Chapter 21
KIMBERLY
The world doesn't end with a bang. It ends with the smell of stale laundry detergent and a sudden, blinding absence of light.
The hood is thick—a heavy poly-weave that scratches against my cheeks and tastes like dust when I try to gasp. One second, I’m looking at Tur’s steady silhouette, ready to fight; the next, I am submerged in a hot, fabric-scented nightmare.
Then, the shock baton hits my ribs.
It isn't a "zap." It’s a physical invasion—a white-hot spike that detonates inside my chest and turns my nervous system into screaming static. My knees don't just buckle; they vanish. My lungs seize, and for a terrifying heartbeat, I can’t remember how to trigger a breath. I hear a roar—Tur—but it sounds like he’s shouting from the bottom of a deep well.
“Get her up—now!” a voice barks.
Hands—too many of them—grab my arms. I’m hoisted off the floor, my feet dangling. I try to fight, managed to drive my heel into someone's shin and hearing a satisfying grunt of pain, but then a second shock hits my thigh. Everything goes gray.
I am being dragged. My boots scrape against polished ferroglass, then the texture changes. Concrete. Rough, cold, and damp. I count the turns because it's the only weapon I have left.
Left. Right. Thirty paces. Another right.
A door shrieks on its hinges—not the smooth hiss of modern hydraulics, but the heavy, grinding protest of old steel.
The air pressure shifts, growing heavy and metallic.
Even through the hood, I know where we are.
We’ve plunged downward into the legacy infrastructure—the pre-Alliance bones of the city sitting directly above the Node.
They shove me through a steel door that shrieks on its hinges and into a room that smells damp and metallic and faintly electric, like old wiring sweating inside concrete.
They rip the hood off.
Light slams into my eyes.
I blink hard.
The room is small.
Bare.
Concrete walls streaked with moisture that beads and slides down in slow, patient rivulets.
A single light strip hums overhead, flickering faintly like it’s thinking about dying.
Four men stand in front of me.
No masks.
No hoods.
No dramatic villain capes.
Just practical clothes and hard eyes and the quiet confidence of people who know exactly how much pain they’re allowed to use without killing me.
One of them pulls a chair out and sits.
He folds his hands.
“Ms. Fierson,” he says pleasantly. “Thank you for coming so promptly.”
I spit blood onto the floor.
“Go fuck yourself.”
He nods.
“That’s about what I expected.”
Two of them grab my arms and haul me upright.
Pain flares down my ribs and thigh where the baton hit me.
My knees wobble.
I don’t give them the satisfaction of falling.
“We know about the transit node,” the seated man continues calmly. “We know about the zoning anomalies. We know about the buried convergence hub under your family’s restaurant.”
My heart tries to punch its way out of my chest.
“We also know,” he adds, “that a Reaper asset has gone off-script to protect you. That’s… inconvenient.”
I lift my chin.
“Good.”
He studies me like a bug under glass.
“We want the node,” he says. “And we want Tur.”
I laugh.
It comes out cracked and ugly.
“You’re not getting either.”
He sighs.
“Ms. Fierson, please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
One of the men behind me drives a fist into my injured ribs.
White pain.
I gasp.
My vision tunnels.
“Talk,” the seated man says gently.
I swallow blood.
“Kill me,” I rasp. “See how expensive that makes your lives.”
His brow arches.
“Oh?”
“You kill me and two rival Nine families go to war over my corpse,” I say hoarsely. “Because they think I know something you’re hiding. You also light up half a dozen Alliance oversight committees who are already sniffing around your shell routes and excavation laundering.”
He goes still.
Just a fraction.
I push.
“You think I didn’t build insurance,” I continue. “You think I walked into this blind? I have data drops scheduled. Dead man switches. Names. Account numbers. Transit audit violations that would make your grandchildren radioactive.”
His eyes narrow.
“Where is this data.”
“Everywhere,” I lie smoothly. “Nowhere. Depends how alive I am.”
Silence stretches.
The man behind me shifts.
The seated man exhales slowly.
“You are… inconvenient,” he admits.
“I get that a lot.”
They escalate.
They don’t beat me bloody.
They don’t break bones.
They’re professionals.
They apply pain in precise, measured doses.
Electric shocks to nerve clusters.
Pressure to damaged tissue.
Stress positions that turn muscles into screaming knots.
“How involved is the Reaper,” he asks calmly.
I laugh weakly.
“You really think I’d tell you that.”
Another shock.
My teeth chatter.
My vision swims.
I ride it.
I think of my grandparents.
My mother.
The grill.
Tur’s face in the bathroom mirror when he came back into himself.
“No,” I croak. “You don’t get him.”
They try softer next.
They offer me protection.
Money.
Off-world transport.
A new identity.
A quiet life.
I spit on the floor again.
They try threats.
They describe what they’ll do to Tur.
What they’ll do to Ishaan.
To Mara.
To my staff.
I go very still.
“You kill them,” I whisper, “and you die screaming in a courtroom you didn’t know existed.”
They stop.
They look at each other.
Finally, they give up.
They drag me down a corridor into a narrow cell with a thin cot bolted to the floor and a steel toilet in the corner.
They shove me inside.
The door slams.
The lock engages with a dull, final clunk.
The light inside is dim.
The air is cold.
Somewhere beyond the walls, heavy machinery thuds in slow, distant rhythms.
I sink onto the cot.
My whole body hurts.
My hands are shaking.
Not from fear.
From adrenaline and rage and the brutal clarity of knowing exactly how bad this just got.
I stare at the wall.
I do not bargain.
I do not regret defiance.
I prepare for execution like it’s a calendar event.
Then something flares inside my chest.
Sharp.
Aching.
Alive.
The bond.
Hope flickers like a match in the dark.
“Tur,” I whisper.
And for the first time since they grabbed me, I let myself believe I’m not dead yet.