We drink in silence, but the world outside is starting to move again. The wind shakes the window. The clock ticks louder. Somewhere in the distance, a first drone buzzes low over the tree line.
I flex my hand, testing the stitches. They hold.
Landon looks at me, something fierce and almost tender in his face.
“Scared?” he asks, and for a second I think he means himself.
But he’s talking about me.
I shake my head. “Not of them.”
He nods, satisfied. “Good.”
He stands, moves to the window, and peers out through the corner of the tarp. “Should we run now, or wait until they get here?”
I watch the line of his back, the way his shoulders set. He’s afraid, but he’s not going to freeze. He’s going to fight, even if it kills him.
I like that.
Getting up, the pain in my side already dulls to a background hum, and move to the window with him. The woods outside are a black mass, but the security lights on the road catch the glint of something metallic moving low. The drone coming for a second sweep.
I touch his hand, just once, and feel the way he jumps at the contact.
“Time to go,” I say.
He looks at me, nods, and grabs the bag of supplies and guns. I check the ammo, the weight of the gun cold and familiar in my hand.
As we slip out the back, the drone passes overhead. I shoot it down with a single round, and the noise is lost in the rush of wind.
Landon looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“Let’s move. Got shit stashed in the shed.”
The panic of the run fades the second I kill the drone. Its metal guts leak onto the needles, and the woods snap back to silent. Landon is behind me, breathing hard, adrenaline giving him a strange kind of clarity. We get to the shed quick enough.
The safe is at chest level, disguised by a panel of fake cinderblock. I thumb the code—six digits, my father’s birthday—and the door opens with a hiss. Inside, everything is just as I left it.
Stacks of currency in neat bricks. Euros, dollars, yen, some Rubles for old times’ sake. There’s a passport for every alias I ever burned, some of which might even get me past a border if I’m careful. Three black market handguns, each with four full mags, wiped and oiled. A flash drive, matte black and unlabelled, in a tamper-sealed bag. A SAT phone. At the back, behind a box of burner SIMs, is the real prize: a drive encrypted with House Harrington’s master key. The kind of thing that, in the wrong hands, could topple the whole city in under a day.
Landon leans in behind me, face pale in the gloom. “Is that—?”
“Everything we need to survive off-grid,” I say. “If we last that long.”
He lets out a low whistle. “You always this prepared?”
“Only when I know it’s coming.”
I load the bag, tucking the cash and passports in first, then the hardware. I pass Landon the lightest pistol, a Glock 19, and show him the safety again. He’s not ready, but that’s not the point.
“You’ll need to carry this,” I say. “Don’t shoot unless I say. Point, click. Point, click. Easy, okay? Pretend you’re playing a video game or something nerdy.”
He nods, jaw locked. The weight of it grounds him, maybe for the first time all day.
I check the window—no movement. The woods are still, the road empty. I let my breath out slow, feeling the tremor in my hands fade as I focus on the next steps.
I grab the bag and the phone. I’m about to head out the door, towards the vehicle I have stashed under a camo blanket when the SAT phone buzzes—a sound so foreign it freezes me in place.
I look at the display: “B. Brooks.”
