​Chapter 26. Secure Channel

Mark stared at his own face on the holo — distorted, ominous. They broadcast it every thirty minutes, as regularly as a weather report, announcing a search and a reward.

Maybe he was still hoping they would announce that it had all been some monstrous mistake the next time. There was nothing else he could do.

Panic rose in him, threatening to drown him. He was trapped. Not only framed — the whole world had become a prison. His enemy had been the City, but now, with a bounty posted, even the entire Ring had turned into a hunting ground for Mark Kane.

What now? Run to another City? They would find him anywhere. The Contour saw everything.

He replayed the events in Silas’s house in his mind. The rage. The shift. The gunshots. The wristband.

Which meant there was a video record.

“System,” he said, and his own voice sounded alien to him. “Local logs. Show the last video capture. Stabilize image.”

The cuff projected a small holo in front of him. The same scene, but shot from his perspective. Borg bursting into the room. The borg fired first; a bullet tore into Mark’s shoulder. And Mark shifting the gun into his left hand and firing back. Self-defense. Clear and indisputable. Evidence.

But how could he deliver the footage to the authorities? How could he prove his innocence when the entire system existed only to erase him? He couldn’t send the file to the police. The police didn’t care; it wasn’t their job — it was the Center’s. They would wipe the recording and locate him instantly. And he couldn’t contact the Center directly. Would the Center intercept his message? No way to know. The Contour decided such things.

He needed someone inside the system who’d actually hear him out.

There was only one person — Diana. She had broken into the Center; she was part of the very system he hated. But she knew him, and they had been through too much together. Maybe something of the woman he once knew still remained in her. It was a desperate, insane option — but the only one he had.

Mari watched him from her chair, silent, her book set aside.

“I need to make a call,” he said, as if asking permission.

“All right,” Mari said with a small smile — and in that smile there was neither surprise nor question.

“Cuff. Secure channel. Search the archive. Diana... Detective Diana Wells.”

The cuff froze for a moment, processing the request. He wasn’t sure the contact even existed anymore after he’d been erased from the system. But then a green light blinked, and a purr of the ringback sounded.

The call rang for so long that Mari had time to turn a page. Mark was about to disconnect when a click came from the other end.

“Mark?” Diana’s voice carried unfiltered astonishment. “What the hell? Where are you calling from? Your identifier isn’t recognized, but the biometrics— that’s you. There’s no geotag.”

“I... I’m in the Ring,” he said. “I need your help. It’s important.”

“The Ring...” she repeated, her voice edged with worry. “What are you doing there? Mark, what happened?”

“They pinned a murder on me. I’m wanted.”

“I know,” she said. “I saw the broadcasts. The whole City saw. And it was... strange. It’s nothing like you, not even at your worst. Were you drunk?”

For the first time this endless day, the tension in his chest loosened a little. She probably didn’t believe him — but she hadn’t hung up.

“It’s fabricated. I have proof, a recording. He fired first. I need to show it to you.”

Another silence. He could almost feel Diana, in her sterile, gleaming office, weighing risks. Helping a fugitive — a former colleague and lover — could cost her everything.

“... All right,” she finally said, having made her decision. “But everything happens on my terms. No dark alleys in the Ring. The old Atlas assembly plant, right past the southern Barrier. It’s neutral ground. One hour. And you come alone. Understood?”

“Understood,” Mark said. “I’ll be alone.”

The connection cut off, and he exhaled almost in relief. He’d gotten his chance — yet instead of freedom, it brought weight and fear.

“You’re making a mistake,” Mari remarked from her chair. She didn’t lift her eyes from the book, but she’d heard every word.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “It’s the only evidence.”

“Proof?” She finally looked up at him, and her visor showed nothing but the reflection of the dim lamp. “Or bait? She’s part of the same system that branded you a criminal. You think she’ll come alone?”

Mari closed her book, sending up a faint cloud of dust.

“Stay here, Mark. You don’t need to go anywhere. You’re safe. I’ll talk to Derek — his people won’t go after you. We’ll find another way.”

Her words were rational, logical. And that was exactly why Mark couldn’t accept them. He was tired of hiding — even if it had only been a day.

“Hiding is exactly what they want from me,” he said. “To sit quietly while they rewrite the world however they please. Enough.”

He walked to the coat rack and put on his old, worn jacket.

“I’m going.”

Mari said nothing, running her hand thoughtfully over the book’s cover. She seemed to be weighing the possibilities.

“Fine,” she agreed at last. “It’s your choice. But...”

She stepped to the window and looked out at the snowy alley.

“Tell the car to drop you at the old Hughes warehouse by the South Canal,” she added without turning. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ll be watching you.”

Her words landed with the weight of an obvious fact — one he’d overlooked in his panic. She saw not only his next move, but the trap he was walking toward.

“Fine,” he muttered.

The freezing winter air gave him a jolt of clarity. The despair receded; only a calm, vicious resolve remained. He got into the car.

“Atlas,” he said.

The car glided forward without a sound, carrying him into the rising blizzard. The snow that drifted over the Old City like a light powder had turned here, in the open stretches of the industrial zone, into a real storm. Handfuls of dry ice grit hammered against the glass, and the defroster barely managed to melt them into a murky smear.

He headed south, toward the Barrier. The closer he came, the emptier the world outside became. The last grotesque residential blocks receded behind him, replaced by rusted skeletons of workshops. No one lived here. There was no point settling next to a wall the City could dismantle and shift at any moment, swallowing your home and your life.

The Barrier drew near — a solid black wall disappearing into the white haze on both sides. It was built from huge standard concrete slabs joined with steel clamps. Not an eternal monolith, but a temporary, mobile structure. A construction set that could be disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere, cutting off another slice of the Ring. Up above, in the snowstorm’s whirl, dim searchlights glimmered, and the silhouettes of automated turrets emerged through the swirl.

Beside the Barrier, like a prehistoric beast crouched low to the ground, stood the old “Atlas” assembly plant. A gigantic, rusting shell of metal and concrete, its broken windows howling with the blizzard’s wind. Once they assembled military vehicles here; now only rust and trash gathered.

The car stopped by the main entrance, its headlights carving the yawning mouth of the gates out of the storm. Mark stepped out, and the wind nearly knocked him over. He pulled his jacket tighter and hurried inside.

The vast assembly hall drowned in a frigid, hollow darkness. Snow drifting through the shattered windows swirled in ghostly glow breaking through the broken roof, forming ghostlike, dancing pillars in the gloom. It smelled of rusted metal and machine oil.

Diana waited for him in the center of the hall, beside the bare frame of an armored carrier. Alone. A plain tailored coat, hair neatly styled despite the storm outside. She didn’t look like someone who was afraid or setting up an ambush. More like a detective at a meeting point.

“You came.” Diana stepped toward him. “I thought you wouldn’t dare.”

Mark gave a short smile.

“I didn’t have a choice, Diana. When your face is on every channel, the options get pretty limited.”

Diana folded her arms across her chest.

“You always have a choice. You can surrender or disappear. But you chose to meet me. Why, Mark?”

He took a step forward. A heap of rust-eaten, frozen debris lay between them.

“I need your help. More precisely — your access,” he said. “I want you to upload a file into the Center’s database. As an official piece of evidence in the case of Officer Cross’s murder.”

For a moment, Diana froze — her face visibly paled in the half-dark of the hall.

“Are you out of your mind? You want me to plant evidence into the system from the primary suspect who’s on the run? That’s the end of my career.”

He raised his wrist, and the cuff projected a trembling image into the dusty air.

“Watch.”

The recording played back from his perspective. Diana silently watched the borg burst into the room. Watched him fire first, and Mark fire back.

“Self-defense,” he said as the footage ended. “And what they show on the news — is a lie.”

Diana remained silent for a long time, staring at the holo flickering in the air like a weightless piece of evidence. Snow swirled around her, drifting through the projection.

“But this is impossible,” she said at last. “Two logs of the same event. One of them has to be fabricated.”

“Which one, Diana?” Mark pressed. “The one you and the whole City saw? Or the one recorded by my old cuff, disconnected from the network? If you upload my file, they can’t just wipe it — it becomes part of the official case. My status changes. I stop being a murderer and become a suspect.”

Diana surely understood that his recording, unlike the official one, was intact — without a single splice. She looked him in the eyes.

“If this is real, they’ll still hunt you down, Mark. And they’ll shoot you during the arrest. The only way out is to surrender. That’s your chance to stay alive. Surrender and hand over the footage yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I won’t do that. I want them to know the truth. Upload the recording.”

She gave him a long, heavy look. On one side of the scale lay her career; on the other — his life. And the scales trembled.

“Fine,” she said at last. “I’ll do it.”

Mark felt the tension finally ease its chokehold on him. Hope. He had almost forgotten what that felt like. He brought his cuff to her hand, and the file — his one desperate piece of evidence — transferred over. The transfer completed.

“And now, Mark, you need to come with me,” she said, her tone turning hard and official again.

He froze.

“What?”

“Surrender,” she continued. “This recording is your only chance. If you surrender voluntarily, and I attach it to the case, it will secure your safety. There will be an internal investigation, the charges will be dropped.”

The relief he’d just felt flipped into cold, white fury, burning every other emotion to ash. She wasn’t helping him. She had taken the evidence and now intended to arrest him — by the book, by protocol. Not a friend, but a cog. A part of the system.

“No,” he said sharply. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I know how this ends.”

“You don’t have a choice, Mark,” her voice grew even colder. “I can’t let you go.”

Her palm transformed: with a soft click, a rifle barrel slid out from her wrist.

She was aiming at his chest. His former partner — now just another enemy.

The last thread connecting him to his past snapped. All the pain, resentment, and rage of this endless month converged into a single point. He was no longer a victim. No longer a supplicant.

A lunge to the side, behind the armored carrier’s skeleton. A split second later, the air exploded with a dry, rapid crackle of gunfire. Bullets sent showers of sparks off the rusted metal where his head had been moments before. Diana was shooting to kill.

Without stopping, he burst from behind cover and sprinted toward the exit, toward the gaping, storm-filled maw of the gate. Torn apart by her betrayal and his own fury, the world around him shifted.

Everything slowed. The sound of gunfire thickened into dull, viscous thuds. The snowflakes swirling in the gateway froze in midair like billions of tiny, glittering points. Bullets leaving her barrel drifted forward not as flashes but as slow, red-hot wasps, lazily gliding through air as thick as syrup. He had no weapon — and even if he did, he wouldn’t have fired back.

His body moved on its own. With impossible, inhuman grace and speed, he slipped between the bullets. He didn’t dodge — he shifted, sliding through the gaps in their trajectories, and his body lost density, turning into a shimmering, translucent silhouette.

He burst out of the factory—and the world snapped back.

The sounds, the blizzard — all the brutal physics of reality crashed onto him, tearing him out of the trance. Stumbling, he made it to his car, yanked the door open, and collapsed into the seat. The engine came alive with a soft hum.

“Go!” he managed to shout.