“In away?” Ezekial echoes, his brows furrowing.
Julien doesn’t speak to reply, instead, sharing the memory.
Her soft voice filters through our minds:“I can’t choose.”
Ezekial breathes out long and hard through his nose while pinching the bridge. “Julien, I’m not sure that works.”
“I will ask,” I say, levelling Julien with a stern stare. “Sai influences you too much.”
“Not enough,” Sai mutters with a wide grin, giving Julien’s shoulder a playful shove. “Good job, man. So glad you’re back, these fuckers never let me have any fun.”
That line hangs for too long as we all remember why Julien is with us again.
Jasmine.
Her choice. Her gamble. Her willingness to walk into danger because we wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t take the risk. Sheendangered herself because we treated her like someone who needed protection rather than our equal. Our bond.
Ezekial clears his throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “Now we’re all finally here.” He gives Sai a quick scowl, and he mouths a brieffuck youback. “I’ve recalled the Lead Commanders, we’ll be meeting with them in two days.”
Sai’s smile disappears. “Two? Nah, why not right-the-fuck now?”
“Two days to consider why a Lord has called them back,” Julien answers calmly. “Two days to worry.”
“Nervous people make mistakes,” I add. “Especially liars.”
Sai nods like we were waiting for his approval. “Right, love a good emotional tactic, I’m here for it.” Then his gaze flits across the room to each of us. “But just how sure are we that it’s actually one of them?”
Ezekial swipes up on the tablet beside him on his desk. A holographic map of the district appears in the air, all crisp lines and glowing markers.
“These markers,” he explains, pointing out several red Xs, “mark searched zones. Every X has a signature, that’s standard procedure.”
The map zooms out and shifts, mirroring Ezekial’s movements over his screen, until it stops.
Over the outskirts, the place that only I had been patrolling, with Xs I didn’t make.
“Who?” My voice is clipped.
Ezekial double-taps and the display shifts again, zooming in on the digital tags.
Four different signatures.
We all lean forwards, reading them, recognising them.
Lead Commander One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Sai exhales frustratedly. “It’s all four of them?”
“I really fucking hope not,” Ezekial mutters, rubbing his temples, staring hard at the hologram. “But only we and the Lead Commanders can access this log.”
He brings up a secondary screen—lines of code, secure access data, endless pages of it as he scrolls and scrolls.
“Each unique electronic signature is tethered to a biometric hash—a fingerprint. Encoded, multi-factor verified. So, unless we’re dealing with four separate instances of internal compromise, someone’s managed to spoof or extract the biometric data. Problem is, every single fucking system authentication has been routed locally, through this network node.”
