By the time Kael saw the sky again, it was already turning the color of old bruises.
Not night yet. Not day.
That gray hour when the city pretended nothing bad could happen because most people were between shifts and too tired to care.
He dragged himself out of the drainage tunnel and onto the broken concrete of an abandoned loading yard, lungs burning, hands slick with someone else's blood.
The others spilled out behind him, one by one.
Rin.
Heat‑fists, limping.
The tattoo‑ink woman, her shadows clinging to her skin again like they were exhausted too.
A handful of others whose names he didn't know and now might never get to.
They stared around, dazed.
Above them, shields flickered faintly over the skyline Orion's grid stretching like a ghostly dome, humming louder than usual.
"Is this… outside?" someone asked.
The question shouldn't have made sense.
It did.
"Yes," Kael said. "Congratulations. You made it out of hell and into… whatever this is."
The yard was wedged between dead warehouses, overgrown tracks vanishing into rubble. In the distance, the city proper glittered towers, clean light, lev‑lanes still moving.
Normal life.
Untouched.
For now.
Rin swayed on her feet.
Kael grabbed her elbow before she fell.
"We need to move," he said. "If they track our exit point—"
"Already did," the tattooed woman muttered, glancing up at the shields. "You hear that? They're re‑tuning the grid."
Kael listened.
Under the city noise, under the faint rumble of traffic, there was a higher whine, shifting.
They were right.
The net was tightening.
He fought down a wave of dizzy anger.
They were above ground for five minutes and already the system was rewriting itself around them.
"We head to the rendezvous," he said. "Lysa will meet us there."
No one argued.
They were too tired.
Too trusting.
They shouldn't have been.
He shouldn't have been.
He led them into the maze of back alleys and service roads, away from main streets and cameras, every step a micro‑calculation line of sight, cover, distance to the nearest manhole.
The Network had mapped these routes over years, layer by layer.
Tonight, they were bleeding on them.
Rin stumbled again.
"Stop pretending you're fine," Kael said quietly.
She gave a ragged laugh.
"You're one to talk," she said. "You're shaking."
He looked down.
She was right.
His hands wouldn't still.
Too much power burned through nerves never meant to handle it, too much adrenaline without enough space to drain.
"Side effect," he said. "It'll pass."
He didn't know if that was true.
He said it anyway.
Behind them, the city hummed with distant sirens.
Not close.
Not yet.
Someone at the back retched into a gutter.
No one looked away.
There was nowhere else to look.
***
The rendezvous wasn't a safehouse.
Those were burned now, at least for tonight.
The Network had contingency points for when everything went wrong.
This one was an old maintenance depot half buried under a collapsed overpass, its interior carved up over the years into hidden rooms and access hatches.
When Kael shoved the side door open, the smell of oil and damp concrete greeted him.
And voices.
Taro's, high and frantic.
"…you can't just assume that! She's pulled worse tricks than that and walked out, you know she has—"
Aiden's, rough.
"Taro—"
"And you why are you leaking on everything, what did you do to your ribs, that is not how ribs are supposed to look—"
Kael stepped inside.
Conversation stopped.
Aiden sat on a crate, pale, shirt dark with blood at the side. The sliver hung around his neck on a makeshift cord, hidden under fabric but glowing faintly through it.
Taro, hair a wild mess, turned toward the door, eyes going wide.
"Oh," he said. "You're not dead. That's… that's statistically impressive."
Kael almost smiled.
"Working on keeping it that way," he said.
He ushered the others in.
The space filled quickly too quickly for how small the room felt.
Taro's gaze flicked over the new arrivals, counting.
Kael saw his face change at the number.
Less relief.
More absence.
"Where's Lysa?" Taro asked.
The question landed like a stone.
Kael swallowed.
"She diverted in the waste level," he said. "Pulled a lockdown on herself so the rest could get through the chute."
"You left her," Taro said.
The words weren't an accusation.
They felt like one anyway.
"She made a choice," Kael said.
"So did you," Taro shot back.
Silence pressed in.
Rin sank onto the nearest flat surface, face gray.
Aiden pushed himself upright with a wince.
"How bad?" he asked Kael.
Kael looked around at the room.
At the wounded, the missing, the blood.
"At Twelve‑North or in here?" he asked.
"Both," Aiden said.
Kael exhaled slowly.
"We freed maybe a few dozen," he said. "Maybe more between the labs and the corridors. Some didn't make it to the ducts. Some didn't survive the blast when you hit the pillar. Security took casualties. Orion did too. We made it out with… this."
He gestured at the people scattered around them.
"Lysa stayed behind," he added. "Mara cornered her in waste. Lysa forced a vent. I don't know—"
He broke off.
The image of steam and sirens and Mara's silhouette wouldn't leave his head.
Aiden's jaw clenched.
"She knew what she was doing," he said.
"That makes it worse," Taro muttered.
No one argued.
For a moment, the only sound was the drip of water somewhere in the walls and the uneven breathing of survivors.
Rin's hands shook.
She stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.
"I thought," she said softly, "that getting out would feel… different."
"Like what?" Aiden asked.
"Like a clean cut," she said. "Like stepping through a door and slamming it on the past and suddenly everything is… lighter. But it's just… more air. More places to be scared in."
No one told her she was wrong.
Kael leaned against a support beam, letting exhaustion dig hooks into him.
"This is what freedom looks like," he said after a moment. "It's not a door. It's a hallway with more doors and more people trying to slam them in your face."
"That's a terrible metaphor," Taro said.
"It's all I've got," Kael said.
He slid down until he was sitting, legs stretched out, back to the cold concrete.
His body hurt.
His head hurt.
His thoughts hurt more.
"We did what we came to do," Aiden said.
His voice sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
He reached under his shirt and drew out the sliver.
Its light painted the room in sick colors.
"Every log," he said. "Every reading. Every 'incident report' where a Deviant's name gets replaced with a code and their pain gets turned into a productivity metric. It's all in here. Once we push this out, no one can say they didn't know anymore."
"Knowing and caring are two different things," Taro said quietly.
He wasn't looking at the sliver.
He was looking at the door.
At the absence behind it.
"Some will care," Aiden said. "Enough to matter."
"And the Board?" Kael asked. "They'll call it fabricated. Foreign interference. Deviant propaganda."
"They'll try," Aiden said. "But they can't erase every frame. Not when it hits a hundred feeds at once, mirrored a thousand times. That's what the Network's for."
"The Network is bleeding," Taro said. "Half our safe routes just lit up red. Cells are going to ground. Some won't come back. Whatever Lysa thought we were ready for, this is more."
"Good," Kael said.
They all looked at him.
"Good?" Taro repeated, incredulous.
"If this had gone clean," Kael said, "if we'd walked in, stolen the files, walked out without breaking anything… they would have patched the hole and pretended nothing happened. Quiet horrors stay. Loud ones force a choice."
"People died," Taro said.
"Yes," Kael said. "And if we hadn't gone in, they would still be dying in those chairs tomorrow. And the day after. And next year. At least tonight, some of them walked out."
Rin lifted her head.
"I'm not sure yet if that's better," she said. "Being alive with all of this in my head."
Kael met her gaze.
"Me either," he said. "But it's the only option that includes possibility."
The word felt thin.
He used it anyway.
***
Mara did not go home when Twelve‑North finally stopped screaming.
She sat alone in a small observation room two levels above the waste processors, watching a playback of the omega chamber collapse.
The feed shook with the force of the blast, static chewing at the edges, sound compressing into a dull roar.
She watched anyway.
She watched the pillar flare.
She watched bodies thrown back.
She watched systems fail.
Then she watched it again.
And again.
Each time, her eyes caught on different details.
The moment the energy surged sideways instead of down the choice.
The instant some modules failed open, some failed shut random or design.
The shape of a figure near the railing, half obscured by light, arm outstretched.
Lioren.
The Board had already started the narrative.
Containment incident. Deviant attack. Heroic response. Tragic casualties.
They had drafted statements while the smoke still hung in the air.
They had circled her name in those drafts more than once.
Responsibility.
Liability.
Leverage.
She closed the feed.
Silence fell, heavy.
Her reflection hovered on the dark screen—lines sharper than she remembered, eyes older.
She looked tired.
She looked like someone who had run out of justifications.
The door chimed.
"Enter," she said.
Rian limped in on crutches, leg braced.
He looked worse than she did.
That helped.
"Captain," he said.
"Sit," she replied.
He did, lowering himself into the chair with a hiss.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
"You lied in your report," Mara said at last.
Rian's mouth twisted.
"Yes," he said. "Badly. You caught it."
"You said you arrived after the blast," she said. "That you found Lioren destabilizing the pillar and tried to stop him. That he fled through the maintenance door before you could bring him in."
"Sounds heroic," Rian said. "Shame it's not true."
He met her gaze.
"You're going to charge me with obstruction?" he asked. "Treason? Accessory to whatever they're calling tonight?"
"I should," she said.
"But?" he prompted.
"But," she said slowly, "if I do, Internal will tear your story apart until they get to what actually happened. And then they will have to ask why you did what you did. Why you helped him. Why you didn't shoot."
She leaned back.
"And then they will have to ask why I didn't either," she added.
Rian's brows rose.
"You're not as important to them as you think," he said. "They'd sacrifice you if it made a cleaner story."
"I know," Mara said.
The admission sat between them like a third person.
"The Board wants a name to hang this on," she said. "They want Lysa, they want Lioren, they want Kael. Failing that, they will take you. Or me. Or anyone they can package as 'the one who let it happen.'"
"Did we let it happen?" Rian asked.
Mara thought of the labs, of the pillar, of the collars.
Of every report she had skimmed faster than she should.
"We let it exist," she said. "They tore it open."
Rian looked down at his hands.
"You're still calling this 'they,'" he said. "Like you're not part of it."
"I'm not sure what I'm part of anymore," she said.
He laughed once.
"Welcome to the rest of us," he said.
She didn't return the smile.
"The files got out," she said. "We're still tracking the leak, but we both know the Network planned redundancies. Even if we cut a few, others will survive. Within a day, maybe two, there will be images circulating we cannot fully suppress."
"And the city will see what you've been doing in its name," Rian said.
"In our name," Mara corrected.
He flinched.
She didn't let him look away.
"What happens next," she said, "will decide more than who keeps their job. It will decide whether the Order admits it built something it cannot defend, or doubles down and calls any criticism a threat."
"You know which way the Board will lean," Rian said.
"Yes," she said. "That's why it matters what we do underneath them."
Rian snorted.
"Us?" he asked. "The people who just failed to keep a facility from turning into a war zone?"
"The people who saw it," Mara said. "Who can't say 'we didn't know' anymore and still look at ourselves in the mirror."
She stood.
Her shadow cut across the floor between them.
"You'll keep your lies," she said. "For now. Officially, you did your duty under impossible circumstances."
"And unofficially?" he asked.
"Unofficially," she said, "you're going to tell me everything Lioren did in that chamber. Every choice he made. Every system he bypassed. Every person he could have killed and didn't."
Rian's eyes narrowed.
"You planning to turn that into a hunting guide?" he asked.
"I'm planning to understand him," she said. "Because the Board will treat him as a symbol to be erased. I need to know what he actually is if I'm going to decide whether to chase him or listen."
Rian stared at her.
"That sounds dangerously close to treason," he said.
"I think we passed that line when we walked into Twelve‑North and pretended we didn't know what happened in the rooms with no cameras," Mara said. "The only question now is which side we're on when the dust settles."
She turned the screen on again, not to the blast footage this time but to a still image Taro's loop had missed scrubbing entirely—a frame of Kael in the corridor, lightning in his hands, collar shattered at his feet.
He looked furious.
He looked terrified.
He looked alive.
"Pick your line, Rian," Mara said quietly. "Because the city is about to pick, whether it wants to or not."
***
Back in the depot, Kael dozed sitting up and dreamed he was still on the scan pad.
The cold light swept over him again and again.
Every time, the console flashed different words.
CONTAINED.
DANGER.
UNKNOWN.
ERROR.
He woke with his hands sparking and the taste of metal in his mouth.
Rin sat across from him, knees drawn to her chest, eyes open.
"You were making noises," she said.
"Apologies," he said.
"Don't be," she said. "It's nice to know it's not just me."
He wiped a hand over his face.
"How many are still here?" he asked.
Rin glanced around.
"From our group?" she said. "Eleven."
"How many started with us?" he asked.
Her throat worked.
"More," she said.
He nodded.
Aiden appeared at his elbow, moving carefully.
"We pushed the first packet," Aiden said.
Kael blinked.
"To who?" he asked.
"Everyone we could reach," Aiden replied. "Underground feeds, pirate channels, slip‑nodes in the civic net. It'll take time to propagate. They'll try to block it. They'll fail completely only if no one wants to look."
Kael imagined some kid in a clean apartment scrolling through news and catching a flicker an image of a lab, of a collar, of a body arching against restraints.
He didn't know whether to hope for outrage or fear.
Both were better than silence.
"What now?" he asked.
"Now?" Aiden said. "We rest. We bury our dead. We wait for the first reactions and figure out who's going to come after us hardest."
"Optimistic," Kael said.
"It's the closest word I have to 'not giving up,'" Aiden said.
He sank down beside Kael with a hiss.
For a moment, they just sat, shoulder to shoulder, watching survivors patch each other up with whatever supplies Taro could salvage.
"We broke something tonight," Kael said quietly.
"Yes," Aiden said.
"Do you think it was worth it?"
Aiden didn't answer immediately.
He watched Rin's hands as she practiced, very slowly, drawing thin strands of light between her fingers the beginnings of control coming back.
He watched Taro pacing, muttering calculations under his breath, already planning how to keep the Network from shattering completely under the pressure.
He watched the way everyone in the room flinched every time a distant siren wailed, then relaxed when it faded.
"I think," Aiden said at last, "that 'worth it' is a question we don't get to answer yet. Maybe ever. All we get is: was it necessary?"
Kael thought about Twelve‑North's heart, cracked and cooling.
About Lysa disappearing into steam.
About Mara, standing in the corridor with a gun she chose not to fire.
"Was it?" he asked.
Aiden's fingers brushed the sliver through his shirt.
"Yes," he said. "Because the alternative was pretending we could live with it."
Kael closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the world hadn't gotten any brighter.
But it felt different.
Less stable.
More honest.
"Then we live with this instead," he said.
"Or die with it," Aiden said.
Kael snorted.
"Always the cheery one."
"Someone has to balance you," Aiden replied.
Outside, unseen, the first fragments of their stolen truth slipped into the city's veins.
Screens flickered.
Feeds glitched.
Faces frowned.
The Order and the Flame had both crossed lines they could not step back from.
The world, whether it was ready or not, was about to find out what lived under its feet.