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Security stormed the corridor at last, their boots slipping on glass, their weapons holstered, their expressions wide-eyed and a little too eager to look helpful without being useful. Too late to matter.Convenient,she thought bitterly,how they had failed to protect anything until the threat was already over.
A different kind of rage flared under her skin then, not panic this time, but something sharper, something colder. Resolve.
She could still taste the electric crackle of the drones, hear the metallic hum overhead, feel the way the system had turned on her without warning or remorse.
The flashback hadn't just taken her breath. It had taken her back, all the way down, past the neat walls she had built around the memory, past the years of careful silence, until she was there again, outside Fallon, feeling the scream of metal she could not out-code, the helpless slip of lives falling out of her reach. She had sounded the alarm. She had thrown herself against the system with everything she had, clawing at the seams, demanding someone listen. But the system had buried her voice the same way it buried her people, fast, permanent.
She had lost the part of herself that believed trying was enough.
The tribunal had been swift and clinical, the words wrapped in bureaucratic calm, but the verdict had been written long before she entered that sterile room. Not guilty, but not innocent either. Not culpable, but not clean. An asterisk placed beside her name that no clearance level could erase.
She had survived the breach, the inquiry, the reassignment, but she had not survived herself.
After the dust settled, the isolation had begun.
She hadn’t just lost them. She cataloged them silently now, every name, every face.
Not to break herself. To steel herself.
If OrdoTech thought a few broken drones and a hallway full of smoke were going to scare her off, they didn’t know a damn thing about what it meant to lose everything and keep standing.
They hadn’t taken her then. They wouldn’t take her now.
Through it all, Nash hadn’t let go of her.
His body was a wall against the chaos still thick around them, tall, solid, bleeding but unshaken. She could feel the energy burning through him like a loaded weapon, coiled and ready, his chest rising and falling in tight, controlled breaths.
When Rory strolled into view, composed, indifferent, he stated, “It was lucky that no one was seriously hurt.” The obvious subtext was.Too bad you’re still upright.
Nash’s patience was strained like a bowstring ready to snap. Grace squeezed his arm, hard, feeling the muscle jump under her hand. It wasn’t a plea for him to stand down. It was a reminder.Cat-like patience.
She straightened, tugging her sleeves down with deliberate calm, ignoring the shredded fabric and bloodstains. They had no choice but to keep control. “We’re still at the mouse hole,” she whispered. “Whiskers just peeked out. We wait.”
To be the professionals OrdoTech was so desperately hoping they would fail to be.
She shifted her weight slightly to stay close to Nash, feeling the suppressed violence still thrumming under his skin, and found it comforting rather than frightening. She knew exactly how lethal he could be when it mattered. Exactly how magnificent.
every cell in her body vibrated with the knowledge thathe had done it for her.
Rory’s voice broke into their quiet. “Mr. Fenwick would like to see you,” Rory said, voice too crisp, too calm, like a band-aid over a bullet wound.
His eyes flicked to the blood on Grace’s blouse, then briefly to Nash, and for half a second, something smug flickered there.Gone before it settled.The mask slipped back into place.
“He better have a goddamned answer why your drones attacked us,” Nash bit out, looking like he was two steps away from mayhem. Grace nodded once, sharp and sure, feeling Nash fall into step beside her. “We might be waiting, but I’m not a passive guy.”
She turned to look at him and warmth rushed through her. “I kinda like that about you.”
He chuckled. “Only you can make me laugh when I want to tear something apart.”
“No tearing…yet.”
“Just give me the word,” he said, the lethal threat of him like an aura encasing them both.
The walk down the executive corridor was pure theater, soft carpet muffling their footsteps, recessed lighting casting clean, polished shadows across wood-paneled walls. The contrast between the wreckage they'd just left and the sterile opulence they were being led into was almost laughable.
It reeked of money. Of desperation disguised as power.
Grace let her hand brush Nash's fingers briefly, a silent check-in, and he answered by walking half a step closer, his body heat radiating in quiet solidarity.