Rhea grabs her, arms tight, whispering nonsense against her hair.
I feel everything in me coil.
Not from the fight.
From the look on my daughter’s face.
She’s never seen me fight like that. Not outside holovids. Not up close.
And now she’s shaking.
Rhea meets my eyes. Her voice breaks when she says it.
“We can’t keep doing this.”
I start to speak.
She cuts me off.
“We can’t keep dragging her through this, Valtron. Through run-ins and stunners and surveillance drones. Through blood and secrets and... and whatever the hell this is.” She’s crying now, holding Ripley like the girl’s about to be stolen.
“We have to end it.”
And I don’t have a goddamn argument.
Because she’s right.
Because this war came back for us.
And it’s staring me in the face wearing a child’s terror like a brand.
I nod once.
Just once.
And I say, “Then we burn them all down.”
CHAPTER 22
RHEA
Idon’t cry when Ripley finally falls asleep.
I wait until she’s curled up in the corner of the cot, breathing shallow through her mouth, one hand fisted in her favorite ragged plush drone. Then I sit down, wrap a blanket around my shoulders, and let the silence cut me open.
It’s not the kind of cry that feels cleansing. No catharsis here. Just a slow, quiet leak of everything I’ve been holding back since the first time I saw my daughter’s face on a public broadcast.
The compad hums beside me. It’s finished scanning the second crystal.
I wipe my face and square my shoulders.
“Okay,” I whisper to nobody. “Let’s see what got Quinn killed.”
The interface unfolds like paper flames. No showy encryption—just layer after layer of dirty, black-band tricks, the kind you only learn if you spend your nights hacking feed nodes and your days dodging subpoenas.
Valtron’s in the arena right now. Training. Sparring with a brute who’s got tusks for teeth and a hatred for shirts. Kaelor’s down there too, monitoring the impact scanners like it’s still a game. I told them I needed time to work.
I didn’t tell them I needed time to fall apart.
