I exhale. “I’m alive.”
A beat. Then her voice, softer: “And Morazin?”
“Alive,” I say.
Her breath shakes. “Good.”
I can hear the emotion she’s trying to swallow. The fear. The relief. The anger. It hits me harder than the cold water ever could.
“We’re moving to the Nun,” I tell her. “My vault.”
Jordan’s voice sharpens. “Your personal vault?”
“Yes.”
Fyr snorts beside me. “Oh, fantastic. Kings and traitors in the same room.”
“Accurate,” I say dryly.
We move fast through back corridors and industrial alleys, using Kaijen access routes Jordan keeps clearing ahead—traffic locks opening, cameras looping, comm distortions bleeding through the grid like fog.
We reach the Defrocked Nun through a service entrance that smells like bleach and perfume fighting for dominance. The contrast hits like a slap after sewage tunnels. Warm air. Soft music. People laughing, unaware there’s a war crawling under their feet.
I take Morazin straight down.
Past guards who don’t ask questions because my face answers them.
Down into the Nun’s bones.
My personal vault sits beneath the building like a secret heart—thick doors, redundant locks, shielded walls that block comm signals and dampen sound. It was built for holding kings and traitors, people too valuable to kill and too dangerous to free.
Morazin looks around as we enter, eyes wide.
“What is this?” he whispers.
“A room where lies come to die,” Fyr mutters.
I lock Morazin into a restraint frame bolted to the floor—stronger than the chair, tighter. The vault hums with its own power grid. The air here is cool, dry, metallic—clean in a way that makes violence feel sharper.
I step back and finally allow myself to breathe.
Fyr leans against the wall, breathing hard, pain etched into his face. His eyes burn as he looks at me.
“This is what you chose,” he says quietly. “People die. We lose ground. The Nine tightens its grip. And you still refuse to end the problem.”
I meet his gaze. The air tastes like copper and steel.
“You think killing Morazin ends the threat,” I say.
“It ends this chase,” Fyr snaps.
“It ends our leverage,” I counter. “It ends the one thing that forces the IHC and Alliance to acknowledge the conspiracy.”
Fyr’s eyes narrow. “You’re choosing Jordan’s morality over Kaijen survival.”
I feel the words hit, sharp.
Jordan. Always Jordan in people’s mouths now, like she’s an infection.
