Chapter 10
LONARI
The Defrocked Nun always smells different after blood.
Not the obvious kind—the copper splash, the gun-oil haze, the hot-metal tang that hangs in the air right after a hit.
That stuff burns off fast, carried away by scrubbers and money and the human talent for pretending.
What lingers is subtler: an over-sweet perfume trying to cover fear, carpet fibers damp with spilled drinks and spilled secrets, and the faint antiseptic sting from crews wiping down walls like they can sanitize intention.
I’m standing in a corridor that pretends it’s private, listening to the building settle back into its usual heartbeat—music restored, lights reset, laughter returning in careful bursts the way people test a wound with a fingertip.
My jaw aches from clenching. My palms still remember the merc’s throat.
My head still remembers the look in Jordan’s eyes when she said Morazin is alive, like she’d just watched the universe laugh at her.
She’s inside my suite.
My suite.
That used to mean something. It still does, apparently—because the knock that comes at my door is polite enough to be insulting.
Three soft taps, then a pause that says we’re not asking.
I open it anyway.
Renn stands there with his shoulders squared and his eyes refusing to meet mine, which tells me the conversation he’s about to deliver tastes like poison.
“Boss,” he says, voice tight.
“Renn,” I reply, calm.
He swallows. “Godfather Kel wants you. Now.”
I lean my head a fraction to the side. “He wants me, or he wants something from me?”
Renn’s throat works. “He wants… the human.”
Heat crawls up my spine, slow and controlled. “No.”
Renn flinches like I slapped him. “Lonari—”
“Don’t ‘Lonari’ me,” I murmur. “You’re not my mother.”
His mouth tightens. “Kel says she’s a liability. He says the Nine are watching. He says—”
“I know what he says,” I cut in. “What does he want?”
Renn’s voice drops. “He ordered you to surrender her.”
My tongue presses against the roof of my mouth until I taste that bitter edge of rage. I stare at Renn and imagine snapping the hallway cameras off the wall one by one.
“Tell him no,” I say.
Renn’s eyes widen. “Boss—”
“Tell him,” I repeat, still calm, “that if he wants Jordan, he can come get her himself.”
Renn’s jaw flexes. “He’s not going to take that well.”
“That’s his problem,” I say.
Renn hesitates, then glances past my shoulder, toward the suite interior. “She’s in there?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s… okay?”
The question lands strange—like he cares, like he’s checking because he’s human under the suit and gun and syndicate tattoos.
“She’s okay,” I say, and my voice goes quieter without me meaning it to. “She stays that way.”
Renn nods once, stiff. “I’ll tell Kel.”
He starts to turn, then pauses like he can’t help himself.
“Lonari,” he says carefully, “Fyr’s been moving.”
That name is a blade in my ear.
I look at him. “How?”
“He’s been whispering,” Renn says. “Security rotations. Private corridors. The kind of whispering that ends with bodies in laundry carts.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides, not because I want to hit Renn, but because I want to hit the walls.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Renn shakes his head. “Not sure. But he knows Kel wants her. That’s… incentive.”
“Incentive,” I repeat, voice flat.
Renn nods once. “Be careful.”
I hold his gaze for a beat, then nod. “Get out.”
He leaves.
I close the door and the lock clicks, a small sound that suddenly feels like a prayer.
Jordan is sitting cross-legged on the bed, compad propped on her knees, holo panels floating above her like a storm of numbers.
She looks up when I enter, hair messy, eyes sharp, wearing my shirt like it belongs to her.
The sight hits me in the chest in a way I don’t have language for, so I don’t try.
“You have the face,” she says immediately.
I snort. “The face?”
“The ‘I’m about to tell you something stupid and dangerous’ face,” she clarifies, tapping her compad. “It’s very expressive for someone who pretends he’s carved out of stone.”
I walk to the bar cabinet and pour myself a drink I don’t need, because my hands need something to do besides break things. The liquor smells like spice and smoke and the kind of money that thinks it’s immortal.
“Kel wants you,” I say.
Jordan’s expression doesn’t change—she just goes a little still, like a cat hearing a door open.
“Define wants,” she says, voice careful.
“He ordered me to surrender you,” I reply.
Jordan blinks once. Then, because she’s Jordan, she laughs—short, incredulous, bitter.
“Wow,” she says. “That’s… bold.”
I take a slow sip. The liquor burns down my throat and settles in my gut like a small controlled fire.
“They’re scared,” I say.
“Of me?” she asks, eyebrows lifting. “That’s cute. I’m five-foot-nothing and I cry at sad holos.”
“They’re scared of what you carry,” I correct. “And what you make me do.”
Jordan’s gaze holds mine for a moment longer than necessary. Then she looks down at her compad again, like data is safer than feelings.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks, voice too casual.
“The plan is you don’t leave this room without me,” I say.
Jordan makes a face. “I hate that.”
“I don’t care,” I reply.
She exhales sharply, frustrated. “Lonari, I’m not a vase.”
“You’re not a vase,” I agree. “You’re evidence. And you’re a target.”
Jordan’s mouth tightens. “I can handle myself.”
“I watched you get chased by drugged inmates with a compad in your hand,” I say, deadpan. “Let’s not rewrite history.”
Her eyes flash. “I’m still alive.”
“Because I was there,” I say.
Jordan’s jaw flexes, and I see that familiar stubbornness rise—her instinct to push back against any boundary, even a protective one.
I set the glass down. “Jordan. Listen.”
She looks up.
“Fyr’s moving,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow. “Fyr is…?”
“A problem,” I say. “An old one.”
The words barely leave my mouth before the lights flicker.
Not a full outage. A brief stutter—like the building’s heartbeat misses a beat.
Jordan’s head snaps toward the ceiling. “That wasn’t you.”
“No,” I say.
The suite’s environmental system sighs, then the vent temperature shifts—cool air turning warmer, heavier, like someone rerouting flow through the ducts.
Jordan sits up straighter, alert now in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with pattern recognition.
“Someone’s in the service grid,” she says.
My blood cools.
The door panel remains dark—no entry request, no knock. Which means nobody’s coming in the honest way.
Jordan swings her legs off the bed. “Bathroom,” she says suddenly.
“What?” I ask.
“Now,” she snaps, already moving. “If they gas the room, the bathroom has independent filtration. Probably. It’s a luxury suite.”
I don’t ask how she knows that. She knows systems the way I know knives.
We move—Jordan to the bathroom door, me to the wall panel where the suite’s internal sensors can be accessed.
The next flicker hits.
Then the suite door chimes—soft, polite.
A voice comes through the speaker, smooth as oil.
“Boss,” it says. “It’s Fyr. I need a word.”
Jordan freezes in the doorway, eyes wide.
My jaw tightens. “What do you want?”
“Just a word,” Fyr says, voice warm, friendly, the kind of warmth that makes my scales itch. “Kel’s worried. We’re all worried. I’d like to talk.”
I glance at Jordan.
She mouths: Do not open that.
I don’t.
“I’m busy,” I call back. “Go away.”
A pause.
Then Fyr’s voice again, softer. “Lonari. Don’t make this difficult.”
Jordan’s gaze flicks to the ceiling vent.
Then to the wall thermostat panel.
Then to me.
Her lips shape silently: He’s in the ducts too.
I feel the hairline crack of rage opening wider in my chest.
“Fyr,” I say, voice low, “if you touch that door—”
The lights cut out entirely.
Black, like before, but this time it isn’t strategic.
This time it’s predatory.
Jordan moves like she’s made of wire and lightning. She darts to the thermostat panel, pops it open with a maintenance tool she somehow still has, and starts ripping through the wiring like she’s playing a violent instrument.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Buying time,” she whispers back, and I feel a grim little jolt of recognition—she learned that from somewhere ugly too.
A soft hiss sounds above us.
Gas.
Not thick yet, but the smell hits immediately—sweet, cloying, chemical.
Jordan’s eyes water. “Yep. Gas.”
She doesn’t panic. She just works faster, fingers moving with furious precision.
I yank open my internal access panel, forcing the suite’s security interface to display on my wrist comp. The sensor feed is glitching—someone’s masking it. Of course they are.
“Jordan,” I snap, “bathroom. Now.”
“Not yet,” she says.
The door handle clicks.
Not opening—just testing.
Then a soft scraping sound comes from the ventilation grate as something metallic slides along it.
Jordan’s hands flash.
She bridges two wires, then slams the panel shut.
A beat of silence.
Then the suite’s environmental system roars as every vent in the room reverses.
Instead of pushing air in, it yanks it out—hard.
The curtains snap inward. Papers flutter. The sweet chemical smell thins abruptly as the system begins vacuuming the room like a lung coughing.
Jordan grabs my wrist and hauls me toward the bathroom. “Move!”
We slam the bathroom door shut behind us.
Inside, the air is cooler, cleaner, and the faint scent of soap punches through like relief. Jordan coughs once, wiping her eyes, then plants both palms on the bathroom sink as if bracing herself.
“You just reversed the airflow,” I say, staring at her.
She coughs again, then glares. “Yes.”
“That’s insane,” I tell her.
“I’m aware,” she snaps. “But I’d like to not be unconscious on your carpet while your enemies do a little light murder.”
I press my ear to the bathroom door.
Outside, I hear the suite door open—finally.
Footsteps. Soft. Controlled. Two, maybe three sets.
Then Fyr’s voice, closer now, muffled through the door.