Shadows of the Amber Wing

The transit corridor narrows to a choke point of brushed alloy and dim strip-lighting. Ahead, a heavy maintenance drone sits squarely in the lane, its sensor cluster sweeping in slow, clinical arcs.

The Runner stays half-covered behind the drone’s bulk, eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. Lahani and Serafina tense beside Nahuli, gear still exposed to the corridor cameras.

A side hatch irises open with a hiss. A corridor janitor in gray utility mesh steps out, pushing a cart of filter canisters and pretending not to care about anyone at all.

The drone’s sensors pause on the group, then resume their sweep, waiting for someone to choose the next lie.

Nahuli taps the spoofed tag loose from the open port log and shunts its data into the station’s sweep loop. The false trail collapses into the maintenance channel, then disappears from the active watcher list.

The corridor monitor flickers once, then settles. One thin line of status text drops into a gray clearance band, and the drone’s sensor head turns away from the crew as if they were never tagged.

Serafina shifts her kit, and a little salvage emblem peeks out from under a cloth wrap, the kind used on unauthorized field jobs. The Runner’s eyes catch it, and their tired expression tightens into recognition.

The janitor’s cart rolls a half-step closer, but he does not intervene. The sweep light slides past the corridor mouth, now blind to the group, while the Runner waits for an answer they can sell to themselves.