Red circles. Blue arrows. Yellow fallback zones.
Home, turned into geometry.
Mara sits to my right with her cybernetic hand wrapped around a chipped mug, knuckles clicking faintly every time she tightens her grip. Vox leans against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes hooded, immaculate suit ruined by soot and blood spatter she hasn’t bothered cleaning off. Ishaan stands near the back with two other civilian coordinators, quietly arguing over ration math in low, vicious murmurs.
And Tur?—
Tur is pacing.
Which is how I know this meeting is about to turn into a problem.
He moves like a caged storm, heavy boots silent against concrete, shoulders tight, jaw locked so hard I can see the tendons standing out in his neck. Every time someone says the word “node,” his eyes flick to me like he’s checking that I’m still here. Still breathing. Still within reach.
Mara clears her throat. “Okay. We’ve got three independent confirmation streams now. Same story from all of them.”
I don’t look up. “Say it anyway.”
She taps her compad and throws a holo into the air above the table. Syndicate routing patterns bloom in ghostly blue and red lines, clustering thick and ugly around my neighborhood like a cancer.
“The surviving Nine leadership pulled out of the city core overnight. Consolidating everything they’ve got around the Fierson District perimeter. Merc units. Private armor. Off-world muscle. They’re building a ring, not a strike team.”
Vox’s mouth curves, humorless. “Vultures nesting on a carcass that isn’t dead yet.”
I finally look up. “They’re not here for me.”
Mara’s jaw tightens. “They’re here for the node.”
“And me,” I say flatly. “Because I’m inconveniently attached to it.”
Tur stops pacing. His eyes lock on mine.
“No,” he says. Just that. One word. Absolute.
I exhale through my nose. “We’re not doing this right now.”
“Oh, we’re doing this right the fuck now,” he snaps, voice low and brutal and vibrating with something I don’t hear from him often: naked fear. “You are not going anywhere near that node.”
The room goes quiet in that way that means everyone suddenly wants to be somewhere else.
Mara glances between us. “Maybe we?—”
“No,” Tur cuts in, not even looking at her. His eyes are still on me. Burning. “You will not be present for this.”
I straighten slowly. “You don’t get to make that call.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“You’re not my commanding officer,” I say, voice steady even though my pulse is starting to pound in my ears. “And you’re not my jailer.”
“I am your bonded partner and the primary fucking target magnet for half the military-industrial crime machine in this sector,” he growls. “Which means my job is to keep you alive.”
“My job,” I shoot back, “is to not let my life be decided in rooms I’m not standing in.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“This is not you refusing to be hidden,” he says tightly. “This is you volunteering to be executed on camera to make a point.”
I step around the table and close the distance between us. “No. This is me refusing to be erased again. This is me refusing to let men who burned my parents’ restaurant to the ground decide how this ends.”
