[Begin Act Two: Ghosts of the Future]

//Report: Park, Taewon.

//Six months later.

//New Washington.

//The United States.

//Resume log.

The air stank of ozone and smoke. Rain slicked off of broken glass and concrete, pooling in neon-lit gutters beside the husks of old delivery drones and the wind-blasted husks of buildings.

New Washington was barely a city, let alone a convincing impersonation of the bombed-out husk it had gained its namesake from. It was a hollow facade of pre-war city life, stubbornly clinging to the world like a stain.

It was hard not to see the city as a living thing, an old, beached husk that had been plopped on the bank of Chesapeake Bay and only resurrected by sheer heartless determination, shaped into the ghost of something long since lost.

The buildings were too tall, too close, like they were leaning in to listen. Concrete bridges and glass pedways arched overhead like ribs. Old billboards flickered against the overcast sky, advertising obsolete neural interfaces, antirad treatment plans, and war bonds that were years out of date.

The American Corporate Zone liked to call it peace, a walled-off slice of the southwest that granted it's inhabitants a normal urban life under corporate control, but I'd seen what they meant by peace. It was peace at the end of a barrel. Peace held together by riot foam and sonic cannons. It was the peace that came between breaths beneath a boot on your neck.

If the city could speak, then New Washington was screaming.

I stepped off the magrail line onto a cracked tile platform slick with rain and grime, then merged with the river of bodies moving toward the city's heart. There was a hum here, constant and inescapable, like a machine breathing just beneath the skin of the street. Neon lights buzzed overhead even though the sun wasn't visible behind the clouds—like the city refused to give nature the satisfaction.

The city towered above me. Glass spires broke through the clouds like the fingers of some long-dead god, smooth and featureless, if not for the ad-screens that flickered on every vertical inch of surface.

I lowered my gaze, pushing down on my baseball cap. You learned to, walking these streets. The cameras perched on every streetlamp tracked every step I took, calculating threat vectors with every movement. My face was still flagged in a dozen databases as presumed deceased, but that wouldn't hold if someone got a clear angle of me.

"Another block to go," Sora breathed. Her voice was soft in my ear, filtered over the airwaves into the slim earpiece I had equipped. It was far more discreet than my old comms headset—even if he hadn't received it willingly, I could see why Jackson preferred his implant.

"How do we know this is the day?" I replied. I pulled my coat tighter around me, fighting off the late February chill. I was lucky it was just warm enough to rain—the past few weeks of snow had been miserable.

"Oh, trust me," Sora replied. Even through the headset I could hear her smile. "You haven't seen the street yet. Today is definitely the day."

As I spoke, a woman pushed past me, and I was momentarily taken aback by her attire. Clad across her eyes was a silver visor, its sleek surface marred by countless haptic wires that traced beneath her clothes. Her eyes were wide, but she didn't really see me.

Somewhere else—some simulation up in the clouds—she was probably happy. Maybe even free.

But not here. Never here.

I continued walking.

I wasn't going to pretend that this wasn't familiar—I'd walked streets like these before in Korea, until my military service term began. But where Seoul had felt too crowded, too dense, too alive, New Washington somehow felt emptier.

More than five million people surrounded me, yet I'd never felt more alone.

That wasn't to say that New Washington was completely devoid of personality, however. The riots came in pulses, flaring and dying like a heartbeat too weak to sustain the body. In the weeks since I'd taken up residence in an apartment block on the southeast side of the city, at least ten separate riots had occurred, each a chain reaction to the crushing defeat of the last.

The corporate boots tried to stamp out the flames, but they divided and spread, appearing in new locations every day, in greater and greater numbers.

Something was about to give—and that day was today.

Ahead of me, a sleek glass skyscraper rose like a blade, slicing straight into the clouds. As the local headquarters of Axion Industries, Olympus Tower was obscene—too tall, too perfect, too clean for a city like this. Where most of New Washington was prefabricated concrete and salvaged metal molded into copy-pasted chunks of structures one block at a time, the surface of the skyscraper was made of glass and obsidian-veined carbon steel, polished to an unnatural sheen that caught every flicker of artificial light and bent it into something sterile and cold. It carved through the sky like a fallen sword, severing the horizon in two.

The base of the tower was even worse. Built into a wide, tiered plinth of black tile, it loomed over a square that had once been designed as a public plaza—an invitation, an illusion of access. Now, the square looked more like a cage. The dry fountain at its center had long since stopped working, its cracked bowl filled with hand-painted protest signs and torn streamers. The concrete was stained with scorch marks and the waxy residue of past tear gas barrages.

The rioters were already there—dozens of them, maybe hundreds—clustered around the square like blood cells around a wound. It was a sea of writhing neon, all scavenged gear and painted armour, bright reds, greens, and yellows smeared in streaks of paint across gas masks, welding visors and patchwork coats. Homemade drones buzzed above them, relaying footage and flashing signs of their own to any who would look.

I'd seen many protests, but this one was far greater than any before it—there were no chants, just sound, fury, rage given form.

And opposite them, a wall of stark grey, like a slab of chiselled concrete.

The Axion Industries soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder in gleaming grey armor. Their helmets were smooth and expressionless, but the automatic rifles they carried spoke loudly enough to convey their purpose—they weren't peacekeepers.

The front of the cadre were clad in full-body MTT exoskeletons, their metal frames decked out with plexiglass riot shields. They acted as a bulwark for the rest of Axion's forces, and already I could see bursts of coloured paint streaking down the sheer plastic surface of several riot shields.

I could see the breath of the front line fogging against the cold air, rising like smoke from the vents in their armoured collars. Each one had a small Axion insignia stamped in pale white on their chestplates, flanked by ID glyphs I didn't bother trying to decode. They didn't need names. The only identity they cared about was the one you surrendered when you got too close.

Overhead, a corporate security drone passed by with a hollow hum-buzz, a black, insectoid thing easily twice the size of the motley drones used by the protesters. A speaker crackled, and a synthesized voice repeated a warning I'd heard countless times since arriving in New Washington.

"This gathering is unauthorized," the drone barked. "You are trespassing on Axion Industries property in violation of Statute 4-A1. Disperse immediately or you will be branded a partisan threat."

No one moved. The riot didn't abate for even an instant, and neither did the soldiers.

"Are you almost there?"

Sora's voice was barely audible over the rising din.

I threaded the crowd, moving along the sidewalk with one shoulder to the far side of the building. I had to skirt the curb awkwardly to pass around the riot, but it beat cutting through the street and risking the attention of the soldiers.

"Yeah," I replied, my voice low. "I'm close. What's this riot about, anyway? Things seem even more intense than the last one."

"Hang on," Sora replied. "Haneul, got anything?"

There was a momentary hiss in my ear as the comms switched channels, and Haneul's voice materialized over the airwaves. His matter-of-fact tone made the information that followed all the more disheartening.

"There was a weapons depot fire downtown last night," he muttered. "Intel is still unclear, but from the sounds of it the surviving soldiers blamed the arson on a small group of protesters congregated just outside the property line. Not sure if they were guilty or not, but it didn't matter. Three arrests and two dead, one was only nineteen."

Part of me wished that the rage in my gut was more pronounced, but after weeks spent watching and waiting for the right moment, the same dull numbness that had pervaded the city itself seemed to sap my fury. Stories like these were more common than I'd ever feared, and growing in frequency as New Washington slowly festered.

"Barbarians." The voice belonged to Sam, and he sounded as angry as I wish I felt. His voice was barely audible over the comms, drowned out by the roar of the protesters, and I heard him breathing heavily as he moved somewhere within the crowd. "Let's make this one a real rager on their behalf, shall we?"

A moment later, the crackle of a megaphone screeched over the din, and Sam's voice disappeared from the radio. I turned to see him, clad head to toe in a worker's coveralls streaked with blue paint, as he clambered up onto the stoop of the dry fountain and levelled his megaphone toward the imposing face of Olympus Tower.

I knew I had to continue walking—I couldn't afford to stay and watch, but as Sam began shouting I found myself locked in place, transfixed.

"Did you hear the drone?!" Sam roared, his voice amplified tenfold. "They called us trespassers, but the only trespassers in this city are the leeches in that tower!"

The crowd roared, fists raised, signs waving, and Sam, encouraged, continued.

"Right now, right this very minute, one of Axion's senior board members, one of these parasites, sits in his office!" Taking on the tone of a stadium announcer, Sam leaned into the receiver. "You know him, you hate him, it's the one and only trillionaire scumbag... Ezekiel Stoat!"

The response was electric—a chorus of boos, roared curses and rattled signs filled the space between Sam's words.

"You think he's up there repenting?" he shouted, pacing atop the fountain like a preacher in a warzone. "Do you think Ezekiel Stoat feels guilt? Remorse? Regret for the blood on his hands?" He jabbed a finger toward the tower's blackened windows. "He's not praying for forgiveness. He's hoping we'll all just get tired and go home!"

The crowd howled.

Sam leaned in again, his voice lowering just enough to pull the crowd closer, force them to lean in, feel the heat of every word.

"Well, I say we don't wait for an apology that's never coming. I say we don't beg for justice from a system built to erase us. Time and again, year after year the one thing they've proven is that we have to take it. Right here. Right now. For the dead. For the disappeared. For the broken world they left behind!" He raised the megaphone skyward like a weapon. "Because if the suits in that tower want absolution in this world or the next, they'll have to fight through us to earn it!"

The crowd erupted, a surge of fury and defiance that rattled the very foundations of the tower itself.

"Taewon, get a move on!" Sora barked. "If the protest gets dispersed, we're out of luck!"

"Right," I continued moving with a jolt, picking up the pace to make up for lost time. "Sorry."

"We're sure this is the right day?" The voice, backed by the howl of wind, belonged to Reina. I didn't bother looking for her—she was already somewhere far above my head, perched atop a nearby building.

"If we were sure about anything, I wouldn't be so damn nervous," Haneul replied. "I'm not even out there and my hands are shaking—I miss my Haechi."

"It'll be fine," I assured him. "It has to be."

Pushing through toward the entrance to the tower, I was bathed in warm light. Past the barricade, the front of Olympus Tower was completely open to the world, an atrium of gorgeous marble and glass. I could see movement beyond the rain streaked window panes, but it was too blurry to make out any specifics.

"Time to commit," I breathed. Fighting back a chill that ran down my spine, I leaned forward and pulled the ballcap from my head, letting it fall to the pavement, and brushed back my hair, ensuring it was tucked neatly in place. Tightening my jacket, I stepped off the curb and approached the barricade from one side.

The closest soldier clocked me the moment I stepped forward. His stance shifted—subtle, but ready. The matte grey of his armor caught the light from the building behind him, and for half a second, I swore I saw his finger twitch near the trigger.

I didn't flinch. Taking a deep breath, I walked slowly, like I belonged here.

Without a word, I pulled the small plastic card from my coat pocket and held it up. As far as the soldier knew, I was Daeho Kim, a mid-tier mechanical engineer from the lower floors of the tower—the card told him as much, stamped in simple black text.

Despite my anxiety, I kept my expression bored.

The soldier scanned the card without touching it, and my breath caught when I saw him incline his head slightly. I knew what was going on—somewhere behind that opaque helmet, microprocessors were verifying the card's signature against an employee database.

Fortunately for me, Daeho Kim was a real person—was being the operative word—but the reports of his unfortunate car accident two months prior had been prevented from reaching Axion systems through Haneul's interference.

We hadn't been responsible for his death, but it still felt wrong abusing his identity. Just another small sin, used in service of combatting a larger evil.

The soldier lifted his head, staring back at me through his helmet, then nodded.

"Go," he said.

Just that. No threat. No challenge. Not even a second glance. The man had bigger problems to worry about, and that's what I'd been counting on.

He stepped aside, and I crossed the threshold, moving through the gap in the barricade he'd been protecting.

As I stepped forward, a burst of pain flared against the side of my neck and I stumbled, nearly dropping my ID card to the wet pavement. A firm hand caught my arm and a soldier roughly pushed me to my feet, shoving me further past the barricade.

Confused, I brought my hand to the back of my neck and it came away stained with a few drops of blood—the instant I'd been acknowledged as an Axion employee, someone in the crowd had thrown a rock at me.

"Damn, you alright Taewon?" Sam called. His voice was quieter now, filtered through the comms. "I saw that from here, someone here has a good arm!"

"This is definitely the day for this," I winced, shaking out my shoulders. Pulling my hand away from my neck, I made my way up to the entrance to Olympus Tower.

I took a breath, kept my pace even, and as I stepped through the revolving front door, I forced myself not to look back.

"Here we go."

The lobby of Olympus Tower was a monument to excess. Ten stories of open space yawned above my head, ringed by sweeping balconies of grey marble and silver-veined stone. Crystal balustrades shimmered under the warm ambient glow of recessed lighting, while long scarlet drapes fell from the balcony edges like waterfalls from ceiling to floor. Even the air was crisp and clearly filtered, laced with perfume.

It didn't smell like the outside world. It didn't smell like the city. It smelled like money trying to disguise itself as culture.

The crowd inside was exactly what I expected—polished socialites and Axion executives in finely tailored suits that shimmered between colours with reactive threadwork, their conversations clipped and shallow, as effortless as their laughter. Lounge chairs upholstered in dark leather and brushed steel were artfully arranged across the floor, grouped around glass tables bearing platters of hors d'oeuvres so delicate that they could've been carved from soap. Waiters in monochrome uniforms floated through the crowd like ghosts, their trays gliding between fingers tipped in gold and chrome.

And at the center of it all, like a shrine to corporate ambition, loomed an Erebus. The mech stood atop an industrial turntable the size of a ballroom, slowly rotating to show every lethal curve and predatory angle.

All at once I was on Yamantau, listening to the screams of my colleagues as the olive green mechs poured from the Frostpoint facility, ripping through our ranks with raptor-like intensity.

As I got a closer look, to my horror I realized that this was not, in fact, the mech that had caused me so much strife on Yamantau, but some form of descendent.

Only slightly taller than its four-meter predecessor, this Erebus bore all the alien elegance of the original, its sharklike chassis now rendered in a matte obsidian finish that swallowed the light. The sleek front tapered into a blade-like prow, while the flared rear armor had been re-engineered—its jagged folding fins were now deployed with automated precision, like a bird of prey baring its wings.

To my shock, it seemed that the mech on display was entirely functional—beneath the exposed chassis, nestled like a forbidden gem, glimmered Doctor Stonewood's signal deadener, a fusion of metal and crystalline glass faintly pulsing with electrical energy.

"Mister... Kim?"

It was only after a brief moment of confusion that I realized that the voice was talking to me—I turned away from the immense mech to see a tall, dark-skinned man in a black suit staring at me expectantly.

At first, I feared I'd been busted before my mission had even begun. If the man was a coworker of the real Daeho Kim I had no doubt that my deception would come undone in an instant. What was worse was that the man was part of Axion's internal security force—commonly referred to as the Red Ties—and capable of arresting me on the spot if I was considered even remotely suspicious.

However, my worries evaporated when the man tapped the side of his security visor, squinting at me through the translucent screen. Two silver bars clipped to his crimson tie marked the man as a low-level security officer, and a nametag made of the same steely metal introduced him as C. Percival.

Percival gazed at me with a concerned expression, clutching a boxy detector wand in one hand.

"Mister Kim?" he attempted again. He tapped the side of his visor and the display flashed. "I've got the right name here, don't I?

"Right, sorry!" I blurted. "Just taking in the atmosphere."

I stepped closer to the guard, trying to keep my eyes off the matte black pistol holstered just inside his open jacket.

"You probably know the drill by now, sir," Percival stated. His tone was amicable but bored. "Hold still for the scan, arms to the side, remain still, be prepared to justify any contraband." He casually swept the wand through the air and I watched a small red LED blink as it moved, even as his other hand gently lifted my left arm.

"Fair enough," I nodded. "Can't be too careful at an event like this, given what's going on outside."

I forced my shoulders to relax even as my pulse began to pound. The wand emitted a soft hum, casting a pale red glow across my jacket. Percival swept it methodically from my shoulders to my cuffs, around my waist, and down each leg. I was completely unarmed, but it didn't help my nerves.

"It's a right shame," Percival admitted. "I've got a cousin out there, and I can't blame her." He winced. "My supervisor would have my head for saying that."

"I won't tell anyone if you won't," I replied.

Percival smirked. "Glad you understand, sir. Sometimes I need to learn to keep my mouth shut."

The wand beeped once—soft, not urgent, but enough to raise Percival's eyebrows.

"Huh," he frowned. He stared up at his visor. "You've got an IRON implant, Mister Kim? Scan says it's pretty hefty, too. They chipped you for desk duty?"

"Nope, it's non-standard," I lied, "I was a test pilot before I got sick of it and asked to be transferred to desk duty. Management didn't see a reason to put me through another expensive surgery just to remove it or swap it out."

"That kind of cost-cutting is why I'm stuck here today," Percival sighed. His brow furrowed. "Mind if I verify it's inactive?"

I hesitated just half a second too long, then nodded. "Sure. Go ahead."

He stepped closer. Far too close.

I felt his fingers brush the edge of my hair, gently parting it to reach the base of my skull, just above the nape of my neck. The wand tapped once against the implant site and chirped again, this time a low confirmatory tone.

"Looks clean," he nodded. "Sorry for the proximity, but we were asked to check. Only waitstaff are permitted to have any IRON chips active tonight."

"Weird," Sora whispered. Her voice came through my earpiece, which mercifully remained tucked out of scanner range beneath my hair. "Why only waitstaff? Waiters don't need exoskeletons or mechs."

Something was wrong, but this wasn't the place to start asking questions.

I kept my gaze steady, fixed just over Percival's shoulder, as he brought the wand down to his side, stepping back.

"All clear," he smiled.

"Thank you," I replied, trying not to exhale all at once.

"But I'd be careful if I were you," Percival stated.

My blood turned to ice.

"How... how do you mean?" I attempted, fumbling my words.

"Your hair," he replied. "It's way too long to be regulation. Personally I don't give a damn, but if any of the higher-ups see you with anything more than a buzz cut you can expect a pink slip from Mister Stoat himself on your desk by day's end. You can kiss goodbye to your corporate housing."

"Oh, right." I brought a hand up to my hair, feeling it brush against the back of my neck. I could've kicked myself—it had been almost six months since I'd last cut it, and I was enjoying the longer style so much that I'd forgotten the strict regulations of Axion Industries.

"Hey," Percival hissed. He tapped the side of his visor with one finger and smirked. "I won't tell anybody if you won't. Welcome to Olympus Tower, Mister Kim."

As Percival turned away, I stepped past him into the lion's den. The scent of wealth and power returned in full force, but all I could think of was how close I'd come to disaster.

Further into the room, a grand piano sang quietly from the far corner, its notes perfectly timed, perfectly inoffensive. The pianist, a white-haired man in a sharp vest, didn't look up once, fingers moving like clockwork. Above the mech display, an immense chain hung from the ceiling far above, supporting a grandiose chandelier. The ornate masterpiece of crystal caught every camera flash and spark of movement below, fracturing the room into kaleidoscopic fragments. Beneath it, the well-dressed murmured and sipped on champagne, their eyes locked more on one another than the machine on display.

But none of it compared to what lay just in front of the mech.

Stamped into the marble floor of the lobby, like a fossil from another age, was a single footprint, sealed in polished glass. It was enormous, nearly half the size of the Erebus on display, and it shone beneath the chandelier's fractured light.

"Hot damn," I breathed. I kept my voice to a whisper as I approached the footprint, hoping my conversation wouldn't be noticed. "They framed one of the Walking Machine's footprints."

"No time—sightseeing," Sora replied. Confused, I tapped my earpiece with one finger, passing it off as scratching an itch.

"Sorry, repeat that?"

"Getting some interference on—now," she continued. "Not exactly—of the source. Should we abort?"

I glanced up at the mech overhead and almost groaned aloud. Taking a few steps back, I moved toward the open bar, turning away from the Erebus before I spoke.

"They have a mech on show here, an Erebus, and the signal deadener is active. It's gonna make comms impossible in certain areas."

"What?" Sam was shouting to be heard over the roar of the protest. "Then how do you communicate if you're piloting it?!"

"Internal comms run on a recognised signal that the deadener doesn't block," Sora replied. "It's what made SPEAR's comms so easy to tap in the Warsaw Exclusion Zone."

"Thanks for that, by the way," I smirked. "You gave our comms technicians headaches for weeks!"

"Can you do it again?" Sam bellowed. "Not the headaches, I mean the tapping thing!"

I tried not to wince as the roar of the protest bored into my ear with his every deafening word, and gave a polite nod to a passing couple in matching gowns.

"Possibly," Sora replied, "but we don't yet know what the excluded frequency is for this version of the mech—Haneul?"

"Working on it," Haneul stated. I could hear the sound of his fingers dancing across a keyboard. "In the meantime, my only advice is to stay away from that mech!"

The dull thud of a finger on the receiver of a microphone filled the lobby, and the chatter seemed to die down a notch. I could now hear the roar of the protest outside, muted as it was, but over the din a proud voice began to speak.

"Ladies, gentlemen and other esteemed guests, please make your way toward the mech at the center of the room for tonight's feature presentation!"

"Just my luck," I sighed.

As the crowd began to draw themselves toward the stage, I saw a short man in a grey suit step up onto a small stage that had been erected in front of the Erebus' turntable. With his slicked-back brown hair and confident stride, I had no doubt that this was one of the superiors that Percival had mentioned.

With a microphone in hand, the man grinned at the adoring crowd, basking in the smattering of applause that his arrival elicited.

"Thank you all so very much for coming," he beamed. "As I'm sure you're all aware, my name is Cassius Knight, administrator of Axion's global sales division, and tonight... someone among you is going to make me disappear."