Chapter 11 #2
“I’m sending a partial package,” I say. “Biometric mismatch logs, docking authorization overwrites, armor HUD glitch captures. I’m keeping the deepest financial trails and the full archive offline as insurance.”
Clint’s brows lift. “Smart.”
I transmit. Data streams through my maintenance relay like a tight, controlled artery.
While the files transfer, Clint shifts, and I catch a glimpse of his forearm where a sleeve rides up—metallic seams under skin at the wrist, subtle.
Cybernetics. Enhanced reflexes with a cost. His fingers tap once on the table, a soldier’s impatience.
His face tightens briefly, like pain pulses behind his eyes. Headache. He pushes through it anyway.
On his end, he’s already verifying—eyes flicking fast, scanning, cross-referencing. For someone who plays laid-back, he moves like precision.
“Okay,” he says after a long minute. “Yeah. These biometrics don’t track as Alliance-standard Vakutan units. They’re missing redundant organ signatures. And the encryption header—Jesus. That’s not military. That’s merc kit wearing a costume.”
Relief hits me so hard my knees threaten to go. I grab the edge of the rack to steady myself. Cold metal under my palm. Breath shaking.
“I knew it,” I whisper.
“You knew enough to not die,” Clint says. Then his expression sharpens again. “But listen—if I log this through standard IHC channels, intake will trigger containment. Automatically. No discretion. You’ll be treated like a contamination event.”
My stomach turns over. “I know.”
“No,” he says, voice hard. “You remember.”
I go cold. The orphanage walls come back for half a second. The way doors lock without drama. The way adults say it’s for your safety while they file you into a room that smells like bleach.
I force air into my lungs.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
Clint leans forward, lowering his voice even though he’s on his own ship—habit, paranoia, wisdom. “We do it sideways. I can get you in front of one person who might listen before the machine eats you.”
“Who?” I ask.
“General Dowron,” Clint says. “It’s not a guarantee, but it’s the best shot I’ve got without getting you bagged.”
My heart stutters. “Can you arrange that without me lighting up every IHC sensor on the route?”
“Yeah,” he says, and there’s a grim satisfaction in it like he enjoys beating bureaucracies at their own game. “There’s a medical resupply corridor that legally crosses jurisdictions. It’s boring. Which is why it works.”
“Espionage via antibiotics,” I mutter.
Clint’s mouth twitches. “Now you’re getting it.”
A new sound bleeds into the holo feed—Honeybear again, louder. “Clint! I found the peanut butter!”
Clint turns his head slightly and barks, “That’s not a win, that’s a disaster.”
Honeybear’s voice booms, delighted. “It’s the good kind! It’s crunchy!”
Clint looks back at me, deadpan. “I live with a seven-foot-tall toddler.”
“That checks out,” I say faintly.
Clint sends me the corridor details: time window, rendezvous beacon pattern—three short pulses and one long, repeating on a medical freight band—plus a corridor segment ID that looks like inventory but smells like covert movement.
“Jordan,” he says, and his tone shifts—less snark, more soldier. “Warning: if your ping hits the wrong IHC node, you’ll be treated as the threat. Not the witness.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
Clint studies me for a beat like he’s trying to see through the holo into whatever mess I’m standing in. “Do you have someone with you?”
I hesitate, because the truth is complicated, warm, and dangerous.
“Yes,” I say carefully. “But I’m leaving alone.”
Clint’s eyes narrow. “Smart. Also suicidal.”
“Story of my life,” I mutter.
He snorts once. “Yeah.”
Then, softer—still Clint, still rough, but real: “I’m glad you’re alive.”
My throat tightens. I can’t afford to cry in a server spine, so I do the next best thing: I turn emotion into motion.
“Me too,” I whisper, and I cut the connection before my voice breaks.
The holo collapses. The server spine hums. Somewhere above, the Nun keeps pretending it’s glamorous.
I stand there shaking for three seconds, then force myself into the next task like a person shoving broken glass into a pocket and calling it fine.
Evidence kit.
Digital proof disappears. Paper has to be burned.
I haul out a portable printer from a maintenance drawer—bless crime syndicates and their paranoia—and feed it heat-resistant strips used for machine labels.
The printer whirs; warm plastic smell rises.
Strip after strip slides out: biometric mismatch charts, docking authorization overwrite timestamps, header chain anomalies.
I roll them tight, seal them in polymer, and tuck them deep in my bag.
Then mirror backups: two sealed drives, one real, one decoy. I program the decoy to look juicy enough that any idiot snooping will grab it and feel smug.
Finally, the dead-man release.
I set it with shaking hands: if I don’t check in by a set time—twenty-two hours—the full archive auto-sends to three civilian journalists. I don’t know their names. I don’t need to. I just need the truth to become a grenade nobody can quietly pocket.
The timer starts.
Twenty-two hours.
A countdown to either justice or a funeral.
A distant rumble vibrates through the floor—bass from the casino, or something heavier. I pull up security feeds.
Outside the Nun, Gur is starting to fray. Rival crews clash near a transit artery, muzzle flashes like angry fireflies, vehicles blocking lanes, Kaijen enforcers forming barricades, pushing civilians back. The city feels like it’s holding its breath before it decides whether to riot or kneel.
Lonari’s people lock down streets on the feeds, moving with disciplined menace.
If I leave in “Kaijen style” transport, I’ll be flagged as syndicate property and intercepted before I even reach a corridor gate. If I take official routes, I’ll light up every scanner like a beacon that says witness available for capture.
I swallow hard.
“We’re going ghost,” I whisper.
I build a cover identity fast: casino systems subcontractor, outbound maintenance shuttle, routine relay calibration.
I forge a work order with Kaijen formatting and bureaucratic language so dull it could sedate a predator.
I hack a customs stamp by copying a legitimate outbound cargo pod authorization pattern and bending the timestamp into the maintenance window.
Then I loop a hallway camera feed—thirty seconds of empty corridor on repeat.
My heart hammers. My palms sweat. The air tastes like metal and fear.
I leave the server spine and head to Lonari because I’m not stupid enough to vanish without a single tether—and because the last thing I want is him thinking I’m dead.
He’s in his war room, holo displays blooming around him: street feeds, guard positions, internal ledgers. Renn is there, jaw tight. Enforcers linger by the door like they’re part of the architecture.
Lonari turns when I enter and his gaze sweeps me—boots on, bag on shoulder, hair tied back, expression too focused. He knows immediately.
“You’re leaving,” he says, not a question.
“Yes,” I reply.
Renn’s eyes widen. “Now?”
“Yes.”
Lonari steps closer, voice low. “No.”
I stare up at him. “Lonari. I’m not asking permission.”
His jaw flexes. “You’re walking into a corridor that can get you contained or killed.”
“I’m aware,” I snap. “I spoke to Clint Rogers.”
Renn flinches at the name like it’s a landmine.
Lonari’s eyes narrow. “Clint.”
“He verified the partial package,” I say. “He flagged the biometrics as merc kit. He’s arranging a covert meet with General Dowron via a medical resupply corridor.”
Lonari’s posture tightens. “Alliance.”
“Complicated Alliance,” I shoot back. “Not the kind wearing stolen armor.”
Lonari exhales, controlled. “I’m assigning a tail.”
“No,” I say immediately.
His eyes harden. “Jordan—”
“Anything Kaijen on my exit route flags me,” I cut in, voice fierce. “If your people shadow me, I get tagged. I become syndicate property on paper. I’m not letting anyone label me like that.”
The room goes tight.
Lonari’s voice drops, dangerous. “You’re not property.”
“Then don’t treat me like something you can attach a leash to,” I say, and my throat burns with it.
For a moment the air feels like it might spark.
Then he says, quieter, “I need to know you’re alive.”
My anger stutters. Because that’s not control. That’s fear in a language he hates speaking.
I swallow. “I’ll give you one thing.”
He watches me.
“One anonymous emergency beacon,” I say. “Only you can decode it. No Kaijen signatures. No traceable routing. If I’m in danger, I ping it once.”
Lonari’s gaze holds mine, and I see the battle in him—cage versus respect, instinct versus choice.
“Fine,” he says finally.
Renn exhales like he’s been holding his breath for a week.
Lonari steps closer, lowering his voice so only I can hear. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” I whisper.
He looks like he wants to argue. Instead he just says, rougher, “Don’t die.”
I manage a thin smile. “Try to stop me.”
And then I turn and leave before the softness in the moment can trick me into staying.
The cover identity works because boredom is camouflage.
I walk through side corridors in a plain tech jacket, compad clipped to my belt like I belong to the building’s bloodstream. I hand over my forged work order at checkpoints. Guards barely glance at it—paperwork fatigue is universal. One stamps it with a bored flick.
I keep my pace steady even as my heart tries to break out of my ribs.
At the final checkpoint near the outbound maintenance shuttle bay, I trigger my timed camera loop. The hallway feed repeats emptiness while I slide through a blind angle.
The shuttle is small, ugly, functional. The bay air smells like old fuel and hot metal. Somewhere nearby, someone is yelling about a delayed shipment, and it’s the most comforting sound in the world because it means life is still happening in petty ways.
I strap in, head down, and when the shuttle lifts, the Defrocked Nun shrinks beneath me—neon and violence and money condensed into a glittering bruise against Gur’s sprawl.
I don’t look for Lonari.
If I look, I’ll hesitate.
And hesitation is how you die.
We clear atmosphere. The sky darkens into stars.
My nav console pings softly—one quiet chime that makes my blood turn to ice.
Passive tracking.
A whisper of a signal hitching onto my shuttle’s signature like a shadow.
“Of course,” I mutter, fingers already moving.
I kill all broadcast functions. Full comm blackout. No polite participation in traffic nets. No friendly pings.
Then I drift cold for a full minute—engines silent, inertial path carrying me like debris. The cabin is too quiet. I can hear my own breath. I can smell my own sweat.
The tracking ping wavers.
Fades.
Maybe confused. Maybe recalculating.
I don’t wait to find out.
I burn hard—engines flaring, the shuttle rattling as acceleration presses me into the seat. Stars sharpen in the viewport like teeth.
I set my course toward Clint’s corridor route, toward the legal artery disguised as medical logistics, toward the meeting that might keep me from being labeled a threat by the same institution that once kept me alive by filing me away.
My hands stop shaking.
Not because I’m calm.
Because I’m committed.
Behind me, Gur fractures into skirmishes and syndicate tension.
Ahead of me, the corridor waits—and somewhere on a scuffed ship called the Aces High, an ex–IHC Marine with cybernetic reflexes and a headache is probably yelling at a seven-foot Odex to stop blasting Bon Jovi while they prepare to do something illegal for the sake of the truth.
I tighten my harness and whisper to the empty cockpit, “Try to contain me.”
Then I fly.