley. "Don't get comfortable, Renvan. It just means they have to look for us with their eyes instead of their servers."