The lights were dead again. Not a flicker, not a hum. Just the thick, oppressive dark of yet another systems crash echoing through the concrete bones of Enclave Twelve.
"The junction relay's toast," Micah said, elbow-deep in the exposed conduit. His voice was measured, almost bored. "It probably fused when the surge hit last cycle. Maybe that or the capacitor grid failed. Or -"
"Or maybe the universe is allergic to us having nice things," Layla snapped from the catwalk above. "Remind me again why I'm sweating through two layers of synthweave while you get to play with sparky wires?"
"Because I have small, steady hands and you refuse to follow voltage safety protocols?"
"I have dignity, Micah! I don't crawl into holes unless something's on fire or bleeding. You see anything on fire?"
"Not yet."
She sighed - long and theatrical. "Comforting."
The enclave was silent otherwise. No humming filtration units, no drone chirps, not even ambient system noise. Just the twins: one arguing with a relay box, the other watching through a cracked AR visor that had defaulted to grayscale and kept projecting her brother's name as UNKNOWN CONTACT.
Micah's fingers flicked through the last of the old relay's interface ports, pulling data via a makeshift wristband and blinking slowly at the response. "Huh."
"'Huh' as in you fixed it?"
"'Huh' as in the error cleared itself."
Layla leaned over the railing, sweat glinting against her collarbone, her limp clamped leg brace catching the low light. "You mean I stood here for thirty minutes giving motivational speeches to dead hardware and it just... decided to live?"
Micah didn't answer immediately. He ran a checksum. Then a double verify.
All green.
The grid wasn't just back, it was clean. Too clean. Every routing path optimized, every error scrubbed. No packet drift. No phantom lag.
Layla was watching him now. "Micah?"
He looked up. "We didn't fix it."
She blinked. "Okay. Do we panic, or pretend we did?"
"Neither," he said. "We should observe, and quietly. Someone upstream flushed the whole node. It's not us, and it's not Dr. Voss's tech either. It's way too smooth. Too... elegant."
Layla whistled low. "Elegant's not our brand. We're more sandpaper-and-spite."
Something in the far wall clicked - a soft, asynchronous pulse that echoed just slightly off. Not power or code but rather something... evaporating. A phantom routine unwinding its last thread.
Micah stood slowly. "Did you feel that?"
Layla nodded, then lied: "Nope."
The lights flared immediately. Not harsh, but gentle, as though they were rebooting. The enclave came alive with quiet dignity: coolant systems restarted with a polite hiss, info panels flickered back to green, and security turrets resumed idle tracking rotations like nothing had happened.
"Whatever it was," Micah muttered, "it's gone now."
"Mmm or, it's not gone," Layla said, eyes narrowing. "It's just done with us."
The lights had barely finished their full reboot cycle when the enclave's central console emitted a sharp, three-tone chime - high, descending, final. Both twins froze.
A pale holo-field unfurled from the atrium pillar like smoke catching sunlight, forming the sharp figure of Dr. Helena Voss. No title or banner, no welcome packet. Just her. She stood with hands held at her sides in her traditional almost-layman's pose, flanked by flickering schematics no one could access. Her coat unzipped at the collar, her eyes dark with calculation, her posture immaculate. She wasn't looking at anyone in particular, yet no one in the room dared move.
"This is Dr. Voss. Enclave Twelve, your signal is confirmed restored."
Her voice, as ever, was precise and measured, like she had carved each syllable from stone. "There has been a synthetic incursion in Praxelia. Details are limited to Command Tier operatives."
Micah's jaw tensed. Layla leaned against the railing again, her expression unreadable.
"All personnel at clearance Level Three and above," Voss continued, "are to report to their mission handlers for briefing within the next hour. You will receive dossiers on encrypted ports only. All outbound comms are temporarily suspended."
Micah exhaled slowly through his nose in response.
"Personnel Level Two and below will maintain system operations. Conduct full diagnostics on all uplink nodes, conduit relays, and internal logs. Any system that deviates even one iota from baseline parameters is to be marked irregular and reported via physical courier to my office. No proxies. No uplink transfers."
Layla muttered under her breath, "So we're doing this old-school again."
Voss's eyes didn't waver. "Any deviations flagged without appropriate follow-up will result in protocol escalation."
There was no threat in her tone. Just inevitability.
"Debriefing will occur in eight hours, Sovereign City standard. Maintain radio silence - we are not at war, just in motion. That is all."
The holo collapsed in on itself without fanfare. Silence returned. Micah stood frozen for a beat longer than his sister. "She's locking down the information flow."
Layla folded her arms. "And telling us exactly how important this not-war is."
Micah moved toward the central console, already pulling up diagnostic overlays, but Layla didn't follow. Instead she watched the empty space where Dr. Voss's image had stood, then finally said, "You know she's hiding something."
He glanced over. "She's always hiding something."
"Yeah," Layla said, softer now. "But this time I think she's scared."
The console's glow had faded from hard blue to a gentler amber, an idle loop. The hum of stabilized power crawled up the walls like breath returning to the lungs. In the silence, the enclave began to feel real again and less like a tomb.
Micah crouched beside the main system relay, fingers dancing over the old interface like it was a living thing he half-respected. His sleeves were rolled precisely to the elbow. No oil marks on his collar. No sweat. Just that restless focus that meant his brain was still ten steps ahead of the system, waiting for it to catch up.
Layla dropped into the seat opposite him with a grunt and a puff of displaced dust, her shoulder armor clanking faintly against the frame. Her face was streaked with soot and machine grease, like warpaint forgotten after the war ended. She didn't seem to notice, or care. She wore her dirt like a uniform, earned, not endured.
"You ever think maybe the enclave likes breaking just to make us talk to each other?" she asked.
Micah didn't look up. "No."
She snorted. "You're no fun."
He paused only briefly, glancing toward her. "I'm diagnostic support. 'Fun' isn't part of the loadout."
Layla leaned back, propping one boot on the edge of the console desk, her leg brace creaked softly under the weight. It wasn't flashy. Just patched leather and metal, tightened with frayed fabric bands that once belonged to something else. She adjusted it absentmindedly, like someone scratching at an old scar.
"Think Dr. Voss actually cares if we flag a bad port?" she said, voice lower now. "Feels like she's just looking for an excuse to isolate the duds."
"She gave a direct order," Micah said.
Layla watched him - watched the way his blonde curls had started to fall across his eyes again, how he hadn't noticed. Or maybe he had. Maybe he just didn't care. He always looked like he'd just woken up from some dream about numbers he hadn't finished solving.
"We're no military. But you'll follow it," she said softly.
"Yes."
Even now, even after the system corrected itself without them, Micah was combing through subroutines like he could catch something the surge had missed. His hand moved like he was still trying to apologize to the machine. Layla hated that about him. That need to fix what he didn't break.
She reached over and flicked his temple with a gloved finger.
"Hey."
Micah blinked, annoyed. "What?"
"You didn't do this," she said. "Whatever cleaned the system, wasn't us. So stop acting like it's your fault."
He stared at her for a moment, then turned back to the console. "I'm not. I'm just making sure whatever did do it didn't leave a backdoor."
Layla leaned her head back against the cold steel wall. The ceiling fan above them spun lazily, like it was waiting for an excuse to fail again. She closed her eyes.
"Don't you ever just... let it be okay for five minutes?" she murmured.
Micah didn't answer at first.
"Alright," Micah said finally, powering down the interface with a soft keystroke. "Five minutes."
Layla cracked one eye open. "Five minutes of what?"
"A break."
Her brow rose. "Did... did Micah Dorne just volunteer leisure!?"
He stood, dusting off his hands. "I want to show you something."
Layla pulled herself up with a low groan and followed him through the auxiliary hatch, past the storage corridors and into the sub-level access tunnels - still half-lit, still thick with old coolant stink. Micah didn't talk as they moved. He was already ahead, boots echoing softly, head down.
They moved in perfect rhythm. Same stride. Same center of gravity. It was always uncanny when they weren't paying attention - how their steps aligned, their gestures mirrored. Same height. Same build. Both carried the Dorne genetics like a blueprint had been folded twice and colored differently. Blonde, sure, but Layla's hair was tangled and tied back in a war-knot of necessity, while Micah's curled in soft defiance of his own attempts at order.
Fraternal. Technically.
But close enough that people still did double-takes when they stood side by side. Close enough that Layla could tell when Micah was anxious by the shape of his silence.
The sub-hangar door hissed open at his wristband ping. Inside, it was quiet, sealed and insulated. A single overhead light bathed the chamber in white. At its center stood the thing. Layla stopped walking.
The mech was dormant, but unmistakable - six meters tall, plated in matte hunter green, every joint socketed and armored. The cockpit sat nestled beneath twin missile pods and railguns like a shielded throne, its frame reinforced with hydraulic response bracing and manual override rotors.
Layla stared for a full ten seconds before speaking.
Then she lit up.
"Holy hell!"
Her boots clanged loudly against the deck as she half-sprinted toward the mech, arms swinging wide like she was about to hug it. She circled the chassis with open awe, her hands flying across its surface, slapping the armor plating, tracing the missile pod contours, practically bouncing on her heels.
"You absolute beautiful monster," she whispered, eyes wide and glittering. "Look at the thrust vectoring! Are those dual feeds? You stacked twin rails over a recoil brace? Oh my god, Micah - she's gorgeous."
Micah blinked. "That's the first time I've ever seen you happy to see a machine."
"She's not a machine," Layla grinned, craning her head up to admire the canopy, "she's a full-scale reckoning!"
Micah crossed his arms, watching her bounce around like a kid in a sugar shop. "Glad you approve."
Layla turned, wide-eyed and breathless. "Approve? This thing's beautiful. She's a death sermon wrapped in bulletproof plating. You built this?"
"I Started last year. Some recycled Sovereign tech, stripped down and reprogrammed from the ground up. Manual override. Analog redundancies. No neural dependencies. It runs on skill, not implants."
The mech stood on broad, reinforced actuator legs, each foot plated with segmented armor and magnetic grip claws designed for stability on uneven terrain. Pneumatic piston rods braced its joints like muscle analogs, giving the whole frame a posture that suggested momentum even at rest.
Mounted along the left shoulder was a rotating missile rack - several dozen micro warheads locked in place behind a vented shielding grid. The right carried a high-pressure autocannon with triple barrels, chain-fed through a dense, armored spine.
Beneath the cockpit, two parallel-linked rotary cannons jutted forward, compact but high-caliber, each fitted with directional recoil dampeners. A long-barreled kinetic lance extended over the top, reinforced with impact sheathing and calibrated for armor-piercing strikes at range.
The torso itself was squat and angular, built to absorb damage rather than deflect it, like it expected to walk through artillery, not around it.
Layla looked back at the warframe, hands on her hips. "This... this changes everything. You get one of these patrolling the border of a Purist safezone, and no Ascendent freak's going to roll in and start flinging bodies."
Micah let the moment hang before he spoke again, voice steady.
"Get familiar with it," he said. "because I'm presenting it to Dr. Voss with both of our names on the design."
Layla blinked. "Wait, what!?"
"You heard me."
"You're telling me," she said slowly, turning to face him, "that I'm co-inventor of the most badass piece of anti-aug hardware in Sovereign City?"
"Technically, you're the co-developer. You improved the dampening systems without realizing it two months ago when you fixed the regulator on the lower fusion pump. I just didn't tell you it was part of the prototype."
Layla laughed - a bright, almost startled sound. "You manipulative bastard."
Micah shrugged. "I prefer 'strategically motivated.'"
She pointed at him. "If this gets us bumped to Level Three, you owe me more than a naming credit."
"You already named it 'Apology Accepted.'"
"Okay but now I'm serious."
Micah finally smiled - small, but real.
The frame of the mech gave off a cold, metallic scent, the kind that suggested potential violence more than recent use. She didn't wait for a nod. She grabbed the support rung and pulled herself up the side ladder like she'd been waiting her whole life to climb something this serious. Her boots hit the treads hard, confidently. She moved like someone who trusted her own balance more than the structure beneath her.
Halfway up, her right shoulder twitched, a sudden, sharp tremor that jolted through her frame.
She froze, hand pressed firm against the hull. One second passed, then two, before she moved again, same pace, same rhythm. If it hurt, she didn't show it. If it had happened before, she wasn't acknowledging it.
The shake hit mid-climb. Micah flinched, internally - just for a second. But when she didn't mention it, neither did he. That was the rule. Instead, he just adjusted his stance slightly and folded his arms, tracking her ascent like an engineer double-checking tension in a support beam.
Layla reached the cockpit, popped the manual seal, and swung herself in with the casual finesse of someone sliding into a favorite chair. Inside, the console was still in standby mode, but her hands were already sweeping across the layout like she was assembling it from memory. She toggled a few subsystems, running diagnostics not by label, but by intuition - like she could hear what the machine wanted and was offering it options.
"The recoil calibration's analog," she said. "Nice. No servo latency."
Micah raised an eyebrow. "You're not even on the primary readout."
"I don't need it," she said, flipping a switch overhead with a flick of her gloved thumb. "Whoever mapped this interface did it in combat logic. Muscle memory forward, threat analysis left-hand load. You build this for single pilot or co-op?"
"Whoever!? It was me, you silly goose. And yes, its built for a single."
She nodded approvingly, not looking down. "Good. Two-person cockpits are for nobles and cowards."
Micah smirked faintly. "You're forgetting civilian escort units."
"Exactly."
Her fingers paused briefly over the manual throttle. "This thing's built for escalation, it doesn't just hold a line - it pushes. You gave us the ability to really move here, Micah."
He took a few steps closer to the chassis, resting one hand on a hydraulic brace. "Purism doesn't mean standing still, you know. It means standing whole. The moment we stop moving, they get to define the field."
Layla leaned back in the seat, boots braced against the front plate like it was a throne. "Funny. You sound like you've finally figured out how to sound like me."
"I sound like someone tired of watching us get cornered and calling it survival."
Layla looked down at him now, her grin half-cocked. "There he is. The radical. I knew you were in there somewhere."
"I'm not a radical," Micah replied evenly. "I'm just an analyst with a good memory."
"Same thing!" she said, flipping a switch. The console blinked once - clean, precise green.
They sat in that brief silence, the kind that only siblings could occupy without urgency. She in the cockpit, high and relaxed, surrounded by the tools of a war she had always wanted to fight. He, on the floor, eyes on the quiet flex of muscle beneath armor, watching someone who never asked for protection but always deserved it.
"You ever think," Layla said suddenly, "that we might actually win?"
Micah tilted his head. "You mean politically? Tactically? Ideologically?"
She rolled her eyes. "I mean all of it."
He hesitated. "Sometimes."
"Only sometimes?"
"Hope clouds judgment."
Layla reached up and tapped the inside of the canopy with one knuckle. "Yeah, well. So does grief. And we've got more than enough of that."
Micah didn't answer, not out loud. But in the quiet between them, the mech hummed its readiness. And neither of them said what they were both thinking:
If war was coming again, at least this time, they'd be ready to meet it on equal ground.