Not small shakes.
Big ones.
“Not today,” I mutter. “Not fucking today.”
The tracking signal doesn’t disappear.
It narrows.
They’re bracketing me.
Someone in Oversight just noticed something anomalous light up under a syndicate-controlled restaurant and decided to take a closer look.
I sever the implant’s external interface completely, ripping out the firmware bridge I installed years ago to keep them from pulling me back into a black site.
Pain lances through my skull like a nail being driven behind my eye.
I grunt and drop to one knee, one hand braced against the floor as sparks dance at the edges of my vision.
“Worth it,” I rasp.
The signal fuzzes.
Wobbles.
Then steadies again.
Persistent.
They know I’m here.
They just don’t know exactly where here is yet.
I force myself to breathe.
Slow.
Controlled.
Professional.
I instinctively conceal the discovery beneath my feet, collapsing the sensory footprint of the buried node and smearing its energy signature with background noise until it looks like a benign utility fluctuation instead of a dormant transit hub that could rewrite the balance of power in three sectors.
If Alliance systems flag this place before I figure out what the hell to do with this information, Kimberly’s life expectancy drops from “bad” to “measured in hours.”
I straighten slowly and look around the ruin again, seeing it now with a new layer of horror superimposed over the old one.
This place wasn’t just her restaurant.
It was a lid.
A piece of camouflage.
And the Nine weren’t just trying to kill her.
They were trying to evict whatever was sitting under her floor.
My jaw locks hard enough to make my temples ache.
