Chapter 495: Ashfall Verge

The car rolled off the main transit lane and into Ashfall Verge without any clear marker that said they’d arrived. There was no gate, no checkpoint, no welcoming sign. The pavement changed first, smoother alloys giving way to patched concrete and old composite slabs that didn’t quite line up. Traffic slowed, not because of congestion, but because drivers were watching each other instead of the road.

Klatos rested an elbow against the window and looked out. “This is it,” he said. “Once you’re in, you’re in.”

Xavier didn’t respond right away. He was watching the movement. Cargo lifters cutting across lanes without signals. Workers flagging down vehicles directly instead of using terminals. Stacks of containers welded into living spaces, power cables draped between them like someone had given up on hiding the theft years ago.

Ashfall Verge felt busy without feeling organized.

The car passed a transit yard where old rail engines sat half-gutted, crews working on them with tools that looked older than the city itself. Beyond that, factories squatted low and wide, smoke pushed through filters that hadn’t been replaced in a long time. People moved in groups, never alone unless they looked like they knew exactly where they were going.

Xavier glanced at Klatos. “This place doesn’t sleep. It’s more lively than Helior Prime was.”

“No reason to,” Klatos replied. “Sleep’s when things get taken.”

They drove deeper. The road narrowed, buildings pressing closer, light shifting from open sky to a patchwork of signage, flood lamps, and exposed industrial glow. Vendors operated straight off the curb, selling food, tools, parts, information, sometimes all three at once. Nobody looked twice at their car, which told Xavier more than any map ever could.

“You said you lived here?” Xavier said.

Klatos nodded. “Long enough to know which streets you don’t turn down and which faces you don’t ignore. Ashfall runs on memory. If you act like you belong, most people let you pass.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then you’re a resource,” Klatos said. “Or a warning.”

The car slowed near a cluster of low structures built around a power relay station. People were gathered there, trading, arguing, loading cargo by hand. No uniforms. No visible authority. Just momentum and unspoken rules.

Xavier scanned faces, movement, angles. “If Reva came through here, she wouldn’t linger.”

“She wouldn’t,” Klatos agreed. “Which means we don’t look for someone hiding. We look for someone passing clean.”

Xavier nodded once. “Start with docks and drop zones. Anywhere a ship could offload without filing a report.”

Klatos pointed ahead. “Three places like that within walking distance. One of them is quiet enough to matter.”

Xavier shifted in his seat. “Then that’s where we start.”

The car pulled over and cut its engine. As they stepped out, the noise closed in around them immediately. Voices, machinery, movement, life stacked on life with no interest in who they were or why they’d come.

Xavier and Klatos moved through Ashfall Verge the way people did when they didn’t want to be remembered, slow enough to look normal, alert enough to notice patterns. They split their attention naturally. Xavier watched faces and movement. Klatos watched routes, dead ends, places where people paused too long or moved too fast.

They started near the drop-adjacent yards.

Cargo was being offloaded by hand, crates dragged across cracked concrete, scanners replaced by people with clipboards who didn’t bother pretending they logged everything. Xavier walked past one group arguing over payment, caught a fragment about a ship that had passed through earlier, then another fragment about a crew asking for short-term storage. Nothing concrete yet, but the timing lined up close enough to keep them moving.

Klatos stopped near a parts stall built into the side of a gutted engine housing. He didn’t speak at first. He just leaned in, exchanged a few words with the vendor in a native accent and dialect. The vendor glanced at Xavier once, then back at Klatos.

“Transport came through last cycle,” the man said. “Don’t know if it dropped people or cargo.”

“Security?” Xavier asked.

The vendor shrugged. “They looked like they knew what they were doing.”

That was enough to confirm direction without confirming location.

They moved again, this time toward the quieter side lanes where temporary housing stacked up against old industrial walls.

They followed the trail until it thinned into nothing useful.

Xavier was about to suggest pulling back and widening the search radius when his wrist device vibrated.

He looked down.

The signal wasn’t a message. It was a proximity ping.

He glanced up instinctively, scanning rooftops and lanes, then checked the readout again. The signature was unmistakable.

“My hover,” he said.

Klatos blinked. “Here?”

“Close,” Xavier replied. “Angel dropped it on the outskirts.”

“Ashfall is a big city and this area is hard to get familiar with.” Klatos continued. “Let’s just say it’s the most safest and dangerous district at the same time. So your friend from Earth, Angel, might have some big connections if she really sent the hover all the way here, which is the closest area to Helior Prime.”

“No shit.”

Klatos considered it for half a second. “That changes things.”

Klatos gestured down the lane. “Then we grab it first. No point chasing shadows on foot.”

Xavier sent the return ping and started moving, already adjusting his search pattern in his head. With the hover, they could cover Ashfall Verge properly instead of guessing.

The signal led them to the edge of one of Ashfall’s older vehicle yards, the kind that had started life as a freight depot and ended up fenced, subdivided, and claimed by whoever had enough people to hold it. Tall metal barriers ringed the place, patched with different alloys and welded repairs that didn’t bother matching. Floodlights hung at uneven angles, casting harsh light over rows of parked machines inside.

Xavier could see his hover immediately.

It stood out even while trying not to. Low profile, clean lines, panels that didn’t scream wealth but carried a quiet confidence that most Ashfall vehicles lacked. It sat deeper in the yard than the others, guarded more carefully than anything around it.

They didn’t get more than a few steps toward the gate before they were stopped.

Two men stepped into their path, rifles slung but hands already close. A third leaned against the gate itself, chewing something and watching them like they were already wasting his time.

“Yard’s closed,” the one in front said. “Move along.”

“That car inside,” Xavier replied, nodding toward the hover. “It’s mine.”

The two men looked at the hover and then glanced at each other, and then at the man at the gate.

The man laughed. “Sure it is.”

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