They all stared.

Piper didn't know what to do. Her whole body blazed, ready to lash out at Vinder and his cohorts, but now all she could do was try and replay Lanson's disappearance over and over in her head. The glimpse of metal. No matter how many times she replayed it, she couldn't get a clear picture of it. Even her implants; even Cassie hadn't been able to catch it.

Whatever it was, it was freakishly fast.

In the end, Vinder shook off the shock first.

"Lanson? Lanson?" He jolted into motion, as though his feet had been glued to the floor, darting over to where Lanson had been standing just seconds before. "Grennick?!"

No answer.

The others in the group scattered away from where Lanson had been, spinning around, amplifiers levelled into the dark. In front of them yawned a shadowed chasm between two of the silos. Exhaling a sharp breath, Piper lowered her amplifier and started walking. She kept a wary eye on the guards in the gantries, but everyone's attention had been snared by Lanson's disappearance.

Vinder sent a pulse of light into the darkness. The steep sides of the silos bracketed it, but the narrow defile within was empty, with no sign of Lanson, or anything else. His face contorted with bafflement and he tried again, but still the light revealed nothing.

"What the fuck?" Lenor gasped, her voice shaking as she looked around. "Where... where...?"

"Sir?!"

A barked voice cut through the stunned silence, followed by clumping footsteps. Piper looked up sharply.

It was the woman in charge of the Gammaton security guards, skidding down a gantry stairwell, with all of her languid bravado gone now. Her companions trailed behind, moving with a lot less enthusiasm.

"Sir," the woman blurted as she raced towards them. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Vinder hissed, his eyes never leaving the alley. He made a dismissive gesture towards Piper. "Secure these three for transport."

The guard hesitated for a moment, her eyes flashing to to the shadows. Then she nodded, turning to Piper.

"Ms. Russel, surrender your amplifier, if you please."

She actually couldn't believe it. Even now, some part of Vinder's brain was more focused on the civil war he'd concocted among the corporations than what had just happened to one of his allies.

"You're serious?" she hissed.

"Ms. Russell, I would suggest you follow the directions of Mr. Tovas and hand over your amplifiers."

A sudden, boiling rage stirred in Piper's chest. Mattellus might have been an abrasive, cold-hearted thug, but his murder because of this damned feuding was more than she could stomach. Him and his guards, all sacrificed at the alter of a bloody corporate power game. And now, even with everything that had just happened, Vinder was still playing. The stupidity of it all just tipped her over the edge and she lashed out.

Her amplifier erupted. The fist of gravity lifted the guard off her feet, and pulverised her body against the wall of the silo with enough force to kill her instantly. Armour cracked, organs ruptured and bones shattered; she didn't even manage to scream before her lifeless body crashed to the ground.

"Piper?!" Odiye jerked to a halt, his mouth dropping open.

Vinder twisted around, saw what she'd done, and pointed his amplifier at her. "You crazy-,"

"SHUT UP!" Piper screamed, her implants boiling so violently that her voice took on a rattling, metal scraping edge. A wash of residual energy crashing out of her body with enough force to shake the ground. Metal buckled and chunks of concrete shattered in all directions as she let loose. "You stupid fucking bastard, Vinder! You think you can come out here, threaten us, murder those people, and then just walk away from it?"

She pointed at the dead guard. "That's a slap on the wrist compared to what I should do to you all." Turning, Piper let it all out as she swept her gaze over all of the AmpCore practitioners and guards. "And now – thanks to this corporate pissing match, your buddy Lanson is probably in pieces. So tell me who's crazy, Vinder. Tell me?!"

She could feel power seeping into the air around them as Vinder stood his ground, amplifier still raised. Lenor Karga still looked shell-shocked, her brain still trying to process how the situation had spiralled so quickly out of her control.

Piper took a step forward, arms spread wide. "C'mon, Vinder! If you're the big bad boy on campus then prove it. Take us back to AmpCore if you really think you can."

"Enough!" Arrow yelled, leaping forward to place themselves in front of Piper. They still had their amplifier in one hand, the other raised pleadingly. "All of you, stop. We have to find Lanson!"

"We do?" Piper snorted.

"Yes, Piper, we do."

"They're right," Odiye said, moving up beside her.

His hand closed gently around her wrist and she felt the violent, intoxicating surge of their implants reaching out for each other. Her body shuddered, amplifier trembling until she yanked herself loose again. Piper felt her cheeks flush crimson, heat spreading through her as she leapt away from him. Thoughts and mental images stormed through her mind and she squashed them down.

Now was not the time.

Digging her nails into her palms, she dragged her implants back under control, glowering at Odiye for a moment, before she turned back to Vinder. He still had his amplifier pointed at her, but Arrow was now in the firing line, both hands still raised in desperation. The other AmpCore agents opposite them dithered, wands raised uncertainly.

"Vinder," Odiye barked. "Enough. Something took your friend."

Vinder's mouth contorted with anger, his eyes flickering to the dead guard, then back to Piper.

Then he looked into the darkness.

Cursing under his breath, he let his amplifier drop. "What the fuck are you hunting down here?"

"The same thing you're supposed to be," Piper snarled, moving up alongside Arrow, pointing to the narrow, pitch dark defile. "We're supposed to be stopping that from happening to anyone else."

When no-one moved she let out a shrill, wordless exclamation and clapped Arrow on the shoulder, walking forward. She walked right past Vinder; past Lenor and straight the mouth of the alley, reaching out with her AmpCore tendrils, sweeping for any sign of the empty presence.

You feel anything, Cassie?

I am sorry. Whatever it was, it appears to be gone.

Any idea what it was?

No. But I remember the sensation. I remember the empty.

Remember? From where?

From before you. From when they made me.

Piper blinked. Before? Like, Schism before?

Possibly.

"Russell?" Vinder's snarl snapped her out of her internal dialogue and she cast an irate look back at him. "What is it? Do you see something?"

"Not yet."

Having recovered his composure, he moved past her, shoulders square and amplifier sizzling. Apparently he didn't want to get shown up by a dock rat. Arrow stepped up beside her, eyeing Vinder's back grimly.

"You feel anything?" they whispered.

Piper shook her head. "C'mon."

One by one, the AmpCore agents filtered into the darkness, amplifiers lighting up the narrow space with ease. It was barely wide enough for them to walk side by side, but she saw no sign of Lanson or his assailant anywhere.

"What... what could do this?" Lenor stammered from further back.

"Probably some Skiltron wartech," one of her companions suggested. "Maybe Knox sent it out here to help his friends out?"

"This has nothing to do with us," Odiye rumbled, and she felt the buck of his implants as his displeasure manifested itself. "You're the ones who tried to kill us remember?"

"Still time for that."

"Lenor, enough!" Vinder snapped from up ahead. "We find Lanson first. Do you have any idea what his father will do to us if we come back without him?"

Piper almost laughed, but managed to swallow it back down in the nick of time. The group crept onward, and the quiet made the hair on the back of Piper's neck prickle. The primal part of her brain told her she was being watched. She shook it away, focusing on what she could see; what she could feel.

In either case, there wasn't much. Just dark buildings and no sign of the empty presence she'd felt. Her brow furrowed in annoyance.

"I've got something," Vinder said quietly. She turned her head and saw him, stopped in his tracks a few meters up ahead, looking down at something. Piper moved up close behind, her amplifier raised.

"What is it?" Arrow hissed from behind.

"Maintenance hatch," Vinder replied as the other AmpCore agents slowly coalesced into a tight group behind him.

Piper raised an eyebrow as she examined it. About a meter across, the hatch was a thick, half-rusted slab of metal with a manual turnwheel at its centre: emergency access that didn't rely on codes and automated mechanisms.

"Look at the rust scatter round the edges," Arrow said. "It's been opened recently."

Piper nodded. "You think he's down there?"

"I don't see anywhere else that he could have gone." Vinder's fingers curled and uncurled around his amplifier for a moment. "Be ready."

She felt a tug of force stretch out from Vinder's wand to snare the hatch. He didn't even have to turn the wheel. With a creak of neglected hinges the metal door swung open, hitting the ground with a gentle clunk, before Vinder released his grip. A black pit greeted them, with just the faint outlines of a narrow metal walkway beneath.

For several seconds, no-one moved. Unease simmered in the air, and she could see the others exchanging wary looks. A sense of disgust roiled through her as their hesitation. Lanson had been a good little soldier who'd put himself at risk for Vinder's cause. Now that he was in trouble, it seemed his chosen allies weren't about to extend the same courtesy.

"For God's sake," Piper snarled, shoving Vinder roughly aside. Ignoring his incensed exclamation, she dropped down into the dark hole, barrier wrapped around her and amplifier growling for release.

"Piper!" Arrow's yelp echoed down after her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find that little shit, Lanson," she growled. "What does it look like? Everybody just stay where you are."

Closing her mind to the others, she looked around. The darkness down here was a different order of magnitude. Even the grimy, permanent twilight provided by Hadrian's neon-plated skyscrapers couldn't reach down here. Piper gathered light around her amplifier to illuminate the claustrophobic passageway. It was barely wide enough for her to fit, and she had to hunch over to keep from banging her head off the ceiling. Pipes and dead circuit pathways lined the walls, with faded section markings in peeling white ink.

She marvelled at the speed and deftness of the thing. Not so much as a dent in the plating gave any sign of something deadly having passed this way.

"You okay?" Odiye's voice came down through the hatchway.

"I'm good." Piper started shuffling, moving away from the centre of the Caxton plant. "Maybe somebody can pull a blueprint of this dump? Tell me where exactly this leads?"

It took a moment. To her surprise it was actually Vinder who answered.

"It's a maintenance crawlspace for the main silo controls," he told her. "Eventually that passage should link to a cross-junction. From there you can either head further out to the subsidiary silo yards, or in towards the smelting plants."

"I'm guessing out," she replied as she moved, sweeping slowly back and forth with her amplifier. So far she didn't sense anything, and couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not. She carried on about thirty yards in the inky dark until she reached the cross-junction that Vinder had mentioned.

To her left, something gold glinted in the light.

She froze.

Eyes narrowing, Piper swivelled her hips in the tight confines of the passage, craning her neck to look as she angled her amplifier. She squinted, then sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth when she saw the metal wand lying on the ground.

Twisting herself around, she shuffled crab-like towards it. Looking more closely, there was no mistaking Lanson's amplifier – a garish gold thing inlaid with stark white conductor rings. She sank a little lower, scooping it up with her free hand and tucking it into her sheathe.

Trying to keep a reign on her thumping heart, she straightened up, looking for any sign of life. What she found was a dark grate in the wall a few meters in front of her. It was intact, but ever so slightly askew, with one corner screw missing. It was also just big enough for a human body to fit through if it were laid flat.

Piper licked dry lips as she slunk forward on the balls of her feet, trying not to make any sound. Breathing slowly, she leaned forward and raised her amplifier to the grate, gently undoing the remaining screws and lifting it from its housing without a sound. Placing it down beside her, she braced herself and looked inside.

Just beyond the grate, she found a broken fingernail and a spatter of blood. Beyond them, pitch black shadows stretched away into the night.

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