He waves a hand. “We’ll coordinate. You’ll know when.”
“Cool,” I say, standing up, my armor whispering against itself. “I’ll keep my compad open.”
“You do that,” he says, raising his glass in a mock toast. “To new partnerships.”
I tap the rim with one claw. “To golden exits.”
And then I’m gone.
I wait till the lift doors close before I speak.
“Did you get all that?”
Lazarus’s voice comes through the subdermal implant nestled behind my ear like a ghost with a clipboard.
“Crystal clear,” he says. “The whole restaurant’s tapped. Audio, visual, ambient thermal. We’ve got it from five angles.”
I exhale through my nose. My smile fades.
“Think he bought it?”
“Enough to put things in motion. This recording alone would bury him in Alliance court. But I want the others. I want Tugun. I want names.”
“You’ll get 'em,” I say.
The lift drops, thrumming quietly as it descends through layers of glittering Novaria decadence. I flex my fists. My knuckles crack like gunfire.
“Prep the team,” I mutter. “This is the beginning of the end, Commandant. I want all eyes up. Because when Tugun makes his move?”
“We make ours,” Lazarus finishes.
Exactly.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror-polished lift walls. The hulking red monster with gold eyes and scarred plates stares back.
You wanted war, Otto?
Buckle the hell up.
CHAPTER 20
SABLE
Something’s wrong.
I know it before I open my eyes. Before my compad chimes. Before the city’s light pollution starts leaking through the slats of my blinds like cheap perfume.
The air feels off. Too still. The silence in my apartment isn’t peaceful—it’s suffocating. Like the building itself is holding its breath.
I roll out of bed in a T-shirt and nothing else, pulse already climbing. The floor’s cold under my feet. Voltar’s not back yet—he said he had a “thing,” which, in his language, could mean anything from a classified recon mission to hunting a rat in the alley for fun.
He didn’t specify, and I didn’t ask. Maybe I should have.
The hallway is dim, the soft red security glow barely illuminating the path to the front door. I listen. Nothing. No hovercars outside. No clack of boots from the patrol posted outside.
It’s too quiet.
Way too quiet.
