Freedom, they were learning, was expensive—and not always in blood.
The leak of Project Umbral rippled like a pulse through the resistance. Kirion sat silent as the data played on the screen—his daughter's voice narrating in cold, focused bursts.
"This isn't surveillance. It's strategic preemption. Thought-policing via machine learning."
Her voice didn't tremble. His fists did.
Within days of the leak, two safehouses were hit. Friends vanished. Three members of their tech network were "disappeared"—no arrests, no reports. Just… gone.
Even Kirion, seasoned in loss, felt a new weight settle in his bones. It wasn't grief. It was the cost of pulling the curtain back. Of showing the world its monsters.
His daughter blamed herself.
She said nothing, but he saw it in her eyes—wide and sleepless. In her hands, fidgeting over her holopad as if she could reprogram the past. She ate less. Spoke only when spoken to.
One night, after confirming another name on the missing list, she turned to him.
"Did I get them killed?" she whispered.
Kirion didn't answer with words. He reached into his coat, pulled out an old, frayed photo—four young medics, arms slung over shoulders, smiling despite the blood on their scrubs.
"Three of them are dead," he said. "We were caught treating civilians after a raid. They tortured us for three days."
She blinked, startled. He rarely spoke of the early years.
"I kept going. Because the alternative was giving them everything."
He handed her the photo.
"This fight takes. And takes. But it's the only thing that gives meaning back to what we've already lost."
She didn't cry. She nodded—once, sharply—and returned to her rig.
By morning, she had traced a military subnet to a black site outside the city. By noon, two names believed dead were found alive. Their extraction was dangerous, but it worked.
That night, father and daughter sat on a rooftop watching the stars fade into dawn.
"Freedom's expensive," she said quietly.
Kirion smiled. "We just pay in different currencies."