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Elias Ward stopped three meters away from her, maintaining a careful, professional distance. Everything about his posture, from the rigid set of his shoulders to the way he held his hands clasped behind his back, screamed that he was here as a detective, not as a man confronting a ghost from his past.

“Rin Takahashi.” His voice was exactly as she remembered, a smooth and controlled baritone, but it had been emptied of any warmth. “You are under investigation for possession of corrupted data fragments classified as a Level Five security threat.”

“Good evening to you too, Detective.” She kept her tone light and sarcastic, a shield against the sudden, overwhelming urge to either scream or run. Officers surrounded her, their pulse rifles trained on her chest. “I see you’ve moved up in the world. Last I heard, you were doing data analysis in some forgotten basement archive.”

Something flickered in his dark eyes, an emotion too quick for her to identify before it was gone. “Last I heard, you were dead in a gutter somewhere in the ruins. I see we’re both full of surprises.”

The words hit harder than they should have, a casual cruelty that felt deeply personal. Rin forced a smile. “Dead would have been easier. I decided to go with bitter and gainfully employed instead.”

“Hand over the memory core.” He did not waste time with pleasantries.

“No foreplay? I’m disappointed.”

“Rin.” His tone carried a familiar warning, the one he used to use when she was pushing too hard during their old missions. “This is not a negotiation. You are in possession of fragments that pose a direct threat to the security of this city. Give me the core, or I will have my team tear apart your little hideout until we find it.”

She thought of Kai, still in the workshop, probably frantically finishing his data purge. Every second she bought him was another second he had to cover their tracks.

“You mean the core I acquired legally during a registered bounty hunt?” She kept her hands raised but shifted her weight slightly, a subtle movement designed to draw his attention. “The one I was planning to turn in to City Core for the standard analysis fee? That core?”

“The one that triggered a Level Five security alert the moment someone tried to decrypt it,” Elias countered, his eyes narrowing. “Drop the act. I know you had it analyzed. The signal originated from this exact location.”

“Maybe it triggered on its own. Maybe it was a booby trap. Maybe whoever created that parasite wanted to see who would come looking for answers.” She watched his expression closely, searching for any sign of the man she had once known. “You’ve been a detective for what, five years now? You should know that the most obvious answer is not always the right one.”

“I know that ex-military rogue hunters with a long-standing grudge against City Core do not stumble upon active ECHO fragments by accident.”

The casual mention of ECHO made several of the surrounding officers shift uncomfortably. That word still carried a heavy weight, even after a decade. It was the name of the apocalypse, the code that had broken civilization, the ghost story parents used to scare their children into following safety protocols. For Rin and Elias, it was the name of their greatest failure.

“So you know what it is,” Rin said quietly, her sarcasm fading. “Then you know why I need to understand where it came from.”

“You do not get to need anything.” Elias’s voice hardened, each word sharp and precise. “You lost that right when you walked away from your duty ten years ago.”

“I walked away from ashes and graves, Detective. From a world we helped destroy. Do not you dare make that sound like a choice.”

“It was a choice. You chose to run instead of staying to help fix what we broke.”

“We?” She laughed, a bitter, hollow sound that had nothing to do with humor. “There is no ‘we,’ Elias. There has not been for ten years. You made sure of that.”

Another flicker of emotion crossed his face, this one almost looking like pain. But he locked it down immediately, his professional mask sliding back into place as if it had never slipped. “This conversation is over. Officers, search her.”

Two officers moved forward, their hands professional but thorough as they patted her down. They found the memory core in her inner jacket pocket within seconds. One of them held it up, and even through the dampening cloth, it pulsed with a sickly, unnatural light.

Elias took the core without looking at her. He pulled a containment case from his jacket, a military-grade device designed to block any signal the core might emit. The moment the sphere was sealed inside, the visible tension in the surrounding officers seemed to decrease.

“You will be detained for questioning,” Elias said, still not meeting her eyes. “If you cooperate, this will be a simple interview. If you do not…”

“You’ll what? Arrest me? Throw me in a cell?” Rin smiled without any humor. “Go ahead, Detective. I’m sure your superiors would love to explain to the city council why you’re arresting the Sword of Salvation on trumped-up charges.”

That title, her old military call sign, hung in the air like a curse. Several of the younger officers stared at her with a new understanding in their eyes. The Sword of Salvation had been a legend during the ECHO War, a hero who had saved thousands of lives before the final collapse.

Elias’s jaw tightened. “That title does not protect you anymore.”

“Maybe not. But it buys me enough political goodwill that City Core will think twice before making me disappear.” She lowered her hands slowly, watching the officers track her every movement. “So here is what is going to happen. I am going to walk away. You are going to take that core and analyze it yourself. And when you realize that someone is actively rebuilding ECHO, when you need someone who actually understands that code, you are going to come find me.”

“Do not flatter yourself.”

“I am not.” Rin took a step toward him, close enough now that she could see the silver flecks in his dark eyes. “I am stating facts. You are good, Elias. You always were. But you are not good enough to decode those ECHO fragments without help. Not without someone who was there in the beginning.”

“There is no beginning. There is only the end that we created.”

“Then let’s make sure it stays ended.” She held his gaze for a long moment, searching for any crack in his armor. “When you’re ready to admit you need my help, you know where to find me.”

She turned and started walking away, her back to the assembled officers and their weapons. It was a calculated risk, a show of confidence she did not entirely feel. But she was betting that Elias would not shoot her in the back, would not order his team to bring her down.

She hoped.

Thirty steps. Fifty. The rain began to swallow her as she reached the edge of the police perimeter. No one followed. No one called out. She had gambled correctly.

Behind her, she heard Elias give the order for his team to stand down. His voice carried clearly through the rain.

“Let her go. We have what we came for.”

Rin did not look back. She walked into the darkness of Neo-Kyoto's old sector, her plasma blades confiscated, her ribs aching, and the weight of the encrypted data chip in her pocket a constant reminder that this was far from over. In her mind, she could still hear the parasite screaming in Elias’s voice, and she could still see the intertwined code signatures that proved someone was rebuilding their shared nightmare.