Targeting Pack -

The Sundered Quarter was a graveyard. Peaseblossom slipped through a shattered window frame, its quad-rotors silent on magneto-hydrodynamic drives. The air inside was thick with rust spores and the cold, chemical smell of old battery acid. Kael saw through its camera: a long corridor, desks overturned, terminals with their screens spiderwebbed by kinetic rounds. A child’s shoe, bleached white, lay in a pool of dried slime. He forced himself not to see it. He was the targeting pack. He had no room for grief.

Silence. Then, a crackle of static. “Nest to Wasp. Authorization denied. Repeat, denied.” targeting pack

But as the pack’s remote feeds went dark, Kael replayed the moment: the old man’s eyes, wide with terror behind the respirator mask, the way his hand had clawed for the gun. He hadn’t been a monster. He had been a tired, frightened archivist. The Sundered Quarter was a graveyard

The hexapod lunged, its armored carapace scraping sparks from the floor. A manipulator arm closed around the case. The Archivist, dazed, scrabbled for a pistol in his coat. He was fast for an old man. Kael saw through its camera: a long corridor,

“Scarab. Suppression. Non-lethal area.” Scarab-2’s 20mm cannon didn’t fire a shell. It fired a sonic projectile—a focused, concussive blast of air designed to incapacitate. The round hit the floor two meters from the Archivist. The shockwave lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the far wall. He slid down, unconscious but breathing.