Page 82 of Over the Edge

The gambit worked. Three drones immediately pivoted, sensors locking onto my movement. Neurodarts peppered the ground at my heels as I zigzagged across the courtyard, diving behind the fountain just as a dart grazed my shoulder.

Fuck. Even that slight contact sent numbness spreading down my arm. Partial dose. Not enough to paralyze me, but my left arm hung uselessly at my side, fingers tingling with pins and needles.

So Moreau was using the non-lethal options first.

He was toying with us, but he’d lose patience soon enough and unleash the real payload.

Explosive microblades that could peel skin off bone. A neural disruptor that scrambled your brain until you forgot your own name.

Hell, maybe even the toxic fog—silent, invisible, fatal in under a minute.

And if that didn’t break us, Sentinel could always scream. That low subsonic pitch that turned your guts to water and made even seasoned ops piss themselves.

This wasn’t just a drone.

It was an executioner driven by a man with a god complex.

“Flynn!” Lyric’s voice cut through the crowd’s excited murmurs. She’d made it to a cluster of potted trees, using the dense foliage as cover. The single drone tracking her hovered nearby, its sensors struggling to get a clean lock through the leaves.

“I’m good!” I called back, though we both knew that was a lie. “Keep moving!”

I ducked under another cluster of trees and, using the reflective surface of the knife blade, mapped the drones’ positions. They hovered at different heights, creating overlapping fields of fire that would make any direct movement suicidal. But they weren’t the only things I was tracking.

Across the courtyard, Lyric crouched under her sad bit of cover, pistol held ready. I raised my hand in a quick series of gestures.

Cover fire. Moving to flank. On three.

She nodded once, then mouthed:One. Two. Three.

Lyric broke cover first, firing two perfectly placed shots that caught one drone mid-sensor. It didn’t destroy the thing—these were built too well for that—but now that it was smaller than the first time she shot it, the bullet’s impact sent it spinning, temporarily disrupting its targeting system.

The distraction was all I needed.

I sprinted from my cover, keeping low, zigzagging between patches of cover. The remaining drones adjusted with frightening speed, their algorithms predicting my path with uncanny accuracy. A dart skimmed my shoulder, the fabric of my shirt tearing as it passed. Too close.

I dove behind a large stone urn, my shoulder slamming into the ornate base hard enough to send pain shooting down my arm. It fucking hurt, but it was better than taking a dart.

I signaled to Lyric again:Your turn. I’ll cover.

She was farther from my position than I’d like, but we needed to keep moving. The longer we stayed in one place, the more time the drones had to calculate optimal firing solutions. I broke cover, knife in hand, and hurled it at the nearest drone. A desperate move, but, holy fuck, it actually worked. The blade embedded itself in the drone’s propulsion system, sending it careening into a nearby column with a satisfying crunch of metal and electronics.

Three left.

Lyric used the distraction to sprint toward a grouping of stone benches closer to my position. The audience tracked her movement, gasping as she narrowly avoided another barrage of darts. I could see them placing bets, pointing excitedly as if we were racehorses rather than human beings fighting for our lives. The sight stoked the fury in my chest to new heights.

A flash of movement caught my eye—one of the drones had repositioned itself, hovering just above a decorative frieze to my left. I ducked as it fired, but I wasn’t the target. The dart was aimed at where Lyric would be in three seconds if she maintained her current trajectory.

“Nine o’clock high!” I shouted.

Lyric changed direction instantly, dropping into a roll that carried her behind a decorative statue instead of the bench she’d been aiming for. The dart missed her by inches, shattering against stone.

But the drones were learning, adapting to our communication patterns. While we’d been focused on the obvious threat, the third drone had circled wide, approaching from an angle I couldn’t see from my position. I heard the soft whir of its propulsion system too late.

Pain exploded in my thigh as a neurodart struck home, the needle penetrating deep muscle before deploying its payload. The effect was immediate—waves of paralyzing numbness spreading from the impact site, my leg buckling beneath me as the neural pathways misfired. I pitched forward into the open courtyard, suddenly exposed on three sides.

The crowd’s excitement surged to new heights. First blood drawn. The odds just shifted dramatically against us.

“Flynn!”

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