I close my eyes for a moment, letting the warmth settle.
Outside, Gur hums. Not healed. Not safe.
But alive.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m not just surviving inside a machine.
I’m building one that can’t be used against us as easily.
I open my eyes, look at the ring again, and the weight of the choice doesn’t feel like a chain.
It feels like a handle.
Something to hold onto when the world shakes.
CHAPTER 40
LONARI
Morning tastes like ash and citrus in the Defrocked Nun.
It’s always both. The building has a way of pretending it’s clean while keeping the memory of violence in its grout. The vents push perfume. The servers push heat. And somewhere in the bones of this place, Morazin still breathes like an owed debt.
I stand in the transfer bay—underground, sealed, lit by harsh white strips that make everyone look guilty. The concrete is cold under my boots. The air smells like antiseptic and metal and the faint sour tang of nerves.
Jordan is beside me, shoulders squared, hair pinned back like she’s going to court, not to a handoff that could get a witness killed in twelve different ways. The ring I gave her catches the light when she moves her hand. It shouldn’t look right on her—something that symbolic on someone so practical—but it does.
Because she chose it.
Because she choseme.
The neutral tribunal convoy sits behind a blast door: three armored transports bearing the seals of “Oversight,” “Tribunal,” and “Stabilization.” Words that mean almost nothing until there’s a rifle behind them.
“Confirm the protocols,” I say.
Sable’s voice comes through my ear, calm. “Dead-man protocols armed. Morazin biometrics tied to global release. If he flatlines, evidence dumps everywhere.”
Jordan’s mouth tightens. “If he even dips,” she adds, “the system flags tampering and pushes a public alert.”
I glance at her. “You didn’t have to make it that aggressive.”
Jordan doesn’t look away from the monitors. “Yes I did.”
And that’s the thing about her. She doesn’t negotiate with predators. She builds traps predators can’t ignore.
Morazin is rolled in on a restraint gurney—still injured, shoulder wrapped, skin pale. He looks smaller now that his arrogance has been punctured on camera. Smaller… but still dangerous. The kind of dangerous that hides behind civility.
He sees Jordan and tries to smirk. It comes out like a grimace.
“Congratulations,” he rasps. “You get your tribunal.”
Jordan leans close enough that the guards tense. Her voice is low, crisp. “You get to live if you keep talking.”
Morazin swallows. “And if I don’t?”
Jordan lifts her compad slightly so he can see the red icon on her screen—biometric trigger armed, ready to detonate truth like a bomb.
“Then you die,” she says evenly, “and the world burns anyway.”
