Chapter 35
KAIRO
The air outside the freight tunnels tastes like metal and rain. The old access gate moans when I shove it open, sound echoing down the corridor like a warning. Every instinct in me says don’t go farther.
I do anyway.
The Redscale safehouse used to hum—low power lines, generators, voices behind reinforced doors. Tonight it’s dead.
No guards.
No light.
Just the slow drip of condensation off a burst coolant pipe.
My boots scuff through dust. It hasn’t been disturbed in hours. The silence is wrong; it’s the kind that doesn’t feel empty but vacant, like something’s been pulled out of the world and left a vacuum behind.
“Jav?” My voice bounces off the steel walls. “Garkin? Anyone?”
Nothing. Not even the static of a power cell left running.
I step into the main bay. It smells of ozone and faint smoke—burnt wiring and the ghosts of plasma discharge. Tables overturned. A few bullet casings on the floor, glittering dull bronze in the emergency light.
He’s been here.
I can feel it, the residual pulse of his energy, the way the air still holds heat where violence once lived.
But he’s gone now. All of them are.
Something tightens in my chest. I scroll through my compad, opening the local networks, the encrypted channels he once used. No activity. No signal bounce from his ID tag.
And then—
Ping.
One new message. No sender. No metadata.
Just five words.
You chose wrong. Now he bleeds for it.
My mouth goes dry. The room tilts. A single attachment loads below the text.
I shouldn’t open it. I do.
It’s a photo. Blurry. Distorted by motion blur and a cheap lens.
But the figure—slumped, shirt torn, blood streaking down his arm—is him.
Jav.
My vision flashes white. The floor seems to drop out beneath me. I taste copper, realize I’ve bitten my lip hard enough to draw blood.
He’s hurt. He’s alive—at least in that picture—but hurt.
The compad slips from my fingers and clatters to the ground. I snatch it back up like it’s a lifeline.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”
Then instinct kicks in.
Ben.
I shove the compad into my pocket and start running.
The city blurs around me.
Glimner’s streets glow in rain-slick reflections, every light a smear of red and blue. My breath fogs the air; my boots slap puddles. People turn to stare, but I don’t slow. I don’t care. The wind tastes like rust and panic.
Every block feels longer than the last. Every second that passes feels stolen.
I reach the building and take the stairs two at a time. By the time I reach my floor, I’m shaking so hard I can barely punch the access code. The panel buzzes red—once, twice—before it accepts.
The door slides open.
I know something’s wrong before I even cross the threshold.
The air’s different. Still, but charged. The kind of silence that only comes when the world has just ended and doesn’t know it yet.
“Ben?” I call. My voice cracks. “Baby, where are you?”
No answer.
The living room looks the same at first glance—couch, blanket, his half-finished art project on the table. Then I see it.
His backpack.
Lying on the floor by the door, one strap twisted, the zipper half-open. The tiny patch he sewed himself—the one that says Space Explorers Club—is torn halfway off.
And the door.
The door is open.
My heart stops.
I run to the threshold, shove it wide, peer down the hall—nothing. Empty air and the echo of my own breathing.
“Ben!”
It rips out of me. The word tears my throat raw. “Ben!”
Nothing answers.
The sound that leaves me next isn’t a word. It’s a sound I didn’t know I could make—a kind of broken animal noise that fills the corridor and comes back in distorted echoes.
The world narrows to that single point: the empty doorway, the rain blowing in from the stairwell, and the small backpack lying abandoned like an accusation.
I stumble backward into the apartment, fumble for my compad with shaking hands. The screen blurs under the smear of tears I didn’t notice falling.
I call his name again, softer now, like maybe if I whisper it the universe will take pity.
No answer.
Just the rain.
Just the hollow thud of my heartbeat echoing in an apartment that suddenly feels too big, too quiet, too wrong.
I move on instinct—search the rooms, the closets, under the bed. Each empty space slices me open a little more. The walls seem to close in; every sound is amplified—the tick of the clock, the hum of the fridge, my own ragged breathing.
My mind starts filling in the blanks with every horror it can imagine.
Who took him?
Was it the Nine? The League? Some nobody trying to cash in on the chaos?
And Jav—was the photo real, or a lie meant to pull me apart before they finish the job?
I grab Ben’s blanket from his bed—it still smells like him, like vanilla soap and glue sticks—and clutch it to my chest. The fabric is damp at the corners from my shaking hands.
My compad pings again.
Another message.
He won’t scream if you stay quiet.
I drop the blanket. My whole body goes numb.
For a heartbeat, I can’t breathe.
Then something inside me snaps into focus.
I don’t remember leaving the apartment. Only the sound of my footsteps pounding down the stairs, the elevator alarm blaring as I shove past the closing doors, the voice of some neighbor calling after me. None of it matters.
The city swallows me whole.
Rain starts again, hard this time, drumming against metal awnings and glass. It slicks my hair to my face, chills my bones, blurs the lights. But I keep moving—toward the only place I know Jav would run if everything fell apart.
Back to the Redscale network.
Back to where it started.
Because if they’ve taken my son, they’ve made the mistake of thinking I’m just a mother.
They’ve forgotten that I’m also his.
The air tastes of ozone and rage as I reach the edge of the under-tunnels again. My reflection stares back from a puddle—eyes wide, soaked hair plastered to my cheeks, mouth set in something that looks like determination’s darker cousin.
Somewhere below me, someone knows where Jav is.
And where Ben isn’t.
I take one last steadying breath. The rain washes down the steps like tears over stone.
Then I descend.
And the city closes over me like a lid.