{

I snap back to reality, gasping for air, my body trembling with adrenaline. The VMT Reader's blinking red like it's got a damn death wish, error codes pouring across it's screen. Piece of shit, I mutter, throwing it aside. What the fuck was that? I can still feel the sensation of dying, that suit's weight, hear the fear in that guy's voice. Jatari. The Merge. The Vault. Whatever she's got down there, it’s big enough to freak out her own people.

I head straight to my monitor and I dive back into the network. Gotta find the location of that vault. The screen pulls up a map, zooming out past the city limits until it stops dead in the wasteland surrounding Neo. Of course. Stashed right in the middle of nowhere. They really wanted to bury this deep, out where nobody'd think to look.

I dig through the files, scanning endless lines of encrypted bullshit until I find it — a schematic, buried deep in some maintenance logs. An emergency exit. Gotta be how they snuck their way in and out without raising alarms. I smirk to myself. Their secrecy was their own damn downfall. I memorize the layout, grab my gear, and head out. 

Time to drag whatever she was hiding into the light.

 MEMORY DATA DOWNLOADING 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

}