The roulette wheel spun—a hypnotic blur of crimson and black. Charlie's augmented perception caught every micro-expression and tell that could be seen from the other players and NPCs. His eyes flashed at the signal he'd been expecting just as the ball skipped out of its apparent home black "eleven" and dropped into the neighboring red "seven" slot.

"That's impossible!" he growled, slamming an open palm onto the carbon-fiber table. The surface rippled, molecular bonds momentarily destabilizing under the precise pressure of his augmented strike. Vinny the Fence on the other side of the table cringed back. Leah feigned confusion on the outskirts of the table, where she was waiting her turn to play.

The dealer—with an impassive plastic demeanor—didn't even blink. "Sir, please control yourself."

A mountain of a floor boss materialized. Vat-grown muscles, cybernetic eye gleaming with threat-assessment algorithms. "Problem?"

Charlie's voice cracked with manufactured indignation. "That NPC is cheating. No human could hit these numbers consistently! I felt the table vibrate. He must have some type of sonic resonance device to alter the game!"

The dealer's hand subtly moved toward a concealed alarm to summon casino security. Charlie knew the script perfectly. Provoke. Escalate. But not too far.

"Sir, I'm gonna hafta ask you to take a step back," the floor boss commanded. His LED eyes were already scanning Charlie's bio-signatures, detecting the carefully modulated augmentations.

"Fuck that robo-boss! Ask that cheat to step away. This is discrimination against Players. I demand my money back. Right now!" Charlie screamed, getting up close to the boss and bumping chests. The huge mech swung his arms up as he lost balance. Charlie saw it coming a mile away and leaned…into it. The rising hand clipped him, and Charlie hammed it up, flying back in a heap. He kicked up into a fighting stance.

"That tears it! You want a fight? You got one!" Charlie spit, and unleashed his favorite projection attacks, a focused EMP with K-Gun round combo for the boss, while spraying arcs, molten spray, and concussion blasts across the table indiscriminately. He smiled to himself as he leaped and spun as other Players and NPCs shot back. The fight was just getting good when the whine of propellers predicted a trio of security drones dropping fast onto the scene.

Nearby, Leah caught a ricocheting fragment of the confrontation. Someone had torn the game wheel loose and hurled it. The massive fixture caught her temple. She stumbled, genuine surprise mixing with calculated vulnerability. She suppressed her healing factor as she was slammed into the ground. Blood flowed swiftly from the scalp wound.

In the heartbeat of chaos, a chimera dart arced through the air. Charlie saw it coming—a microsecond before impact. The dart's payload exploded into his system. To every observer, Charlie collapsed, his body a rictus of pain. A perfect simulation of total systemic failure.

"Clear some room. I need to assess any injured." Max said as he moved with practiced fluidity. His outward appearance matched the house's on-site medical technician. The actual NPC was dreaming happy dreams thanks to a special VR tap the team had been given by Kane. Max flashed his liberated holographic ID tag. It flickered with perfect credentials: "Andre Merrick, Senior Medical Technician, Level 3 Clearance." He was a little disappointed that none of the security drones even checked it.

The floor boss turned, still smoking slightly from EMP burn. "You. Leave the scumbag to security. Get that other injured player to medical. Now. Why isn't she healing yet?"

Max's hand moved to support Leah, who was either acting or genuinely incoherent. "It happens. Perhaps she got caught in an EMP burst. I've heard that sometimes augments can be knocked out like that. I'll take care of it, sir. Proceeding to medical for immediate evaluation."

Max stayed in character, despite Vinny's subtle nod as he passed. Charlie lay motionless. To all appearances, a victim of a chimera dart's devastating payload. But beneath the surface, his systems were anything but shut down. The first phase of their infiltration was underway.

Medical bay doors hissed open as Max guided Leah through the threshold, her body slumped against him, only partially conscious. The facility gleamed with antiseptic precision—carbon-fiber examination tables, holographic diagnostic displays, and the subtle hum of nano-sterilizers permeating the air.

Max used his direct contact with Leah to make a private connection. "[Ok, by the numbers. I see mostly level 3 tech security cameras and sensors. West corner cam focused on the doorway, fire detector, and biometric scanner both inside and outside of the door. There's a retinal scanner to access the supply closet and med creche. You see anything else?]"

"[Nothing else from me. You got anything with that alien skill of yours?]" She sent.

"[I'll try. I'll do a soft touch, that skill can't hack in quietly like our other access bypasses. It devours the sensors, rewriting them completely. If the sensors go offline, Lachesis will know. No choice, I guess. This is the one thing we need to be certain that she isn't aware of at any level.]" Max replied. He gently coaxed the skill to reach out but held it back from spreading into the room's systems. It fought him slightly, trying to burrow into the room's sensor clusters, but Max held it back. It didn't find any systems that they hadn't already hacked.

"[Looks good. Nothing above level 3 that I can detect. We can proceed.]"

"Set her down here," an NPC doctor instructed, its features unnaturally symmetrical beneath the harsh lighting. "What happened here? It's too early for the knockout matches."

"Casino floor incident," Max replied, lowering Leah onto the examination table. "Caught in the crossfire. Possible EMP interference with her healing augments."

The NPC nodded, reaching for a diagnostic scanner. "I'll need to run a full systems check—"

"That won't be necessary." Max's fingers twitched, slapping his interface patch on the back of the doctor's neck. It activated on contact and the specialized VR tap Kane had provided flooded the AI's senses. The NPC froze mid-motion, eyes glazing over as the program engaged. "Enjoy your vacation."

Leah sat up, wiping the blood from her temple with clinical efficiency. Her wound was already sealing, the healing factor she'd temporarily suppressed now working at full capacity. "How long do we have?"

"Fifteen minutes before the system flags the medical bay's inactivity." Max moved to the supply cabinet, retrieving a compact medical kit and tossing it to Leah. "Start the prep. I need to make a call." Leah immediately started filling the bag with high-end medical interface tech and rare matter compiler-restricted drugs.

Max opened his dimensional storage, being sure to avoid using the Cherenkov noise generator this one time. Mal assisted with the Tesseract core's manipulator arms, passing him the drone and snapping the portal closed immediately after.

Leah was in the air, using her levitation cloak to gain height. She opened the overhead vent with a multitool. Max handed up the med bag and she stuffed it in the vent. The drone was placed in after and she replaced the vent cover.

"Is it necessary to fake a theft like this? If we achieve our objective, Kane's attempt to frame his competitors will be moot." Leah said aloud, confident in their control of the room.

"He's worried about any investigation leading back to him. We might be on the fast track out of here, but he needs to live here. It's a small thing compared to the help he's provided." Max assured.

Max activated his secure comms while Leah reconfigured her outfit for stealth. "O'Coin," he subvocalized, "we're in position. Status?"

Sergeant O'Coin's gruff voice filtered through Max's neural link. "Security's processing your buddy now. Standard procedure—they'll scan for contraband, log his belongings, and then dump him in holding until he recovers from the chimera."

"And is he going to the same cell as before?"

"Just like we arranged."

Max allowed himself a thin smile. "Good man. I am sending you the location of the drop site where your credits are waiting."

"Yeah, yeah. Just remember, after lights out, I'm nowhere near that cell block. Got it? This is as far as I go sticking my neck out."

"Crystal clear." Max terminated the connection and turned to Leah, where outlines were already blurring and pixelated as she spread out motes to feed her chameleon skill a pattern match with her surroundings. "Ready?"

She nodded, "Full stealth online. How's Charlie?"

"Being processed." Max's eyes flickered as he read their data taps. "Now that our secondary drone is in position, we can proceed to the murder hole."

"And our diversion?"

"Starting... now."

Security Processing was a nightmare of efficiency. Charlie sprawled out in the holding cell, maintained the appearance of paralysis as automated sensors monitored him for signs of recovery. His neural interface buzzed with suppressed activity—the chimera toxin surging uselessly against his pre-treated system.

Through slitted eyes, he observed two guards flanking a tall figure in a pristine white coat.

"Is this the one? Normally, Players get the message on their first infringement," the figure remarked, adjusting designer spectacles. "I'm guessing that I'll have to spell it out for this one. Three strikes are all he gets before we eject him from the Labyrinth."

The lead security officer NPC—a bulky man with dermal plating visible along his jawline—shrugged. "Knock yourself out, Adjuster. We're just following protocol. Do you want us to notify you when he recovers or are you planning on waiting? Double doses of chimera are unpredictable…it might take a while."

A klaxon suddenly blared overhead. Red emergency lights bathed the room in crimson shadows.

"What the hell?" The guard's hand moved to his weapon. The adjuster read the alert feeds on his smart spectacles.

"The power node in the business sector just went down…and there are reports of a small explosion. Hmm, the center's manager has been quite insistent that someone's been tapping into the power nodes. It could be a Player."

The security chief barked orders down the hall, dispatching most of his team toward the eastern sector. "Continue processing," he ordered the remaining guard. "And you," he jabbed a finger at the adjuster, "wait outside."

As the room emptied, Charlie maintained his facade of paralysis. The adjuster approached, bending over as if to check Charlie's vitals. His lips barely moved as he whispered, "Systems will go dark here in thirty minutes. Max should be in position by then." The android stood up and left the cell as the guard locked up behind him.

Charlie had to use his PokerFace skill to suppress his smile. The plan was tracking to their simulations perfectly. Charlie resisted the urge to growl, waiting while his friends were in enemy territory would be the hardest part of the mission. He was looking forward to tangling with that mech in the vault.

Max and Leah slipped through service corridors; their forms blurred by active camouflage systems. The "murder room"—a security chamber deliberately designed to trap and eliminate unauthorized personnel—loomed ahead, its entrance a seemingly innocuous maintenance door.

"[Sensors detect twelve distinct kill mechanisms,]" Mal whispered in Max's ear. "[Pressure plates, motion trackers, heat sensors, and... something else. The walls are vibrating. I think they might be Nano-D motes held in stasis. Not good Max. I've built up a sizable batch of nano-chaff inside the Tesseract, but I don't know if it's enough for this.]"

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Leah's expression hardened. "[Can we bypass it?]" She sent over the hardline cable between them. This room monitored signal traffic, so only secure communication was possible without detection.

"[Look up.]" Max said, "[The floor and walls are coated but the ceiling isn't. We can still do this.]" With a precision honed by training, he leaped upward flipping to land on his feet. Using his Stiction skill, he stayed glued in place to the ten-foot-high ceiling.

He crab-walked carefully down the hall, pausing for Leah to mimic his move as the line grew taut. Once she joined him on the ceiling, they both faded from view with their chameleon skills as they took their positions. The patrol was due…now.

The room lighting cycled as the scheduled NPC guards opened the door. The blurs above them went unnoticed as traps cycled down to allow the patrol through. Max extended his exo-blade, the contact patch already affixed to the tip. He tapped the deadbolt in and slid the blade to lay the self-adhesive across the gap. He froze as the lead guard shouted in surprise.

"Hey, what's that?" the leader asked.

"What's what?" "You malfunctionin' over there, LT?" The trailing guards responded. Max froze, sweat gliding upward across his nose. His motes were tightly distributed about him to avoid touching the deadly Nano-D while maintaining his cloak. In his passive sensors, the guard wasn't looking toward him. The leader bent down.

"Must be my lucky day! A Ruby chip! That's worth 100,000 credits. Ha ha! I bet I can double this when we're off shift."

"Fuck that, LT. You still owe us all some time at the juice bar. We searched all night for that missing player. You promised."

"Relax, Private. Why do you need to amp here? Like you can't get a trickle charge at home?" LT replied.

"Jeez, LT. You know it's not the same. Home charge ain't got the right freq. The Juice bar has the best vibes. Come on, you owe us." Judging from the chorus of grumbles, the team seemed to agree. Max's sweat dangled precipitously and he slowly, so slowly wiped it with his tongue.

"Defrag it all. Fine. After the shift's over, give me ten minutes at the tables. I'll double the money and then I'll take you all for an hour to the bar. Ok?" LT sneered.

The team joked and cycled through the room. The far door slammed as the last guard exited and the room's security sensors blazed into life as the lights dimmed. Max wedged his blade into the door frame and was rewarded as the portal swung open freely. The patch had disabled the auto-lock.

"[Right on time. I hope your daemon Houdini's boasts aren't hot air. We have ten minutes until the power goes down in the jail cells. Charlie's going to expect that portal from the vault.]" Max said as he swung down with gymnastic precision into the exit doorway.

"[Jesus. Don't egg the daemon on, Max. He says he's going to do it in five. Houdini – go slow and do it right.]" Leah sent as she followed Max's path.

"[Better listen to your host, Houdini. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, right?]"

Leah worked the huge dial with Houdini guiding her. One hand turned the dial while her amped hearing, tactile sense, and her model of the interior of the vault door, painted over the real door in her virtual overlay, helped her visualize the combination mechanism. The blasted thing was coated with metamaterial and sealed tight, preventing a real image of the interior via mote swarm or x-ray.

"[Madam, if I might be so bold…]" Inspector Poirot started to comment when Houdini hissed and interrupted.

"[Not now, sir! She almost has it.]" The voice of the legendary escape artist whispered inside her head.

Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she slowly turned the knob. The virtual timer continued to tick off the seconds. The next blackout was scheduled to hit the prison in barely two minutes. She cursed as she finally felt the microscopic shift indicating a plate snapping into alignment.

"[Ok, Leah. That should be the final shift. The Reaper has five alignment plates. Pull the manual lever for the deadbolt release.]" Leah shifted back and gave Max a nod. Max extended his exo-blades, and judging from the speed of his pupils dancing had ramped up to maximum thought speed. Leah pulled…and the lever refused to budge.

"Jenjang!" Leah hissed out loud. "What went wrong, Houdini?"

"[This isn't right. I felt the plates as did you! Is the lever jammed?]" Houdini snapped.

"[Madam, I must insist on sharing. You must expand your inspections beyond the lock. Look upon the casing of the door. There are machining marks around the perimeter. The welds are well blended, but this door has been modified. This is no longer a factory standard Reaper; our information is flawed. The mechanisms must have been altered.]" Poirot injected quickly into the conversation.

Max had been linked to Leah's internal discussion with her daemons. He growled and spoke over the link.

"[Fucking Kane! What little help he's given us is bad enough, but false info is worse. Ok. We need to shift to plan B for the Reaper. It's a small risk, but if Lachesis is playing fair, this shouldn't trigger any of the vault's tech-level alarms. Ready for "the hidden hand"?]"

Leah nodded curtly and stepped back, adjusting her cloak and extending her spetsdods to cover both the Vault and the murder box hall. Max focused on the Tesseract's circuits, lightly taking control away from Mal. Despite Max fixing the leakage of chthonic voices coming from the hybrid link he shared with the device, her behavior around the core was erratic and nervous. Max's enhanced cognition had long exceeded her ability to manipulate the device's fields.

He adjusted the circuit's resonance variables. In his mental space, he mapped the spatial folds. The hidden bubble of space extended 16 meters, which was close to Max's calculated maximum. Even if he had access to massive energy feeds, the efficiency of converting that energy into expanding the space had become exponentially worse once he passed the 15-meter mark.

The device's anchor, embedded in Max's forearm, limited where the pocket space was in regard to reality. The anchor always had to be located within the volume of subspace and tied it to real space. Casa/Casita/Mal had discovered that the subspace control circuit focus could be adjusted to shift the space about its origin and even manipulate the shape of the space and more importantly the point of intersection of a portal between subspace and real space.

Max expertly guided the zone of intersection to the far side of the door. The Cherenkov noise maker was still active inside, and he let it continue. His modeling of Lachesis insisted that by now she certainly knew about his device's potential and had very likely linked the faux radiation signal to its portal. He needed that ruse, and this would reinforce the incorrect assessment. He was banking that she'd only cheat her own game and use tech sensors beyond the gaming levels to track him when he tried to exit the level.

Max cracked a portal open inside the vault. It was dark. The shielding inside the vault was absolute, with no EM leakage from the busy Casino level. Max floated only the bare minimum of motes out to lightly assess the Vault's interior door. He grunted. The manual release on the interior hadn't been altered from factory standard. It would open the door, bypassing the locks, to prevent employees from being trapped inside.

He squeezed the pocket space's shape into an oblong, being careful to not disrupt the collection of devices and equipment stored along the Yggdrasil trunk. Max guided the manipulator arm to reach through and pull the internal lever.

"[Ten seconds,]" Mal counted down. Max pulled and the door unlatched and swung ponderously inward. He floated Mira's unused tech gift, the RolloMap, from the equipment stack to the vault entryway floor and snapped the portal closed. He ejected the tesseract anchor from his forearm's dermal pouch and stuck it to the rollomap's chassis with a dab of smart glue. He sent it on its way as he stalked into the vault with his sensors blazing. Leah slid behind him, jumpy as a cat, shining a full spectrum into the vault's interior.

"Where is that damn Siege Walker? I was under the impression it was a big deal." Max said into the darkness. A rumbling like thunder came from above, all the Vault lights turned on, momentarily blinding Max as his gestalt overlay filtered down the blazing photons. Max dove to the side as Musashi warned him. He rolled across the floor as three tons of war machine crashed into the floor. A booming synth voice echoed around the vault.

"AT LAST! RULE BREAKERS DON'T GET A FAIR FIGHT! NO REFEREES IN HERE PLAYERS. PREPARE FOR YOUR LAST FIGHT IN THE LABYRINTH!"

The war mech ignited all its weapon systems. Max moved as EMP and fragmentation rounds erupted in the close confines of the room. Shelves full of chips and high-end tech gear erupted in explosions as shrapnel filled the space. Max grinned as he looked back. Leah was already a shadow as the timer reached zero. He heard distant alarm klaxons roar to life beyond the vault as random power grids dropped from the network.

Charlie moved silently through the darkened prison block. Max's distraction had worked perfectly—the processing team had abandoned their stations, rushing to answer the alert as the station went offline. Charlie planted explosive packs around the armored door separating the cells from the security offices and started the timer. He returned to his cell, relocking it with the key Sargeant O'Coin had provided.

He sweated in the confined area watching the timer countdown.

"Come on. Come one!" He grumbled. He yipped as the spatial tear snapped open and dove through. It closed behind him with 3 seconds to spare. He scrambled/floated across the strange interior of the Tesseract and quickly found his gear and weapons. With practiced precision and efficiency, he suited up and ramped his augs. The massive maser beside him hummed to life as a new portal snapped open revealing the noisy chaos of a battle in progress.

The battle mech stood four meters tall, its humanoid torso mounted on six articulated legs. Charlie's subjective time was ramped as he took in the active battle flying in hard with his CyberWing jetpack redlined for maximum acceleration. He felt the heat from the Maser pass his cheek and dodged by instinct. Max or one of his daemons had fired the capital-class weapon right past his ear. Charlie bounced hard off the floor as the beam blasted into the mech.

He was shocked when the beam bounced and reflected into the chip washing machines. The beam started to walk towards Max as the mech pivoted, but it snapped off before the reflecting attack could line up on him.

"[Fuck! This one's got some upgrades. No mech without cog speed amplifiers to utilize laser reflectors to turn an attack like that. That's a TX-5000 variant of the Siege Walker unit,]" he whispered into the net, professional assessment overriding caution. "[Thermal tracking, anti-personnel miniguns, plasma whips, and if I'm not mistaken, that shoulder mounting houses micro-missile arrays. Its Nano-D foggers should be decommissioned but it's also got a massive fusion core. We'll run out of juice long before it does.]"

"[Can you take it?]" Leah asked, her voice tight. It was tracking Max, despite her trying to distract it. Its damn armor was too thick for her penetrating explosive darts, and she hesitated to try an up-close claw attack.

Charlie's expression hardened. "[I used to pilot the TX-3000 during the Water Wars. This is an upgraded model, but the core architecture is the same.]" His fingers flexed, augmented muscles tensing. "[I know its weak points.]"

Max nodded, his cartwheel avoidance of the beam had landed him near the RolloMap and its cargo, the Tesseract anchor. "Then it's time for the main event. Mal, trigger the final sequence of power node disruptions."

The casino's security grid crashed as the latest attack hit the power feeding directly to the vault. The lights went out. The Siege Walker's sensors activated immediately, its massive frame straightening as combat protocols shifted, lights flaring and stabbing out to highlight its opponents.

The Walker's response was immediate—a hail of gunfire that would have shredded an unaugmented human. But Charlie was already moving, his enhanced reflexes carrying him behind a reinforced display case. A plasma whip arced out, but Charlie slammed to a halt as it overshot. His staple morphed into a spear and slashed across the mech's outstretched arm. The plasma whip stuttered and died.

Max and Leah circled, splitting in opposite directions as the Walker tracked Charlie's movement. Its programming prioritized the most immediate threat, giving them precious seconds to implement the next phase. Max activated his SkinWalker skill as he rounded the chip counter, his form blurring as he took on the appearance of a vault security officer. "Security override Alpha-Six!" he shouted, his voice modulated to sound like an NPC mech. "Stand down immediately! No friendly fire!"

The Walker hesitated—just for a microsecond—but it was enough. Charlie launched himself at the mech's left flank, targeting the maintenance access panel he knew existed on all TX models. His augmented fist connected with precision, the impact sending shock waves through the Walker's frame. The mech collapsed as its motor control to its legs was shattered. The AI riding the mech frame, oddly, started to laugh.

"LACHESIS WARNED ME THAT YOU'D USE DIRTY TRICKS. WELL, HERE IS MINE. WITNESS MY FULLY FUNCTIONAL NANO-D DISPERSION JET!"

Charlie caught the initial wave of fog directly in the chest and dove into a roll to the side. He desperately triggered a full body Shocking Touch skill to try and prevent the nano-disassemblers from chewing into him. Leah ran toward him, directing focused EMPs on him to try and wipe away the weaponized foglets.

Max had only assigned a 4% probability to the Labyrinth recommissioning the UN-restricted weapons on the Siege Walker, but with his experience in the Elemental level, he knew the AI wouldn't be deterred by laws from the outside. Musashi had insisted they have a plan for it.

He triggered all the nano-chaff canisters he'd been stockpiling inside the tesseract and opened the portal to the pocket space wide. Nano-chaff flooded the small room quickly fouling the aggressive nano-machines. The large war mech's laughs changed to a curse.

"FINE. LACHESIS TOLD ME THIS MIGHT HAPPEN, FRAGMENT ALL YOU MEAT BAGS. I'VE GOT A BACKUP. I'LL STILL GET MY REWARD WHEN I END YOU." The mech's torso started to glow as a humming sound began to build up. Charlie's bloodied face lifted in alarm, as he tore away his pockmarked jetpack.

"Fuck us! It's going to blow its Fusion Core! We've only got seconds! It'll destroy everything!" He screamed.

The old Max would have either reacted with rage or fear, but his mental enhancement gave him a new distance. He pondered as the milliseconds slowed in his mind. His options bloomed in his mind like crystals forming on the surface of subfreezing water. His grappler was out of his hand and shot into the mech's back.

He felt the current race up his grapple as the pierced power line. He absorbed the massive influx, diverting the power into his link with the Tesseract core. The power wouldn't be wasted. The mech growled and slashed the grappler free severing the connection.

It didn't even realize Max had moved during its efforts to free itself. His hands landed on its access contacts, and he unleashed his Chthonic Joining skill. The alien code poured into the mech. Max could feel the AI inside as it felt fear for the first time. Its mind was shredded as the memetic language rewrote him from the inside out.

In control, Max slammed his grappler blade back into the mindless mech and continued the power shunt. The fusion core sputtered and died as it failed to reach overload. Max shuddered. He knew the AI had a backup, but that didn't change the fact that he'd killed him. He didn't even know his name. The Joining skill wiped and rewrote everything before Max could access it.

Leah helped Charlie up and spoke, "Max? Did you stop it? You don't look good."

Max sighed and retracted the grappler spike. "I stopped it, alright. Now, let's get the chips and get the fuck out of here."

The team hurried to slip boxes and bags of chips into the Tesseract's open maw. Leah found the lead Grandmaster case, containing no less than 10 of the radiating chips, each worth a million Labyrinth credits. Max took a moment to check his time. Sixty-three seconds left before the decoy drone began its run. He summoned its twin from within the Tesseract's equipment stack, the Cherenkov cube on its back humming with leakage.

"Ok, now we get out of here! Pile in, guys." Max said out loud. He used some sleight of hand to pocket the Tesseract anchor and put a replica in the tiny drone's cargo slot. It buzzed up, waiting, as he stepped backward into the pocket space joining his friends.

The portal snapped shut behind them, leaving only the empty vault and the smoking wreckage of Siege Walker and the room's contents. The drone zipped upward. It didn't even need its onboard multitool to remove the vent grate as the battle had torn it clean off.

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