Jorak
The burner phone vibrates against the bedside table with a sound like a hornet’s nest. I’m awake before the second pulse, my hand closing over the cheap plastic before the light can hit Asa’s face.
He’s still dead to the world, curled into the mess of blankets we’ve rebuilt in his condo, his breathing deep and rhythmically heavy.
The scent of pear and vanilla is thick in the room, anchored by the faint, underlying musk of a body changing from the inside out.
I don’t look at his stomach yet. I can’t.
I slide out of bed, the floorboards cold against my soles.
The screen shows an encrypted string of digits, a frequency that doesn’t exist on any ESA-monitored band.
I step into the hallway, pulling the door shut until only a sliver of light remains.
My thumb swipes the glass. A single file transfer icon blinks in the center of the display.
It’s Silas. I don’t need a name to know the signature of the Unbound’s lead agitator.
The data packets begin to unfurl, a cascade of blueprints, heat maps, and red-bordered disaster projections.
I lean against the wall, my skin prickling as the images resolve.
These aren’t just maps of Redbrook; they’re the ghost blueprints of the old suppression network.
I scroll through the District Nine flare readings.
The numbers are catastrophic, levels of stray power that should have triggered a full-scale evacuation a month ago.
Instead, the logs show a quiet redirection of resources.
Mercer isn’t sending stabilization teams; he’s reinforcing the perimeter walls.
He’s turning the most populated districts into pressure cookers, letting the corruption build until the nodes hit critical mass.
He isn’t planning a rescue. He’s planning a controlled demolition.
The projected rupture point sits directly under the central grid, a massive knot of failing energy that will collapse inward, dragging three districts into the dirt with it. Mercer will call it a tragic, unavoidable failure of aging infrastructure.
"Jorak?"
The voice is soft, rough with sleep. I turn to see Asa standing in the doorway of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes. He looks small in one of my discarded t-shirts, the hem hanging halfway down his thighs. He notices the phone in my hand, his gaze sharpening instantly. The haze of sleep evaporates.
"Silas found the maps," I say, my voice sounding like gravel. I hand him the phone. "Mercer’s writing off the East End. He’s going to lock the gates and let the network eat itself."
Asa takes the device, his thumb flying across the screen as he navigates the data sets.
He doesn’t gasp. He doesn’t curse. He just goes very still, his face going pale as he processes the mathematics of the disaster.
I watch the way his throat moves when he swallows, the way his fingers tighten on the plastic.
"He’s sacrificing sixty thousand people," Asa whispers, his voice dangerously level. "He’s already shifted the emergency Guide reserves to the North Wall. He’s literally building a fence around the graveyard."
"We aren’t going near it," I say. It comes out too fast, too blunt. "Silas wants to blow the network open, but if he does that without a ground, the flood will kill just as many people. It’s a suicide mission, Asa. We’re staying here. We’ll find another way to get you out of the city."
Asa looks up from the screen, his eyes bright with a sudden, cold fury. "Stay here? While he executes an entire district?"
"You’re pregnant," I snap, the word hitting the air like a physical blow. We haven’t said it out loud since the facility.
It’s a secret we’ve been wrapping in soft touches and quiet mornings.
"You can’t be near a rupture of that scale.
The backlash alone would strip the skin off an S-Class.
You’re an Anchor with a body we don’t even understand yet. "
"I'm an Anchor," he corrects, stepping closer until he’s in my space, his scent spiking with agitation.
"And don't you dare use my body as an excuse for your fear.
I spent thirty years being told I was useless.
I am not going to sit in a nest while Mercer murders my city because you think I'm made of glass. "
"I think you’re carrying my child," I growl, my hands hovering near his waist, wanting to grab him and needing to let go. "I think the ESA already tried to kill us once this week. I am not taking you into the mouth of a corrupted node."
"Then you'll go alone and you'll die," Asa says, his voice cracking. "Because you can't dismantle that much power without someone to ground you. You’ll burn out in the first ten minutes. Is that the plan? I stay here, safe and alone, while you become a crater in the East End?"
The silence that follows is heavy with the things we aren’t saying. I look at him, really look at him, and see the stubborn set of his jaw.
I’m acting like Mercer.
I’ve been owned for so long that I don’t know how to protect something without putting it in a cage. I close the distance, my forehead dropping against his. My hands find his hips, fisting in the fabric of the shirt.
"I can't lose you," I whisper against his skin. "I finally found the one thing that makes the noise stop. If I take you down there and something happens..."
"Then we do it together," Asa says, his hands coming up to cradle my face, his palms warm against my jaw.
"Trust me, Jorak. Stop trying to save me and start letting me help you.
I can see the seams in the power. I can guide you through it.
If we don't go, there won't be a Redbrook for this baby to grow up in. "
I let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped in my lungs for years. I don’t like it. But he’s right. The only way to keep him safe is to end the system that views him as an asset.
"Okay," I say, the word barely a sound. "We do it together."
We spend the next four hours at the kitchen table, the air thick with the smell of old coffee and the hum of a laptop.
Mira arrives shortly after dawn, her eyes rimmed with red but her hands steady as she routes the Anchor research through Silas’s stolen maps.
She looks at Asa, then at me, and starts building the digital pathways we’ll need to bypass Mercer’s security.
"Here," Asa says, pointing to a central junction where three major lines converge. "The corruption has pooled in the primary cooling bypass. It’s like a clot in an artery. Silas wants to cut it, but the back-pressure would be lethal. If we enter through the service tunnels in Sector Four, Jorak can use the Black Current to strip the corruption in layers. I’ll anchor the feedback loop. "
"It’s going to be intense, Asa," Mira says, her voice tight. "The resonance from that much energy... your body is already under a lot of strain."
Asa doesn’t look at her. He looks at me. "I can do it. I have to."
Mira nods slowly, her fingers flying over the keys. "I’m uploading the sequence to your comms. If the readings spike above ninety percent, you pull out. No arguments. I don't care if the whole city goes dark."
I stand up, the chair scraping against the floor.
It’s time. The city outside is gray, the light filtered through a thick layer of smog and industrial haze.
It looks like a place waiting to die. I walk over to where Asa is gathering his coat, my body feeling heavy, the Black Current buzzing under my skin in anticipation of the fight.
I don’t say anything. I just pull him into my arms, my hands sliding up his back to cradle the back of his head.
He presses his face into my chest, his hands fisting in my jacket.
I can feel the heat of him, the steady, stubborn pulse of his heart.
I lower my head, my mouth pressing against the soft skin of his throat, just above the collar of the shirt.
I breathe him in, pear, vanilla, and the sharp, clean scent of iron-willed resolve. I scent him deeply, marking him, memorizing the exact texture of his skin and the way he shivers when my teeth graze his pulse point.
"I have you," I murmur into his skin. "I have you both."
Asa steps back, his eyes dark with the same fierce, protective energy that’s currently keeping me from falling apart. He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, his touch grounding the static that’s already starting to rise in my hands.
"Don't get cocky, Eni," he says, the old sarcasm flickering back to life like a pilot light. "I’m the one who has to do the heavy lifting. You’re just the muscle."
I manage a short, sharp smile, the first one in days. "Let's go, then. Let’s go break a network."