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Miral shimmered near the holo panel, radiant and opalescent, fingers moving fast across a stream of code pouring through the air in threads of light.

‘I’m inside the Eterna’s servers now,’ Miral announced. ‘ Sante to the node permissions you granted, Savvine. I’m pinging every relay. Scanning servers. Sifting command subroutines.’

The boardroom lights dimmed as data flickered over the air.

Miral’s expression darkened.

‘I’ve found something.’

Xander stopped pacing.

Savvine gripped the table. ‘What?’

Miral turned slowly. ‘Remember the intel about Eugene accepting alien weapons? It seems that when he integrated the systems, all of Eterna’s security got compromised. Everything, navigation, AI, even core command, rerouted, to a non-Bianchi signature I can’t get a read on.’

Just then, the holo panel buzzed, sending more feed data straight from Abby.

An override signal controlled the Signet display, broadcasting a wide-band transmission from the Venantia Eterna .

Eugene Bianchi’s face appeared as his voice crackled through the Livestream channel. It was unnervingly cold, and his eyes were gleaming and unblinking.

‘Bianchi clan,’ he said, inflection stilted.

‘This is your Leader speaking. I bring you guidance. Clarity. Purpose. Do not panic. The blackout is for your safety. Communications off-ship have been suspended to prevent further sabotage, like the cowardly Lombardi assault on The Odalon . This is not a time for weakness. This is when we hunker down, close our ranks, and prepare. The enemy is not at the gates; they are among us. Traitors, interlopers, scavengers. But we are the flame that will not flicker. The Bianchi name will endure. This is our call to arms. Rise, sons and daughters of Eterna , and be ready to defend your blood, your house, and your legacy.’

His face vanished, and the message dropped into the black.

Savvine shot to her feet.

‘That voice. That isn’t Eugene.’

It was not the man she was familiar with.

His words were strange, his cadence off, his utterance out of sync with the movement of his lips, delayed. He also wasn’t blinking, not once.

‘When I last met him,’ she whispered, ‘he didn’t blink either.’

‘Running facial kinetics,’ Miral said, fingers blazing. Her eyes flared as code raced across the boardroom.

‘ Fokk ,’ she breathed. ‘It’s not him.’

Xander’s utterance was a growl. ‘What is it?’

Miral stepped forward, the light from her palms casting eerie shadows on the table. ‘It’s a synth facsimile bot. Bio-polymer skin. Vocal modulator. High-end mimic tech, alien design.’

Savvine’s heart dropped. ‘So where’s the real Eugene?’

‘Unknown,’ Miral replied. ‘He may be imprisoned. Or worse. But that,’ she said, nodding toward the flickering display, ‘isn’t human. It’s a puppet.’

Eugene’s holo repeated, his tone robotic, his eyes empty.

Xander rotated to Savvine. ‘This changes everything.’

Savvine’s gaze didn’t leave the projection. ‘You think? I now see why he sent me to the Sombra to buy a ship. He wanted me out of the way so he could take over my security protocols. Fokk him!’

She faced her companions. ‘Whatever or whoever that is, we need it out of the Eterna , and we need to get to my people inside.’

Xander nodded, jaw set.

Savvine exhaled, pulse thundering, tamping down her panic at the daunting new challenge ahead.

The rest of Savvine’s day was spent with Xander and the Signet strong guard, shifting from briefings to ops rooms and holo simulations designed to get her back onto her ship without being detected.

Her comm tab chimed with the latest updates from Abby, encrypted messages that Miral rerouted from her node and commtab into Signet’s network.

From her end, Abby was relentless, tracing every ghost echo and thermal ping, providing breadcrumbs that Savvine fed into the mission plan.

Zev and Mak cross-referenced the data with Eterna’s older schematics, overlaid with what Signet’s black-ops scouts mapped from recent Lombardi incursions.

Boaz marked infiltration points and fallback zones, revealing the quiet genius mind behind the man’s mountain frame.

Kaal and Rigo input intel, battle calcs, breach angles, and calibrating sensors to detect synthetic facsimile bots.

Santiago was on the Sombra’s bridge, allowing Xander and Savvine to chart an infiltration route and a stealthed approach to the Eterna .

Xander’s arm brushed hers now and then as they conferred, recalibrated, and discussed the best infil strategy.

He glanced at her at one point and murmured, ‘You’re holding up better than most would with a traitor within your house.’

Savvine met his gaze with a wry twist to her lips. ‘The Eugene I know is not a turncoat; he’s a careless, feckless playboy but freakishly loyal to the Bianchi family name. Whatever or whoever we saw onscreen is not him.’

Xander nodded, accepting her correction. ‘Fair enough.’

A few hours later, jacked up on too much kahawa and adrenaline, Xander declared it was time to eat. ‘We all deserve a break.’

The long, sleek side table was soon replenished with food from the ship’s kitchens.

The flavorful dishes crafted by Signet’s resident chefs were rich with the strong guard’s espanol heritage: bowls of paella negra , squid ink black and fragrant with garlic; albondigas in smoky tomato sauce; crisp and golden calamares fritos ; and warm empanadas stuffed with spiced beef and green olives.

They ate like warriors resting between battles, raucous and hungry.

Xander sat at the head, relaxed in his chair, trading barbs with Zev and Rigo while reaching to refill Savvine’s wine glass.

She nibbled on her plate as the brothers-in-arms ribbed each other mercilessly, going after Santiago for some incident he’d had earlier that day in engineering.

‘Did you lift that engine coil with your back, or did Boaz do all the work again?’ Zev jabbed, his grin wicked.

Santiago gave a lazy shrug. ‘Ask the coil.’

Rigo smirked. ‘Boaz lifted it on his back, while you tightened two screws and took the credit. Typical Santi.’

Santi placed a hand on his chest in mock offence. ‘I bring all the charm and flair to this operation, gentlemen.’

‘You provoke clamor and commotion, cabrón ,’ Kaal muttered, biting into a slice of tortilla.

‘Tis all the love coming my way, from the ladies, that rattles the rest of you.’

Savvine found herself laughing in hearty chuckles, her troubles forgotten for a moment in time.

Xander poured her a glass of tempranillo , the bottle already sweating from the cold, and topped up her plate again.

He didn’t say much, but his presence wrapped around her like a second skin.

She welcomed the attention and the comfort it provided when his shoulder nudged hers, stroked her upper arm, and placed a calloused hand on her knee.

They weren’t overt gestures, but they counted, for he was becoming her anchor in the storm.

Other than her parents and siblings, no one had ever cared like this for her.

She loved how his hand lingered on her lower back when passing behind her chair.

How his knee brushed hers beneath the table, the way he gazed at her.

It wasn’t dominance.

It was attentive care, quiet and constant.

Tears pricked her eyes as she clung to the comfort it gave her, even as she fought off waves of panic, thinking of her family and friends on her ark ship.

As the meal wore on, Savvine reveled in the safety and unity on the Signet vessel packed with ex-prisoners and former rebels, and had once housed chaos and blood.

She sensed little tension in the air.

There was no evidence of open-carry weapons, glints of distrust from passersby, or proof of tight-lipped factions side-eyeing one another.

Here, the harmony was companionable, the laughter was unrestrained.

The Eterna hadn’t enjoyed a peace like this in years, caught in the endless tension of mafia feuds, internal factional bickering, and external clan wars.

Savvine soon grasped that the calm on board the Sombra was attributed to Xander.

His presence dominated every room he prowled into.

He was the steady, magnetic eye of the storm.

His brotherhood admired him and often sought his affirmation or even critique, but never with fear, always with respect.

Her estimation of him rose even more.

After dessert and hot, bitter kahawa , it was back to the boardroom, and more poring over plans.

At one point, Xander leaned closer to her again, reviewing a layout of the Venantia Eterna’s docking grid. His breath warmed her cheek.

‘I think we can get you in through engineering sector four,’ he murmured. ‘Quietest entry point.’

She nodded, her throat tight.

His knee nudged hers, a silent signal of reassurance. She didn’t pull away.

Instead, she lingered, basking in his care, leaning into his touch.

Damn. This was devotion she could get used to.