Chapter 28 #2
I don’t look back. “I know.”
Morazin murmurs, almost smug through fear, “Your people die for my breath.”
I stop so suddenly the water sloshes hard. I turn, looming over him in the narrow tunnel.
Morazin flinches.
“You think you’re special?” I whisper, voice like gravel. “You’re not. You’re a ledger entry. The only reason you still inhale is because your death would make powerful people comfortable.”
Morazin swallows. “You need me.”
“I need your testimony,” I correct. “Don’t confuse that with respect.”
He shuts up.
We push forward until the tunnel slopes upward. A ladder rises into a maintenance chamber that smells less like sewage and more like oil—still disgusting, but an improvement. I shove the hatch above us open and climb out, hauling Morazin up after me like a sack of bones.
Fyr drags himself out last, breathing hard, sweat slick on his scales despite the cold.
The chamber is dim, lit by a single emergency lamp. Pipes run along the ceiling, dripping. The air is heavy with industrial heat.
I hear distant sirens—city security responding to gunfire, too late and too corrupt to matter.
Jordan’s voice crackles in my ear suddenly, tight and shaken. “Lonari—are you alive?”
I exhale. “I’m alive.”
A beat. Then her voice, softer: “And Morazin?”
“Alive,” I say.
Her breath shakes. “Good.”
I can hear the emotion she’s trying to swallow. The fear. The relief. The anger. It hits me harder than the cold water ever could.
“We’re moving to the Nun,” I tell her. “My vault.”
Jordan’s voice sharpens. “Your personal vault?”
“Yes.”
Fyr snorts beside me. “Oh, fantastic. Kings and traitors in the same room.”
“Accurate,” I say dryly.
We move fast through back corridors and industrial alleys, using Kaijen access routes Jordan keeps clearing ahead—traffic locks opening, cameras looping, comm distortions bleeding through the grid like fog.
We reach the Defrocked Nun through a service entrance that smells like bleach and perfume fighting for dominance. The contrast hits like a slap after sewage tunnels. Warm air. Soft music. People laughing, unaware there’s a war crawling under their feet.
I take Morazin straight down.
Past guards who don’t ask questions because my face answers them.
Down into the Nun’s bones.
My personal vault sits beneath the building like a secret heart—thick doors, redundant locks, shielded walls that block comm signals and dampen sound. It was built for holding kings and traitors, people too valuable to kill and too dangerous to free.
Morazin looks around as we enter, eyes wide.
“What is this?” he whispers.
“A room where lies come to die,” Fyr mutters.
I lock Morazin into a restraint frame bolted to the floor—stronger than the chair, tighter. The vault hums with its own power grid. The air here is cool, dry, metallic—clean in a way that makes violence feel sharper.
I step back and finally allow myself to breathe.
Fyr leans against the wall, breathing hard, pain etched into his face. His eyes burn as he looks at me.
“This is what you chose,” he says quietly. “People die. We lose ground. The Nine tightens its grip. And you still refuse to end the problem.”
I meet his gaze. The air tastes like copper and steel.
“You think killing Morazin ends the threat,” I say.
“It ends this chase,” Fyr snaps.
“It ends our leverage,” I counter. “It ends the one thing that forces the IHC and Alliance to acknowledge the conspiracy.”
Fyr’s eyes narrow. “You’re choosing Jordan’s morality over Kaijen survival.”
I feel the words hit, sharp.
Jordan. Always Jordan in people’s mouths now, like she’s an infection.
I step closer to Fyr, voice low. “This isn’t about morality.”
“Oh?” he bites out.
“This is about autonomy,” I say. “Survival without autonomy is just slavery with better lighting.”
Fyr flinches slightly, like the word lands somewhere it shouldn’t.
I keep going, because once I start, I can’t stop.
“The Nine doesn’t want us dead,” I say. “They want us obedient. They want tribute. They want influence. They want our syndicate as a pipeline for their operations. If we accept that, we live… but we live as property.”
Fyr’s jaw tightens. He looks away, then back. “And if we resist, we bleed.”
“Yes,” I say. “We bleed. We lose people. We lose comfort. But we keep the one thing that matters—our choice.”
Fyr’s eyes flicker with something like reluctant understanding. Or maybe it’s just exhaustion.
He spits to the side. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
“Maybe,” I say softly. “But at least we’ll die as ourselves.”
Fyr holds my gaze for a long beat, then shakes his head like he can’t believe me.
“You’ve changed,” he mutters.
I think of Jordan’s eyes in the tunnel feed. The way she builds redundancies like prayer. The way she refuses to run even when the whole galaxy labels her a threat actor.
I think of Venn’s scream.
I swallow hard.
“I’ve remembered,” I say finally. “That’s all.”
Fyr doesn’t answer. He turns and limps toward the exit, pride holding him up like a crutch.
Before he leaves, he says quietly, almost grudging, “Don’t waste their deaths.”
I nod once. “I won’t.”
When the vault door seals behind him, the silence is thick.
I stand in front of Morazin’s restraint frame and stare at him.
He’s breathing fast. Sweat beads on his forehead. His eyes dart.
“You’re losing,” he whispers, voice brittle. “The Nine will—”
I cut him off. “You don’t get to talk about them like they’re gods.”
Morazin swallows. “They are inevitable.”
I step closer, my shadow swallowing him.
“No,” I say, and my voice is quiet enough that it feels like a vow instead of a threat. “They’re a network. A parasite. A machine made of cowards who think distance makes them untouchable.”
I inhale, and the air tastes like cold metal and grief.
Venn. Dren. Names that will never laugh again.
I lift my hand and press my claws against the vault wall—feel the vibration of the building above, the casino heartbeat, the life that continues.
Then I close my eyes and speak, not to Morazin, but to the dead.
“I swear,” I whisper. “The Nine won’t just be resisted.”
My throat tightens.
“They’ll be dismantled.”
When I open my eyes, Morazin is staring at me like he finally understands he’s not dealing with a criminal playing politics.
He’s dealing with a man who has decided to burn the whole structure down rather than kneel inside it.