Taboo Online

By the time the recovered device reached North Basin, the seventeen points on the city map had begun taking turns.

One signal faded as another brightened, followed by a third several miles away. The pulse traveled through transit tunnels, utility buildings, rooftops, and abandoned warehouses in a repeating sequence that took eleven seconds to circle the city.

Red Hound watched two full cycles before speaking.

"They’re passing control from one relay to the next. If we destroy one too early, the others will know which part of the network we found."

The branching device recovered from the glasshouse rested inside a sealed cylinder on a metal table beyond the Heartroot’s nearest root. Bureau analysts had attached passive readers to the outer case without opening it. Each time one of the seventeen relays answered, a black filament inside the device contracted.

Aelira remained on her medical cot with one hand against the silver bark. Lauren carried Red Hound’s explanation through the Heartroot, then waited while the Queen studied the moving pattern.

They built it to survive losing pieces, Aelira sent. A severed strand warns the hand before the next one is cut.

"That matches what we’re seeing," Red Hound said after Lauren translated. "We disable all seventeen together, or the masked woman gets time to erase whatever remains."

Thalen stood beside the Queen with half of his white-wood breastplate missing. A temporary ceramic guard had replaced the gauntlet ruined at Southbank. He touched the capture pictogram on his wrist display, then pointed toward the pale mask shown in the Bureau file.

Aelira’s fingers tightened against the Heartroot.

Alive if possible. Her needles, mask, and records return intact.

Red Hound nodded. "That’s the plan."

Luke sat several yards away in the reinforced field chair with his right arm supported in its sling. The cold around his wrist had eased again, but the dead residue remained trapped around his mana pathway, and no one had found a safe way to remove it.

Lauren sat beside him with padded wraps still covering her wrists. Shaw had cleared one brief use of Unveiled Weakness under direct monitoring, but Oracle’s Glimpse remained off-limits for the rest of the day.

Rhea stood behind them with a compression brace beneath her light armor. The scarred panel she had managed to summon again remained unmanifested.

Red Hound closed the city map and faced Luke.

"Your wrist reacted when active Ruinborn channels pulsed at the tunnel and pumping station. If the residue still shares their resonance pattern, the decoy may make the network acknowledge it."

Lauren’s hand settled over Luke’s left. "So he becomes the bait."

"He becomes a monitored point of contact, but only if he agrees." Red Hound glanced toward the medical team. "Shaw controls the cutoff. The moment Luke’s readings cross the limit, the test ends, even if we haven’t found the central node."

Luke studied the black device. "Could a new connection wake the old tether?"

"We have no evidence that it can," Lauren said. "The fragment has no rhythm, command, or living will. A fresh line would still be dangerous, but it would remain separate unless it reached your mana."

"That’s why two barriers will stand between the probe and your skin," Red Hound added. "You can refuse."

Luke looked over the warehouse plan, lingering on the emergency shutters and the medical station marked beside his position.

"What do we gain if it works?"

"The central node controlling the other seventeen. Once we have it, the masked woman loses the network she uses to watch us and trigger traps from across the city."

Luke let out a slow breath. "I’ll do it, but Shaw decides when I stop."

The nearest medic met his eyes. "Good. Then we understand each other."

Lauren squeezed his hand once before letting go.

The decoy receiver occupied the center of an abandoned Bureau test warehouse three miles from North Basin.

Ceramic partitions divided the building into sealed sections. At one end of the main chamber, the recovered branching device rested inside a transparent containment column connected to a stripped copy of the pumping-station receiver.

Luke sat behind a second barrier with his right forearm enclosed inside a clear ceramic sleeve. The sleeve did not touch his skin. Anything reaching for him would first have to cross the open chamber, spread over the outer shell, and pass two emergency shutters before it came near his wrist.

A medic checked the sensor beneath his shirt. "Report every change. Cold, pressure, numbness, movement in the fingers, or anything else that feels different."

"I will."

She watched him for another second. "You reported properly during Mason’s treatment. Keep doing that."

Luke nodded.

Lauren sat close enough to reach his left hand. Rhea waited near the containment controls, while Thalen stood beside Red Hound and followed the operation through pictograms on a wall display.

Seventeen smaller windows showed Bureau teams waiting around the city. Each team had enclosed its relay inside temporary ceramic barriers and positioned a cutter around the active needle. No blade had closed.

The lead analyst looked toward Red Hound. "All sites are ready."

Red Hound checked the medical station, then Luke and Lauren. "Start the handshake."

Power entered the decoy.

The recovered device contracted once inside its cylinder. A narrow black pulse passed through the copied receiver and vanished into the city network.

One relay answered, then a second and third. The sequence continued around the map exactly as before, although the pulses grew stronger with each cycle. Analysts marked the timing differences while the field teams remained motionless around their targets.

Luke felt nothing during the first circuit.

Halfway through the second, cold tightened inside his wrist.

"The residue reacted."

The medic’s hand moved toward the emergency cutoff. Red Hound raised one finger without looking away from Luke.

"Any pull or movement?"

"No. It’s cold, but the fragment hasn’t shifted."

Lauren turned her blindfolded face toward the physical receiver. "I’m opening Unveiled Weakness."

The medic started the timer. "Five seconds."

Violet light gathered beneath the black fabric.

The decoy changed beneath Lauren’s perception. Most of the visible filaments carried the rotating signal the analysts had already found. One line behaved differently. Instead of traveling outward toward another relay, it curved through the receiver, gathered behind a compact knot, and pointed across the chamber, directly at Luke.

"Something is reaching for him," Lauren said.

A soft click came from the containment column.

A hair-thin black thread emerged from the copied receiver and stretched into the open chamber. It moved without sagging, feeling its way forward until the tip turned toward Luke’s enclosed wrist.