Rain in Kordis didn't fall the way it did in Prismis. In Prismis, water ran evenly down glass facades – filtered, clean, almost sterile. In Kordis, rain brought with it rust, grease, dust from the rooftops, and that characteristic metallic taste that settled on the tongue and reminded you that this city had long ceased to be a place for people who had somewhere else to go.

*Clara didn't feel the rain. Not the way humans did. Droplets struck her shoulders, splattered across her white shirt, leaving dark, wet patches, but her body didn't react with shivers or pleasure.

She walked down an empty street, avoiding puddles. Her black jeans were already soaked up to mid-thigh, and the tips of her bright red hair – those that always glowed like smoldering embers – seemed dimmer in the rain, as if the water was trying to extinguish their light. She made no attempt to shield them.

Kordis in the rain was even more dismal than usual. Signs that barely flickered during the day now smeared into colorful reflections in the puddles – red, blue, rarely green. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed but quickly fell silent, as if someone had cut it off with a single stroke. Dogs barked somewhere in the courtyards, and from closed windows seeped voices – televisions, arguments, a child crying. Life went on, indifferent to the fact that someone who didn't belong had arrived in Kordis.

Clara turned into a narrow alley that had no name – at least none that appeared on any official OmniCorp map. Her shoes stepped across cracked pavement tiles, avoiding piles of garbage bags and abandoned, rusted bicycles. Above her head, tangled cables formed a dense web through which the rain pushed slowly, hesitantly, as if unwilling to touch what lay below.

The building she stopped in front of was unremarkable. A gray, peeling tenement with a row of windows, half of them boarded up. The entrance door hung on a single hinge, and the doorbell – if it ever worked – had long been ripped from the wall. Clara stepped inside without hesitation, as if crossing the threshold of her own apartment.

Inside, it smelled of moisture, old wood, and something sweet that could have been mold or someone's cigarette butt. The stairs creaked beneath her shoes, but she moved so quietly that even this building – accustomed to heavy footsteps, drunken falls, and silent slips – seemed not to notice her presence.

On the third floor, she stopped.

The hallway was narrow, dark, with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that flickered with a frequency suggesting its days were numbered. The walls were layered with paint that remembered times before the H2 War, and the floor – worn, slick boards – sagged beneath her weight, though she weighed little.

The door she stood before was like all the others in this hallway. The same scuffs, the same old lock, the same – or nearly the same – number plate that someone had once scratched off, but not entirely. Clara didn't check the number. The locator in her network pinpointed this spot with millimeter precision.

She stood before the door and for a moment just looked.

Her red eyes moved across its edges, across the lock, across the narrow gap beneath the door through which seeped a pale, yellow light. Someone was inside. She could hear it – a quiet, uneven breath, the muffled rustle of fabric, and then complete, absolute silence. Someone held their breath.

Clara didn't knock. Not right away.

She pulled her hand from her pocket – slowly, without haste – and pressed her fingertips against the cold, damp surface of the door. Her nails were immaculate, perfectly manicured, which in this place looked like an insult. For a moment, she stood like that, touching the wood, as if trying to sense who was on the other side.

Inside, no one moved.

Clara lowered her hand. Slipped it back into her pocket.

"Clara Young," she said finally, her voice so quiet it almost merged with the sound of rain outside the window. "OmniCorp."

For a moment, nothing. Then – that same, held breath.

Clara sighed. Softly, barely audible. Not out of irritation. Out of something that, in her case, could pass for resignation.

"I know you can hear me," she added, without raising her voice.

Rain beat against the windows at the end of the hallway. The lightbulb above her head went silent for a moment, then flickered back on, wavering uncertainly.

Clara stood before the door, wet, motionless, with the ends of her hair that still – despite the rain, despite the damp, despite this place – glowed with a bright, stubborn red.

She didn't knock. She didn't call for backup. She didn't move.

She waited.

She knew time was on her side. She knew that sooner or later, that door would open. Sooner or later, the person on the other side would understand that there was nowhere to run, that there was no point in waiting, that OmniCorp – and she – had more patience than any human.

And if not... well. She had orders to bring them back alive. Nothing said how long she could wait before resorting to other methods.

The rain fell. Kordis pulsed somewhere below in its own uneven rhythm.

And Clara stood.