Chapter 23
ROJA
Iintercept the message by accident.
It’s barely a blip—just another encrypted packet in a sea of background noise.
I’ve been combing the dead channels for over an hour, mostly static and system pings, and then this frequency pulses like a vein under pressure.
Wrong modulation, wrong time. Coalition local but routed through private lines.
It’s not patrol orders. It’s not logistics.
It’s something they don’t want broadcast wide.
I don’t hesitate.
My fingers move fast, instincts kicking in like muscle memory. Reroute the signal, strip the shell, tease the key—until the firewall splits like wet bark under a blade. And then it’s there.
A name. My name. Then hers.
My blood goes cold.
“Target: Roja Renn. Target: Human companion alias ‘Kelsea.’ Detainment Protocol 9-47B. Immediate apprehension. No tribunal. Deliver directly to Judge Harro for expedited deportation.”
I blink once, twice. The words don’t change. No tribunal. No appeal. Not even a damn booking number. This isn’t an arrest. It’s a deletion. They want us erased, quiet as ash on a black wind.
Something cracks in my chest—quiet but irreversible. Not panic. Not rage. Just that slow, simmering fury that builds when the world confirms every suspicion you tried not to believe.
I stand without a word.
“Kelsea,” I call, voice tight.
She stirs on the blanket, bleary-eyed, still caught in that twilight space between dread and dream. “Roja? What is it?”
I walk over, hand clenched tight around the comm unit. The screen's still glowing faintly, casting pale green light up across my knuckles. I crouch and hold it out to her.
Her breath stutters. She reads the message once, lips parted. Then again, slower, like maybe it’ll rewrite itself.
“They’re sending us straight to the judge?” she says, voice rasped thin.
I nod. “No lawyers. No record. Straight to processing.”
Her face hardens—not fear exactly, more like the air's been knocked out of her. I’ve seen it before. The look people get right before they’re loaded into a shuttle bay and told they don’t have a name anymore.
She barely whispers, “They want us gone.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Permanently.”
I don’t let her respond. I don’t want to hear the word “why” again. I’ve heard it too many times. I don’t need her to process it. I just need it done.
So I close my hand and crush the comm unit.
The plastic shrieks under pressure, metal groaning like it wants to scream. The screen flickers, dies, then sparks out in a pop of blue light. It leaves a scorched line across my palm. I don’t flinch. The broken pieces fall to the ground like they’re already in mourning.
Kelsea jerks slightly at the sound. Her hand rises, instinctive, reaching for a blade that isn’t there.
“They’re not taking us,” I say.
She looks up, searching my face for something to anchor to. “So what do we do?”
“We move. Fast.”
“How long before they act on this?”
“Hours. Maybe less. That message was a direct route to a ground team. No repeats. No backups.”
I can see her pulse at the base of her neck, fluttering like a trapped moth.
I step closer, crouch beside her. She smells like dust and adrenaline, skin cold under the low warehouse air. Her fingers graze mine as she steadies herself. There's something in her eyes—more than fear, deeper than resolve. A resignation that's turned to steel.
“I thought we had more time,” she murmurs.
I shake my head. “That’s a luxury. We were lucky to have any.”
She swallows. I hear it, thick and hard. Her hand drops to her lap.
“This is my fault,” she says.
“No,” I cut in, sharper than I intend. “This is on them.”
“I pulled you into this.”
“You didn’t pull me anywhere. I walked in.”
Her lips tighten. “You could’ve walked out.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “But then I wouldn’t have found something worth fighting for.”
She looks away, and for a second I think she’s going to cry. But she doesn’t. Kelsea doesn’t break like that. She just hardens, like cooling metal.
“I’m not letting them take you,” I say. “I made my choice. Long before this.”
She nods, just once. Then reaches out and presses her fingers to my wrist. The contact is small, but it grounds me more than I’d admit out loud.
The warehouse groans, echoing the weight in my ribs. Outside, the wind’s picked up. Sand skitters across the windows like it’s trying to get in. Or maybe trying to warn us.
We don’t move. Not yet. But we both know—when we do, there’s no coming back.
And I’m fine with that.
Long as we go forward together. There’s no more running. No more fallback plans. No more quiet.
We’re out of time.
I feel it like a pressure in my chest—tight, hot, insistent.
The kind that makes your breath go shallow even when you’re still.
Kelsea’s asleep, curled around one of the blades like it’s a lifeline.
Her chest rises and falls in shallow, stubborn rhythm.
I let her rest. Gods know she needs it. But I can’t sit still any longer.
The comm rig’s cobbled together from old black-market guts—one node scavenged from a busted courier drone, the signal booster from a defunct alarm tower.
The casing hums when I power it up, like it’s remembering how to breathe.
I run a pulse test, watch the static flicker green, then spool the first feed line.
I know exactly where to send it.
The public node spine lights up on my screen, skeletal and exposed. I don't waste time re-uploading the data—that's already out there, burning through the nodes Ceera hit yesterday. I just open a direct broadcast channel. Reroute it through the public spine so they can't scrub it fast enough.
I click record.
“This is Roja Renn,” I begin, my voice lower than I expected. Rough with dust and resolve. “Former Coalition security enforcer. ID 14273-XK.”
I hear a rustle behind me. Kelsea shifts.
“The files released yesterday... the records of bribery, weapon smuggling, and the clerical corruption in Jark District... they aren't fabrications. They are valid. And they came from me.”
I pause. My tongue feels like it’s coated in ash.
“Cleric Vasso sanctioned these acts. And now, rather than face a tribunal, Coalition Command has issued a kill order for the witnesses. They don't want justice. They want silence.”
I lean into the cam, letting the light catch the scars on my face.
“I am fully aware this transmission marks me for execution. But the data stands. Check the timestamps. Check the signatures. This is the cost of silence. And I won’t pay it anymore.”
I cut the feed and hit SEND.
The comm rig whines, spitting sparks. The video is gone—loose in the bloodstream of the district’s networks, attaching itself to the data packet we already released.
“What did you do?” she asks, voice raw.
I don’t turn right away. I can’t.
“Roja—what did you just do?”
I finally look at her. She’s sitting up, hair mussed, face pale under the flickering lantern light. There’s a half-folded blanket around her shoulders, her fingers white-knuckled around it.
“I claimed it,” I say. “I gave the truth a face.”
Her mouth parts, but no sound comes.
“You... You said your name.”
“That was the point.”
“Roja, you just painted a target the size of a freighter on your back—on both of us.”
“I know.”
She drops the blanket, stands, starts pacing—boots silent on the dust-choked floor.
“Do you know how many people you just pissed off?” she hisses. “That message—it removes all doubt. It’s going to burn down half of Jark.”
“That’s the idea.”
She stops. Turns. Her eyes are sharp, haunted. “And what if they come before it spreads? What if they cut the feed?”
“They won’t,” I say. “It’s already on seven mirror channels. By morning, Vasso won't be fighting a rumor. He'll be fighting a confession.”
Outside, the wind kicks up, brushing sand across the high steel shutters like whispering teeth.
I move to the window, stare out. Past the skeletal outline of the warehouses, the city beyond is twitching. Lights in places that should be dark. Movement. Drones.
“Roja…” she says, softly now, closer.
“They’ll pull Vasso,” I tell her. “Maybe even a few others. They’ll panic, try to spin it, bury us deeper.”
“But?”
“But the people’ll see it. They’ll know.”
She exhales, long and low. “And what happens to us?”
I meet her eyes. “We survive. Or we go down together. Either way, we don't run anymore.”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t flinch. Just steps closer until her shoulder brushes mine.
“I hope it was worth it,” she whispers.
“It already is.”
The storm outside’s finally blown out, but inside the warehouse, it’s still cold.
Kelsea’s asleep again, back curled tight, her breath barely audible over the distant hum of the grid. One of my knives rests beside her pillow. She placed it there herself, the handle angled toward her dominant hand. Just in case.
That detail sits with me.
I stay back against the wall, crouched in the shadows near the gear pile.
The glow from the emergency lantern’s gone soft, faded to the orange tinge of a dying fire.
My own eyes burn from the screen’s backlight—feeds still stuttering through, news echoing what I already know.
Vasso’s gone. Officially removed. The Council's scrambling to distance themselves, dragging him like a carcass in front of the mob and hoping it’ll be enough.
It won’t be.
Still, it’s something.
I exhale slow, watching the condensation cloud in front of my face. The cold bites my fingertips, sharp and grounding. My body’s tired. My mind’s exhausted. But I can’t sleep.
Not yet.
Not when she looks like that—fragile in a way she never lets herself be. Not when she’s finally still, the tension unwound from her frame, just for a second. I should look away, give her the dignity of privacy. But I don’t.
Because for the first time since this all started, I let myself want something.
Not a mission. Not a victory. Just... her. Here. Safe. Breathing.
The knife beside her pillow is more than habit—it’s history.
It’s who she had to become to survive. I see it for what it is.
But part of me wants to take it away—not because she’s in danger, but because I want her to believe she doesn’t have to be ready anymore.
That maybe, just maybe, she could stay asleep without fear.
I close my eyes and try to picture something else. A tomorrow.
We’re not bleeding. We’re not running. We’re not shadow-dancing on rooftops or dodging patrols.
We’re just somewhere warm. A shitty apartment maybe—metal walls, real floors, cracked coffee cups in a sink.
She’s barefoot, hair down, laughing at some stupid thing I say and telling me I’m an idiot with that half-smile she uses when she doesn’t really want to smile but can’t help it.
I want that.
Gods, I want that more than I’ve wanted anything.
I open my eyes again, and she hasn’t moved.
The knife’s still there.
My fingers twitch.
I reach into my coat, pull out a ration bar. My stomach growls at the scent—salt and synth protein. I don’t eat it. Just hold it. Let the moment be quiet.
“Roja,” she murmurs, voice like gravel and silk.
My head snaps up. “Yeah?”
She doesn’t turn, just shifts slightly under the blanket. “You’re still awake.”
“Didn’t want to sleep through an ambush.”
She huffs a soft laugh. “You think they’ll hit us tonight?”
“Probably not,” I say. “But I’m not betting on probably.”
“You regret it?” she asks. “Sending the files?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
She finally rolls to face me. Her eyes are shadowed but clear. “Even if it gets us both killed?”
“Especially then.”
She nods once, slow and solemn. “Good.”
We don’t say anything for a while.
Then she whispers, “I didn’t think I’d make it this far.”
“You did,” I say.
“And you?”
“I didn’t think I’d care this much.”
She doesn’t respond right away. Then she says, “We’re not built for quiet, are we?”
“Maybe not,” I say, “but I’d like to try.”
She smiles. It’s tiny. Fleeting. Real.
Then she reaches over and shifts the knife further from the pillow—just a few inches.
But enough.
My breath catches in my throat.
Because maybe that future I pictured—the one with warmth and cracked coffee cups and peace—maybe it’s not just a dream.
Maybe it’s the next move.
I think we might live long enough to reach it.