My stomach turns to ice.
“What did you just say?”
He doesn’t blink. “You should’ve terminated when the scans came back abnormal. But you got sentimental. Weak. You raised her like she’s a person.”
I feel the baton before I remember grabbing it.
The one I stashed after the last raid—old scavenger tech. Half-charged, dented, humming softly in my palm now like itknows.
“Say her name,” I say, voice barely audible.
Tarek’s head tilts. “Nessa.”
He says it like a curse.
“Cute. Wild. Stronger than she should be. And without training, she’ll rip herself apart. Or worse, someone else. Themoment her claws show in public, she’s a weapon. One we can’t afford to lose track of.”
He steps forward again. His tone drops, quiet and cruel. “That’s why I tagged her before you ever left Luria. You thought you ran fast enough? Sweetheart, we’ve been watching her grow.”
Something breaks.
Not like glass. Not like bone.
Like silence.
I move.
Tarek barely has time to register the change before I’m inside his guard. The baton snaps up. One sharp arc through the air, and the charge connects with his rig.
The effect is instant.
Electricity surges through the loop of his body tech. Sparks erupt across his chest plate. The disruptor at his belt overloads and pops. His back arches, teeth flashing in a grimace of disbelief—because this wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t howheplanned it.
“You don’t touch my daughter,” I say, voice shaking.
He tries to swing at me. I dodge, grab his wrist, and drive the baton straight into the base of his neck.
One second. Two. The current catches.
Tarek screams.
Then he drops like a stone.
Smoke curls from his rig.
I don’t breathe. I don’t think. I just stare down at him, my heart thudding so hard it feels like the world is shaking with it.
He twitches once. Then stills.
I wait for him to move again. For the smug voice, the clever pivot, the lazy smirk.
Nothing.
Only the wind, and the low whimper of sirens curling off into the horizon.
Vael groans again behind me, louder this time.
I don’t look back.
