Chapter Thirty-Four
Christian tightened the grip on his rifle.
Beside him, Gemma’s violet eyes were bright with hope, and Lysa—his fucking little sister—stood tall with her electrostaff spinning in practiced hands.
He wanted to tear it from her and lock her behind the nearest barricade, but he couldn’t stay protective of her forever.
He needed to let go.
The Dissent surged forward as one. Boots hammered against the drainage tunnel floor. Weapons were clutched tight. Shoulders touched as they marched toward the upper levels of Perileos. The thunder of the city’s awakening rose with them, a storm that made Christian’s pulse race.
He kept Gemma at his side, his fingers brushing hers every other step. Lysa stayed close behind, her staff collapsed and strapped to her back until the fight demanded it.
At the top, Nadine kicked open a bulkhead door. Cool air flooded in, heavy with the grit of Perileos. Their boots hit the street, and the city roared alive around them.
For a heartbeat, Christian froze. He had expected chaos. Instead, what he’d found was fury made flesh.
From everywhere, Perileos citizens poured out, led by the undercover Dissenters who’d waited for the call. Miners still streaked in dust. Vendors with knives clutched in fists. Women and men who had spent lifetimes bent under the Systems’ boot. They weren’t panicking. They were rising.
Nadine raised her fist, her voice ringing like revarium steel. “Zone 12, with me!”
The crowd surged like boiling water breaking its dam.
Christian moved with it, shoulder to shoulder with fighters and civilians alike, all of them charging with whatever they could carry—rifles, drills, pipes, blades. The roar of their voices shook the tunnels, pressing in his chest and rattling his bones.
Black-armored Systems soldiers fell back in waves, disciplined but outnumbered, their rifles spitting fire into the surge. People went down—some screaming, some silent—but more filled the gaps, refusing to break.
Christian ducked low, knives flashing as he ripped through a soldier who’d leveled on Lysa. She spun her staff in answer. The tip crackled when it whacked against another soldier’s ribs. The woman stiffened and dropped, smoke curling from her armor.
Hawk roared, swinging wide and catching a soldier across the helmet with the butt of his blade. The man staggered back just in time for Imara’s shot to drop him clean.
Gemma was a blur ahead of him. Every move precise, every strike brutal. Her tattoos burned like liquid, violet fire through the haze. She cut down two soldiers in a seamless arc and kicked another straight into the mob behind them. For one raw second, Christian almost forgot to breathe.
She was glorious.
The fight rolled with them, street after street, until the fortress came into view: Gallowood House. Its walls loomed over the city, hard and unyielding. Floodlights swept the approaches, catching faces and blinding fighters, but the Dissent didn’t slow.
Nadine raised her rifle high, her voice carrying over the storm. “That’s their heart. Let’s cut it out!”
The crowd answered with a thunder that shook the foundations.
Christian’s pulse skipped a beat the second he caught sight of heavy repeater guns powering up.
“Cover!” Christian shouted, dragging Gemma and Lysa behind the rusted carcass of an old transport tram as the first round of heavy gunfire ripped through the square.
Sparks showered where rounds chewed through metal. Screams tore across the mob. But the Dissenters didn’t stop. They scattered into alleys, climbed fire escapes, flanked hard from the shadows. For each body that fell, three more pressed forward.
Christian sucked in air thick with gunpowder. His heart pounded from the weight of what was happening. The Systems had brought in troops. Had gone after Gemma and the Dissent. But all they’d really done was set fire to a city that had been waiting years to burn.
He stayed low behind the tram carcass, waiting for a break in the Systems’ volley. Gemma was pressed against his side. Lysa crouched tight with her staff braced across her knees.
Hawk and Imara slid in beside them.
“We’ll never get inside this way,” Hawk growled, panting.
“What do you suggest?” Christian asked.
“Around back, I can sneak us in.” He pointed at the side of his house. “We’ll take the service lane that runs tight against the house. We get in, we convince Dad to surrender.”
“Will that actually work?” Imara asked. “I don’t exactly see your dad handing over the keys to the city.”
“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” Christian replied. “First things first—we gotta get into the house in one piece.”
When all nodded in agreement, the five of them surged from cover. Rounds ripped past Christian’s ear, hot with death. He dove hard, rolled, and came up slashing at a soldier who’d turned his rifle too slow.
More of the Systems soldiers ran at him.
But Gemma was there in an instant, her blades a violet storm.
One soldier went down screaming. Another gurgled through a ruined throat.
Christian felt the old rhythm settle in, the unspoken bond of movement, strike, cover.
Only this time, her power burned like a star beside him.
They pressed closer to the wall, the Gallowood fortress looming higher. The Dissent fighters hammered the Systems’ barricade, climbing, clawing, breaking. It was the distraction they needed.
Christian swung wide around the edge of a sandbag wall—and froze.
Three figures stood there with familiar stances and familiar faces.
Ahna leveled her rifle, her eyes as cold and precise as they’d been in every briefing. Claude crouched behind cover, sidearm ready, while Yosef took extra charge packs from a satchel at his hip.
His chest constricted, knives slick in his grip.
“Christian Holm.” Ahna’s voice cut through the roar like ice. “Should’ve known you’d crawl out of the gutters with the rats.”
Claude’s mouth tightened. He didn’t speak, but his eyes—usually bright with humor—looked carved in stone. Yosef shook his head, like Christian’s very presence was a betrayal.
Gemma skidded to a stop beside Christian, her glow painting the five of them in violet light. “Friends of yours?”
His pulse thundered in his ears. “They were my team when I was here looking for Nadine.”
Ahna’s rifle didn’t waver. “Correction. You were on my team. Past tense.”
Behind her, Claude shifted into a better angle, sighting down on Gemma, while Yosef calmly slid a fresh mag into his blaster. Christian’s gut knotted tighter with every breath.
Then movement stirred at the edge of the squad.
Cho stepped forward from the shadows of the barricade, her frame taut with certainty, dark eyes blazing. She wasn’t bound. She wasn’t a captive. She wore the SARTF uniform like she’d been born for it.
Christian’s stomach dropped. “You told them where we were,” he rasped, disbelief cutting into fury.
“She’s the only reason I haven’t fired yet,” Ahna said. “You know how much I hate speeches. But I promised her she could have you and finish the fight she’d started in that bar.”
Cho’s lips curved into something sharp and cruel.
“You think I’d keep bleeding in tunnels for a hopeless cause?
The Systems offered me a future. Your Dissent would’ve left me rotting underground until I was bones.
” Her eyes flicked to Gemma, narrowing. “And all because of her. I saw what you did back there, Gemma. You’re not salvation.
You’re a weapon. And I won’t die chained to it. ”
Gemma stiffened at Christian’s side, her glow pulsing brighter. But all he could see was Cho—someone he’d grown up with, who understood the pain of the Falaichte as well as he did, who he’d shared meals and a bed with—standing shoulder to shoulder with his former squad.
“That’s enough talk, Cho,” Ahna snapped. “Kill him.”
“No!” Gemma’s voice cut like a whip. Her violet light flared off her palm, fast and instinctive. It surged between Christian and Cho, hitting the SARTF line like a wave.
Then snapped back with a concussive crack.
The shields stitched into the Systems’ armor caught Gemma’s power and hurled it straight at the source. The backlash slammed Gemma off her feet.
Cho laughed. “You think they wouldn’t be ready for you?”
Christian lunged a step toward Gemma, whose body sparked like a fuse in water, but Cho was already on him, eyeing him with the kind of hate that wanted to savor pain and swinging her knife for his throat.
Christian twisted, his grav knuckles catching her blade with a scream of sparks. Cho pressed in close, teeth bared, her knife grinding toward his jugular. Her breath was hot and sharp in his ear.
He shoved his grav knuckles forward, and Cho stumbled in reverse. She hissed but didn’t falter. The cadence of their battle dance fell into a familiar rhythm. For years, they’d practiced in the bowels of Perileos’ Underground. He knew her tells as well as she knew his.
Then her blade bit across his forearm, shallow but biting. He hissed, faltering for half of a second. Cho came at him again, quick and low, and her knife sank into his thigh.
White hot pain tore through him, stealing his breath. He roared, head-butting her hard enough to send her to the ground.
She laughed through bloodied teeth. “Now, that’s the Holm I remember.”
Christian staggered back, hot blood running down his leg. Hawk and Imara were squaring off with Claude and Yosef, but Ahna was no longer in sight. His heart in his throat, he shouted for Gemma and his sister. They both replied, and he tucked away the fear for their safety.
Cho jumped to her feet in practiced elegance. She slashed for his ribs. He caught her wrist and twisted, but his leg buckled.
She drove her knee straight up into his groin.
Agony ripped through him. He collapsed onto one knee, vomit rising in his throat, his vision swimming black at the edges.
Cho loomed over him, lips pulled into a cruel snarl. “Pathetic.” She swung for his neck—
Gemma’s blade intercepted Cho’s with a screech. “Get away from him!” she shouted, shoving Cho back with raw force.
Christian gasped for air, clawing his way upright. Every nerve screamed, but he wasn’t done. Not yet.
Cho cursed, staggering under Gemma’s sudden ferocity, but she spun and kicked Gemma hard in the ribs. The crack echoed. Gemma went down, breathless, her glow sputtering as she rolled across the cobblestones.
Christian saw red. He launched forward, knives tight in his hands.
Cho whirled just in time to catch his slash, but his fury drove her backward. They collided, grappling, blood soaking both their armor. Her knife raked his side. His blade carved into her shoulder. They crashed against the wall, fists and elbows striking as hard as revarium steel.
“I’ll kill you slow!” she hissed, slamming her forehead into his nose. Stars burst across his vision as copper flooded his mouth.
Christian’s roar tore through the alley as he drove his blade up under her guard and kissed bone. Cho gasped, eyes wide. She clawed at him, nails raking his cheek, her knife still hacking wild at his vest-covered ribs.
“Christian!” Gemma’s voice cracked through the haze.
He snarled, twisting the blade deeper. Cho choked, her body jerking against his. Her eyes met his one last time, still full of venom. Still trying to laugh.
Her grip slackened.
Christian shoved her off, both of them slick with blood. She hit the ground hard, her knife clattering from her hand.
For a heartbeat, all he could hear was his own ragged breathing and the hammering of his heart. Then Gemma was at his side, her hand hot against his back, her glow a comfort he hadn’t asked for but needed.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered.
He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his knife still tight in his grip. “So is she.”
His chest heaved. He couldn’t stop staring at Cho, at what was left of someone who had once been his closest friend. Her mouth was still twisted in half a snarl.
Gemma’s hand closed over his wrist, steadying him, grounding him. He let her draw the blade from his grip, let her clean it on Cho’s uniform. He couldn’t make his fingers unclench on his own.
Boots thudded toward them. Christian spun, fist raised, but it was Hawk and Imara. Both were streaked with blood, and Lysa was close at their heels.
“We got ’em,” Hawk said, his chest heaving. He jerked his chin back the way they’d come. “Claude and Yosef are down. Dead.”
Imara wiped blood from her cheek. “Ahna slipped us. But she’ll circle back. I’m counting on it.”
Christian’s stomach tightened, but Hawk was already scanning past them toward the looming shadow of Gallowood House. Floodlights swept the square. Gunfire still rattled against the barricades as the Dissent pressed harder at the fortress.
Hawk spat into the dirt. “We’re wasting time bleeding in the street. We gotta get inside.”
Imara holstered her side arm. “All right. Hard and fast. Get in, grab the governor, and hold him until the people lock the streets.”
Christian swallowed the bile still clinging to his throat and forced himself to nod. “Let’s go.”