It’s parked crooked in an alley three blocks from the compound, engine still idling, back doors hanging open like the driver bailed mid-shift and never looked back, and the dashboard is lit up with half a dozen warning icons that suggest it hasn’t passed a safety inspection since before I was born. The interior smells like motor oil, burned coffee, and wet concrete, and there’s a hairline crack in the windshield that spiderwebs outward every time I hit a pothole, which is roughly every ten meters because Novaria’s roads are held together with civic neglect and vibes.
Tur stares at me like he’s trying to decide whether to argue or just accept that this is who I am.
“You’re not even limping,” he says flatly as I throw the truck into gear.
“I’m in shock,” I reply. “It’s a temporary buff. Don’t worry, I’ll fall apart later on a schedule that is deeply inconvenient for both of us.”
He snorts despite himself and braces one hand against the door as we fishtail out of the alley and into a street that looks like the opening credits of a civil war documentary.
Sirens scream in every direction.
Smoke curls up from three different blocks.
Someone is ripping a Nine banner down off a transit station with a length of pipe while a crowd cheers like it’s a playoff game.
My wrist display lights up with incoming calls.
Mara.
Ishaan.
Three different unknown numbers.
I answer Mara on speaker.
“I’m alive,” I say before she can speak. “And I need you to become my emergency operations director right now.”
There’s a half-second of silence.
Then: “Okay. I love you. Tell me what to do.”
I feel something in my chest crack open and reorganize itself into steel.
“Get everyone who used to work at the Grill out of their apartments,” I tell her. “Every cousin, roommate, boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, weird uncle, all of them. We’re moving people tonight through the old tunnels under the District.”
A beat.
“You mean the ones your grandfather made us swear never to talk about.”
“Those exact ones.”
“Kim,” she says carefully. “Those tunnels are off-grid. Half-collapsed. Not on any municipal map.”
“I know. That’s why they’re perfect.”
Another beat.
Then, “I’ll get the vans.”
I hang up and answer Ishaan next.
“I need food and medical supplies,” I say. “Whatever you can get your hands on. I don’t care if it’s legal. I don’t care if it’s expensive. I don’t care if it technically belongs to a syndicate that wants me dead.”
He laughs, breathless and a little unhinged.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for you to say that.”
The ruins of the Fierson Grill appear at the end of the street like a broken tooth in the city’s mouth.
