Taboo Online

Rhea’s hand rose toward the empty space where her panel would form.

"Wait," Red Hound said.

The black thread reached the outer ceramic sleeve around Luke’s forearm and spread over its surface in branching lines. His fingers twitched inside the sling.

The medic reached for the emergency cutoff. "His motor response changed."

"The old fragment still isn’t moving," Luke said. The cold had sharpened into pain, but it remained confined to his wrist, and no command traveled through his arm. "This is outside me."

Lauren kept Unveiled Weakness fixed on the physical receiver rather than turning it toward Luke. The fresh line tightened around a compact knot near the base of the decoy. Each attempt to reach the sleeve drew that knot smaller and sent a return pulse through the city.

"It isn’t waking the dead tether," she said. "The network is trying to fasten a new line to it."

"Can it cross the sleeve?" Red Hound asked.

"Not while the barriers hold."

The timer sounded.

Lauren closed the skill at once. Violet light faded beneath her blindfold, and she pressed two fingers lightly against one temple before describing the structure to the analysts.

"The probe knot tightens after the seventh relay answers. Then it sends a signal somewhere outside the seventeen-site loop."

The lead analyst replayed the last cycle. On the seventh response, a brief distortion appeared beneath the municipal map and vanished before the system could fix its location.

"I see the gap," she said. "I need one clean return pulse to lock the route."

The thread pressed harder against Luke’s sleeve. His right hand jerked once, pulling against the support straps.

The medic watched his readings. "The pain response is climbing. We can cut power now."

Luke looked toward the analyst. "How long is another cycle?"

"Eleven seconds."

Red Hound left the choice with him. "You heard the risk."

Luke turned to the medic. "Tell me exactly where you stop it."

"One more sharp spike, the foreign cold moving beyond your wrist, or any loss of sensation in your fingers. I end the test the moment one of those happens."

Luke flexed the smallest finger he could still move. "One cycle."

Lauren took his left hand. Their weakened resonance stirred beneath her touch, carrying enough of her worry that he did not need to guess at it.

"I’ll tell you the moment anything changes," he said.

"I know. I’m staying here anyway."

Red Hound signaled the analyst. "Run it."

The network pulsed again. Six relays answered in sequence before the seventh brightened.

The knot inside the decoy contracted.

Cold deepened inside Luke’s wrist without spreading into his forearm.

"Stronger," he reported. "Still confined to the wrist."

The hidden return line flashed.

This time, the analysts were ready. A trace followed the pulse beneath the municipal network, lost it for less than a second, then caught it again inside the old communications district near the city center.

"Central switching exchange," one analyst said. "Decommissioned twelve years ago."

The lead analyst fixed the route and pushed the coordinates to every field team. "Central node confirmed."

Red Hound lifted his radio. "All sites prepare to sever. Confirm your barriers."

The windows answered one after another.

"Transit One sealed."

"East utility sealed."

"Rooftop Four secure."

"Warehouse team ready."

The thread on Luke’s sleeve narrowed to a sharp point. The ceramic surface crackled faintly, although no fracture appeared.

Rhea moved between Luke and the containment column without summoning her panel. The emergency shutters had been built for this exact failure, and she would not spend the damaged shield while those defenses still held.

Red Hound waited until the seventeenth team confirmed.

"Cut on my mark. Three, two, one. Cut."

Seventeen ceramic blades closed at once.

Across the city, relay needles split inside their containment boxes. Severed threads snapped against ceramic walls and fell across sealed floors without reaching the teams behind them.

Every marked point on the map went dark.

The probe recoiled from Luke’s sleeve.

The decoy receiver convulsed inside the containment column and threw several black threads toward the observation barrier. Emergency shutters slammed down before the strands crossed half the chamber, trapping them between two ceramic walls.

The cold vanished from Luke’s wrist so quickly that his breath caught.

The medic checked his fingers, pulse, and neurological trace. "Any numbness?"

"No. The residue feels the same as it did before the test."

Lauren kept hold of his left hand until the monitor settled. "Nothing living answered from inside him."

A single line remained on the city map, leading straight to the abandoned central exchange.

The analyst enlarged the building plan. "There’s no rotating signal and no secondary route. Whatever is left is operating from that building alone."

Before the field teams left their relay sites, each one sealed both halves of its severed needle inside a transport container marked for North Basin. The surrounding thread fragments and contaminated material would travel with them rather than disappear into separate Bureau laboratories.

Thalen studied the new target on the wall display. Red Hound showed him the pictograms for the masked woman, capture, civilians, and alive. Thalen answered with one fist against his chest.

Rhea lowered her hand from the containment controls. "She can’t watch the whole city anymore."

"She also can’t trigger a trap from somewhere we aren’t looking," Red Hound said. "Whatever she does next, she has to do it from the exchange."

He sent the location and capture order to the liaison beside Aelira, then turned back to Luke and Lauren.

"Medical decides whether either of you joins the approach. Luke stays inside the protected route. Lauren gets one scan if Shaw clears it. Neither of you changes those terms halfway through the operation."

Luke glanced at the ceramic sleeve. "I won’t leave the route."

Red Hound studied him for a moment. "Good. I’m holding you to that."

Lauren’s mouth curved faintly, but the concern beneath it remained. "The masked woman will know the relays are gone."

"Yes. She may run, destroy the archive, or use everyone inside the building to buy herself time."

Red Hound brought up the thermal scan of the central exchange. Six human shapes occupied the basement level. Five remained close to the old switching frame, while one moved freely between them.

He sent the assault order.

"Outer teams seal the district. Roof entry goes first. We move before she decides which lives she can afford to spend."

With the relays dead, the warehouse fell quiet except for the cooling receiver and the steady pulse of Luke’s medical monitor. The dead tether residue remained trapped in his wrist, unchanged and lifeless.

Since escaping Lethariel, the masked woman had always kept another relay waiting. Now the central exchange was all she had left.