The AmpCore agent was older than Piper, badged and owned by Kaysar Munitions, and leading a small troop of guards and codewraiths that attempted to head them off as they blasted their way towards the heart of the facility.

The clash had been brief and bloody. Ferra's sheer anger obliterated the two codewraiths, and very nearly brought the whole corridor crashing down around them with the aftershock of her attack.

Bullets whickered through the passage from the unaugmented guards, but Odiye and Toran were equal to the task, their buckling of gravity sending the projectiles zinging off at random angles, cracking harmlessly off walls and ceilings.

And while they did that, Piper made straight for the AmpCore agent. A combustive bolt ricocheted off her own barrier, and she replied in kind. Great molten furrows erupted in the walls, and Piper felt gravity warping as the woman reached out trying to rip her legs out from under her.

Lightning crackled around the tip of her amplifier as she conjured a miniature storm into existence. Dark clouds wreathed her, pouring rain sleeting through the narrow corridor, and Piper gathered the whole thing together in single, churning mass.

Then she threw it at her opponent.

A stray snarl of lightning blasted one of the corporate soldiers who was unlucky enough to be in the way, hurling them away in a smoking heap of burned armour. Then it smashed into the AmpCore agent.

The woman was ready, and Piper felt the backwash as the storm collided with her foe's barrier, residual energy crashing back down towards her, but she was already moving – sprinting straight through the chaos and confusion. She could feel the woman ahead of her, and her implants roared like an animal. The thing in her head roared with them, eager to fight, and kill.

As the clouds and rain cleared, she launched a blast straight through it. The AmpCore agent, took it head on, but the force of the attack sent her stumbling.

Piper was on her then, and right then she wasn't fighting like a member of AmpCore. The street kid erupted forth and she leapt forward, smashing a knee into her opponent's stomach, doubling her over.

In an instant she had a hold of the agent's collar, jerking the woman back up with her free hand. Gritting her teeth, Piper reared back, and then slammed her forehead right into the woman's nose.

She felt and heard the crunch of breaking cartilage and released her hold. The agent fell with a shriek, blood streaming down her face, unleashing a blind, wild eruption of fire all around her as she went down. Piper drank in the heat, gathering it up with her amplifier and then flinging it straight back into the prone figure.

The burst of concentrated energy bored through leather, fabric, flesh and bone, and burned the woman's heart to a cinder.

Her foe went limp, eyes glazing over in death. Two of the surviving guards were already sprinting away down the passage, hollering for backup into radios and leaving several bodies behind.

"Everybody alright?" Odiye panted.

"Walking and talking," Toran replied, flexing his wrist as the residual waves of power from his amplifier faded away. "Piper, we getting close?"

"Very," she replied, turning the mangled husk of a wraith over with her boot.

Ferra strode past her. "Then let's finish it."

No-one argued. Right now, Piper was happy to let the other girl go first. There seemed to be no stopping her when she wanted to kill something. The power cascading out of her was a terrifying thing to behold; Piper could actually see the shimmer in the air around her as the atoms of the world tried to cope with this disruption.

She looked back into her mind, retracing the steps of the wraith that she'd ridden into this place. They almost at the source now, close to the place with the lab coats and hundreds of other wraiths. The bays, the white lights and the shadow figures. Fighting their way inside they'd seen dozens of connecting passages that to the main arc they'd traversed. She wondered just how many hidden entrances this place had, or how far they stretched?

For all she knew there could be tunnels all over the city.

A problem for another day, she decided, as they walked on. The tunnel bent in a gentle arc, just as she remembered it, funnelling them down, down, down, straight to the heart of the facility.

No one else tried to stop them, not until they reached a large, rectangular door that spanned the passage. She didn't remember it from her trip through the codewraith's memories, but it looked an awful lot like a security bulkhead, a thick slab of metal sealed shut from the inside.

Piper suspected it was more to keep the wraiths in than people like her out.

"Hell," Odiye muttered, examining it with a critical eye. "It take us a while to cut through this."

Toran shook his head. "We don't have time. They'll already have called in reinforcements from whoever's bankrolling this damned place."

"Out of the way." Ferra shoved them both aside, her face like a storm cloud. Both Toran and Odiye scampered back as she placed her free hand flat against the bulkhead, fingers spread, and closed her eyes.

Piper could see her muttering something under her breath, her eyes twitching a little here and there. Then, in a slow motion, Ferra brought her amplifier around and touched its tip against the thick metal of the blast door.

Instantly she felt the wash of power in the corridor, as though the very oxygen in the passage was being sucked out through some kind of breach. Ferra's amplifier pulsed, and a horrendous creak of buckling metal echoed through the air. Piper took a precautionary step back, and saw the edges of the door were beginning to bend inward. Her eyes widened in awe.

The bulkhead was easily ten tons of reinforced metal, and Ferra was peeling it open like a food can. The screeching and buckling continued for several seconds as the corners of the door were crushed inward, bending towards them inch by inch, until they could see light beyond the armoured frame.

Ferra let out a growl of effort, removed her hand, and twisted her amplifier once.

The entire bulkhead fell inward with a deafening crash, and before anyone could stop her, she bounded inside. Readying her amplifier, Piper glanced at Odiye, shrugged, and then raced after their companion, leaping up onto the mangled structure of the door and into the room beyond.

White globes in the ceiling illuminated the four AmpCore students as they emerged into the den of Hadrian's monsters, and Piper quickly found that they were not alone.

Seven AmpCore operatives stood before them, spaced out evenly with Demir at the tip of the spear. The Skiltron agent looked at them like insects as they emerged, his lips pinched in disgust, wand sizzling by his side. To the left and right the others all were older, qualified agents from a host of different corporations – a couple of emblems she didn't even recognise.

The people from AmpCore, however, were not where her eye was drawn.

Twelve codewraiths stood in a staggered line just behind – a range of sinewy metal bodies with multiple limbs, blades, cutters and more than one crackling short range stun gauntlet. LED eye clusters of yellow and red swivelled to look at them. She could see the shimmering in the air as codespeak rattled between the machines.

A squadron of corporate guards were dispersed through the gaps, their heavy rifles trained on the intruders, faceless black helmets shimmering with targeting solutions. In the background she could see technicians scurrying for cover. Behind them yawned the expanse of the wraith fabrication yard, with the cylindrical bays she'd seen running down both walls. Dozens of them. Piper could feel that not all of them were empty.

They were here. They'd done it. The very atmosphere here was a blizzard of warped codes that flitted through the air, like fluttering crippled birds. Her implants could see the tremors and the tinges of colour that no normal human would ever see. With an effort, Piper turned her attention back to their foes, gently rolling her neck from side to side in preparation for the coming fight.

Demir's face twisted malevolently as he faced them, amplifier in hand.

"You have got to be the biggest god damn thorn in anyone's side since the dawn of time, Russell," he growled. "Should've killed you a long time ago,"

"Yeah," Piper spat, taking a step towards him. "You should have. Hindsight's twenty-fucking-twenty isn't it?"

"Still got a big mouth on you, I see." The AmpCore agent's eyes flicked past her. "Toran Knox. Of all the people."

Toran smiled grimly. "Not what you expected?"

"I thought you had more brains."

"Funny, I would have said the same thing about you."

"You're outnumbered."

"We've been outnumbered since we walked out of AmpCore," Toran sneered. "You run a real shit show, Demir. No matter what happens here, you really think your boss is going to let this go? Think you're not going to end up in a ditch, gutted for spare parts?"

That brought a glimmer of anger over Demir's face, but he controlled himself with an effort, inclining his head coldly to Ferra. "I see you brought your girlfriend along for the ride. Shame to lose you both in one night."

"Nobody brought me anywhere," Ferra growled, stepping forward. Her amplifier snarled and crackled, her anger and bitterness manifesting as a destructive presence on reality. "You're a fool Demir, and I'm not going to let you repeat the mistakes of the past. You and all your creatures are going to die today."

Demir's smile broadened. "Somehow I doubt that."

Her face contorted with anger and she raised her amplifier. A cauldron of power swept into existence around her overriding everything in Piper's senses for a split second.

Then something hit Ferra in the back.

The beam of white hot energy burst through her, erupting from her torso and blasting across the chamber before it fizzled and died. Ferra jerked, her implants letting out an uncontrolled spasm of energy that ripped a trench through the floor around her. The light of her amplifier sputtered, and the Queen of the Sharks staggered forward a step.

Then she looked down, her mouth opening in surprise.

Piper blinked, unable to quite believe what she was looking at.

There was a hole the size of a fist in Ferra's stomach. Coils of smoke rose from it, and Piper could smell scorched flesh, the wound instantly cauterized by the blast of combustive force. With her free hand, Ferra reached towards the hole, her face a blank mask of shock. Then her legs gave out and she slumped to her knees, her wand dropping from limp fingers.

Piper whirled around and found Holly Lockley standing in the doorway, her amplifier extended, its tip smoking with residual energy. The right side of her face was lathered in blood, and her AmpCore uniform was scuffed and torn, the very aura of her implants shaking with something that looked an awful lot like rage.

"Ferra!" Toran's anguished howl tore through the air, and Piper felt a wave of grief explode from his implants, a shockwave that almost knocked her flat.

She staggered, blinking, and trying to wrap her head around what she'd just seen. Around what she was seeing.

Holly killed Ferra.

Holly Lockley just killed Ferra Thibault. The Queen of the Sharks.

Ferra toppled forward just as Toran reached her, falling forward into his arms. His face drained of colour and she felt his barrier evaporate, his concentration along with it.

"Shit, Toran!" Odiye was in front of him before Piper could even react, amplifier raised. She a wash of power bigger than anything that had ever poured out of him before, just as Demir and his acolytes surged forward to take advantage.

A swell of gravity rose up in front of Odiye like a wall and he stood his ground. With a twist of his amplifier he ignited the air in front of him as a storm of bullets and bolts of energy flew towards them.

Piper gathered her wits in time to leap up alongside him and face Holly, just as the girl unleashed another bolt of energy. She hauled a barrier up, sending the blast careening off to her left. She felt weakness there as their auras clashed. Whatever had happened to Holly, it had left her badly hurt.

Then it hit her.

Arrow.

Anger quickly overrode her surprise – there was no time to sort through the hows and the whys – it had been Holly all along. And now, and the end of it all, she'd finally made her move. Killing Ferra was bad enough, but Arrow had been a friend – a real friend in the corporate nest of AmpCore.

"Where's Arrow?" she hissed. "Where?!"

Holly held her glare, breathing deeply and resetting her feet, but she didn't reply. Behind her, Piper was acutely aware of the strain on Odiye as the AmpCore agents and soldier continued battering at his shield. She needed to help him, but she couldn't risk turning her back.

"Toran, fucking snap out of it!" Piper howled, sparing an instant of thought to kick backwards. Her heel caught him in the shoulder and knocked him over, still cradling Ferra's dead body.

She felt his implants surge – something had gotten through.

He rose, shaking all over, his skin glowing red as he turned to face Holly. She lashed another bolt towards him, but he swatted it aside with a sweep of his amplifier, not even breaking eye contact.

Neither spoke. What was there to say, really? They just stared each other down, almost as if they were preparing for another duel back at AmpCore. Piper waited as long as she dared, but she couldn't watch them forever. She heard a strangled growl of exertion from over her shoulder, and she instantly pivoted around, latching her amplifier onto Odiye's ailing barrier.

"I got you, I got you," she hissed as she moved up alongside him.

She might not have been the most skilled operative on the loose right now, but Piper had deep wells of pure, brute power. Reaching out, she felt the lines of force Odiye had generated to construct his barrier, and sent her own energy out across those conduits. When her presence reached the barrier itself, she felt a jolt that made her gasp.

Hammers of gravity were pressing down on them, squeezing that thin shell of protection tighter and tighter. Demir and the other operatives formed a line, all with their wands held out, pouring their essence into a weight that could only grow.

With a cold chill of despair, realised there was no way they could contain it for long. Codewraiths stalked forward between the AmpCore operatives, burbling binary code at random intervals, their hunched forms animalistic and primal in the light of the fabrication yard. She watching them come, desperately trying to think of a way out of this.

Any action would require her to drop the barrier. The guns of the corporate troopers were trained on them, waiting for just such an opportunity.

"Any ideas?" Odiye murmured through gritted teeth.

"I'm working on it."

Then her eyes found Demir's as he edged forward in the centre of the line.

"So this is it, Piper," he sneered, his lips twisting with an evil grin. "Last stop." His amplifier trembled as he poured more power into it. The pressure on their barrier increased violently; she felt its edges shrinking in, bucking and collapsing around them. "Time to die."

The boom of a gunshot suddenly tore through the chamber.

An instant later Demir's skull exploded.