Jordan’s jaw flexes, and I see that familiar stubbornness rise—her instinct to push back against any boundary, even a protective one.
I set the glass down. “Jordan. Listen.”
She looks up.
“Fyr’s moving,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow. “Fyr is…?”
“A problem,” I say. “An old one.”
The words barely leave my mouth before the lights flicker.
Not a full outage. A brief stutter—like the building’s heartbeat misses a beat.
Jordan’s head snaps toward the ceiling. “That wasn’t you.”
“No,” I say.
The suite’s environmental system sighs, then the vent temperature shifts—cool air turning warmer, heavier, like someone rerouting flow through the ducts.
Jordan sits up straighter, alert now in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with pattern recognition.
“Someone’s in the service grid,” she says.
My blood cools.
The door panel remains dark—no entry request, no knock. Which means nobody’s coming in the honest way.
Jordan swings her legs off the bed. “Bathroom,” she says suddenly.
“What?” I ask.
“Now,” she snaps, already moving. “If they gas the room, the bathroom has independent filtration. Probably. It’s a luxury suite.”
I don’t ask how she knows that. She knows systems the way I know knives.
We move—Jordan to the bathroom door, me to the wall panel where the suite’s internal sensors can be accessed.
The next flicker hits.
Then the suite door chimes—soft, polite.
A voice comes through the speaker, smooth as oil.
“Boss,” it says. “It’s Fyr. I need a word.”
Jordan freezes in the doorway, eyes wide.
My jaw tightens. “What do you want?”
“Just a word,” Fyr says, voice warm, friendly, the kind of warmth that makes my scales itch. “Kel’s worried. We’re all worried. I’d like to talk.”
I glance at Jordan.
She mouths:Do not open that.
I don’t.
