The alley was a canyon of wet brick and roaring wind.

It smelled of old garbage, and the kind of low-grade, existential terror that Leo was starting to consider his signature cologne.

He stood at the base of the Cross Corp tower, a tiny, insignificant insect about to climb a monument to everything he hated.

"Okay, so, just spitballing here," his voice crackled over the comms, a high-pitched, frantic buzz against the howl of the storm.

"Has anyone considered just… not doing this?"

He craned his neck, his gaze tracing the impossibly high, needle-like spire as it disappeared into the churning, black clouds.

"We could run."

"I hear Argentina is nice this time of year."

"We could open a small alpaca farm."

"I've always wanted to raise alpacas."

"They seem very low-stress."

From a windswept rooftop across the street, Miles watched him through his own eyes, a cold, wet, and deeply unimpressed gargoyle in a hoodie.

"He is disturbingly cheerful about the possibility of his own brain being liquefied," his internal monologue observed, a dry, weary voice in the quiet of his own thoughts.

"I'm not sure if that's bravery or a cry for help."

"I'm leaning towards a cry for help."

"A very loud, very sarcastic cry for help."

"Team Beta, what's your status?" Clara's voice cut through the comms, a calm, steady anchor in the middle of his internal weather report.

Leo took a shaky breath, the cold rain plastering his curly hair to his forehead.

He looked at the two silent, stone-faced climbers who were already prepping their gear, their movements the economical, practiced motions of people who did this sort of thing for fun.

"Status is… moist," Leo replied, his voice trembling only slightly.

"And existentially compromised."

"But we are go for the climb."

The wiry girl of Team Beta, whose name was apparently Maya, gave him a look that was somewhere between pity and profound annoyance.

She tossed him a harness.

"Less talking," she said, her voice a low, clipped command. "More climbing."

"Right," Leo muttered, fumbling with the straps. "More climbing."

"My favorite."

The ascent began.

It was less of a climb and more of a controlled fall upwards.

The two climbers moved with an unnatural, arachnid grace, their grappling lines shooting into the darkness, finding purchase on the slick, metallic skin of the tower.

Leo just tried to keep up.

He felt a strange, tingling sensation in his fingertips, a flicker of his own broken, unreliable system kicking in.

[LOW-GRADE ADHESION FIELD: 2% POWER,] it seemed to whisper in the back of his mind.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep his gloves from slipping on the wet, freezing metal.

He was a bug, crawling up the side of a giant, angry god.

"Okay, so the view from up here is… mostly just rain," he panted into his comms, the wind trying to rip the words from his mouth.

"And a terrifying, gut-wrenching void that is whispering all of my deepest insecurities to me."

"It's a very chatty void."

"You're doing great, Leo," Clara's voice replied, a warm, reassuring presence. "Just keep moving."

"Focus on your hands. Focus on your feet."

Miles was watching from two different perspectives.

Through his own eyes, he saw a small, fragile figure, a tiny spark of light against the monolithic darkness of the tower, slowly, painstakingly making his way up.

Through the eyes of his clone, perched on a skyscraper three blocks away, he had a god's-eye view of the entire operation.

He saw the flashing lights of the battle in the lobby, a chaotic, beautiful, and deeply terrifying storm of its own.

He saw the new security patrols beginning to emerge, drones mostly, their red optical sensors cutting through the rain.

"Leo, you've got company," Miles's voice crackled in his ear, calm and precise. "Two hunter drones, ascending on your six."

"Oh, fantastic," Leo whimpered, his knuckles white where he gripped the access ladder.

"I was just thinking, 'You know what this terrifying climb in a hurricane needs? More killer robots'."

"It really completes the aesthetic."

"I'm on it," Maya's voice grunted from above him.

She stopped climbing, dangling from her harness hundreds of feet in the air.

She pulled a small, sleek, and deeply illegal-looking rifle from her back.

"Hold still," she commanded.

Leo squeezed his eyes shut.

"I don't like that command!" he shrieked. "I don't like it at all!"

There were two soft, high-pitched phwips from above him.

He risked opening one eye.

He saw the two hunter drones, which had been closing in on him with a silent, predatory grace, suddenly jerk and spin out of control.

They plummeted into the darkness, two dead, metal birds falling from the sky.

He looked up at Maya, who was already holstering her rifle and continuing her ascent.

She glanced down at him, a flicker of something, maybe even a smile, in her eyes.

"Try to keep up," she said.

"I am officially in love with her," Leo thought, a wave of pure, unadulterated, and deeply terrified admiration washing over him.

They were getting closer.

The spire was just a hundred feet above them now, a thin, whip-like antenna that seemed to be scraping the belly of the storm clouds.

Lightning flashed, a brilliant, stark, and deeply ominous spiderweb of white light across the sky, and for a terrifying second, the entire city was illuminated.

"Okay, the spire is just ahead," Leo reported, his voice a ragged, breathless thing. "I can see the access port."

"The diagnostic cycle is scheduled to begin in two minutes."

"So, you know, no pressure."

"Leo, you have a new problem," Miles's voice cut in, his tone no longer calm, but sharp, urgent.

"A big one."

On the clone's tactical display, a new set of signatures had appeared.

They weren't drones.

They were bigger.

Faster.

More heavily armed.

A squadron of five elite, military-grade hunter-killers, the kind that were usually reserved for protecting Silas Cross himself.

They were rising from the tower's hidden rooftop hangars, a pack of mechanical wolves emerging from their den.

And they were heading straight for the spire.

"They know," Clara's voice whispered, a note of dawning horror in her tone. "They know what you're doing."

"They can't stop the diagnostic cycle from this close," Leo replied, his voice a frantic buzz of data and adrenaline. "It's a hard-wired, physical system check!"

"But they can sure as hell stop me from getting to it!"

The first of the hunter-killers opened fire.

A searing bolt of blue plasma ripped through the air, slamming into the side of the tower just feet from Leo's head.

The impact was a deafening, metallic shriek, and a shower of sparks and molten metal rained down around him.

He flattened himself against the cold, wet steel, his heart a frantic, trapped bird in his chest.

"Okay, new plan!" he screamed into his comms. "I climb faster!"

Maya and the other climber were already moving, their previous grace replaced by a desperate, frantic speed.

They were a shield, placing their own bodies between Leo and the incoming fire.

Plasma bolts sizzled all around them, turning the rain to steam, painting the dark sky with streaks of deadly, blue light.

They reached the base of the spire.

It was a small, precarious platform, slick with rain and whipped by a wind that threatened to tear them from their precarious perch.

"I'm here!" Leo yelled, unclipping himself from his harness. "Thirty seconds until the port opens!"

The hunter-killers were closing in, their movements the cold, precise dance of apex predators.

Maya and her partner took up defensive positions, their small, specialized rifles spitting a desperate, and deeply inadequate, stream of fire at the approaching machines.

Leo crawled on his hands and knees across the platform, the Data Wraith clutched in his hand like a holy relic.

He reached the maintenance panel.

"Fifteen seconds!" he cried out.

A plasma bolt slammed into the platform just behind him, and the entire structure groaned, a deep, protesting sound of tortured metal.

He was out of time.

He was out of options.

He looked at the small, dark, and still-closed access port.

He looked at the five elite killing machines that were now hovering in a semi-circle around them, their weapons glowing with a final, fatal charge.

He was a dead man.

"It was a good run," he thought, a strange, quiet calm settling over him.

He clutched the data chip in his hand.

He had failed.

He had failed Gideon.

He had failed them all.

And then, just as the hunter-killers prepared to unleash a volley of fire that would have vaporized the entire spire, a new figure appeared in the storm.

It was a flicker.

A shimmer of displaced air.

A ghost, appearing out of the rain and the lightning.

Miles.

Or rather, his clone.

It materialized on the platform, its feet landing silently on the wet metal, a silent, black-clad specter of impossible speed.

It didn't say a word.

It just looked at the five hunter-killers.

And it raised its hand.

A blade of pure, shimmering darkness, a slice of the night sky itself, formed in its grip, the rain hissing and steaming where it touched the impossible, cold energy of the [Phantom Edge].

The clone looked at the five machines.

And then, it looked at Leo.

And in their shared, silent mind, Miles gave his other self a single, simple, and deeply satisfying command.

Show them what a ghost can do.

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