My lungs burn. The tunnel air tastes like rust.
I keep my compad pressed tight, feeling the vibration of distant explosions through the concrete.
And inside my pocket, inside my data, inside my screaming heart, I carry one critical thing the Nine didn’t plan on:
A partial biometric imprint tied to High Lantern.
Not a name yet.
But a trail.
And I’m going to follow it until it leads me to the person who thought they could restart a war like it was a machine.
CHAPTER 28
LONARI
The safehouse turns into a throat the second the Nine breaches.
Concrete dust hangs in the air like gray fog. It coats my tongue, gritty and bitter, and every breath tastes like burned stone and metal shavings. The lights stutter overhead—one strip flickering like it’s trying to decide whether to die now or later—and the corridor beyond the breach flashes with muzzle light, sharp white pulses that carve silhouettes out of smoke.
I don’t get the luxury of panic.
Panic is what you do when you don’t have people depending on you.
“Choke One, hold!” I bark into Ghostline, my voice steady even as the walls vibrate with impacts. “Two on the left alcove. Don’t let them stack the door.”
Rook’s voice snaps back, clipped. “Copy. They’re pushing hard.”
“They always push hard,” I growl, and I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, not frantic—focused.
I glance down the service tunnel where Jordan disappeared with my escort, her compad clutched to her chest like a lifeorgan. She looks back once, eyes wide in that way humans get when adrenaline turns them feral.
“Go,” I tell her, sharp. “Don’t look for permission.”
Her jaw tightens. She hates being ordered. She hates being protected. She hates all the things that keep her alive.
But she goes.
Good.
Now I can do what I’m good at.
I pivot into the main corridor and the world narrows to geometry.
Cover. Angles. Sound. The way footsteps echo tells me how many bodies are coming. The way the air smells tells me what kind of weapon they’re using—hot ozone means energy discharge, sharp chemical bite means explosives, and right now the air reeks of clean ionization.
Alliance-grade.
Not the sloppy black-market stuff you find in Gur alleys. Not the home-brewed plasma throwers criminals love because they look scary.
This is precision.
This is funded.
A shot snaps past my head, close enough that I feel heat skim my scales. It hits the wall behind me and leaves a neat cauterized crater.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “That’s not cheap.”
