“You’re not what they built me for,” I say quietly.
“Good,” she replies. “Because what they built you for sucks.”
Something in my chest loosens.
Just a fraction.
I pick up the EMP spike casing and pocket it with hands that are still shaking.
“Let’s go,” I say.
She falls into step beside me without comment.
The warehouse looms ahead.
The night hums around us.
And for the first time in my life, control doesn’t feel like a cage.
It feels like something I can hold.
CHAPTER 13
KIMBERLY
The safehouse kitchen always smells faintly like instant coffee that’s been reheated too many times.
It’s late. Not midnight-late, but that heavy, off-kilter hour when your body thinks it should be sleeping and your brain is still wired on cortisol and unfinished business. The overhead light hums with a thin, electrical whine that makes my temples ache if I pay too much attention to it, and the air feels stale, recycled through too many filters that were never meant to handle adrenaline and fear and two people who are lying to each other by omission.
Tur is standing at the counter with his back to me, disassembling and reassembling a compact pulse pistol with mechanical, unnecessary precision.
Click.
Slide.
Tap.
Lock.
Over and over.
He hasn’t looked at me since he came back from the warehouse.
I don’t raise my voice when I speak.
That’s how he knows it’s bad.
“You’re hiding something from me.”
The words land softly.
They hit anyway.
His hands pause for half a second over the weapon.
Then they keep moving.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
