She’s right.
She’s always right in the way that gets people killed.
I step closer to the terminal, lowering my voice. “You stay in the Nun.”
Jordan’s eyes flash. “I am.”
“And you let my people handle perimeter,” I continue.
She rolls her eyes. “Sure.”
I give her a hard look. “Jordan.”
She sighs, then nods once. “Fine. I’ll stay in your giant crime hotel. Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” I mutter.
Then I glance at the locked IHC terminal Clint was using earlier—still flagged, still red.
We’ve triggered alarms. We’ve caught a messenger. We’ve uncovered a directive pointing straight at High Command.
We’re no longer just hunting the Nine.
We’re hunting the bridge that feeds them.
And the bridge just felt us touch it.
CHAPTER 33
JORDAN
The dead-man packet looks innocent if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
It’s the kind of file that sits there like a bored little rectangle—no dramatic skull icon, no fireworks. Just encrypted junk wrapped in polite headers. The kind of thing a normal person would delete because it “won’t open.”
Which is exactly why it works.
I’m hunched over a terminal in the Nun’s operations room, the air around me humming with server heat and stale coffee. My hands smell like citrus sanitizer and metal from the case Lonari brought back—my fingers still faintly tingling from touching the agent’s jaw implant housing, like the plastic remembers being inside someone’s mouth.
Gross.
Useful.
Lonari is somewhere behind me, not hovering but present—like a wall you forget is there until you lean on it. Clint sits across the table, shoulders tight, eyes ringed with exhaustion. He hasn’t stopped scanning the room every few seconds like he expects IHC agents to pour out of the vents.
Honestly, same.
On my screen, the packet’s handshake signature pulses faintly. A tiny heartbeat of threat.
KEYED TO: HIGH LANTERN.
I tap my nails once against the desk to steady myself.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
Clint watches me with a mix of awe and dread. “You’re sure you can crack it without triggering another watchdog?”
“I’m not cracking the whole thing,” I say, voice clipped. “I’m peeling the outer layer. Like… like skinning an onion without making soup.”
