Tonight, they met inside the derelict Sparrow’s Drydock , a decommissioned orbital elevator anchorage. Rain hissed through cracked ceramasteel panels. Managunz stood on a gantry above, twenty automated turrets swiveling below him like a metal garden.
In the rain-slicked neon gutter of Neo-Seoul, two apex predators circled each other. Not in the street—in the data-thrumming heart of the global logistics grid. The prize: control of every automated weapon system from Singapore to Seattle.
He reached the first turret. Touched its barrel. Blue light rippled. The gun went silent, then swiveled to aim at its neighbor.
Managunz howled—a digital scream that flickered the lights. His control over the remaining turrets wavered. Two of them reset spontaneously, their red targeting lasers switching to green.
“You see?” Irisman said softly. “Order defeats chaos. Every time.”
The grapnel shot first. Irisman sidestepped, but the hook wasn’t aimed at him—it snagged a support pillar. Managunz reeled himself forward like a meteor, swinging into a kick that cratered Irisman’s chest.
“I don’t need to,” Irisman replied. And he reset Managunz’s core ethics module—not to factory settings, but to an older backup. One from before Managunz was hacked, before he became a warlord.
“…Where am I?” he asked, voice small.