Gage:How’s my sister?
Guilt punches me in the sternum.
My hands hesitate over the keys.
How’s your sister?
Well, she’s been shadowing me on missions, got her face uploaded into a criminal Pinterest board, and kissed me until my brain turned into static last night.
She’s also braver than any of us, infuriatingly reckless, and currently sleeping ten feet away in a bed while I pretend I’m not thinking about going in there and?—
Nope.
I shove all that down into the mental box markedDanger – Do Not Openand type:
Knight:She’s fine. Holding up. Still annoying.
The reply is instant.
Gage:If she stops being annoying, THAT’S when I’ll worry.
Arrow:Status on the board?
Ozzy:That’s the fun part.
A new icon appears—shield logo, clean lines.
Dean Maddox.
I sit up a little straighter.
We’ve never brought him into our little vigilante mess like this before Gage and River’s situation. Now? Half of what we do is brushing up against, if not directly into, Maddox Security territory.
Dean:Arrow looped me in. You two picked one hell of a hornet’s nest to kick.
I type:
Knight:You’re welcome.
Ozzy:So. Good news?
Dean:We’ve traced the bounty node to a cluster running under the Cathedral umbrella. Less decentralized than it looks. They’ve got admins, hierarchies, protocols. That’s exploitable.
Cathedral.
Of course.
They’re like mold—always in the walls somewhere.
Arrow:Can we get the bounty down?
Dean:We can’t erase your faces from every creep’s hard drive, but we can make it more trouble than it’s worth to chase you. I’ve got BRAVO and a couple of external assets chewing through their infrastructure. We’ll find the handler who posted the order.
Knight:Timeline?
Dean:You’re dark until I say otherwise. No patterns. No repeat routes. No comms except this channel in the window you’re using right now.
Five minutes feels like a joke all of a sudden.
