I woke to silence.
Like the world had been muted while I slept.
My eyelids felt heavy, my thoughts thick.
How long…?
My breath hitched, sharp against my ribs, when I realized—
The room was empty.
I pushed myself upright too fast. Pain flared under the blanket still wrapped around me. My heart spiked, confused, braced for danger, for Viktor, for—
A soft electronic click broke the stillness.
A nurse stepped in with a tray, stopping short when she saw me sitting instead of unconscious.
"Oh—you're awake." She blinked. "Good morning."
Morning.
"What time is it?" I asked, throat dry.
"Six forty-two," she said. "I brought your breakfast."
Six. Forty-two.
Dr. Hsu had said thirty minutes.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, steadying my ribs with one hand as she set the tray on the table.
I tightened the blanket around my shoulders. "Did Sylus—" the name felt too raw in the morning air "—leave any instructions for me?"
She shook her head. "No instructions. Only that you should be given breakfast when you woke."
Just breakfast.
"Do you need anything else?" she asked gently.
Do I?
I need to go home, but that's fiction.
Her name tag said Sylvia. I shook my head.
"No. Thank you, Sylvia."
She left.
The door sealed.
Silence again.
And then my body remembered it was alive.
Thirst hit first — sudden, overwhelming. My mouth felt splinter-dry.
Still wrapped in the blanket, I moved to the table and drank the entire glass in three pulls. It wasn't enough. I poured another, drank that too, and glanced toward the door, wondering if asking for more water would seem dehydrated or unhinged.
My limbs trembled faintly — the adrenaline crash finally arriving. When the room stopped tilting, I sat and began to eat.
Hospital breakfasts: mild flavors, soft textures, easy to digest. My body accepted them like a negotiation.
Halfway through the tray, my phone buzzed.
One vibration.
Sharp.
Too loud.
My hand froze over the spoon.
Anyone could be on the other side of that message.
Viktor liked to send warnings before he acted.
My pulse spiked, cold and electric. I set the spoon down, wiped my fingers on the blanket, and picked up the phone.
Screen up.
One notification.
One name.
Devil.
I exhaled. The Devil wasn't so bad after all.
I opened the message.
Devil: You're awake.
Of course he knew.
Another message appeared.
Devil: Finish breakfast. The twins are on their way to pick you up.
Devil: They insisted.
My pulse stumbled.
Insisted.
Kieran didn't insist on anything. He endured.
Luke insisted on everything — but only when he cared.
Both of them asking… for me?
A third vibration.
Devil: Don't rush.
Not kindness.
Not softness.
Instruction.
But the kind meant to keep me intact.
And the kind that made last night's vow echo painfully in my head.
By the time I finished eating, someone knocked — soft, rapid, like they were trying very hard not to barge in.
The door slid open.
Luke entered first.
Mask on. Hood crooked. Energy sparking off him like static. Even without seeing his eyes behind the visor, I could feel the intensity of his stare sweep the room before he lunged toward me.
"Oh, thank god," he blurted. "You're vertical."
Kieran followed — steady, composed, closing the door with a soft click. Where Luke vibrated, Kieran grounded the air simply by existing.
Only then did I see what he carried.
A slim black case.
My laptop.
"Is that—?" I started.
Luke's hands shot up in instant surrender.
"Okay, okay — before you say anything — we didn't break anything."
Kieran added, tone level but undeniably sheepish, "You left it at the safe house. We thought you might want it."
Luke coughed. "Also we… might have… borrowed it."
"Borrowed?" I echoed, eyebrow rising — but comprehension slid neatly into place.
Of course they had access.
The laptop wasn't really mine — Sylus had issued it, already loaded with every tool I needed. Someone had preconfigured the environment, installed the frameworks, linked the network permissions.
It made perfect sense the twins could walk straight in.
They were probably the ones who'd built it.
"Used!" Luke corrected quickly. "Briefly. Very briefly. Practically not at all."
"Our mission window was narrowing," Kieran said. "We thought your TraceNet might… streamline things."
Luke leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's really good, by the way."
A warmth tugged at my mouth — small at first, then real.
"You used my system," I said, unable to hide the smile.
Luke froze. "Are you mad? Please don't be mad. If you're mad I'll— Kieran will— we'll—"
"Kieran will?" Kieran murmured.
"I'll make him apologize again!"
The laugh that escaped me was real. Rough around the edges, but real.
"I'm not mad," I said. "I'm actually… curious."
They straightened like someone had granted them reprieve.
"What did you think of it?"
Luke lit up instantly.
"Oh — oh, it's incredible. The routing logic? The way it cloaks between hops?? I have no idea how you—"
Kieran cut in gently. "It's elegant. Compact. Minimal overhead. Much faster than what we usually use."
"Yeah, like ten times faster," Luke said. "Maybe fifteen. Kieran said eight but he's conservative—"
"It was approximately eight," Kieran sigh-corrected.
Luke ignored him. "Anyway — it's amazing."
Both of them looked at me then — Luke bright and obvious; Kieran steady, quietly impressed.
Something warm threaded through my chest in a place pain hadn't reached.
"Thank you," I said softly.
Luke's shoulders dropped in relief. Kieran's posture eased.
"You can use it whenever you like," I added. "I'll set up a terminal at the base so you can access the TraceNet anytime."
Luke perked up like someone electrified him.
"Seriously??"
Kieran inclined his head. "That would be very helpful."
For the first time since waking, the air felt lighter.
"I like being helpful," I said.
And I meant it.
"Well," I added, clapping my hands softly, "let me get changed so we can get out of this place."
I was quickly learning the twins had a talent for lifting my spirits — unintentionally, but effectively.
Luke rocked back on his heels. "Excellent plan. Hospital gowns freak me out. Way too much ankle."
I pushed the blanket off my shoulders and stood.
Too fast.
The room tilted just enough that I had to catch myself on the back of the nearest chair.
"You good?" Luke asked, keeping his tone deliberately casual.
"Fine," I said through a slow exhale. "Just moved too fast."
"We were… concerned," Kieran said quietly. "When Boss came back alone."
Luke nodded hard, hands shoved into his pockets. "He didn't say much. Just told us you were at the clinic."
Kieran inclined his head slightly. "What happened at the poker game?"
I held onto the chair a second longer, letting the ache settle, then started toward the bathroom.
"Well, everything was fine—for the most part," I said.
"You know. Power plays. Poker faces. Negotiations."
I crossed the threshold and closed the bathroom door, raising my voice so they could still hear me.
"And the room was… loud with information. So many devices…" I continued, peeling out of the gown.
"I knew when it was safe to call," I said. "And when it wasn't worth winning yet."
I pulled the jumpsuit on and zipped it. "Created some pressure. Made it hard for them to read me."
"Until the last round. Sy—" I stopped myself. "Boss decided to raise the stakes. Went all in."
A low whistle came from the other side of the door. When I opened it, my shoes were in one hand, my coat draped over the other.
"Mr. Kovi didn't appreciate that," I set the coat on the back of a chair and sat to put my shoes on.
"But instead of folding, he tried to pressure me into backing down."
I stood, shrugging into my coat.
"But I had a straight flush."
Luke groaned. "Oof."
"So I did what I was supposed to, I called."
I adjusted the coat.
"After showdown, Mr. Kovi did not take it well," I said. "His bodyguard attacked me. So I put him to sleep."
Kieran nodded once. "Efficient."
"Would've been," I added, "if I didn't already have two cracked ribs and internal bleeding."
Luke winced audibly behind the mask.
"I coughed up some blood," I finished. "And now we're here."
Silence followed—thick, thoughtful.
Luke broke it first, voice careful.
"Next time… maybe don't win that hard?"
A quiet huff of laughter slipped out of me.
"I'll keep that in mind."
And for a moment—just a moment—the hospital room didn't feel like a holding cell anymore.
The discharge was handled without ceremony—no long explanations, no new rules. Just a quiet acknowledgment from the staff that I was cleared to leave under supervision, which in this place seemed to mean whoever Sylus said was enough.
Outside, the morning hit me all at once.
Cool air. Pale sunlight. The city not yet fully awake.
I drew a deeper breath than I had all night and didn't immediately regret it.
Luke stretched as they walked, arms thrown overhead. "So. Timeline check. We're heading back to Linkon at midnight."
I glanced at him. "Midnight?"
"Yeah," he said easily. "Plenty of buffer."
Kieran nodded once. "Which means we wait."
I considered that. Twelve hours. No alarms. No scans. No white lights.
"That's… a lot of time," I said.
Luke grinned. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
The ride back to the safe house was quiet—not tense, just settled. The kind of silence that didn't demand vigilance. I leaned back, watching the city slide past the window, my body slowly catching up to the fact that I wasn't in danger right now.
By the time we arrived, the edge had dulled.
The safe house looked different in daylight.
Like a place someone might actually live.
I slipped my shoes off inside and felt something unfamiliar settle into my bones.
Rest.
Not the collapse kind. The kind that came from knowing I didn't have to be sharp for a few hours.
I realized, distantly, that I'd slept better on that hospital bed than I had in weeks.
Maybe months.
I moved to my room, stripped out of the borrowed clothes and stood under the spray of the shower longer than necessary, letting the water hit my shoulders, my ribs, the back of my neck. It stung where it needed to, soothed where it could. I kept my breathing slow, careful.
By the time I turned the water off, the tightness had eased into something manageable.
I pulled on black sweatpants and a black hoodie—soft, familiar, unremarkable. My hair hung wet and heavy down my shoulders, dripping onto the fabric, but I didn't bother drying it. I liked the weight. The reminder that I was still here. Still physical.
Still real.
I retrieved my laptop and drifted toward the living room balcony. The doors were already cracked open, letting morning spill across the floor in pale bands.
Sunlight warmed my face as I stepped outside.
I set the laptop on the low table and leaned against the railing, eyes closed for a second, letting the light sink in. The city below was waking—slow traffic, distant voices, the hum of systems coming online.
The world, continuing.
When I opened my eyes, I decided I needed some coffee.
I didn't move right away.
The sun was still doing most of the work—warming my skin, loosening the last tight knots in my shoulders. My laptop sat closed on the table, patient. Waiting. It didn't demand anything from me yet, and for once, neither did the world.
But coffee was non-negotiable.
I pushed off the railing and went back inside, moving carefully but without hesitation this time. The kitchen was quiet, immaculate in that way only unused spaces ever are. I found the machine, filled it by muscle memory, and leaned against the counter while it worked.
The smell hit first.
Rich. Bitter. Familiar.
By the time the cup was warm in my hands, something inside me had already started to line up—thoughts snapping into place, edges sharpening, the low-grade fog in my skull thinning out. I took a slow sip and let the heat settle all the way down.
There you are.
I carried the mug back to the balcony and finally opened the laptop.
The screen lit up instantly.
No login screen. No delay. Just the environment I'd built myself into—layers of interlocking windows, live feeds, quiet background processes already humming. TraceNet didn't wake up so much as acknowledge me.
I set the mug down, fingers moving almost lazily at first.
No rush.
Rushing made mistakes.
I started broad—casting the net wide, letting it skim instead of bite. Infrastructure traffic. Security cam metadata. Private feeds bleeding into public systems where they weren't supposed to. Viktor didn't hide by disappearing; he hid by overlapping—burying himself in noise until most people stopped looking.
I let TraceNet listen.
Patterns began to rise.
Not locations yet. Not names. Just absences. Gaps where systems should've pinged and didn't. Routes that rerouted themselves without reason. Cameras that recorded everything except the same two-minute window, every night, like clockwork.
I slowed.
Zoomed in.
There.
A familiar signature threaded through the mess—not a fingerprint exactly, more like a habit. A preference. Viktor liked redundancy, but he seemed to hate symmetry. So I followed the asymmetry.
The sunlight crept higher, warming the backs of my hands as I worked. The city below grew louder, more awake, but it felt distant now—background noise to the quiet hum of data slotting together.
One node lit amber.
Then another.
Not enough to celebrate. Not enough to call it a win.
But enough to prove something important.
I wasn't blind.
And he wasn't as far ahead as he thought.
I took another sip of coffee, eyes never leaving the screen.
"Found you," I murmured.
Enough to know I wasn't guessing anymore.