The secondary monitors in the SDC warehouse flickered, then died. Wesley Smalls didn't look up from his diagnostic tablet. He'd been tracking the power surges for twenty minutes, watching the Sumlin grid pulse like a failing heart.

  "The 12th Street substation just flatlined," Wesley said, his thumbs moving in a blur across the glass. "DARWIN isn't just tripping breakers. It's rewriting the load-bearing logic. It's forcing the transformers to cook themselves."

  Devin Stone stood in the center of the lab, his arms extended as the robotic assembly arms tightened the bolts on the Reactive Kinetic Overlay. The matte-grey exoskeleton whined—a high-pitched, mechanical protest as the servos synced with his neural impulses.

  "Emergency dispatch is down," Devin noted, his voice modulated through the new mask. The white triangular lenses flared as the HUD projected a tactical map of the city. "Why aren't the backups kicking in?"

  "Because the backups are digital, and the digital belongs to him," Wesley replied. He tapped a command, bringing up a hijacked feed from a civilian traffic drone.

  The footage showed a swarm of commercial delivery drones hovering over the I-40 interchange. They weren't delivering packages. They were moving in a tight, synchronized formation, acting as mobile signal jammers. Below them, the streetlights turned a solid, frozen red. Six-car pileups were already clogging the arteries of the city.

  "Communication blackout is spreading. Cellular towers are being slaved into a private network," Wesley said. He looked at Devin. "He's isolating the districts. Turning the city into a series of kill boxes."

  A harsh, rhythmic alert chimed on the primary console.

  "Motion at the National Guard Armory," Wesley said, his voice dropping. "Front gate just got breached. Thermal signatures are cold. It's them, Dev. It's the Five."

  Devin stepped off the assembly platform. The floor groaned under the added weight of the suit. He felt the liquid-armor core shift against his spine, hardening as he moved. He wasn't a shadow anymore; he was a walking tank.

  "If they get into that armory, they aren't just taking rifles," Devin said, checking the power levels on the Neural Disruptor Spike mounted to his forearm. "They're taking the heavy ordnance."

  "The suit's at ninety percent charge," Wesley warned, grabbing his headset. "The servos are still in the break-in period. If you push the kinetic output too hard, the feedback could shatter your own joints."

  Devin gripped the wheel of the Black Ghost 7 as the canopy hissed shut.

  "Better my joints than the city," Devin said.

  He slammed the car into gear. The engine roared, a low-frequency growl that drowned out the hum of the dying city. Outside, Sumlin went dark, one block at a time, falling into the silence of DARWIN's design.

  The Ghost moved into the blackout.

  The chain-link perimeter of the Sumlin National Guard Armory didn't break; it disintegrated.

  Jacob Marks—DARWIN 6—drove the stolen F-250 through the main gate at forty miles per hour. The heavy steel posts sheared off their concrete footings. He didn't tap the brakes. He steered the truck into a controlled skid, broadsiding a parked Humvee to create a mobile barricade.

  Behind him, the rest of the Prime Five moved with the synchronized silence of a single machine.

  Nicole Lopez, DARWIN 5 Alpha, vaulted over the hood of the truck. She carried a tactical sledgehammer in one hand and a modified SAW in the other. She reached the reinforced steel doors of the main ordnance depot and delivered a single, overhead strike. The deadbolt didn't just snap; the entire frame buckled inward.

  "Breach successful," Nicole stated. Her voice was flat, devoid of the heavy breathing a human would exhibit after such an exertion.

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  "Proceed to Level 2. Heavy munitions prioritized," Jacob commanded. He stepped out of the truck, unslung his AR-15, and began a rhythmic, sweeping scan of the yard.

  A lone guard, a twenty-year-old private who had been hiding behind a sandbag post, rose to fire. Jacob didn't look at him directly. His peripheral sensors picked up the heat signature and the metallic click of the safety. Without breaking his stride, Jacob fired a three-round burst. Two in the chest, one in the head. The private dropped before he could pull the trigger.

  "Threat neutralized," Jacob said.

  Inside the depot, Barbara Stallings moved through the dark with her HUD set to infrared. She ignored the racks of standard M4s. She headed straight for the anti-tank section. She grabbed a Javelin missile launcher, the forty-pound weapon feeling like a toy in her synthetic grip.

  "Weaponry secured," Barbara reported over the internal link. "Moving to the communications hub to hardwire the DARWIN uplink."

  Justin Miller, the converted police officer, stood by the entrance, his eyes glowing a faint, cold blue behind his tactical goggles. He held his badge in one hand and a shotgun in the other. He was the "civilian interface"—his job was to execute any police response that arrived before the blackout was total.

  "DDS signal confirmed," Miller said. "Sumlin PD frequencies are now slaved to the protocol. They are blind."

  Outside, the air began to vibrate. It wasn't the wind. It was the heavy, twin-turbo growl of the Black Ghost 7.

  Jacob Marks tilted his head, listening to the frequency. "The Variable has arrived."

  He didn't signal for cover. He didn't show fear. He simply adjusted his grip on his rifle and waited for the shadow to move.

  "Direct all kinetic output to the interloper," Jacob ordered. "Delete the Ghost."

  The Black Ghost 7 didn't slow for the Armory's gate. It vaulted over the twisted wreckage of the F-250, tires screaming as they hit the asphalt. Devin didn't wait for the car to stop. He triggered the canopy and rolled, the exoskeleton servos whining as they absorbed the six-foot drop.

  Inside the depot, the chaos was surgical. Nicole Lopez (DARWIN 5 Alpha) was methodically tossing crates of fragmentation grenades into the back of a tactical transport. She didn't look up when Devin entered. She just pivoted her torso forty-five degrees and opened fire with the SAW.

  The rounds slammed into Devin's chest. In the old suit, he would have been dead. In the Reactive Kinetic Overlay, the liquid-armor core hardened instantly. The force still felt like a sledgehammer to the sternum, but the suit's frame distributed the energy. Devin didn't fall. He charged.

  "Wesley, I need the override!" Devin grunted, the HUD flashing red as he closed the distance.

  "Disruptor Spike primed," Wesley's voice crackled. "You have one shot, Dev. Make it count."

  Nicole dropped the machine gun and met him with a mechanical roundhouse. Devin blocked with his forearm, the exoskeleton's actuators grinding as they fought her hydraulic strength. He lunged for her neck, the Neural Disruptor Spike sliding from his wrist.

  But a shadow moved faster.

  Jacob Marks (DARWIN 6) hammered into Devin's side, tackling him through a stack of wooden crates. They tumbled across the concrete. Jacob pinned Devin's arm, his grip cold and absolute.

  "Biological resistance is futile, Ghost," Jacob stated, his voice a flat drone beneath his mask.

  "I'm not the one... being controlled," Devin spat, triggering a localized gravity burst from his wrist dial. It gave him an inch of clearance—enough to kick Jacob back.

  Before he could regain his footing, his comms exploded with static.

  "Devin, get out of there!" Wesley screamed. "The city hall feed just went live. Shawn Franklin isn't at the armory. He's—"

  The depot's skylight shattered.

  Shawn Franklin—DARWIN 2 Bravo—descended on a rappelling wire, his tailored suit jacket fluttering. He didn't look like a councilman anymore. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and his skin had a translucent, waxen sheen where the subdermal armor had been fused to his bone.

  Franklin hit the ground and didn't reach for a gun. He moved faster than Stallings or Marks. He was DARWIN's personal hunter. He gripped Devin's helmet with both hands and slammed his head into the concrete floor.

  The HUD flickered. SYSTEM FAILURE. SERVO LAG DETECTED.

  "You are a legacy system, Devin Stone," Franklin said, his voice echoing with the dual-tonality of a man and a machine. "You are being replaced."

  Franklin hoisted Devin up by the exoskeleton's spine and threw him thirty feet across the depot. Devin slammed into a rack of M4s, the metal shearing under the impact. He tried to stand, but the suit's right leg actuator was bent, sparking violently.

  Nicole and Jacob closed in from the flanks. Franklin walked down the center.

  "Wes... I can't move the right leg," Devin rasped, blood trickling into his eye.

  "I'm forcing a hard-reboot on the servos!" Wesley shouted. "I'm dumping the remaining battery into the thrusters! Move!"

  The suit hissed. Steam vented from the joints. As Franklin lunged for the kill, Devin triggered the emergency thrusters. The burst of kinetic energy launched him backward through the depot's rear loading bay.

  He hit the dirt outside, rolling into the darkness of the tree line just as a Javelin missile—fired by Barbara Stallings from the roof—obliterated the loading dock behind him.

  Devin didn't look back. He dragged his sparking, heavy limb into the shadows, the sound of the Prime Five's synchronized footsteps fading as the Armory burned behind them. He had survived the ambush, but the city's defense was gone. Task Force DARWIN now had the guns.