The allotment was dark and wet, the kind of wet that clung to everything. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from leaves, guttering, and the rusted frames of abandoned grow beds. The whole place felt like it was exhaling.

  Taylor didn’t bother with the gate. He vaulted the chain?link fence, his red puffer jacket catching on a wire before tearing free. He hit the mud hard, boots sinking, breath fogging in the cold air.

  He saw the steam first.

  A thick white column rising from the side of the tool shed, too dense to be weather, too focused to be anything natural.

  Taylor ran.

  Kam was slumped against the shed door, head hanging, steam rolling off him in waves. Rain hissed as it hit his hoodie. The veins in his neck pulsed a violent orange, bright enough to see even in the dark.

  Taylor dropped to his knees beside him. Mud splashed up his shins.

  “Kam. Eyes up.”

  Kam didn’t move. The air around him smelled like ozone and burnt hair. Taylor reached for his shoulder and recoiled instantly — the heat coming off Kam was like leaning into an open oven.

  He stripped off his puffer jacket, wrapped it around his hands, and grabbed Kam’s collar. Kam groaned, a deep, tectonic sound, eyes rolling back until only the whites showed.

  “…system locked…” he muttered, delirious.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re lagging. Stay with me.”

  Taylor looked back down the path.

  “Leo! Where’s the support? I can’t tank this!”

  A beam of blue light cut through the rain. Leo stumbled into view, gasping, clutching a stitch, the heavy backpack dragging him sideways. He looked like he’d sprinted through a nightmare.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  “I’m here,” he wheezed. “I’m here.”

  He dropped beside them, hands shaking as he tore open the bag. Out came the diagnostic tablet, glowing blue, and the pouch — the Coolant.

  It didn’t look like medicine. It looked like something you’d use to repair a reactor: a heavy grey bag of thick, milky sludge, attached to a brutal?looking injector gun.

  “Hold his arm,” Leo said. “I need the port.”

  “It’s boiling,” Taylor warned.

  “Just hold it!”

  Using the puffer as insulation, Taylor pinned Kam’s left arm to the mud. Kam spasmed — a burst of super?strength — and Taylor was lifted clean off the ground. He slammed his knee into Kam’s chest, using his weight to pin him.

  “Hit the patch! Do it!”

  Leo jammed the injector into the metallic port fused into Kam’s forearm.

  A sharp click–hiss.

  The sludge pumped in.

  Kam arched violently, a scream ripping out of him — not heroic, not cinematic, just raw shock as freezing coolant hit superheated blood.

  “Temp is dropping,” Leo said, eyes glued to the tablet. “108… 106…”

  Taylor held on, watching the orange glow in Kam’s neck flicker, pulse, then slowly fade back to the colour of bruised skin.

  Kam collapsed into the mud. The steam stopped.

  Silence settled over the allotment — just rain and Leo’s frantic breathing.

  “Target down,” Leo whispered. “Reset complete.”

  Taylor rolled off him, panting. His puffer jacket was ruined, the white lining singed brown. He looked at Leo.

  “‘Applying the patch’? Really?”

  “It was accurate in the moment,” Leo said, wiping rain from his glasses.

  “It’s a coolant flush, Leo. Not a software update.”

  “The logic holds.”

  They sat there for a moment, adrenaline draining out of them, leaving only cold and exhaustion.

  Kam groaned.

  His eyes opened — heavy, bloodshot, human again. The orange light was gone. He looked at Taylor, then Leo, then the empty coolant bag lying in the mud like medical waste.

  He sat up slowly, staring at his arm.

  “Did Silas see?”

  Taylor glanced at the shed door. Still dark.

  “He didn’t open the door, Kam.”

  Kam nodded. Not surprised. Just tired. He wiped mud from his face with a trembling hand.

  “I almost had it,” he said. “The threshold… I just needed a few more seconds.”

  “You need a new heatsink,” Leo said, snapping the tablet shut. “Not more seconds. The physics engine is broken.”

  “I can handle the physics.”

  “You were AFK, bro,” Taylor said, standing and brushing mud off his jeans. “Spectating your own death. That’s not handling it.”

  He offered Kam a hand.

  Kam hesitated, then took it. Taylor hauled him up — Kam heavy as stone.

  “We’re done here,” Taylor said. “Let’s rotate. Before the cops show up and ask why you’re glowing.”

  “I’m not glowing anymore.”

  “You smell like a burnt toaster. Close enough.”

  They walked up the mud path — Kam in the middle, a block of grey exhaustion; Leo on the left, blue phone light bouncing off puddles; Taylor on the right, scanning the dark behind them.

  They reached the gate.

  Across the street, under the yellow glow of a bus stop, a figure watched them.

  A girl. Thirteen, maybe.

  Maya.

  Small. Still.

  School uniform immaculate despite the damp.

  Long braids. Sharp eyes.

  She wasn’t on her phone.

  She was watching them.

  Leo noticed first.

  “NPC at twelve o’clock.”

  Taylor glanced over. “Civilian. Ignore.”

  They walked past her. Kam kept his hood low.

  But Maya didn’t look away. Her eyes tracked him, unblinking.

  She reached into her blazer, pulled out a small notebook, clicked a pen, and wrote something down.

  Then she turned and walked into the fog, disappearing like a ghost in uniform.

  “Who was that?” Kam murmured.

  “Just a kid,” Taylor said.

  Leo looked back. “She had high?res textures. Didn’t look like a background character.”

  “Leo, shut up.”

  They turned the corner.

  The allotment disappeared behind them.

  The rain kept falling.