They’re terrible at it.
Their eyes keep flicking up every time my tool kit clinks. Like I’m going to turn around and bite them. Like human teeth are suddenly a syndicate threat.
I don’t look down. I don’t give them the satisfaction.
“Node thirty-seven,” I mutter, half to myself, half to the machine. “You had one job.”
The node flashes a weak red diagnostic ping. It’s been “one job”-ing badly since the warehouse hit last night.
Everyone’s acting like the Nine’s scorch mark is just a message. Like it’s a flex. Like it’s about pride.
I can feel it in my gut that it’s about timing.
Which is worse.
I pop the panel open farther. The inside is a mess—microfractures in the fiber coupler, a power regulator that’s been overdriven hard enough to warp, and a security shim that doesn’t match Kaijen standard. That last part makes my stomach go cold.
Someone touched this.
Not clumsy sabotage. Something more surgical. Like they wanted it to fail at a specific moment, in a specific way.
“Cute,” I whisper.
I pull my compad closer, run a sweep, and start bypassing the damaged coupler with a temporary splice. My hands steady as soon as I’m in the work. My brain knows this. Wires don’t lie. Signals don’t pretend they’re your friends.
People do.
A shadow blocks the light from the corridor below.
Then another.
The guards straighten like they’ve been yanked by strings.
I don’t need to look to know who it is. I smell him before I hear him—antiseptic clinging to scales, old blood underneath, and that sharper scent of pain medication that never quite masks reality.
Fyr.
His voice reaches me rough and dry. “So this is what the famous little human does. Fixes cameras.”
I keep my eyes on the wiring. “Also rewires your security network so your enemies can’t stroll through the back door. You’re welcome.”
He snorts. The sound is a cough pretending to be humor.
I finally glance down.
He’s standing with one arm still braced close to his torso, posture stubbornly upright like gravity’s an insult. Bandagespeek under his dark coat. His eyes are bright with that specific kind of anger that comes from waking up to a world that kept moving while you were unconscious.
And he’s looking at me like I’m a loose nail in a foundation.
“You’re bleeding into our systems,” he says, as if that’s a diagnosis.
I lift my chin. “I’m fixing your systems. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” Fyr asks. He takes a step forward. The guards shift subtly—protective of him, wary of me. “Or are you just embedding yourself deeper so when the time comes, you can pull the knife out clean?”
I let my tool pause in my hand. My pulse ticks once, hard, behind my eyes.
“Wow,” I say slowly. “You wake up and immediately choose to be exhausting.”
