“You come for my mate or my son…”
My claws extend.
“…and I’ll tear the stars down around you.”
CHAPTER 35
KAIRO
The air outside the freight tunnels tastes like metal and rain. The old access gate moans when I shove it open, sound echoing down the corridor like a warning. Every instinct in me saysdon’t go farther.
I do anyway.
The Redscale safehouse used to hum—low power lines, generators, voices behind reinforced doors. Tonight it’s dead.
No guards.
No light.
Just the slow drip of condensation off a burst coolant pipe.
My boots scuff through dust. It hasn’t been disturbed in hours. The silence is wrong; it’s the kind that doesn’t feel empty butvacant, like something’s been pulled out of the world and left a vacuum behind.
“Jav?” My voice bounces off the steel walls. “Garkin? Anyone?”
Nothing. Not even the static of a power cell left running.
I step into the main bay. It smells of ozone and faint smoke—burnt wiring and the ghosts of plasma discharge. Tables overturned. A few bullet casings on the floor, glittering dull bronze in the emergency light.
He’s been here.
I canfeelit, the residual pulse of his energy, the way the air still holds heat where violence once lived.
But he’s gone now. All of them are.
Something tightens in my chest. I scroll through my compad, opening the local networks, the encrypted channels he once used. No activity. No signal bounce from his ID tag.
And then?—
Ping.
One new message. No sender. No metadata.
Just five words.
You chose wrong. Now he bleeds for it.
My mouth goes dry. The room tilts. A single attachment loads below the text.
I shouldn’t open it. I do.
It’s a photo. Blurry. Distorted by motion blur and a cheap lens.
But the figure—slumped, shirt torn, blood streaking down his arm—ishim.
Jav.
My vision flashes white. The floor seems to drop out beneath me. I taste copper, realize I’ve bitten my lip hard enough to draw blood.
