Chapter 7
KIMBERLY
The footage loops again on the cracked tablet screen balanced against my knees, the audio muted because I cannot handle the sound of my own life being destroyed in surround-sound.
The Fierson Grill sits in the frame like a corpse that hasn’t been properly covered yet, a blackened, hollowed-out shell with its front windows blown clean out and its sign hanging at a crooked, obscene angle that makes my stomach flip every time I look at it.
The kitchen roof has collapsed inward, folding down over the prep line like a crushed rib cage, and even through the grainy compression I can see the soot patterns where the fire raced up the walls and then starved itself out on concrete and broken steel.
Ash drifts through the footage in lazy, weightless spirals.
It looks almost peaceful.
I clench my jaw so hard my molars start to ache.
Loop.
The camera angle shifts slightly as the drone operator drifts closer, and I see my front counter split clean in half where something heavy hit it at speed, stainless steel peeled back like a tin can lid.
My dad’s stupid chipped blue coffee mug is still sitting there, miraculously intact amid the wreckage, because of course it is, because the universe has a deeply unfunny sense of irony.
Loop.
I taste blood.
Not because I’m bleeding.
Because I’m grinding my teeth like I’m trying to chew through my own rage.
Loop.
The tablet vibrates in my hands as a comm request pings in.
I don’t answer it.
I already know who it is.
Mara.
It goes to voicemail.
Her message starts playing automatically because I forgot to turn that feature off and now I am being personally victimized by my own poor settings choices.
“Kim,” she says, and her voice cracks on the single syllable so badly it feels like someone just reached through my ribs and squeezed my lungs. “They came by the apartment again. Two guys this time. Different ones. They were polite about it, but it was… not polite, you know?”
I close my eyes.
“They said the Nine are blacklisting anyone still associated with you. Suppliers. Staff. Property managers. They told Lily her lease renewal might get… complicated if she keeps answering your calls. They told Ishaan his cousin’s shop in Sector Four had a gas inspection scheduled that ‘might not go well.’”
Her breath stutters.
“I told them to go fuck themselves, obviously,” she adds weakly. “But, Kim, people are scared. I’m scared.”
I press my thumb into the bridge of my nose until stars burst behind my eyelids.
“Call me back,” she finishes. “Please. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
The message ends.
The room feels smaller.
The air feels heavier.
The antiseptic smell that’s become the background radiation of my life now presses against my sinuses like a personal insult.
I scrub a hand down my face and reopen my eyes, forcing myself to watch the footage again because not watching it feels like a betrayal.
Loop.
The tablet vibrates again.
A text this time.
Unknown off-world number.
Cousin Leena: You can come stay with us on Halcyon until things calm down. We have room. You’ll be safe here.
Another buzz.
Old supplier rep: Heard what happened. Jesus, Kim. I’m so sorry. I’ve got a friend in shipping who can get you a work visa for Meridia if you want out.
Another.
Union liaison: We can relocate you temporarily under protective labor asylum. It’s not glamorous, but it’s off-grid and the Nine won’t touch it.
Evacuation offers.
Exit ramps.
Golden lifeboats bobbing politely in the water while my city burns behind me.
My throat tightens.
I delete them all.
One by one.
With shaking fingers and a jaw clenched so hard it feels like it might fracture.
“I will not be displaced again,” I whisper to the empty concrete room.
I say it out loud because if I don’t, my body might interpret silence as consent.
“I will not be erased quietly.”
The pressure in my chest stirs faintly, low and strange and deeply irritating, like some traitorous internal committee is trying to vote on my life without consulting me.
“Sit the fuck down,” I mutter at my own rib cage.
I push myself up off the narrow cot with my good arm and immediately regret the ambition as pain lances through my injured side and my vision goes glittery at the edges.
“Cool,” I pant. “Love being a functional adult right now.”
I grab the wall and steady myself, breathing through my nose until the world stops tilting, and then limp out into the corridor because lying in that room with that footage and those messages is going to end with me doing something deeply inadvisable, like screaming until I rupture something internal.
The safehouse hums with quiet, invisible activity.
I can feel it now, the way you can feel electricity in the air before a storm breaks.
There’s a faint subsonic vibration through the concrete under my bare feet, a soft, almost musical hum threaded into the walls that wasn’t there yesterday.
Tiny status lights blink green in ceiling corners I’m fairly sure did not have status lights in them last night.
The air smells faintly of ozone and warm electronics layered over antiseptic and dust.
Tur’s been busy.
Of course he has.
I round the corner into the main corridor and nearly run straight into him.
He stops dead an inch from my face, his reflexes snapping him to a halt so fast the air seems to pop between us.
“Jesus Christ,” I snap. “Do you announce yourself, or is lurking your whole brand?”
His eyes drop instantly to my arm.
“You’re not supposed to be walking,” he says.
My jaw tightens.
“Great,” I say flatly. “Good to know I’ve already been promoted to cargo status.”
He winces.
Not subtly.
“What are you doing up,” he asks carefully, like he’s defusing a bomb instead of talking to a woman whose restaurant just got firebombed.
“I’m watching footage of my life getting turned into a charcoal briquette,” I say. “And deleting evacuation offers from people who think I should quietly disappear off-world until the mob gets bored of trying to kill me.”
Silence stretches.
His shoulders tense.
“They’re threatening your staff,” he says quietly.
My laugh comes out sharp and humorless.
“Oh good, so the hits are now expanding into psychological warfare and extortion. Love a diversified crime portfolio.”
“They’re marking you for isolation,” he continues. “Cutting off your support network. Forcing displacement.”
I step closer to him.
On purpose.
“So what’s your brilliant plan,” I ask. “Hide me in a concrete hole until I emotionally atrophy into a compliant houseplant?”
His jaw tightens.
“I’m building you an exit corridor off-world.”
There it is.
The thing I’ve been circling.
“Of course you are,” I say softly. “Because you’ve already decided I’m leaving.”
“It’s the safest option.”
“For who.”
“For you.”
“No,” I snap. “For you. For your threat models. For your control issues.”
His eyes flash.
“This isn’t about control. This is about survival.”
“Those are not opposites,” I shoot back. “And you are talking about my life like it’s a logistics problem.”
He folds his arms across his chest, massive and immovable.
“You are a high-value target,” he says. “The Nine have authorized your termination. Oversight has flagged me. Any place you remain static becomes a kill zone within forty-eight hours. That’s not melodrama, Kimberly, that’s probability math.”
“I do not care,” I say.
“You should.”
“I absolutely should not,” I snap. “Because every time someone tells me something is ‘the safest option’ what they actually mean is ‘the option that costs them the least emotional discomfort.’”
His nostrils flare.
“You’re injured. You’re alone. You’re being hunted by a syndicate that specializes in spectacle killings. You do not get to be romantic about this.”
“Fuck you,” I fire back immediately. “I am not being romantic. I am being territorial about my own goddamn existence.”
Silence detonates between us.
I can hear my own heartbeat.
Fast.
Loud.
“I am not leaving my city,” I continue, my voice shaking now but steadying as the anger finds a spine. “I am not abandoning my staff. I am not letting the Nine rewrite my life as a cautionary tale about what happens when women don’t know their place.”
“This is not about pride.”
“This is about agency,” I say. “And you are stripping it away from me with spreadsheets and kill corridors.”
He opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Then says, “You are not trained. You are not equipped. You are not physically capable of surviving an engagement with syndicate enforcers.”
“I am not asking to go fistfight the mob in an alley,” I snap. “I am asking to be treated like a stakeholder in my own survival instead of a fragile artifact you’re trying to move into climate-controlled storage.”
His eyes darken.
“Stakeholders die.”
“So do people who run,” I say. “They just do it quietly and alone and off-camera.”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking for,” he says.
“Then explain it,” I challenge. “Because right now all I’m hearing is ‘be small and quiet and let the men with guns and monster biology handle it.’”
Something dangerous coils behind his eyes.
“You want to be trained,” he says flatly.
“Yes.”
“You want me to teach you how to survive in a war zone.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to put a weapon in your hands and show you how to use it on other human beings.”
“Yes,” I repeat. “Because pretending violence isn’t coming for me does not make me morally superior, it just makes me unprepared.”
He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“Your casualty probability goes up exponentially if you stay.”
“So does my self-respect if I don’t run,” I shoot back. “And I’m going to need that when I’m rebuilding my life out of ashes and debt and trauma.”
Silence stretches again.
Electric.
Volatile.
“This is a terrible idea,” he says finally.
“I am full of those lately,” I reply.
“You will get hurt.”
“I am already hurt,” I say. “That ship sailed when your jalshagar decided I was emotionally stabilizing.”
His jaw tightens hard at that.
“Don’t use that word like a weapon.”
“Then don’t use it like a leash,” I fire back.
Another long, awful beat.
“I will not hide,” I say quietly. “And I will not be moved like freight. If you’re in this with me at all, then you are in it with me as a person, not a liability profile.”
His hands curl into fists.
He looks down at the floor.
Then back at me.
“You are asking me to fail at the one thing I have never failed at in my entire life,” he says hoarsely.
“What’s that.”
“Keeping my bonded partner alive.”
The word partner lands differently than mine did.
It makes my chest tighten in a way I do not consent to.
“I am not your partner,” I say automatically.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re not. Not like that.”
Then he exhales.
Long.
Slow.
Controlled.
“I will train you,” he says.
The words hang between us like something fragile and flammable.
“On my terms,” he adds. “With medical clearance. With armor. With evacuation contingencies. With me overriding you if your life is actually about to end.”
“Fine,” I say immediately. “As long as you understand that I get veto power too.”
His lips twitch.
Reluctant.
Terrified.
Almost impressed.
“Deal,” he says.