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“Vex!” a voice cut through the tension like a blade. Taos stepped into the room, her presence instantly commanding attention despite her petite frame. She had that kind of charisma; the kind that made people like Vex back down without a fight. It didn’t hurt that he probably wanted to fuck her too.

Vex grumbled something unintelligible and skulked away, leaving Taos and me alone in the corner. She shot him a pointed glare before turning to me, her expression softening into something resembling concern.

“You okay?” she asked, leaning against the wall beside me.

“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging it off. “He’s an idiot. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I know,” she said, her lips quirking into a half-smile. “But it’s my job to make sure things stay…civil around here.”

“Civil,” I repeated, raising an eyebrow. “In a basement full of horny teenage anarchists?”

She frowned, “No one here is a teen…well, I guess Spike is nineteen…but that’s not the point. Eon, you’ve helped us, no doubt about it, but it’s almost like you don’t want to be here.”

“I don’t,” I said, deadpan.

She laughed, a genuine sound that made her seem younger, almost innocent. “Fair enough. It’s like a fucking frat house in here, right? Come on,” she said, gesturing for me to follow. “Let’s get some space from these idiots. I want to talk about the Kinetic Shield anyway.”

I gripped my knees, propelling myself up off the couch and followed her down a cramped corridor to what passed for a command center.

It was a repurposed storage room stuffed to the brim with old terminals and hardware—anything they could scrounge up.

One wall was dominated by screens showing news feeds from all districts, data streams scrolling too fast for most eyes to process.

I glanced at the terminal she had left open—a complex code architecture far beyond the basic rebel systems, with multiple errors flagged in red.

She quickly minimized the window when she caught me looking, a flicker of something defensive crossing her features.

“Still having trouble with the encryption protocol?” I asked.

“It’s not important,” she said a little too quickly. “Just a side project.”

I recognized that dismissive tone—the sound of someone who’d never had to admit they couldn’t solve a problem themselves. She tapped a few keys, bringing up a different screen. Her fingers kept returning to her temple, massaging small circles there.

“You okay? I mean last time I saw you, you were still recovering from that bullet wound.” One put into her by Cy.

“Fine,” she said, the word clipped. “Just a headache. Too many hours staring at screens.”

But I’d spotted something else—a small device nestled behind her ear, partially hidden by her blonde hair. A neural stimulator. High-end medical tech—definitely not standard rebel equipment. The kind of thing you’d find in a Sky District clinic, not an underground bunker.

Except this bunker was full of medical equipment. Not just first-aid supplies, but professional-grade systems and medical kits.

“Quite the setup,” I observed. “You expecting casualties?”

“Always prepared,” Taos replied, dropping into a chair with careful movements.

“But luckily, with your help last time, we only had a few minor injuries. Didn’t need to use this stuff.

” She tapped a sequence on her wrist device, and the neural stimulator behind her ear pulsed once, a soft blue light cycling through its display.

The tension in her shoulders eased fractionally.

“That from the clinic raid you did last month?” I asked, nodding toward the stimulator.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Does it matter?”

I shrugged, letting it drop—though the model looked suspiciously high-end. Not something you’d find in the Magenta clinic they had raided.

She turned toward the largest monitor, pulling up footage of Magenta District streets. Pedestrians moved with the casual confidence of the protected, the yellow flash of Kinetic Shield tech visible whenever someone bumped too aggressively into another.

“Look at that,” she said, a genuine smile spreading across her face. “Six months and it’s everywhere. Gun violence down sixty-eight percent across all districts.” Her eyes shone with pride. “That’s what we did, E. That’s real change.”

I couldn’t argue with the numbers. “It worked out better than I expected,” I admitted.

“Because we made it open source,” she said, leaning forward. “Not just another corp technology to extort people with.” There was an edge to her voice—personal bitterness beneath the revolutionary rhetoric.

She pulled up a schematic I recognized immediately—my modified version the shield algorithm, the one I’d extracted during the POM job. But there were additions, refinements that hadn’t been in my original work. She caught me studying it.

“I made a few adjustments to your code,” she said, a hint of defensiveness in her tone. “Nothing major. Just some efficiency improvements.”

I nodded, though we both knew the “improvements” had been unnecessary. My code had been clean and optimized from the start. This was repackaging, not enhancement.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

Her hand moved unconsciously to her side, pressing against some invisible pain point, and she faltered.

I pretended not to notice but used the moment to scan the room more thoroughly. Near her workstation, partially concealed beneath a jacket, was an injector kit. The logo on its side had been partially scratched off, but I recognized the distinctive teal and white of RejuvaLife Pharmaceuticals.

The same corporation that had denied my mother advanced treatment protocols after her shooting.

Taos followed my gaze and moved quickly to cover the kit completely. “Not what you think,” she said preemptively.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Not all of us have your natural talents, E. Some of us need…assistance to keep up.”

There was something in her tone—not just frustration but a deeper resentment. The neural stimulator pulsed again, cycling through its calibration sequence.

“Why do this?” I asked, gesturing around us at the rebel headquarters. “It’s not exactly a comfortable life.”

Taos winced as she adjusted her neural stimulator. “Comfort is just another prison when you know what it costs others.” Her fingers trembled slightly. “Besides, some prisons can’t be escaped with money alone.”

Yeah, but most could. I kept that to myself.

“The best revolution isn’t destruction. It’s transformation. Building something better inside the shell of the old.” She gestured toward the Kinetic Shield footage. “Just like we did with this.”

The way she emphasized we felt calculated—claiming shared credit for what had primarily been my extraction and code work. She leaned forward, pulling up another set of schematics that looked like they’d been cobbled together from multiple sources.

“I’ve been working on something new,” she said, a hint of pride breaking through. “Something that could change everything about how we interface with systems.”

The code looked unstable to me—ambitious but fundamentally flawed in its architecture. Before I could comment, the neural stimulator behind her ear pulsed again, this time with increasing frequency. She winced, pressing her fingers against it.

“You should rest,” I said, recognizing the signs of someone pushing beyond their limits.

“Can’t,” she muttered, reaching under the jacket for the injector kit. She hesitated, then met my eyes with surprising vulnerability. “Would you mind…”

“Giving you privacy?” I finished for her.

She nodded, relief evident. “Just for a minute.”

I turned toward the door but paused. “Taos? Whatever your reasons…the shield tech helped a lot of people. That counts for something.”

Her expression softened. “It’s a start. But we’ve got bigger things coming, E. Things that could change everything.” She glanced at the code still displayed on the screen. “Just need the right catalyst.” As she said it, she toyed with that glowing necklace she always wore.

I left her with her secrets and what I suspected were higher-grade pharmaceutical stimulants than any rebel should be able to afford, stepping back into the chaotic main room.

The rebels were arguing about their next target, voices rising with misplaced revolutionary fervor.

They saw the system as something to tear down, not understanding how many lives were tangled in its architecture.

Vex cornered me before I could reach the exit, his earlier antagonism replaced with a sly grin.

“Must be nice, getting special treatment,” he said, leaning against the wall to block my path.

“I wouldn’t call a trip to the back room special treatment.”

He snorted. “No? I know she’s hot, but you should watch your back with her. She’s the one who convinced Deacon to blacklist you after the server job. Said you were too unreliable—might sell us out.”

My expression must have betrayed my surprise, because his grin widened.

“Oh, you didn’t know that? Yeah, she was real convincing—talking about how you’re too erratic. Turned right around and kept you on speed dial for her special projects, though.”

I kept my face neutral, though my Flux spiked beneath my skin. “Interesting story.”

“Not a story. I was there.” He shrugged, stepping aside. “Just thought you might want to know who your friends really are.”

“And that’s you?”

He got an ugly look in his eye. “I could be.”

I shoved past him, leaving with a knot of suspicion I couldn’t untangle. I glanced back toward the command center, where Taos was now hunched over her terminal, focused intensely on the flawed code architecture she couldn’t quite make work.

Taos was different from the others. I’d glimpsed something in her that went beyond simple rebellion. For her, this was personal. Desperate. That made her dangerous. She wasn’t just fighting the system.

She was looking for salvation from it.

And apparently, she needed me to find it—while ensuring I remained dependent on her goodwill.