He nods once, minimal. “Clint will escort you to the corridor exit.”
Clint steps closer, eyes on me. When Dowron turns slightly to speak to his guards, Clint leans in and murmurs under his breath, “Jordan.”
I glance at him.
His voice is barely audible. “This corridor is compromised.”
Cold slides down my spine.
“What?” I whisper.
Clint’s eyes stay steady. “I don’t know how yet. But the timing’s off. Too many ‘routine’ checks. Too many quiet pings.”
My mouth goes dry. “So the meeting?—”
“Was a signal flare,” Clint finishes, jaw tight. “Move. Now.”
We’re backin the medical routing passage within minutes, and the corridor suddenly feels less sterile and more like a throat closing around me.
I keep moving, but my brain is already building contingencies as my body walks.
Dead-drop triggers.
Civilian nodes.
Satellite piggyback options.
If I can’t get this evidence through official channels, I’ll lace it through the cracks like poison through water.
I open my compad and start seeding triggers into civilian distribution nodes—entertainment packet relays, public holo-board caches, dumb little meme channels that nobody with a badge takes seriously. I hide encrypted proof inside mundane entertainment data—song overlays, holo filter packs, casino ad loops—because you can’t flag everything without admitting you’re censoring, and institutions hate being seen doing what they do.
Clint glances at my screen as we walk. “You’re dirtying the data stream.”
“I’m making it unkillable,” I whisper.
He huffs. “That’s my girl.”
The phrase hits me in the chest like warmth I don’t have time for.
We reach the outbound transit bay where my return transport waits—a small corridor-approved craft, bland as an envelope. The bay smells like antiseptic and fuel.
Clint stops me just before I board.
“Listen,” he says, eyes intense. “If anything feels off?—”
“It will,” I say.
He grimaces. “If my channel drops?—”
“It will,” I reply, because I can feel the universe lining up the shot.
Clint grabs my wrist suddenly, tight, not painful. He presses something into my palm.
A small token. Metal. Warm from his hand.
“Physical,” he mutters. “If you get grabbed, if everything goes dark—this gets you back to me if you can breathe long enough to use it.”
I curl my fingers around it. “Clint?—”
