Page 58

EON

I ’d fled back to my apartment. DITA was flitting around, her holographic avatar pretending to dust every surface in a little maid outfit.

“DITA, will you put some different clothes on?”

“Am I distracting you, E?” she asked, smirking.

“Yes! I’m trying to work.”

“Whatever you say.” Her countenance flickered, and she was back in her standard little black dress.

I sighed and tried to focus on cyberspace.

DITA was still monitoring the data reconstruction while I was still trying to figure out what the hell the programmer who’d altered my code had been doing.

Their work was sloppy as hell—so many variables left hanging, layers of nested loops that could’ve been simplified.

Amateur stuff. It reminded me of when I was working with…

A message popped up on my Vysor. Cy.

Cy: Looks like we need in at Church of Divine Light. Know anyone?

Me: Need I remind you that I’m a cyberrunner? You’re the one into espionage.

Cy: Yeah, but you’re the one who likes to play dress-up.

I was about to fire back when I remembered—I did know someone with connections to the Church. Even if she pretended that wasn’t who she really was.

Me: Give me a few hours.

Cy: Uh oh. Somebody’s about to get it.

“I like seeing you smile like that,” DITA said, watching me.

I wiped the stupid grin off my face.

I sent another message, this time to Taos.

Me: We need to meet.

I waited. No response. She’d seen it—right there on her fucking face, and I knew she hadn’t blocked me. This was about to get messy.

“How do you think Cy would handle this?” DITA asked.

“He’d make a threat. Force her hand.”

“Hmmmm.” DITA didn’t say anything else, just busied herself with her Sisyphean task of dusting with a holographic body.

Me: It’s about the project Tanaka had you working on. The off-the-books one.

It was a shot in the dark—and vague enough to mean anything—but I had a feeling I wasn’t wrong.

Taos: When?

Jackpot.

Me: One hour.

Taos: K.

I found her at an upscale medical spa in Sky District—her choice, delivered via a last-minute message. The place reeked of privilege, offering neural stabilization chambers and chemical balance adjustments that cost more than my monthly rent.

Taos sat in a secluded alcove, a custom biometric monitor wrapped around her wrist, its display cycling through metrics I couldn’t quite make out.

Her blonde hair was perfectly styled, her clothes expensive but understated.

I was getting a look at the real her—not rebel leader Taos, but the woman beneath.

Only the careful, measured way she moved betrayed anything more.

“Protected clinic,” she said by way of explanation, gesturing vaguely at the privacy screens around us. “No monitoring devices. And I had an appointment anyway.”

I took the seat across from her. “Thanks for coming.”

“What’s this about, E?” Her fingers tapped a complex rhythm against the table—not nervousness, I realized, but impatience.

A spa attendant approached with some kind of herbal infusion, and Taos waved her away without looking up.

Her hand went to the glowing crystal at her throat, toying with it absentmindedly.

The same one I’d seen on worshippers of the Divine Light.

“I need to get inside the Church of Divine Light.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she let out a short laugh. “You? At a service? That’s hard to picture.”

“No,” I clarified. “I need to know their dirty business. I need access to an Echelon member’s service—or at least inside their physical security.”

Her smile disappeared, and she fidgeted with the glowing crystal again. “I don’t think I can do that, E.”

I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t want this to get ugly. Taos wasn’t a bad person, but her idea of revolution always seemed to align conveniently with her personal interests. I flicked over the code— my code—with her fingerprints all over it.

“You’ve seen this before?”

Her eyes went wide. “No!”

So yes. I took a deep breath. “POM has it. Only a matter of time until they trace it to you.” Let her call my bluff.

“What? How is that possible? We destroyed the—” She cut herself off. “How would you know that?” She looked me up and down. “Wait…don’t tell me you’re working for them?”

“I’m not working for anyone.” Lie.

“E! How could you do that? I thought you understood. That’s why you helped us. You wanted to bring those corpo bastards down.”

“What I want is to survive, Taos. To live until tomorrow. To sleep soundly at night knowing my needs are taken care of.”

“How can you do that when they own every aspect of our lives?” She leaned forward, her voice taking on that too-familiar revolutionary fervor that always felt rehearsed. “What we eat, what we drink, what we watch, what’s on the news. Don’t you want to fight back?”

“I can’t fight back, Taos! I’m barely keeping my head above water. I’ve got debt up to my eyeballs, jobs that run me into the ground. I don’t have the time or energy to fight. I don’t have the luxury .”

This wasn’t what I’d come here to talk about, but she was pissing me off.

She looked at me with something between pity and contempt. “That’s a coward’s response. Just proves you’re okay with the status quo.”

Oh no. Fuck her. She did not get to say that to me.

“Easy to stand on that soapbox when you can run back to your trust fund anytime, Sarah .”

Taos froze. Several seconds passed while she processed what I’d said. “You looked me up?”

“I was about to risk my life on a mission with you—of course I looked you up. Sarah Leewood, youngest child of Miranda Leewood, CEO of RejuvaLife Pharmaceuticals, net worth: 4.2 billion. One of five kids, all set up with their own trust funds. You could’ve actually changed things with that kind of money, but instead you’re out here playing revolutionary. ”

The color drained from her face. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? You walked away from real resources that could’ve helped thousands so you could run around with Deacon and his band of idiots. You think blowing up a data center helps anyone? How many people died when that grid went down?”

“You can’t change the system from within,” she hissed, leaning forward.

“I tried that. Redirecting funds, setting up unauthorized treatment programs, smuggling meds to Magenta clinics. You know what happened? They caught me, locked me in a ‘wellness center’ for six months, and undid everything. Every. Single. Thing. To protect the bottom line.”

“So what—Daddy wouldn’t give you the keys to the kingdom, so you decided to burn it down instead?”

“Don’t you dare simplify this,” she snapped, her composure slipping. “The system isn’t broken, E. It’s working exactly as designed. It’s engineered to extract profit from suffering—our suffering. You have no idea what it’s like to be inside that world and see how it really works.”

I refused to feel sympathy. “And that justifies putting innocent lives at risk? People died in that explosion, Taos.”

“People die every day because they can’t afford basic medical care!” Her voice rose, then she caught herself, glancing around at the sterile, spa-like surroundings. When she continued, her voice was low and intense. “You think I chose this path lightly?”

“I think you wanted to be a hero,” I shot back. “Easier than the hard work of actual systemic change. Easier than staying at RejuvaLife and using your position to help people who needed it.”

“What do you know about helping people? You’re fucking working for POM!”

That I was. And I needed this job to keep helping the one person who actually mattered to me.

“You will get me into the Church. I found that kaijin pendejo for you and fucked him to within an inch of his life so you and your little gang could play folk hero. I put my life on the line—my friend did too—so you could do what? Cause some property damage? Some revolution. You owe me this.”

Taos rolled her eyes. “Your friend? Please. That wasn’t exactly a hardship for either of you. It’s what she does for a living anyway.”

My Flux sparked beneath my skin before I could stop it. “What did you just say?”

“Oh, come on,” she said dismissively. “Let’s not pretend she’s some revolutionary hero. She’s just a—”

“Choose your next words very carefully.”

She gave me a confused look. “I’m not saying you’re like her—”

“Oh, but I am. Except Mercy is kind, generous, and forgiving. I’m not. So tread lightly.”

The lights in the spa flickered, reacting to the electromagnetic disturbance I was barely containing.

Taos glanced at the flickering lights, then back at me, something like envy flashing across her features. “There you go again with your precious Flux. So easy for you, isn’t it? Born with power the rest of us can only dream about. Did you know I’m the only one of my siblings without Flux?”

“Should I feel bad for you? Mercy took a risk to help. She didn’t have to. Neither did I.”

“Fine,” Taos said, waving her hand like she was swatting a fly. “Your friend helped. Great. But it’s not like I can just walk you into an Echelon service. My parents are members, not me.”

“But they take you to special events,” I pressed. “You know the security protocols. The access points.”

She looked away. “I cut ties with my family. I told you that.”

“Yet here you are”—I gestured around the high-end spa—“in a clinic I could never get an appointment at.”

Her jaw tightened. “I have my reasons.”

“And I have mine for needing Church access. So unless you want POM to know exactly who modified that code—and they will, because their analysts are actually competent—you’ll help me.”

She glared at me, hatred and calculation warring in her expression.

“Fine. You want in? Your Flux is your ticket. The Church is obsessed with eletrotekniks—something about resonance patterns bridging the physical and digital realms. They’ll give you the royal treatment if you claim you need their help.

Just say…say Brother Ian said you’d be a good candidate.

That should get you where you need to go. ”

“That’s it?”

“It’s all you’ll need. Trust me.”

The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable—not just ideological, but deeply personal. Resentment born from gifts she’d never been given. Her hand moved to adjust the neural optimizer behind her ear, the kind reserved for Sky District elites.

“What did you do to my code, Taos?”

“You’re so smart—figure it out.” She stood abruptly, her chair toppling backward with an expensive-sounding thud .

People were staring now, but she didn’t seem to care—used to being the center of attention.

Maybe the old me wouldn’t have done it. Maybe I’d been spending too much time around Cy.

But I saw the judgment in her eyes, and I wanted to twist the knife.

“You know what I think? I think you’re scared. All this talk against the corps, but I’ve never seen you plan a job against your mom’s pharmaceutical company. That’d be easy for you, with your insider access. Guess we’re both cowards.”

Her hand twitched toward her side, and for a second I thought she might draw her gun. Wouldn’t do her much good, not with the new tech shielding me. Tech I’d recovered while she nearly blew the entire mission.

“You think you’re so fucking cool,” she spat. “So above it all. But the truth is, you’re just another gear in their machine, Eon. You talk about survival like it’s noble, but really? You’re just rationalizing compliance. They’ve already won with you.”

“Better than dying for nothing.”

“Nothing?” Her laugh was sharp and bitter. “I might die for this, but at least I’ll die believing in something. What will you die for? A paycheck? A slightly more comfortable cage?”

She turned and walked away, each step perfectly measured despite her obvious anger. The spa attendants stepped aside without a word—trained to recognize the posture of the privileged, even when cloaked in rebellion.

“Taos.” She paused but didn’t turn. “I hope it’s worth it. I hope your revolution gives you what you’re looking for.”

“It will,” she said quietly. “It has to.”

As she disappeared into the spa’s pristine corridor, I noticed the subtle technologies embedded in her clothing—fashion blended with high-end medical monitoring systems. Her rebellion was accessorized with the very privilege she claimed to reject, a contradiction she either couldn’t see or chose not to question.

Taos wasn’t bad. But I wasn’t good, and I needed this. I needed the paycheck—something she would never understand. She could always go back. She had a safety net.

I texted Cy:

Me: Got our way in.

A few moments later:

Cy: Atta girl.