“He knows,” I whisper. “He stopped the leak, and now he’s mocking us.”
I shut the screen off.
My jaw tightens. I feel heat rising from my skin. Fury and helplessness battling for space in my chest.
“He’s good,” I whisper.
“Not good enough,” Kenron says. “Not this time.”
I step back, staring at the dark screen. The digital path is dead. The remote option is gone.
“We can’t stop this from here,” I say, the realization heavy as stone. “We have to be there.”
Kenron nods, his hand drifting to the blade at his hip. “Then we go in. Through the front door.”
I press my palm flat against the cold glass of the monitor.
“This ends tonight.”
CHAPTER 26
KENRON
The air shimmers with heat and incense, thick with sweat and sugar, and just beneath it all—death.
The plaza hums with celebration. Multicolored banners ripple overhead like prayers stitched from silk and fire. Strings of lanterns bob in time with the music—Vakutan windpipes laced with human drums, alien rhythms twisted through familiar bass lines. There are dancers spinning in spirals, faces painted in festival patterns. And children, gods help them, chasing neon light trails between legs and tail-flicks and hovercarts.
Novaria Prime has never looked more alive.
Kristi walks beside me in silence, head bowed beneath the borrowed Vakutan shawl. The cloth hugs her shoulders, dyed deep dusk blue and stitched with fractal stars, a prayer pattern known only to a few. The kind meant to hide grief. Or vengeance. Or both.
She doesn’t hold my hand, but her fingers brush mine every few steps—just enough to tether. Just enough to sayI’m still here.
We weave through the crowd like we belong. I wear the robes of a ceremonial guardian—flowing layers, dull metallicembroidery, old blood colors dulled by time. The weight of the shard presses against my chest, strapped under the inner lining, cool as guilt.
Inside that sliver of tech is the disruptor code.
And inside Kristi’s belt, wrapped in a silk satchel stitched with false prayer runes, is the manual override—biometrically keyed to Dennis Montana’s thumbprint. We didn’t get it through kindness.
We just have to reach the stage.
Beneath it, through the concealed hatch Kristi traced in schematics stolen weeks ago, lies the launch hub. The node built to spread a nanite weapon across a thousand bodies in seconds. No one here knows they’re standing on top of a bomb.
And we don’t get a second shot.
“Ken,” Kristi murmurs, her voice low, throat-thick with tension. “Red vest. Two o’clock.”
I don’t look immediately. I don’t need to.
“Earth First?”
“Watching the west end. Might be local security too. Blend, don’t hide.”
I nod once, and we slow to match the rhythm of the crowd, trailing behind a group of festival-goers draped in woven festival silks, laughing too loud. They make good cover.
The air is sweet with fried oil and burning herb. The kind used in ceremonial dances and back alley deals. Beneath it all, I smell copper and ozone, memory and violence. The smells of war.
A small Drevia girl hands Kristi a folded petal stamped with a unity glyph. Kristi takes it without breaking stride.
