Like someone tossing a coin, the whole of the Oldcastle media plaza had descended into mayhem.

Piper never got the chance to even attempt her oh-so-clever ruse. Osric had appeared, and time had frozen, until he'd hacked Karga's head from his shoulders in front of millions of people. That shocked her enough to send her scuttling back into the shadows as corporate security – along with everyone else – exploded into panic.

Then, as she tried to collect her thoughts, the whole fucking plaza went dark. Darker than dark. A frightening blackness that she'd never actually experienced in Hadrian before – not above ground least. No matter where you were in the city, there was always something – some LED light or a flickering monitor, or the distant ever-lasting halo of the corporate heart.

The sky remained dark for several stomach-flipping seconds. Then sporadic lights began springing through the streets: spotlights, flashlights, headlights, gun-mounted torches, helmet visors and more. Up above she spotted a copter, its lights sweeping across the windows of the tower high above. It swung in a sharp turn, side on to the building, and hovered there.

Then a whole floor's worth of windows exploded. Piper craned her neck, and saw figures zipping across barely visible lines.

At least someone turned up to work today, she thought grimly as she glanced down at the other milling security teams who were still trying to coordinate.

Piper wasn't about to wait around for them. She sprinted back the way she'd come, racing around to where Kirk and the others still waited, all of them stunned into indecision. Right now, she couldn't exactly blame them, but they didn't have time to stand around gawping. Her eyes flashed to the back entrance of the media tower, where the handful of corporate guards on duty were frantically shouting to each other between flashing comm messages.

"Everybody okay?" she hissed, focusing the attention of her companions.

"For now," Nevay said, jerking a thumb towards the dark tower, "but looks like one hell of a fuckin' mess."

"Yeah tell me about it. What's with the blackout?"

"They've cut power grid completely," Holly replied. "Fastest way to wipe out Osric's broadcast."

"Better late than never," Kirk muttered.

"So what do we do now?"

"Go in and find that bastard before he can slither away again," Piper told them, looking around. "Unless anybody's got a better idea?"

Treysi gave her a bitter smile, flexing the fingers of her cybernetic hand. "Let's just make sure we find him before corps do. I wanna look that fucker in the eye before I rip his heart out."

"Get in line, halfsie," Nevay grated, hefting her stunner.

"Yeah, yeah, you're all a bunch of bloodthirsty bad-asses," Kirk sneered, shaking his in exasperation. "How about we argue about who gets to stick Osric's head on a fucking spear after we find him?"

"He's right," Holly agreed, inclining her head to the back entrance. "We should go now, while the alarms are still down. It won't be long before they reboot the power."

Piper nodded, flexing her fingers. Not having an amplifier left her feeling untethered, like driving a car on icy roads, but there was nothing for it now. She just had to trust in herself, and in the unique architecture of her implants, and hope it would be enough.

"Then let's do this," she told them, turning and walking towards the dark shadow of the building, "and if we find Osric, let's make sure this is the last time."

*

Odiye rolled to his feet, broken glass sliding way from him in a shallow wave as he swept the area with a gentle pulse of gravity. His amplifier shimmered; his eyes gleamed as they rapidly adjusted to the dark, picking out the piece of office furniture, and the terrified shapes of office workers. The main broadcast room was further in, towards the centre of the floor.

Dull thumps to his left and right heralded the arrival of the other operatives and security personnel. They fanned out in perfect order, the Code-Vector guards moving up close to flank Odiye as he moved forward. He made gentle gestures to the civilians, motioning them to stay where they were.

They filtered forwards. He crept invisible senses ahead, sweeping for any sign of Osric, but the corridors beyond remained inert. Without power, the whole building felt like a corpse drained of blood.

The eerie quiet remained as they moved on, out of the offices and through the corridors, until they reached the double doors of the broadcast room. Only now did they find signs of a struggle – one door dangling off its hinges, and the dark scratch of bullet impacts. He ducked down into a crouch, and after a glance over his shoulder to make sure his guards remained with him, he slipped inside.

Osric hadn't bothered to clean up.

The main broadcast room formed a large semi-circle, with dozens of large cameras and drone cradles on one side, and newscasting sets on the other. Bodies lay where they had fallen. Odiye could see the headless corpse of Mazvinar Karga dumped unceremoniously in front of the main camera boom. The main cameras remained dark, like abandoned construction equipment, and among them he could see the hunkered forms of the workers that Osric – for whatever reason – had left alive.

"Sweep the room," he said softly. "Check for survivors. Maddris, round up everyone who's still alive and escort them out of here."

"Sir," the female AmpCore agent replied, slinking past him with a quartet of heavily-armed Skiltron security in tow.

Odiye slunk forward as the others fanned out to secure the area. Not far from Karga's body, he could see a young man hunkered down next to his camera, head in his hands and trembling, his breathing sharp and erratic.

He sank to one knee, touching the terrified camera operator on the shoulder. The man's head snapped up towards him and he let out a yelp, falling back and landing in a sitting position, his eyes wide with terror.

"It's alright, it's alright," Odiye whispered harshly, "corporate security."

"Thank fuck," the man breathed, his voice shrill and rasping. He raked both his hands through lank curly hair. "What's going on? What happened? I just... we were just doing our regular broadcasting-,"

"We do not have time to explain. We need to move fast. Now, which way did they go?"

A hand extended with a shaking finger pointing. "Headed out to the emergency stairwell. Elevators are out so guess they're taking the long way down?"

"Stay here," Odiye told him, standing up. He motioned silently to the others, sending out invisible commands to the AmpCore operatives. They nodded their understanding; in turn gave hushed orders to their security cadres.

Like shadows, they moved to stairway. Odiye nodded to the trooper who moved up opposite him. She reached out, and with a flick of her wrist, turned the handle on pushed the door open. He stepped through the gap, a protective bubble of AmpCore energy already in place.

Just as well. A bang echoed through the stairwell and a blizzard of metal shards washed over him. Deflected away by the barrier, they cracked off the ceiling and walls, before falling like steel rain all over the floor. He flinched; exhaled.

"Sir?" the soldier hissed.

"Clear," he replied flatly. "Home made shrapnel. Follow me, and keep your eyes open."

*

Piper led the way, by necessity more than choice. The guards at the back entrance had been so preoccupied trying to figure out what was happening, that they'd been easy to subdue – without killing anyone for a change.

After brute forcing their way through the thick metal door, they'd emerged into the somnambulant halls, dark and dead as any underground slum. Screens stared blankly at them as they moved towards the nearest stairway. She could feel tremors of the simmering hate somewhere above them, laid bare with the absence of Hadrian's teeming datastreams.

"You still know where you're going?"

"Yeah," she said quietly, "he's here. Just follow me."

They mounted the first of the stairways, and she had a grim thought of just how many flights they might have to climb with the elevators offline. Then her thoughts wandered to what Osric's plan could possibly be to get out of this place in one piece. It might have been chaotic outside, but the Oldcastle plaza was teeming with heavily armed corporate soldiers and police.

Another thought hit her.

"How the hell did he get in here without the corps seeing him?" she murmured as they began their ascent. "No tunnels, security checkpoints outside the plaza."

"Maybe he hitched his own ride?" Nevay suggested.

Piper shook her head. "You saw the broadcast. He wasn't up there alone."

"Well, what's your point?"

"He's got to have an exit plan. Probably getting out the same way he got in. If we can figure it out, maybe we can beat him to it."

They climbed up through three floors before she felt the angle of Osric's presence shift. The building was huge, but she could feel him, diagonally up and across from there, still many levels above at the moment. She led them out of the stairwell and through a series of empty offices. They passed a few baffled and terrified staffers who scurried away like rats fleeing a sinking ship as they made their way down to the lower levels.

"He must have had some way in that didn't rely on the building systems," Holly piped up as they entered another stairway on the far side of the building and started climbing anew. "With the power outage nothing works here. No door locks, no cameras, not even the fucking air conditioning. If it's the same way he's getting out, it'll need to be manual."

"He was probably banking on just that," Kirk offered, gesturing to their gloomy surroundings. "Light the fuse with the broadcast, and when they cut the power, make your getaway while the systems are down. Nobody can track his movements so they'll never see him leave."

"Smart," Treysi muttered.

"Well, maybe not smart enough, eh?" Nevay grunted. "We're here, aren't we?"

Piper, we're not alone in here.

The warning cut through her thoughts like the plunge of a dagger. Piper stopped suddenly, and felt a gently bump against her back as the gangster walked into her.

"Hey, what are you-,"

"Wait, quiet," Piper murmured, flapping a hand at them absently, "we're not alone."

What is it? You feel Osric.

Not him. AmpCore, Cassie replied.

You sure?

I am.

She took her passenger at their word. Her mind flickered back to the copter she'd seen high above; the figures grappling across to the upper levels. There must have been some AmpCore operatives among them.

Motioning the others to stay still, she went looking, placing the palm of her hand against the wall and letting her presence go creeping carefully through the superstructure of the tower. For a moment she lost her grip on Osric, concentrating on maintaining control without her amplifier.

Then she felt something out in those dead hallways that she didn't expect. Through the empty air of the broadcast tower, another presence came sidling, tentative and gentle. Piper touched those ethereal fingers with her own, and felt something so familiar; so welcome that she could have cried. The touch sent electricity crackling through her implants and set her heart pounding.

"No fucking way," she breathed.

"What is it?" Holly asked.

"Look out there for yourself."

Her companion did so. She felt a third set of massless tendrils move forward to investigate. The second Holly touched the newcomer, however, she recoiled like a frightened rabbit. When Piper looked back she saw her companion looking terrified.

"What the hell is Odiye doing here?"

"Probably the same thing we are," Piper answered, feeling a relief was through her as she set off again. "C'mon, if there's one person in this shithole that might actually be on our side, it's Odiye Tambo."

*

When he felt Piper's presence in the air, Odiye didn't know what to do.

A cauldron of emotions stormed through him. Lust, anger, hurt, sadness, rage, love. They made him shudder all over. A second shape briefly coalesced in the empty voids, but disappeared before he could get a proper handle on it.

Piper's out there, he thought to himself. We can sort the rest later.

He remembered the acid words of Brogan Knox, convinced that Piper was somehow working with the enemy, but he didn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it, not unless he saw her standing side by side Osric with his own two eyes. The Piper he knew would have come here looking to tear Osric apart limb by limb.

He glanced around at his entourage. The other operatives and soldiers remained engrossed sweeping for survivors – they'd discovered dozens of terrified people as they slowly swept through the upper reaches of the tower. He'd sent them on their way down towards the main stairwells, reasoning that Osric had made his point.

No-one else seemed to have noticed Piper's presence. Odiye licked dry lips and pressed his AmpCore senses against hers again. It was definitely her, but the sensation was more wild than he'd ever felt it before, ebbing and flowing with surges of power he needed to compensate for.

Is that really you down there? He forced the words through their tenuous connection. If the tower's systems had been functioning, the signal would have been picked up easily, but here and now, it couldn't have been more private in the absence of the datastreams.

Could ask you... the same thing, came the reply – words devoid of her voice and her inflection, but still Piper. They still felt right.

Are you alright?

Yeah... more or less... long story. Don't have my... amplifier. Where are ... you?

Level 67. You?

Eighteenth floor. Listen... Osric is ... here.

We're trying to find him.

He felt her presence surge with urgency. I can find him. I can follow him. Come with us. Odiye winced as the sharp phrases cracked off his mind. Without her amplifier she was struggling to keep her transmissions as simple words. Residual power washed through the dead air.

Piper, you need to be careful.

Odiye... we don't... have... time.

We knew you were out here. I know Kirk's with you. And I know you've got one of those cyborgs with you, too.

She didn't like that. The shape of her in the air writhed.

What exactly... are you saying?

I'm not saying, but not everyone knows you as well as me. I'm not alone up here.

Yeah ... well there's more than just... Kirk and Treysi with me. We should ... meet.

Piper, what is going on? Why are you with them?

We have to meet. I need your help, Odiye, and you need mine. The words came through, clearer and more controlled, sharpened by her evident anger. Meet me on Level 36, north wing. He seems like he's heading that way. I'll explain everything.