“I am surrounded,” I mutter, “by traitors.”
Lark swirls the office chair so she’s facing the main monitor wall. Her gaze flicks over live feeds, scripts, lines of code.
She doesn’t look lost.
She looks like she belongs.
And that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
“Look,” she says, pointing at one of the inactive feeds. “Your outer ring cameras on the west stairwell have a thirty-second blind spot every looping cycle. If someone with half a brain and no morals found it, they could get in without tripping half your alerts.”
I move to the console, and she’s… right.
“I patched that weeks ago,” I argue.
“You patched it badly,” she replies. “Your fix made a different hole two directories over.”
I pull up the routing.
…Shit.
She did find it.
She did fix it.
I feel a cold weight settle in my chest.
I don’t like being outplayed.
Iespeciallydon’t like being outplayed by Gage’s little sister.
She must read something in my face because her smile softens. Just a little.
“Relax, Hayes. I’m not trying to ruin you. If I wanted to, you’d already be trending online with a really unfortunate filter.”
“That’s… not helping.”
She shrugs. “I’m not the enemy.”
“That’s exactly what someoneuntrainedwould say before getting themselves killed.”
She leans back, and for a split second, I see her how she used to be—Lark at fifteen, hair in braids, oversized hoodie hanging off one shoulder, giggling on Gage’s couch while she stole fries off my plate and asked invasive questions likewhy don’t you ever smile?
Back when she was just Gage’s kid sister.
Back when she was off-limits in a way that was easy.
She’s not a kid now.
Nothing about the way she looks is easy.
Her eyes drag over my face. “Why do you act like I’m breakable?”
“Because,” I say tightly, “I remember when you were fourteen and cried for an hour because some senior boy canceled a date. And I told Gage I’d break his legs if he came near you again.”
She snorts. “You’re talking about Tommy Howard. He cried more than I did.”
“Doesn’t matter. You were young.”
