“I will not be erased quietly.”
The pressure in my chest stirs faintly, low and strange and deeply irritating, like some traitorous internal committee is trying to vote on my life without consulting me.
“Sit the fuck down,” I mutter at my own rib cage.
I push myself up off the narrow cot with my good arm and immediately regret the ambition as pain lances through my injured side and my vision goes glittery at the edges.
“Cool,” I pant. “Love being a functional adult right now.”
I grab the wall and steady myself, breathing through my nose until the world stops tilting, and then limp out into the corridor because lying in that room with that footage and those messages is going to end with me doing something deeply inadvisable, like screaming until I rupture something internal.
The safehouse hums with quiet, invisible activity.
I can feel it now, the way you can feel electricity in the air before a storm breaks.
There’s a faint subsonic vibration through the concrete under my bare feet, a soft, almost musical hum threaded into the walls that wasn’t there yesterday. Tiny status lights blink green in ceiling corners I’m fairly sure did not have status lights in them last night. The air smells faintly of ozone and warm electronics layered over antiseptic and dust.
Tur’s been busy.
Of course he has.
I round the corner into the main corridor and nearly run straight into him.
He stops dead an inch from my face, his reflexes snapping him to a halt so fast the air seems to pop between us.
“Jesus Christ,” I snap. “Do you announce yourself, or is lurking your whole brand?”
His eyes drop instantly to my arm.
“You’re not supposed to be walking,” he says.
My jaw tightens.
“Great,” I say flatly. “Good to know I’ve already been promoted to cargo status.”
He winces.
Not subtly.
“What are you doing up,” he asks carefully, like he’s defusing a bomb instead of talking to a woman whose restaurant just got firebombed.
“I’m watching footage of my life getting turned into a charcoal briquette,” I say. “And deleting evacuation offers from people who think I should quietly disappear off-world until the mob gets bored of trying to kill me.”
Silence stretches.
His shoulders tense.
“They’re threatening your staff,” he says quietly.
My laugh comes out sharp and humorless.
“Oh good, so the hits are now expanding into psychological warfare and extortion. Love a diversified crime portfolio.”
“They’re marking you for isolation,” he continues. “Cutting off your support network. Forcing displacement.”
I step closer to him.
On purpose.
