The rain in Neo-Veridia didn’t touch the ground; it sizzled against the heated asphalt and the humming thermal exhausts of the sector’s heavy machinery. Kael wiped grease from his forehead, leaving a dark smear. He was knee-deep in the guts of a decommissioned harvester bot, but his mind was elsewhere.

85%. 90%.

The neon hum of the server room was the only heartbeat Elias trusted. As a legacy hardware specialist, he was a ghost hunter for machines—and today, he was hunting a phantom known as the .