EXT. ALLEY – EDGE OF MARKET SECTOR – NIGHT APPROACHING
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[The temperature drops. Lights flicker on across the city. Jason stands at the mouth of the alley, still as a statue. Snow drifts lazily past. The alley is narrow—metal walls lined with trash units, rusted ducts, and broken Vision Tech monitors playing ads for discontinued products.]
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[Jason activates a low-visibility scan mode. His eyes glow dim red. HUD flickers—“Noise Source: Detected. Biological Presence: 0. Motion Signature: Unknown.”]
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JASON
(quietly to himself)
“If this is a rat with a speaker again, I’m melting Crank’s legs.”
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[He steps in. Each footfall clanks softly. His axe retracts, hand reverts, then shifts into a scanning array. He swipes it over the ground—tracks show up. Small indents in the snow. Heavy. Erratic. Not standard Security or Labor movement.]
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JASON
“…Not a drunk Labor bot either. Unless they’ve started growing wings.”
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[He looks up. A dented pipe above him is leaking oil. Fresh. Thin trail leading deeper.]
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[Jason follows. The alley splits. He hears another faint sound—metal scraping softly. Like claws. Or retractable blades.]
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JASON
(muted sarcasm)
“Claws and secret passageways. Yeah, this is definitely how Security bots retire early.”
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INT. ABANDONED UTILITY SHAFT – HIDDEN ENTRY IN ALLEY WALL
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[A wall panel flickers open—freshly tampered with. Jason ducks through.]
Inside: darkness, steam, flickering emergency lights. Pipes run along the walls. It’s an old Vision Tech substructure, unused since the humans vanished.]
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[He walks quietly, arm transforming back into a cannon this time.]
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JASON
(dry)
“Whoever’s squatting down here, you better be friendly. Or slow. I’m flexible either way.”
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[He stops. His HUD locks onto a faint heat signature—not natural, but artificial. Purification-grade energy levels. It disappears immediately.]
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[Jason freezes. Everything’s silent. Then, suddenly—CLANG! A piece of pipe drops behind him. He spins around—nothing.]
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[Lights flicker again. A brief flash of movement at the end of the corridor—a silhouette with metal wings.]
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JASON
(muttering)
“Oh. Fantastic. They’re nesting now.”
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[He crouches down, hand reverting to scanning mode again. This time he plants a small device into the floor—a tiny spider-drone. It activates silently and crawls off.]
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JASON
“Go find me something to regret.”
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INT. JASON’S POV – SPIDER-DRONE FEED
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[The spider-drone creeps through the shafts. Darkness. Steam. Suddenly—it pauses.]
Something moves just past its range. The feed blurs slightly. A face flickers across the frame—familiar, but wrong. Like a Labor bot’s face stretched over something built for war. Then static.]
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DRONE FEED: SIGNAL LOST.
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[Jason blinks. Stands up slowly.]
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JASON
(low, serious for once)
“…No way you’re supposed to be in here.”
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[Cut to Jason stepping deeper into the corridor. The camera lingers on the dark behind him, where a faint glow pulses briefly. Then fades.]
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