SILAS
The compound hums like a machine that never sleeps. The walls vibrate faintly with the endless thrum of generators, the servers buzz in their cages like hornets waiting to swarm, and every corridor smells of metal and ozone. It’s all Roman’s design. He doesn’t trust flesh alone to win wars. He trusts the steel wrapped around it, the wires threaded through it, the data that moves faster than thought.
Which makes sabotaging him dangerous, but not impossible.
I move like I belong, because I do. Every guard who sees me steps aside without a word. Every technician nods, deferential, as though the weight of my bloodline alone earns obedience. None of them realize I’ve been weaving small cuts into the Syndicate’s veins for weeks.
They don’t see the comm uplink cables rerouted into dead loops that bounce signals back to nowhere. They don’t notice when I slip into the auxiliary server room and rewrite a line of code that slows transmission just enough to scramble surveillance playback. It’s a thousand tiny fractures hidden inside a fortress that prides itself on being unbreakable. And sooner or later, the cracks spread.
Tonight I’m working under the pretense of a systems inspection. The room smells of dust and burned circuits, low blue light spilling across racks of hardware stacked higher than I can reach. The hum is constant, steady, masking the faint clicks of my hands as I pull a drive and slip in a duplicate, then slide the original into my jacket pocket. That pocket already carries a half dozen like it, each one holding fragments of information Roman would burn me alive for stealing.
I finish quickly, wipe my prints with a rag, and reassemble the console exactly as I found it. The cameras don’t see anything but me standing there, checking readings, looking bored. And I make sure that’s all they ever see.
When I step into the corridor, Harrow is waiting. He’s a mountain of a man, Roman’s personal enforcer, the kind of soldier who doesn’t need words to make a threat clear. His eyes are dark, flat, and fixed on me.
“You’re late,” he says.
“I was recalibrating the uplink,” I answer, steady. “The relay was showing lag.”
Harrow narrows his eyes. “Roman’s been asking about you. He thinks you’re distracted.”
I give him a cold half-smile. “Maybe I am. Watching his men train is enough to put anyone to sleep.”
For a second Harrow just stares, weighing my words. Then he snorts, amused despite himself, and moves aside. “Be careful, fox. He doesn’t like being underestimated.”
“I don’t like being bored,” I reply, brushing past him.
I keep my pace even until I turn the corner, then exhale slowly. Roman’s eyes are everywhere, but suspicion is his nature. I’ve lived with it long enough to know how to feed it just enough truth to keep it from finding the lies.
By the time I reach the detention block, the weight in my chest feels heavier than the drives hidden in my coat. The doorslides open with a soft hiss, and the familiar scent of wolf hits me before the air even shifts.
Mary sits against the wall in her usual place, chained but upright, her gaze locked on me the second I step inside. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t sneer, doesn’t bare her teeth. She just watches, her silence sharper than any curse.
I set the tray down — bread, broth, more than usual, a piece of fruit I bribed from the kitchen stockpile — and push it toward her.
“You’re eating,” I say.
She arches one brow. “And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll sit here until you do.”
Her lips twitch, almost but not quite a smile. She takes the bread, tears a piece, chews slowly, eyes never leaving mine. I lean back in the chair, crossing my arms, letting the silence stretch.
After a while, I speak again. “You know, I could get in trouble for this.”
“For feeding a prisoner?” she asks.
“For feeding you,” I correct.
Her gaze sharpens. “You want me to feel grateful?”
I shake my head. “No. I want you to be strong. Weak wolves don’t survive Syndicate cages. Strong ones make it harder for men like Roman to believe they’ve already won.”
Her jaw flexes. She doesn’t answer.
I let it sit, then change the subject. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had to bribe a cook for an apple? Not since I was sixteen and hungry enough to eat half a crate before Roman caught me.”
Her brow furrows faintly, suspicious. “You’re telling me stories now?”
