“I’ll take it,” I say, breaking the quiet.
His gaze jerks to mine, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He doesn’t ask what I mean. He knows.
I swallow, because the words feel bigger than they are. “The deal. I’ll take it.”
Roja doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. But something behind his eyes hardens, like steel folding over itself. “You sure?”
“I’m tired, Roja.” My voice is rough, like gravel under boot. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. And I don’t want to watch you bleed out on a warehouse floor for a cause that’s already won.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I stand, dusting grit from my palms. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
He exhales through his nose, sharp. “You think they’ll honor it? You think the Coalition knows how to keep a deal?”
“No,” I say, honest. “But they’ll hesitate. If we make them.”
Roja’s pacing now, boots whispering across cold cement. “Backroom deals get erased. History gets rewritten. We vanish, and no one ever remembers why.”
“Then we don’t let them make it quiet.”
His steps slow. He turns to me, brow furrowed.
“We put it in the open,” I say. “We make them say it. On record. No secrecy. No plausible deniability. We sign it, but we keep the leverage.”
He watches me. Long. Weighing it.
Then he nods. Once. “You draft it. I’ll make sure it bites.”
I sit back down and pull the pad into my lap, fingers shaking slightly as I type. Each word feels like a stitch across open skin.
We request full immunity—both of us. Absolute and non-negotiable. In return, we stand down. No testimony, no more leaks, no incitement.
The line that costs me the most to write:We walk away.
Roja stands behind me, his voice low. “Add this. ‘Any breach of these terms nullifies the agreement. Reprisals will be met with proportional exposure.’”
I glance up at him. “We’re threatening them now?”
“We’re reminding them we’re still dangerous,” he says, and the glint in his eye makes my stomach twist. “We kept copies, Kelsea. They need to know that if we disappear, the rest of the files go public automatically.”
I add it.
We sign it—thumbprints, encrypted keys. Two fugitives giving the system a choice: Leave us alone, or light the match yourselves.
And we send it.
The hours that follow are a blur. Pacing, silence, half-eaten rations. Roja sharpens his knives with rhythmic fury. I don’t even know if he plans to use them or just needs the repetition to hold him together.
Then the alert chimes. Coalition press feed. We scramble to the screen.
It’s there.Statement of Resolution.Immunity, publicly ratified.
Language sanitized, but the bones are intact. Names spelled right. Conditions posted in full.
We read it twice, then once more.
Roja doesn’t speak for a long time. He says, “So that’s it. We’re ghosts.”
