La Sirena is eight minutes away when the call comes.
Nico. I answer on the first ring, half my attention still on the route ahead, running the entry points, calculating positions, how many soldiers Gunner can hold at the service entrance while I take the main floor—
"It's not here." His voice is wrong. The tone is nothing like his usual military clip.
"What?"
"The assault. They're not at La Sirena, Logan. They hit the Gilded Lily."
For one second, the world simply stops.
Then it crashes through me all at once. Jimmy. Sitting in holding at La Sirena, having already fired off whatever message he needed to fire. Three years of learning how I think, how I plan, what I do when the empire comes under threat. The evacuation protocol — non-combatants to the Gilded Lily, controlled entry, far enough from the main threat.
He gave them the playbook. He gave them all of it.
I sent her there.
Twenty minutes ago I had my hands in her hair and she was telling me she wasn't alone anymore, and I kissed her goodbye and drove away into the wrong fight.
The car turns hard — the wheel yanked, tires screaming against the pavement — and I'm already racing back the way I came, city lights smearing past the windows.
The guilt doesn't arrive like a wave. It arrives like an earthquake, everything shifting at once. Her face wet with tears.I'll come back.That's what I said. And Jimmy had already given them the address.
I seal it. Press it flat, let everything else run over the top of it, because she needs me functional.
"When?" My voice comes out level. I don't know how.
"They hit it fast. Three minutes ago, maybe. Our people are engaged but outnumbered."
Marisol is there. Juliet. The Siren. Wren.
Still aliveis the only thing I'm allowed to want.
The car does ninety on a street that doesn't allow it. I don't care.
"I'm four minutes out," I tell Nico. "Get everyone there. Now."
The Gilded Lily is still dark when I arrive. Three vehicles in the lot that weren't there when I left, doors hanging open. Two of our security people down on the pavement — one moving, one not.
I'm out of the car in an instant.
Inside is worse.
Shattered glass everywhere, scattered from the windows in arcs across the floor. Tables overturned. Bodies down on both sides — I can't stop to count, can't stop to identify. Neon light from a neighboring club bleeds through the shot-out windows in sick pink strips, and the smell of gunpowder and spilled alcohol is sharp in the air.
I take cover behind an overturned table and look for Wren, but I can’t see her anywhere. A dark shadow moves across the stage, but I can’t tell if he’s friendly, so I hold my fire.
Gunner comes in beside me, crouching behind the same table, just minutes behind me. His weapon is drawn.
A Zayas soldier moves through the club toward the stage, and then Gunner is between me and that man and something happens that I will not forget.
He doesn't shoot. He closes the distance in three steps, gets inside the gun, and breaks the man's arm at the elbow with his bare hands. The crack is audible from the other side of the room. The soldier falls. Gunner doesn't look at him again. Already moving to the next target.
Precise. Each movement its own complete sentence, nothing wasted.
Another soldier comes around the back bar — bigger, faster, expecting to have the advantage. Gunner hits him twice. The second blow drives the man's face into the edge of a table and he goes down and stays down. No drama. No hesitation. Gunner steps over him and continues.
A knife appears in his hand. I didn't see him draw it.
