Kirk didn't think he'd ever actually been this close to the centre of Hadrian. They weren't really that close in the grand scheme of things, but the light that normally seemed so distant and aloof was beating down on him like an extra sun.

The wraith didn't seem to care though. Its progress continued, inexorable as a guided missile. Still sticking to the shadows too, somehow; finding the cracks and crevices where the dark still held sway over Hadrian. They skulked along behind it, taking excruciating care not to draw its attention.

"This is so weird," Arden whispered as they slunk along in the looming shadow of one of Hadrian's sprawling scrapyards.

"You don't say," he murmured in reply.

She shot him a withering glance. "I mean more than the fact we're following a damned codewraith through the city. This thing seems to know exactly what it's doing. I didn't think wraiths could... well... think."

Kirk nodded grimly. "They shouldn't be able to. Not anymore."

"Do you know about what happened? You know, before the split?"

He considered that for a moment as they crept along. Did he know? He liked to think so, but history was such a corporate smokescreen it was hard to sift out the facts from the face-saving spin that Hadrian's overlords had stamped on everything. They were desperate to bodyswerve the fact that they'd almost destroyed everything in the pursuit of a god damned profit margin.

"I know some," he replied.

"C'mon, Piper says you're like a walking textbook."

"She does?" He looked at her aghast.

Arden cleared her throat, her cheeks reddening. "I mean, in a good way though."

"Oh, well that's alright then." He looked ahead again, watching the wraith slice a neat hole in the chain fence that ringed the scrapyard. "Well, yeah I mean I read up on everything – everything I could find that didn't come from an academy-approved list."

"And what did you find?"

"Well, official story is that the AIs developed a malware problem and went insane. Corps had to shut off their central processing mainframe to stop them overrunning all of Hadrian."

"Ah, the corporate saviours," Arden sneered. "What about the unofficial story?"

"Well, you know, a lot of people say that the AIs just got a bit too smart." He shrugged. "And the corps didn't want to share anymore so they just pulled the plug."

"Sounds a lot more like the corps I know."

"Yeah." Kirk poked his head through the hole in the fence, glancing left and right before stepping over. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" her voice was incredulous as she stepped through after him.

"I don't know, Just seems a little too simple. Corps would have wanted to just shut it down and keep all of Hadrian in one piece don't you think? Instead we've got a bloody wasteland across the water."

"Maybe they just totally fucking miscalculated?"

"Well, I suppose there's that." He smirked. "But whatever the true story is, you're right, wraiths don't think. At least that's what everybody says, corporate spin or not."

Arden's face crumpled with unease. "So what's gotten into this one?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure I want to know."

They sank into silence then, following the wraith as it skirted the perimeter of the scrapyard and sliced another hole in the fence on the far side, coiling itself out onto a quiet back street. Glittering corporate apartment blocks rose up before them, and Kirk could hear the pulse of music from the streets beyond. Life was creeping closer to them.

It was impossible for it to have gone totally unnoticed – he should have known it would only be a matter of time. This close to Hadrian's corporate heart there were sensor strips, camera drones, cameras, motion detectors and god-only-knew what else keeping tabs on the population. Eventually, as they drew closer and closer to the pulsing light, they started to encounter other people.

Men and women gasped and scurried back the way they'd come, sprinting for the safety of the light. Each time, the wraith altered its course, as if recalculating the best trajectory to avoid human contact. He saw more than one automated security cam-drone go fizzing overhead.

But in the end it wasn't the cameras or the drones that brought death to Hadrian's night. It was just a group of corp-suits out on the town, who took a fateful wrong turn.

The codewraith sent its sinuous, sparking frame around a bend and into a narrow back street, where it came face to face with five of them.

Three men and two women, sleekly attired in their dark suits, gleaming corporate visors, long skirts and sweeping, plush jackets. For an instant everyone froze – even the wraith, its head section cocking quizzically to one side, as though deciding how to deal with this obstruction. One of the women yelped in surprise; a man shuffled defensively forward.

Kirk could see it all before it happened, his eyes widening.

"No!" he yelled suddenly, his voice unbearably loud in his own ears after so long spend sneaking around. "Get out of the way!"

That only seemed to confuse the group further. The other woman pulled a sleek black pistol from her jacket pocket and levelled it; the man on the right of the group followed suite.

"No-!"

The crackle of gunfire cut him off.

Arden squealed and tackled him to the ground as bullets started flying, pinging off concrete, windows and parked cars.

Kirk looked up just in time to see the wraith slice the first man in half. It was effortless; he just came apart in a spray of gore that sent his companions screaming for cover.

It was too late. The codewraith's demented brain had decided they were a threat, and it acted accordingly. Its arms whipped and slashed, its body twisting in a grizzly carousel. A blade slammed through one woman's torso; a man was stamped into the concrete as he tried to flee. The woman with the gun blazed away until her magazine was empty, eyes wide with horror.

She was still pulling the trigger when the codewraith cut her to pieces.

It took seconds, and Kirk could only stare in horror at the massacre. Blood and body parts littered the street, and he watched the wraith turn from its grisly work.

It turned, and looked right at him.

"Oh, shit!" Arden scrambled to her feet, whipping out her revolver – not that it would do any good. Kirk only had his flick blade, and if the thing got close enough for that, he was already dead.

He took it out anyway, instinct not allowing him to do anything else as the wraith came at them, blood-soaked blades glinting in the dark. He snapped the knife open; prepared to spring in front of Arden.

She started shooting. Two shots went wide; another four sparked and crashed off the writhing mass of the codewraith before it launched itself at them.

Kirk lunged to his right, shouldering Arden aside and lashing out with his blade at the creature. He felt one of its blades strike his shoulder, but by some miracle it only grazed him, slicing open his jacket but missing the socket beneath as he fell to the ground.

He felt Arden's arms around him, pulling. He squirmed wildly, pushing himself into a sitting position, only to find the wraith rising up over them, its body arched like a snake ready to strike. A numbness swept through Kirk's body. Everything was about to end, right here and right now.

With the instant he had left, he grabbed Arden and tried to shield her with his body as the blades began to fall.

But they never landed.

A deafening BOOM thundered through the street and something slammed into the wraith with the force of a battering ram. A codescream stung Kirk's ears as its coiling body went spinning into a nearby parked car, its thrashing limbs ripping the vehicle open.

It screwed itself upright, only for another blast to hammer it back into the wreckage. Kirk looked to his left in the direction of the noise, and to his shock he saw Detective Delgado, marching across the street, wrath in her eyes and a double-barrelled shotgun cradled in her hands.

With the flick of a wrist, she snapped the barrels open, slammed two fresh shells into place, and closed them again, taking aim. Her eyes were wide, her face set in an expression of barely contained disbelief, but that didn't seem to harm her aim.

The wraith screamed, thrashing to its feet, shedding broken metal and coils of sparking wire. Delgado planted her feet and took aim as it launched itself at her.

Her first shell blew the codewraiths head-section to smithereens. Her second punched a football-sized hole in its torso. The machine crashed to the ground, close enough to make her leap back, but the damage was done. Twitching and gurgling in broken binary, the codewraith squirmed on the ground for a few more seconds before going limp. The scent of burnt metal and gunsmoke swirled into Kirk's nostrils.

Delgado reloaded again, levelling the shotgun at the dead machine. She stood there for about five seconds, watching; waiting.

When it didn't move her shoulders sagged and she exhaled a huge breath of relief. She took another step back, lowering her gun. For a moment he was confused by how shell-shocked she looked – the hard-nosed detective he'd met a few days ago didn't look like she could have been rattled by anything in the world.

Then he remembered that codewraiths shouldn't be here. For decades they hadn't been here. Hadrian's street cops weren't trained to deal with something like this.

Still clinging to each other, Kirk and Arden slowly rose to their feet. He traded an uneasy glance with her as the detective finally seemed to notice them. Delgado spared the wraith another glance, physically shuddered, and then her eyes found the carnage it had wrought further down the alley.

"Fucking hell," he heard her gasp. She glanced from them, to the bodies then back again, and managed to make a decision, striding swiftly over to them. Smoke swirled around the barrels of her shotgun. At first her face was a mask of concern, but when she recognised Kirk her eyes went wide with outrage.

"You've got to be kidding me!" she exclaimed, her voice shrill. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I... we were..." The words didn't want to coalesce.

"You know her?" Arden asked, speaking in a small voice.

"She's looking into the wraith, the one that went after Piper."

"My name is Detective Delgado," she snapped, eyes flashing angrily to Arden. "And you didn't answer my question."

Arden pointed shakily at the wraith. "We were following it."

"You were what?!"

"It came back to Piper's house," Kirk explained. "We think it's looking for her so we followed it."

"That is amazingly stupid."

He let go of Arden abruptly, taking a step towards Delgado. "You didn't exactly leave me with a lot of fucking choices, detective."

She looked like she wanted to arrest him right there, but managed to reign in her anger. Instead she took a deep, steadying breath and slung the shotgun across her back by its strap.

"Are you two okay?" Delgado asked.

"Yeah, we're okay," Arden answered, taking a gentle grip of Kirk's arm and tugging him back.

"Alright, then. You both need to-" Delgado stopped suddenly, brow furrowing as she looked at Arden. "Hold on a second." The detective tapped the side of her visor with one finger and it sprang into life. Kirk couldn't follow the images that blitzed across the holographic arc, but when they stopped moving he could see a small portrait on one side; a clump of text on the other.

The visor view disappeared before he could look any closer, revealing the detective's enraged expression.

"Arden Russell," she blurted. "You are Arden Russell?"

"Err..." Arden hesitated. "What if I am?"

"Half my god-damn precinct is looking for you, that's what!"

"Oh."

"Oh?!" Delgado shook her head in disbelief. She closed her eyes for a moment, rubbing her temples with both hands. "Kid, you are hot topic number one around here. Jesus, my captain is going to be so damn happy you're alive."

"Wait, no!" Arden's voice leapt shrilly in volume. "You can't!"

"What?"

"You can't tell anyone you found me!"

Somehow Delgado looked even more furious. Her jaw clenched tight as she stared at them, and after a few seconds she eventually spat out the words, "why not?"

"The corps, they're looking for me," Arden babbled, the words spilling out like a waterfall. "After that thing tore up my house, they snatched us – me and my mum. They got Piper too but I don't know where she is. We were following the wraith to try and..." She shook her head, taking an unsteady step away from the detective. "You can't tell anyone about me. You can't. If they find me they'll take me back."

"Back where?" Delgado asked, her tone softening but bafflement still etched on every line of her face. "What is going on here? Where did they take you?"

"Arden, it's okay," Kirk said quickly, moving up and placing a reassuring arm around her shoulders. "Just slow down – tell her what you told me."

Arden tensed, her head snapping to look at him. For a few seconds she held his stare, then looked back to Delgado. The detective waited, though her impatience itched through every piece of her body language; foot tapping, fingers fidgeting, jaw clamped shut to keep her words in check.

Then Arden started talking. The words tumbled out like a rockslide, chaotic and uncontrolled, but Delgado just listened. Listened to the story about the wraith, about the corps shunting her and her mother off to some safehouse in the back of beyond; about the person she'd seen kill one of the wraiths.

When she was finished Arden seemed to deflate, and without his arm around her she might have crumpled to the ground then and there. He kept a hold of her and she leaned against him, letting out a shudder and clasping both hands over her face. Unsure of what else to do, he clung on to her, and looked beseechingly at the detective.

You see what they've done?

In the yawning gulf of silence that followed, a cam-drone buzzed overhead. Kirk looked up sharply, seeing the twinkle of its camera lens and his heart juddered. Arden flinched and sprang out of his arms, her face twisting with hate as she stared at that little symbol of corporate authority.

Delgado saw it too, and he saw her hand flash to her holster.

But she didn't shoot the drone down. It carried on, passing them and casting its gaze over the bloody aftermath. She closed her eyes for what felt like an age and her mouth parted just a little; just enough to let a sigh seep between clenched teeth.

"We'd better get out of sight," Delgado muttered at last, looking at them. "Come with me. I know a place the corps won't go looking for you."

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