Chapter 9
NINE
STIR-CRAZY AND OTHER UNDERSTATEMENTS
KNIGHT
The first thing I register when I wake up is pain.
My spine protests the couch like it personally wronged me in a past life. There’s a spring lodged somewhere under my left shoulder blade, my neck is kinked at a question mark angle, and my right foot is half-asleep, toes tingling.
The second thing I register is the silence.
No traffic. No sirens. No neighbors yelling. Just trees breathing and the faint tick of the old fridge.
And under that, softer, from down the short hallway—
The slow, steady sound of Lark’s breathing.
I let my eyes stay closed for another second.
Last night hits me in disjointed flashes:
Her bare feet on the floor.
Her big eyes in the dim lamplight.
Her voice, soft and raw, saying I trust you with my heart.
The way her mouth felt under mine.
How hard it was to stop.
How much of me didn’t want to.
I scrub a hand over my face and force myself upright. The couch groans in solidarity. The blanket slides into my lap.
“Morning, idiot,” I mutter at myself.
I check the cheap analog watch Arrow gave me “for when the grid goes down and your fancy toys are trash.”
Just after 7 a.m.
The world outside this cabin doesn’t care that I kissed my best friend’s little sister on a couch last night. It just cares that my face and hers are pinned to a darknet bounty board with a payout high enough to attract the worst kind of attention.
I stand, stretch until my back pops, then pad over to the small pack on the table.
Time to check in.
Ranger packed us a little metal box—looks like an old transistor radio, actually a portable, low-power, directional modem wired to a ruggedized tablet. It can’t stream, can’t browse, can’t do anything fun.
But it can punch a thin, encrypted hole through the sky for five minutes at a time if I aim it right.
Arrow made me promise: once in the morning, once at night, five minutes max each.
I set the box on the table, angle the little antenna toward the gap in the trees Ranger marked in the notes left with the box, and thumb the power switch.
The indicator light blinks once. Twice. Goes steady.
The tablet on the table buzzes softly to life, the offline UI waking up and automatically launching one app.
Not labeled Discord.
But it is.
A hardened, skinned, buried version, routed through more layers than I care to think about.
Our server pops up—just one channel lit.
#burner-briefing
I flex my fingers once and start typing.
Knight: On grid, five minutes. Cabin secure. No tails last night.
Arrow’s icon pops up first, the little neon arrowhead Ozzy made him as a joke.
Arrow: About time, Sleeping Beauty.
Ozzy chimes in a second later, his icon a pixelated frog with a knife.
Ozzy: Cabin play okay?
I huff softly.
Knight: Cabin’s solid. No signs of company. No digital leakage.
A new icon lights up—a stylized G with a halo and tiny devil horns.
Gage.
Gage: How’s my sister?
Guilt punches me in the sternum.
My hands hesitate over the keys.
How’s your sister?
Well, she’s been shadowing me on missions, got her face uploaded into a criminal Pinterest board, and kissed me until my brain turned into static last night.
She’s also braver than any of us, infuriatingly reckless, and currently sleeping ten feet away in a bed while I pretend I’m not thinking about going in there and—
Nope.
I shove all that down into the mental box marked Danger – Do Not Open and type:
Knight: She’s fine. Holding up. Still annoying.
The reply is instant.
Gage: If she stops being annoying, THAT’S when I’ll worry.
Arrow: Status on the board?
Ozzy: That’s the fun part.
A new icon appears—shield logo, clean lines.
Dean Maddox.
I sit up a little straighter.
We’ve never brought him into our little vigilante mess like this before Gage and River’s situation. Now? Half of what we do is brushing up against, if not directly into, Maddox Security territory.
Dean: Arrow looped me in. You two picked one hell of a hornet’s nest to kick.
I type:
Knight: You’re welcome.
Ozzy: So. Good news?
Dean: We’ve traced the bounty node to a cluster running under the Cathedral umbrella. Less decentralized than it looks. They’ve got admins, hierarchies, protocols. That’s exploitable.
Cathedral.
Of course.
They’re like mold—always in the walls somewhere.
Arrow: Can we get the bounty down?
Dean: We can’t erase your faces from every creep’s hard drive, but we can make it more trouble than it’s worth to chase you. I’ve got brAVO and a couple of external assets chewing through their infrastructure. We’ll find the handler who posted the order.
Knight: Timeline?
Dean: You’re dark until I say otherwise. No patterns. No repeat routes. No comms except this channel in the window you’re using right now.
Five minutes feels like a joke all of a sudden.
Gage: Knight’s probably already gone stir crazy. Cabin. Lark. This is his personal hell.
Arrow: He’ll crack before she does. My money’s on Lark being fine and Knight starting to alphabetize the canned goods by day three.
Ozzy: Please send pics.
I roll my eyes.
Knight: You children know I can see this, right?
Gage: Bro, you’re trapped in a small wooden box with my sister and zero distractions. Don’t pretend you’re not five seconds away from chewing through the door.
My fingers stutter.
I can imagine his voice too easily. Half-teasing, half-serious. Trusting me.
The guilt crawls higher.
I force a laugh into the text.
Knight: She’s been breaking into the pantry and insulting Ranger’s canned food choices. No one’s bored.
Arrow: Seriously, though. Any sign anyone followed you?
I switch back to mission mode.
Knight: No. I checked perimeters twice. No tire tracks, no footprints, no thermal signatures I couldn’t explain.
Dean: Good. Stay put. We’ve got people working angles on our end. You two keep your heads down and your signals minimal.
I almost ask what exactly “people” means. Which teams. How deep Maddox Security is going for this.
But the timer icon in the corner of the app flashes yellow.
One minute left.
Gage: Hey. For real. Thanks for getting her out.
My chest tightens again.
I stare at the cursor.
Then type, softer:
Knight: Always.
Arrow: Check in tonight if you can. If not, we’ll assume you’re alive until proven otherwise.
Ozzy: And if you die, I’m inheriting your tech.
Knight: Touch my rig and I haunt you.
Dean: Stay sharp, Hayes. If they’re hunting you, odds are they’re proud of themselves. People who are proud of themselves get sloppy. Use that.
The connection timer blinks red.
System: Connection closing in 10… 9… 8…
I fire off one last message.
Knight: Cabin going dark. Catch you on the flip side.
The app drops back into offline mode. The signal light on the little modem goes dark.
Just like that, we’re alone again.
I sit there a second, staring at the black screen.
Dean’s confidence helps.
Gage’s trust hurts.
Arrow and Ozzy’s teasing feels like a lifeline to normalcy we don’t get to touch right now.
I shove the box back into its place, coil the antenna down, and kill the last of the boot power.
The cabin feels even quieter now.
A floorboard creaks behind me.
I turn.
Lark stands at the edge of the hall, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
Her hair is a disaster—half falling out of a messy bun, flattened on one side. She’s drowning in one of the cabin’s oversized t-shirts she must’ve dug out of the dresser, hem hitting the top of her thighs, sleeves dangling past her elbows.
She looks soft and sleepy and completely unaware of the landmine field that is my self-control.
“Morning, Birdie,” I say.
She squints at me. “Morning, Control Freak.”
Her voice is rough from sleep, lower, somehow more intimate. She pads barefoot into the room and stretches, arms overhead, shirt lifting enough for a teasing glimpse of the curve of her hip.
Something in my chest does that now-familiar lurch.
“Any news?” she asks, nodding toward the tablet.
“Arrow checked in. Dean’s working on cracking whoever posted the bounty. They’re going after Cathedral’s infrastructure, seeing if they can find the handler. We’re still dark until further notice.”
She scrunches her nose. “Define further.”
“If we’re lucky? Days.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Longer.”
She groans and flops onto the couch where I was just sitting, hair flying. “You’re telling me I have to survive out here with no internet, no phone, and just your grumpy face for entertainment?”
“You forgot my winning personality.”
She snorts. “That assumed you had one.”
I grab the blanket that slid off the couch and toss it at her. It lands over her head. She makes a muffled noise of protest, then pops her face out, hair now even worse.
Adorable.
Dangerous.
“How’s Gage?” she asks, like she can’t help it.
“Annoying,” I say automatically.
“Emotionally.”
“He’s fine. Worried about you. Threatened me with violence if I let anything happen to you.”
Her lips curve. “Classic big brother energy.”
The guilt spikes again.
If he knew I had his baby sister half in my lap last night, kissing me like I was oxygen—
Stop.
I drag my mind back to safer ground.
“He also suggested I might be going stir crazy here with you.”
She brightens. “Oh? And are you?”
“Not yet.”
“Liar.” She pushes herself upright, t-shirt slipping off one shoulder. She fails to notice. I notice too much. “Since we’re stuck here,” she says, “I’m making breakfast. You look like you need eggs.”
“We don’t have eggs.”
“Then you get… whatever the canned-goods fairy gifted us.”
“That fairy’s name is Ranger, and he has terrible taste.”
She strides into the kitchen like she owns it, blanket still tangled around her waist like a cape. I follow, because the living room feels worse without her in it.
She rummages in cabinets with cheerful determination.
“Okay,” she narrates. “We’ve got canned potatoes, canned corned beef—oh my God, who hurt him—canned beans, canned fruit cocktail, and… instant pancake mix.”
“Pancake mix?” I echo. “You can’t cook.”