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I dug my thumbs into the knot of muscle at the base of his neck.

He groaned, head dropping forward. “Fuck. That feels good.”

I worked my thumbs in deeper, finding the center of the spasm and pressing hard. He hissed, but he leaned back into my hands, surrendering the weight of his upper body to me. I worked the tension out of him, kneading the muscle with slow pressure. My fingers slid over his damp skin, tracing the line of his spine and the sharp blades of his shoulders. He felt fragile under my hands, but I knew the strength coiled inside him.

I moved down his back, smoothing out the strain in the lats. The friction of skin on skin sent a low hum of heat through my veins. I wanted to lean forward, to press my chest against his back and wrap my arms around him, to bury my face in the curve of his neck and taste the salt on his skin. I wanted to mark him again, just to prove he was still here.

“You’re a dickhead,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“You’re trapped down here with a cripple, with no food or water, while the entire security force hunts us.”

“I know.”

“So what’s the plan, Captain?”

Felix winced as he shifted his legs, sitting cross-legged on the tarp. The massage had brought some color back to his face, but his eyes were dark with the reality of our situation.

“We can’t run,” he said, staring at the spinning turbines. “The perimeter is locked down. I checked the schematics and if we try to breach the outer wall, the automated turrets will shred us before we make it ten yards.”

“So we hide?”

“Hiding is just dying slowly,” he said, wiping grease from his cheek. “We have no supplies. If we stay down here, we dehydrate in two days, but if we go up, they shoot us on sight.”

“So we pick between thirst and a bullet,” I said flatly. “Tempting.”

“No.” His eyes narrowed as the calculation returned. The computer behind the blue eyes was spinning up again. “Tegula thinks he can replace you with Helier and ship you off to the Front, and the Board will accept it because the metrics look good. He controls the narrative.”

“He owns the narrative, Felix. He owns the feed.”

“But he doesn’t own the audience,” Felix said. “Tomorrow is the Final Selection ceremony, the biggest broadcast of the year where they announce the National Team roster live to the entire country. The press, the sponsors, everyone will be there.”

“He’ll arrest us the second we step in.”

“Not if we aren’t alone,” Felix said, pulling the cracked datapad from his pocket. The screen was spiderwebbed, but it glowed to life in the darkness. “I still have the override codes. I can access the internal comms and message the team.”

“Sylla and Varo?” I said. “They’re cowards. They watched you carry Anatol’s bag and did nothing.”

“They aren’t cowards, they are survivors,” Felix said. “And they saw what we did on the field. They saw us break the algorithm. They know that if the Director can dispose of me, then none of them are safe. We aren’t asking them to be heroes; we are asking them to save their own skins.”

He tapped the screen, fingers flying over the interface.

“We need witnesses,” he said. “We need the squad to stand with us. If the entire National Team refuses to play without us, Tegula loses his leverage. He can’t liquidate the entire roster two days before the season starts, the investors would riot.”

It was a massive, reckless gamble that relied on the loyalty of men who had been trained to eat their own young, but I looked at the fire in Felix’s eyes and believed him.

“Text them,” I said.

Felix sent the message.

The silence of the boiler room pressed in on us. The die was cast. We were either going to live as legends or die as traitors.

“You gave it all up,” I said, looking at his ruined shirt. “Rank One. The Exemption. The future. Why?”

“I didn’t like the future they picked for me,” Felix murmured, his head lolling back against my shoulder. “It was cold.”

“It was safe. You were the King.”