Chapter 15 SAWYER'S SISTER
ZARA POV
Draft Level 5 came from a mission I nearly didn't survive.
Not because of the Breach threats — those I navigated. Because of the Stitch that compromised the floor during the extraction window and the drop that opened below me and the three seconds of free fall before the Protocol's ejection mechanic triggered and deposited me on the pavement outside the Breach entrance with a functioning body and a verdict score that had absorbed the maximum penalty for near-void conditions.
My hands were shaking when I stood up.
ECHO SYNTHESIS unlocked in my vision while I was still on the pavement reading the mission completion screen, the notification appearing with the flat precision of the System and absolutely no acknowledgment that I had just come within three seconds of ceasing to exist.
DRAFT LEVEL: 5
ABILITY UNLOCKED: ECHO SYNTHESIS
Function: Integration of two or more absorbed abilities into hybrid forms. Requires conscious activation and significant Verdict Score expenditure. Integrated form is permanent.
I sat on the pavement for a while and thought about permanence.
Sawyer found me there. He had a habit of appearing in my vicinity at intervals I hadn't predicted, which I had initially attributed to coincidence and now understood as the behavior of a person who was quietly keeping track of people he'd decided mattered.
He sat down on the pavement beside me with the same unceremonious ease with which he did everything.
"Near void?" he said.
"Floor compromise. Three-second drop."
"Classic." He produced a gas station granola bar from his jacket and held it out. "Your hands are shaking."
"I know."
"Eat something."
I took the granola bar. Ate it in silence.
"Sawyer," I said, after a moment.
"Mm."
"The black market System contract. The one you used to volunteer."
He went still beside me. Not rigid — just the specific stillness of a person who has been waiting for a question and has mixed feelings about its arrival.
"What about it," he said.
"I need to know the terms. Not the general terms. The exact terms."
A pause.
"Two years of standard Player contract," he said. "Active drafting, standard mission quotas. At the end of two years, I get information on a specific Player designated as a family member."
"Information," I said.
"Location. Status. Method of contact."
"Not extraction. Not release. Contact."
"That's what I signed."
I thought about the kill order Cole Rafferty had described in the Battle Royale. The kill order on me — placed not by the Summoner directly, but by a Player acting under Summoner coercion. The Summoner's leverage: Sawyer's life.
"Your sister's name is Delaney," I said.
He turned to look at me.
"She's HERALD-03," I said. "She was drafted three years ago. She's been in the Protocol this whole time and she's still alive."
Sawyer's face did something complicated and uncontrolled and human that his usual performance of reckless ease never showed. It lasted about four seconds, and I let it.
"You have RECALL on the Battle Royale," he said, when he had it managed.
"I heard Cole Rafferty's briefing. Kill order on NULL-001, placed by a Player named Delaney Pike, under Summoner coercion. The leverage was your life."
He was quiet.
"She's alive," he said again.
"She's alive."
"And she tried to have you killed."
"She tried to have me killed because the Summoner told her that if she didn't, he'd void you," I said. "She placed a kill order on a stranger to keep her brother breathing. I understand the math."
He sat with that.
"She doesn't know I'm in here," he said. "She has no idea I volunteered."
"No."
"If she knew I was already in—"
"The leverage evaporates," I said. "Yes."
He looked at his hands. Nineteen years old and already carrying three years of looking for someone who has been in this System trying to keep him out of it.
"I need to find her," he said.
"I know."
"I know you know," he said. "You're telling me because you have a plan."
"I have the beginning of one," I said honestly. "ECHO SYNTHESIS just unlocked. I can integrate RECALL and FRACTURE into something I've been working toward. If it does what I think it does, I can access the structural gap in the System's architecture. From inside the gap, I might be able to locate individual Players who are running off-standard designations."
"HERALD-tier," he said.
"Yes."
He nodded once. The recklessness had gone quiet. What was underneath it was older and more serious and had been there all along.
"Tell me what you need from me," he said.
"Bronze-IV Echo pool access. And your two-year contract terms in writing."
"Why the contract terms?"
"Because if the Summoner's leverage over Delaney is your life, and if your contract specifies an information exchange at two years rather than extraction, then the System has a mechanism that makes your status visible to the contract broker." I looked at him. "Which means we can make your status visible to Delaney. Which means we can pull the Summoner's leverage out from under him without him seeing us do it."
Sawyer was quiet for a moment.
"You terrify me," he said.
"Good," I said. "That's useful."
He pulled the contract terms on his System interface. I started reading.