Fades.
Maybe confused. Maybe recalculating.
I don’t wait to find out.
I burn hard—engines flaring, the shuttle rattling as acceleration presses me into the seat. Stars sharpen in the viewport like teeth.
I set my course toward Clint’s corridor route, toward the legal artery disguised as medical logistics, toward the meeting that might keep me from being labeled a threat by the same institution that once kept me alive by filing me away.
My hands stop shaking.
Not because I’m calm.
Because I’m committed.
Behind me, Gur fractures into skirmishes and syndicate tension.
Ahead of me, the corridor waits—and somewhere on a scuffed ship called the Aces High, an ex–IHC Marine with cybernetic reflexes and a headache is probably yelling at a seven-foot Odex to stop blasting Bon Jovi while they prepare to do something illegal for the sake of the truth.
I tighten my harness and whisper to the empty cockpit, “Try to contain me.”
Then I fly.
CHAPTER 12
LONARI
The financial vault under the Defrocked Nun smells like cold metal and old lies.
It’s not a poetic smell. It’s practical—sterile air scrubbed too hard, ink-ghosts from paper ledgers nobody touches anymore, and that faint chemical tang from coolant lines running behind the walls, keeping servers from cooking themselves to death. The floor vibrates with the building’s heartbeat above us: muffled bass, distant laughter, the occasional sharp shout that says someone just lost a fortune and wants to blame the universe for it.
Down here, the universe doesn’t get blamed.
Down here, the universe gets audited.
Fyr walks beside me like he’s attending his own funeral. His suit is perfect. His eyes are not. They keep flicking to corners, to cameras, to shadows, like he’s trying to memorize all the exits in case I decide today is the day I settle a score permanently.
He should be nervous. He tried to gas my suite. He thought he could do it quietly. He thought I’d swallow it.
Now he’s in my vault.
And I’m in a mood.
Renn is behind us with two guards—loyal ones, quiet ones—hands near their weapons, eyes hard. I can taste tension in the air like electricity on the tongue.
I stop at the main console—a thick slab of black composite with biometric readers and a manual key slot that looks ancient and stubborn, like the vault itself refuses to trust anything purely digital.
I turn to Fyr.
“Open it,” I say.
Fyr’s mouth tightens. “Lonari?—”
“Open. It.”
His gaze flicks to the guards, then back to me. “Kel didn’t authorize?—”
I step closer until my shadow covers him, and I keep my voice low enough that it feels like a knife pressed flat against his ribs.
