Neon glyphs bled across Cybria Terminal's carbon-fiber vaults, painting Vivian Vaughn's exhaustion in ultraviolet. She cracked the crystalline violet pop between her teeth - a synaptic burst of bergamot and regret. Beside her, Felix Li's avatar pulsed with iridescent taunts:
Discipula: (Flashing in Vivian's VR visor) Race me, slowpoke!
"Terminate that noise," Vivian groaned, jackknifing into Seraphina's holographic console.
Felix: (Removing haptic gloves) "C'mon Sapphire! I'll downgrade to Mk.I grav-scooters!"
Vivian: (Flicking holographic shards at him) "Upgrade to silence, Circuit-breaker."
Seraphina: (Blocking collision) "Children! Some seek enlightenment here." (Gesturing at Byron's quantum-chess match)
Byron: (Without looking) "Enlightenment's overrated. Watch this—" (Slamming bishop) "Quantum fork. Your king's entangled with existential dread."
Byron's smirk illuminated the terminal's gloom as Quincy Xu monitored their biofeeds. Rory Chase leaned over his neuro-sync chair, her whisper cutting through bass-heavy synth-beats:
"Shaw orbits Vaughn like a derelict satellite. Are they..."
Quincy's ocular implant flickered crimson. "Affection distorts gravitational constants." His tone could frost solar flares.
Vivian's avatar careened through Neo-Tokyo's holographic rain. Byron Shaw piloted parallel, his grav-rafter executing impossible drifts that nudged her back onto the circuit. She crossed the finish line 0.07 seconds ahead - a margin requiring femtosecond precision.
Vivian: (Ripping off visor) "You rigged the chrono-drive!"
Byron: (Tossing quantum keys) "Merely calibrated your mediocrity." (To Quincy) "Her cortisol levels normalized yet?"
Quincy: "Elevated. Suggest dopamine infusion via sugar."
Rory: (Pointing) "Who's the tech-priest by the bar?"
Carbon-steel doors dilated. Pax Sterling materialized in ozone and arrogance, his leather greatcoat lined with circuit-board patterns. He snapped fingers toward the servo-droid bartender:
"Sol's gone dark. Where's the ghost in this machine?"
A shock of neon-yellow hair emerged from under a console. "Sterling! Thought you'd ghosted us after the Tesla heist."
Pax ignited a magnetic-flux vaporizer. "Heists require finesse, Sol. Not your signature brute-force coding." He exhaled pearlescent mist that coiled around Vivian's booth.
Sol: (Scrambling up) "My Rembrandt slice-job netted 8 tera-credits!"
Pax: "And attracted Interpol's quantum-trackers. Move." (Tossing cred-chip) "Liquidate your position."
Vivian: (Waving vapor away) "Must you pollute every oxygen stream?"
Pax: (Ignoring her) "Sol! Now!"
Vivian's protest died as Seraphina froze - her vintage lace glove hovering near a broken holopop. Pax Sterling's vapor dissipated, revealing razor-sharp cheekbones that triggered Seraphina's mnemonic implants.
St. Ignatius Academy courtyard. Bloodied knuckles on her silk ribbon. A boy vanishing into judicial transport.
"Pax?" The name escaped like a prison-break.
Sterling's flux-vaporizer clattered against carbonite flooring. Six years dissolved in the static between them.
Crew Member: (From doorway) "Yo Pax! You recruiting or romancing?"
Another: "Newmark's waiting at the Shard, you tech-witch!"
Pax: (Not turning) "Drown in the Thames."
Cybria's entrance vortex birthed four augmented silhouettes. Sol vaulted the bar, cred-chip gleaming. Pax's crew dragged him into London's acid-rain embrace.
"Seraphina Beauchamp." Pax reclaimed his vaporizer, thumb tracing biometric triggers. "Still collecting wounded strays?"
Seraphina's glove closed over the shattered hologram. "You traded barrister tracksuits for... vapor-trails?"
"Tracksuits chafe." His smile carved shadows across terminal walls. Beyond the glass, Thames fog swallowed his crew's neon-jacketed silhouettes.
Seraphina: "The St. Ignatius faculty believed you'd take silk by twenty-five."
Pax: (Activating door vortex) "They underestimated my allergy to hypocrisy."
Seraphina: "And overestimated your moral compass."
The vortex hummed with contained storm. Pax's gaze swept her posture - the Beauchamp heiress replaced by this encrypted sphinx.
"Cybria's AI logs your heartbeat." He nodded at her glove. "You'll find me at node 7xGh-09."
A neural-comm address shimmered in her corneal display. Before Seraphina could decrypt it, Pax stepped into the maelstrom.
Byron: (Materializing beside her) "Sterling? The Sterling?"
Vivian: "Who vaporizes in bespoke greatcoats?"
Seraphina: (Crushing holopop fragments) "Someone who thinks ethics are malware."
Pax: (From vortex threshold) "Scan the Thames fog later, Beauchamp?"
Seraphina: (Glove tightening) "Only if you disable your trackers."
Pax's laughter dissolved into quantum static. Seraphina's ocular implant replayed the micro-expression preceding it: Sixteen-year-old Pax Sterling pressing a smuggled violet pop into her palm after the disciplinary hearing.
"Eat this. Sugar's better than tears."
Now violet shards cut her glove. Byron watched Seraphina's pulse spike on Quincy's biofeed display - a seismic event in a girl who weaponized composure.
Quincy: (To Vivian) "Sterling's Interpol file exceeds the Iliad."
Vivian: "But Seraphina's smile just rebooted."