They’re coming for the node like it’s the last lifeboat off a sinking ship.
And the Alliance?—
The Alliance is coming too.
The first warship appears in orbit just after dawn, sliding into position like a predator settling into a blind spot. Then another. Then three more. By mid-afternoon the sky is threaded with unfamiliar constellations, sharp white hulls glinting through cloud breaks like knives.
“Stabilization orders,” Mara reads off her compad, lips curling. “That’s what they’re calling it.”
“Of course they are,” I mutter.
Banks lock civilian accounts without warning. Power flickers across the district in rolling brownouts. The Holonet crawls. Transit shuts down three major lines and quietly reroutes the rest away from Fierson.
People start sleeping in the tunnels.
Families. Kids. Old men with shopping carts full of their lives.
I walk the district until my feet ache, talking to everyone I can find. Shop owners. Street crews. Neighborhood aunties who survived three different regimes and don’t trust any of them. I tell them the truth.
That something valuable is buried here.
That men with guns are coming to take it.
That we are not leaving.
Some people pack anyway.
Most of them don’t.
By nightfall I’ve memorized every route, every alley, every service tunnel access point that isn’t already collapsed or flooded. I mark fallback positions on my compad until the battery runs hot in my hand.
Vox finds me crouched in a stairwell at midnight, staring at a projection of evacuation corridors.
“You’re planning for your own assassination,” she says.
I don’t look up. “I’m planning for yours too. You’re welcome.”
She watches me for a long moment. “You know you’re not supposed to be good at this.”
I finally glance at her. “Trauma builds skill sets.”
A ghost of a smile. Then she sobers. “If this goes bad…”
“It’s going to go bad,” I say. “That’s not the question.”
She exhales. “You really won’t leave.”
“Nope.”
“You really won’t let him hide you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Even though it would probably save your life.”
I think of Tur pacing the safehouse like a haunted animal. Of the way his hands shook when he thought I was asleep.
“I’m done surviving by shrinking,” I say quietly.
