Crimson Vector

Night wrapped the city in an electrical hush, towers and cables stitching a skyline that looked cut from metal and stubborn light. Rian Vale coasted in low, the courier rig under him humming with the careful patience of a machine that knew it could not be hurried. He kept to the shadows, to the gutters of reflected neon where sensors were less reliable and human eyes tended to look away. The roof where the exchange had been booked was a flat of concrete at the lip of an old high-rise—half communications array, half forgotten garden—ringed by satellite dishes and a sentinel antenna that smeared stray signals into static. Tess Kade stood beneath a broken floodlight, the light catching the sharp lines of her face. She wore a jacket that smelled of oil and solder; her hands were small and steady in the way the hands of somebody who rebuilt broken things tended to be.

Rian set the crate on the concrete between them like a small ministry. It had been sealed with a manufacturer's band and then wrapped in two levels of courier encryption; those who had ordered it had paid for discretion that could buy silence at any price. He did not need to look at the band to know it had been triple-checked—that was the cost of what sat inside. He paid attention instead to the way Tess's eyes moved over his face and the case, scanning more for the absences than the presences. In a city wired for theft and leverage, they'd learned to trade in gestures and half-limers: a thumb to the chin meant secure; a lift of the shoulder meant contingency; the way they placed the case down confirmed it was theirs.

Tess's datapad glowed faintly as she keyed a confirmation into the channel, her breath a silent thread in the chilled night. Rian's fingers tightened around the metal of the case. Old rules had taught him the ceremony by heart: don't show the contents, don't offer your back, always leave yourself an exit. For a long minute the world reduced to small distances—the gap between two palms, the soft click of a band, the way light moved across the city. Then a low vibration threaded through the soles of his boots. He registered it before his ears did: a mechanical murmur from above the rooftops, a sound like small wings in formation.

The lights blinked. It was the small, practiced blackout of an EMP trick, clean and quiet and vicious; the rooftop went from lit to a shadow so immediate it felt like being turned pagewise in a book. Someone had cut the power with intent. Tess's tablet died. For a second her face was all shadow until a security flare popped from the case and threw them into sharp contrast; the white light painted everything honest. Two points of light closed in through the dark—drones, three of them, moving low and accurate, like predatory insects. The sound of a truck engine answered from the arterial street below: deep, layered, armored. The exchange had been raided.

He didn't consider surprise; he'd been surprised too often for that—he moved with muscle memory. Rian pushed the crate back instinctively, toward the one corner of the roof that offered an angle and a line. Tess reached for her scarf, keyed the pad with gloved fingers that trembled despite her steadiness, then found the tablet dead and the confirmation gone. Harrow's silhouette fell across the nearest wall as men in layered plates slid over the ledge with the easy brutality of hired soldiers. They wore the corporate sigil like a medal, black and red, and they carried weapons that tasted of regulation and profit.

The first grenade they spun was not meant to kill but to disorient; it rattled the concrete into a hiss of glass and gravel. Rian's ears rang; the world narrowed to the taste of grit. He saw Tess lurch, tried to push in to shield her, and met the impact of a forearm that knocked him sideways. He had time for one clean reaction: a shove that sent a Harrow operative over the antenna box, the metal coughing under his weight. He heard the thud of Velcro and armor and a command clipped in a voice that meant money and consequence. The approach was surgical. They were not there for the bystanders on the roof; they were after one thing and one thing only.