Chapter 7
CARTER
By the time I hit the freeway, the sun’s turning the horizon into a blood smear. The world smells of gasoline, salt, and bad memories. Rebel fades in my mirrors, but not in my head. Every time I blink, I see her, chin up, anger blazing, Alex’s ghost living behind her eyes.
I tell myself I’m finished with all of this. No partners, no missions, no saints or sinners rewriting the same story. But the truth? I’ve been orbiting that woman since the moment she said her name, then she looked at me like I was both a suspect and a solution.
I take the long way home, cutting through the old oil fields where the pumps still bow like penitents in rust and dawn. My place sits on the far edge of the industrial district, an abandoned shipping office I rebuilt from bones and bad wiring. From the street, it looks forgotten. Perfect.
Inside, it’s something else altogether. Concrete floors.
Reinforced windows. Two rooms, one for sleeping, one for working.
The furniture is practical, heavy, and uninviting.
A couch that’s seen better days, a table made from a cut-in-half ammo crate.
Nothing here is accidental. Nothing here is sentimental.
I drop my keys on the workbench and peel off my jacket.
The cut Rebel wrapped still burns along my arm, tight under the bandage.
I should rewrap it, but instead, I reach for the bottle on the counter and pour two fingers of whiskey.
It catches the setting sun, amber and unrepentant.
For a second, I see her hands in the clean edge of the bandage, steady and stubborn. I swallow the thought with the burn.
The walls hum with silence. I built them that way, insulated and sealed, with no echoes. But silence doesn’t stop memories.
Alex’s photo sits on the shelf above my desk. Us, years ago, before everything broke. He’s got that grin that could talk you into a storm. I look older now, harder, less human.
“Guess I didn’t keep my promise very well,” I mutter.
My phone vibrates on the table. Burner line, no ID. A text flashes on the screen:
VULTURES // NODE REACTIVATED — SL LOGISTICS.
I straighten. The name drills through my ribs. SL Logistics, Alex’s old cover company. Dead and buried, or so I thought.
I cross to the desk, turn on the monitors, and type fast. The servers kick up, and the screens flare to life in rows of data and static. I dig through encrypted trails, cross-reference dormant nodes, and watch one IP blink back to life.
Downtown L.A. Abandoned textile plant. Same quadrant the Vultures used before the hit on Alex.
“Son of a bitch.”
The cursor blinks like it knows I’m already in too deep. I keep tracing. Every ping opens a new shadow of contract IDs, old shell accounts, and recycled signatures.
Then the last one hits me like a round to the chest. A. Slade — verified authorization.
My pulse spikes sharply enough to blur the edges of the screen. Someone’s resurrected Alex’s digital ghost.
The comms channel crackles before I can shut it down. A new signal piggybacks my feed, clean, confident, familiar. You didn’t knock, soldier.
Divine. Of course. The Royal Harlots’ hacker.
“Persistent,” I mutter, typing back.
Stay off my system, sweetheart. You don’t know what you’re in.
Wrong, she replies. I know exactly what I’m in. You just don’t like being seen.
My jaw tightens. She’s skilled. Better than I thought. That makes this harder.
You light up my network again, you’ll bring company we don’t want.
Too late.
That’s when I hear the sound of distant engines outside, the low rumble of approaching tires. My exterior sensors blink red across the monitor. Two black SUVs. No plates. No hesitation.
“Goddammit.”
I grab my gun, shove the laptop into a go-bag, and kill the lights. By the time the first bullet shatters the front window, I’m already out the side door. Concrete dust rains down as I sprint toward the alley.
The next shot misses by inches, sparking off the metal doorframe. I return fire once, quick and precise, just to buy space. Then I’m on the bike, engine roaring to life.
The chase is short, brutal, and loud. I cut hard through side streets I’ve known by heart for years, pushing my bike faster until their headlights vanish from my mirrors. My pulse doesn’t slow until the skyline reappears.
Normally, I’d vanish. New burner, new ID, new coast. But Alex’s name on that file, and Rebel’s face when I lied to her, won’t let me run. The Vultures are here. And if I’m right, they’ve already breached the one place that shouldn’t exist on paper.
The Royal Harlots’ network.
I turn the bike north.
By the time I reach the compound, evening has burned itself out. The gate looms ahead, all steel teeth and humming sensors. The Royal Harlots crest glows gold and scarlet under the floodlights.
I kill the engine and wait.
An intercom buzzes. A woman’s voice, smooth and dangerous, slides through the speaker. “You brought a tail, soldier. Not a great first impression.”
“Didn’t have a choice,” I answer. “They found me.”
“Yeah,” Divine’s voice purrs, “I can see that. Next time you decide to ghost my firewall, maybe try not to drag a kill team behind you.”
Before I can answer, the gate hisses open. Two women in cuts step out, rifles at ease but eyes sharp. One smirks as she looks me over. “Are you Carter Bishop?”
“Unfortunately.”
She grins. “Rebel’s got interesting taste.”
“Rebel exaggerates.”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
They motion me through, closing the gate behind. The place is alive now with engines starting, voices echoing, and lights flaring to full alert.
Divine’s waiting for me on the porch. Tall, lethal, tablet in hand. The kind of calm that could flay you alive with a smile.
“You tripped my system,” she says, not looking up. “Then you brought a convoy to my front door.”
“Not intentionally.”
“Funny, that’s what hackers say right before the explosion.”
“I’m not a hacker.”
“Clearly. You left footprints big enough to GPS from space.”
I bite back a retort as alarms start pulsing through the compound.
Floodlights sweep the perimeter. Boots hit asphalt, leather flashes under light.
No panic, just purpose. The women move fast, falling into formation.
This isn’t a bar or a clubhouse anymore.
It’s a military outpost in lipstick and leather.
Divine scans her tablet, frowning. “They’re pinging our outer network. Digital and physical breach attempts.”
I step closer. “Show me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve got three data signatures rotating on a fixed loop. They’re probing your sandbox for lag response. They’re not just scouting. They’re mapping your power grid.”
She shoots me a look. “And you know that how?”
“Because I used to be the one writing the maps.” I know exactly how much damage they can cause once they finish drawing them.
Her eyes narrow. For a second, I think she’ll tell me to get out. But then the screen flickers red. Three flashing dots converging on her firewall.
“Shit,” she mutters. “They’re fast.”
“Not faster than me.”
She hesitates, then shoves the auxiliary keyboard toward me. “Touch anything stupid and I’ll shoot you.”
“Fair.”
We work in silence, fingers flying. She counters their signal bursts while I reroute power between decoy nodes.
The compound hums like a living thing, alive with electricity and warning klaxons.
Sweat stings my eyes, my shoulder throbs under Rebel’s clean wrap, and I focus on the code because it’s easier than focusing on the girl whose name is threaded through all of this.
“Who the hell are these people?” she asks.
“The Vultures,” I tell her. “And they’re not people. They’re professionals.”
“Rebel’s not gonna like this.”
“She doesn’t like me already.”
“True.” Divine’s mouth curves faintly. “But she trusts her instincts. And right now, they’re the only thing keeping you breathing.”
We isolate the breach, trap the remaining packets in a closed loop, and reroute the signal into a dead node. The monitors stabilize.
“Locked,” she says. “For now.”
I sit back and exhale slowly. My shoulder’s screaming again, and the blood on my bandage’s gone dark.
Divine studies me for a long moment. “You’re bleeding through Rebel’s handiwork.”
“I’ll live.”
“You might not if you keep running solo ops in my city.”
Her voice softens, not quite sympathy, but something close. “You’ve been off-grid for a reason. So why crawl back now?”
I meet her gaze. “Because someone used Alex Slade’s name to wake up a network that should’ve died with him.”
Her expression flickers, curiosity breaking through the steel. “Then I guess we find out who just played necromancer.”
She stands, calling into her comm. “Allura, you’re gonna want to see this.”
As the compound settles into an uneasy quiet, I step out into the night air.
The engines cool. The smell of oil and metal lingers.
On Divine’s screen, a watermark I hoped I’d never see flickers.
A gear hugged by a vulture’s wing. Silver Talon invoices will be ash by morning, but the map they point to won’t be.
Somewhere inside, Rebel’s probably pacing, furious that I came back.
You can’t outrun ghosts. You can only decide who bleeds when they catch up. She counts the money. I count the bodies. And if I miscalculate again, the next one on the list won’t be mine.
It’ll be hers.