He better be.
Because the next ping on my pad isn’t from a secure line.
It’s a wide-open comm drop. Unencrypted. Obvious.
Too obvious.
Still, I open it.
No message. Just a single line of text.
“Your apartment has been marked.”
I stare at it. I read it twice. Three times.
Then I delete it.
Not because I don’t believe it.
But because I do.
I don’t go back.
I don’t even think about going back.
Everything I am—all the evidence, the contacts, the plan—it’s all in here now, in this tiny safehouse of Kenron’s, stitched together from scraps and whispers.
The apartment? That place was never home.
Home was a lie I told myself so I could keep pretending I belonged in his world.
Not anymore.
I shove the datapad into my satchel, run a hand through my tangled hair, and grab the field pistol Kenron stashed under the sink.
When he gets back, he’ll ask what I’m doing with it.
And I’ll tell him the truth.
I’m ready.
CHAPTER 20
KENRON
The netsplosion is great, but I’m a hands-on kind of individual. I know just the people who can help us blow this whole thing wide open…if I survive the encounter.
First, though, I have to ferret out their latest hidey hole…and these are the kinds of people who don’t like to be found easily. It takes me a few hours of pounding the pavement to get the info I need, my destination is an unmarked alley in the worst part of town.
Swell.
The back alley stinks of old oil, ozone, and wet stone. Real stone, the kind you don’t find in new cities anymore. It's chipped and blackened from plasma scars, flanked by towers stitched together from old Novarian concrete and newer Vakutan alloys—ugly, but sturdy. Like the people I’m here to meet.
They picked the place on purpose. Out of the way, barely within the legal perimeter of Novaria Prime. No patrols. No scans. Just a flickering floodlight above the service entrance and the knowledge that if someone follows you in here, they better have the balls to finish the job.
I step through the rusted gate, slow and deliberate, my coat heavy around me and my hands in plain sight. The knives staysheathed. Doesn’t matter that they know me—doesn’t mean they trust me. Not yet.
“Kenron,” a voice calls from the shadows. “Still dragging that meat suit around, huh?”
