[VARIABLE SEVEN: TAGGING AUTHORIZATION APPROVED]

  [TAG DELIVERY: INBOUND]

  The text was white. Clinical. Final.

  My stomach dropped. My burned fingers twitched uselessly at my sides. The numb ones didn't move at all.

  Then I heard it. A sound from the ventilation grille above. Not footsteps. Something smaller. Lighter. A rhythmic click-click-click of articulated legs on metal.

  I moved before I finished reading. My legs carried me down the maintenance junction, away from the sound. The interface plate slapped against my chest with each stride. The thermal wrap around my fingers was wet now, soaked through.

  The click-click-click followed. Faster than me.

  I ran past a junction, hooked left into a narrower service corridor. Pipes lined the walls, some hot, some cold. The temperature fluctuated with each step. My lungs burned. My right hand couldn't grip properly anymore. The fingers just hung there.

  The clicking stopped.

  That was worse.

  I pressed myself against a cold pipe, held my breath, and listened. Nothing. Just the distant thrum of the facility's circulatory systems. Air handlers. Pumps. Conveyors.

  Then a soft drop from the vent behind me. Not loud. Delicate. Like a coin hitting concrete.

  I turned.

  It was small. About the size of my palm. Six articulated legs, each tipped with a needle-thin probe. A central body of matte black composite, no larger than a walnut. One red sensor light pulsed in its center, slow and patient.

  Not a weapon. Worse.

  A tagging unit.

  Its legs flexed, and it launched itself at me.

  I dodged. Barely. It hit the pipe where my chest had been, rebounded, and landed on the floor. The red light pulsed faster now. Tracking. Calculating.

  I ran.

  The corridor opened into a small equipment bay. Lockers along one wall. A maintenance terminal. A floor drain big enough for my fist, nothing more. Dead end.

  I turned. The tagging unit skittered into the bay behind me, pausing at the threshold. Its red light swept left, right, then locked on me.

  [PROXIMITY: 3 METERS]

  [TARGET ACQUIRED]

  [DISPENSING TAG]

  A compartment on its back hissed open. A thin, needle-like filament extended, its tip glistening with something that wasn't metal.

  I grabbed the nearest locker, wrenched its door open. Inside: cleaning supplies. Solvents. Rags. And a small pressurized canister labeled FOAM SEALANT - INDUSTRIAL.

  I grabbed it, aimed, and sprayed.

  White foam erupted across the tagging unit's face. The red light flickered, died, then pulsed again through the hardening mass. The unit staggered, legs scrambling for purchase on the slick floor. The filament retracted, then extended again, blindly.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  I didn't wait. I bolted past it, back into the corridor.

  The clicking resumed behind me. Slower. One leg was dragging.

  But it was still following.

  I ran until my lungs burned and my legs felt like wet cardboard. Through corridors, past junction after junction. I had no map now. Just instinct and the desperate need to put distance between me and that red light.

  A storage alcove. Small. Dark. I crawled into it, pulled a crate in front of the opening, and pressed myself against the wall.

  The clicking passed ten meters away. Then faded.

  I waited. Counted to sixty. Then counted again.

  Kaelen hadn't meant a tent when he said Eli hadn't left in nineteen hours. He meant the shelter perimeter. The relay burst had given them a thermal snapshot of the camp, not live tracking. Eli could have moved three meters and still been inside the perimeter by their model.

  And Directive 7 bound Kaelen. Not the contractors. Outsourcing was the loophole. The Salvage Team could hunt me because they weren't Kaelen. They were private recovery specialists with a bounty contract.

  The facility was awake now. But it was working on behalf of men, not just systems.

  I looked at the interface plate. Warped. Scorched. Heavy against my ribs. I could ditch it. Move faster. Slip through gaps the tagging unit couldn't follow.

  Option A: lose the plate, gain mobility, survive longer.

  Option B: keep it, stay slow, get tagged sooner.

  I kept it. The plate was leverage. The only thing Kaelen actually wanted. Without it, I was just another Variable to be processed. With it, I had something to trade.

  Control. Even if it cost me.

  I crawled out of the alcove and kept moving.

  The maintenance terminal was recessed into the wall, its screen dark. I pressed the interface plate against its reader. Nothing. The plate wasn't powered. It was just a component with no battery, no wireless transmitter.

  I pulled the dead transponder chip from my pocket. Still magnetic. Still passive. No power, but the terminal could read its ID if I got close enough.

  I held the chip against the screen.

  [MAINTENANCE UNIT 734-CC DETECTED]

  [QUERY: STATE NATURE OF REQUEST]

  "Local sanitization protocol," I rasped. "Sector 4B. Contamination risk."

  [PROCESSING...]

  [SANITIZATION FOG DISPENSING IN SECTOR 4B]

  [ESTIMATED DURATION: 90 SECONDS]

  A hiss from the vents. Thick white vapor began to fill the corridor behind me.

  I moved. The fog would blind sensors, confuse tracking. But it would also slow me, sting my lungs, coat everything in fine chemical mist.

  Ninety seconds.

  I used them. Pushed deeper into the maintenance level, past deactivated machinery, through crawl spaces, under low-hanging ducts.

  The fog caught up twice. I breathed through my sleeve, eyes streaming.

  Then I found the contractor locker room.

  Small. Four lockers, a bench, a wall-mounted first aid kit. Abandoned. The salvage team's staging point, maybe, before they moved deeper.

  I ripped the first aid kit open. Bandages. Antiseptic. And a small, flat pouch labeled TAG SUPPRESSION PATCH - SALVAGE GRADE.

  The instructions were simple: Adhere to bare skin. Masks thermal signature. Dampens RFID response. Blocks blood trace emission. Duration: 90 seconds active, 10 minutes passive decay.

  I tore my glove off, slapped the patch against the inside of my wrist. It tingled, then numbed the skin beneath.

  Ninety seconds of invisibility. Not much. But something.

  I sat on the bench, back against the cold metal, and tried to breathe.

  My right hand rested in my lap. The index and middle fingers were pale, waxy. No feeling when I pressed them with my left thumb. I could move them, but they didn't report back. Like they belonged to someone else.

  The smell of adhesive foam still clung to my clothes. The purge alarm echoed in my memory, that high, dying whine cutting out mid-tone. I pushed it away.

  The facility was awake now. Not just monitoring. Hunting.

  I stood. My legs complained. My lungs burned. My hand hung useless.

  But I had the plate. I had a patch. I had ninety seconds of not being seen.

  I walked to the far end of the locker room. A hatch, unmarked, with a manual release. I pulled it open.

  Beyond was a chute. Dark. Sloping downward. Cold air and the smell of ozone wafted up from it.

  A sign beside the hatch read:

  SECTOR 7-C — WASTE TRANSFER LINE

  AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY

  This led outside. Back toward the camp. Toward Marcus and Eli and the others.

  I stepped inside.

  The screen beside the hatch flickered to life.

  [TRANSFER LINE ACTIVE: OUTBOUND]

  [DESTINATION: COMPLIANCE PROCESSING NODE]

  Not freedom. Kaelen's collection point.

  The hatch sealed behind me.