Page 133 of The Sterling Acquisition

“She’s not my—” Dante started, then caught the teasing glint in Orion’s eyes. “How much, you impossible man?”

“12.7 million iscs,” Orion said, watching Dante’s face. “Split six ways between Lilac, the three Berserkers, and us.”

Dante was quiet, processing. “That’s...”

“Just over two million each,” Orion finished. “Enough to disappear if we wanted. New identities, safe passage to territories outside corporate control, maybe even passage off-continent.”

“The Berserkers are considering heading north,” Lilac said from the doorway, having appeared with her usual silent creeping. “There are some communities up in the former Canadian territories that don’t ask questions about corporate refugees. But Granny Lu offered them the option to stay as long as they maintain their suppressant regimen.”

She looked tired, Orion realized. The kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came from planning something this complicated while maintaining the facade that everything was normal. Whatever Lilac had done to coordinate the corporate account heist while simultaneously arranging a rescue operation, it took everything she had.

“What about us?” Dante asked, struggling to sit up despite Orion’s protests. “The collective can’t be safe anymore. Gensyn will eventually realize their people died nearby.”

Granny Lu wheeled herself into the room, her expression thoughtful. “They searched the battlefield, found the bodies, collected their intelligence, and left,” she said simply. “As far as they’re concerned, it was an SVI operation gone wrong. Corporate rivalry at its finest.”

“We’re invisible,” Lilac explained. “We’ve been perfecting the art of looking like nothing worth corporate attention for decades. Overgrown buildings, no obvious technology, and people who scatter when vehicles approach. Just another abandoned settlement in the Static Zone.”

Orion felt himself ease. “So you’re safe.”

“We’re always safe,” Granny Lu corrected gently. “That’s rather the point.”

She wheeled closer to Dante’s bed, her sharp eyes studying his face. “The question is whether you two want to keep running, or if you’d like to try staying somewhere for a while.”

Dante was quiet, his hand finding Orion’s and gripping tight. “We can’t go back to corporate territories. Either of them.”

“We wouldn’t want to,” Orion said firmly. “But...”

“But?” Granny Lu prompted.

Orion looked around the room—at the living walls, at Lilac’s scarred but peaceful face, at the sounds of normal life happening just outside the windows. “This place feels like home,” he said. “For the first time in my life, somewhere actually feels like home.”

Dante squeezed his hand. “The collective would really... let us stay?”

“Let you?” Lilac snorted. “Cabron.We’ve been hoping you’d ask. You think we went to all this trouble just to watch you disappear into some other Static Zone community?”

Granny Lu smiled, and it transformed her weathered face. “The collective always has room for people who understand that freedom isn’t about having power over others. It’s about having the choice to live as you are.”

“Besides,” Lilac added pragmatically, “your corporate training might come in handy. We could use someone who understands how they think, how they operate. And Orion’s got skills we can use.”

“Plus,” Riot said from the doorway, “Miss Lilac just likes you two.”

The next few hours passed in a blur of planning. Not escape plans this time, but settling-in plans. Where they might live—there was a building on the eastern edge of the collective that had been prepared for new residents. What skills they could contribute. How thecommunity operated primarily on bartering rather than currency, with their iscs serving as emergency reserves for situations that required actual corporate credits—bribes, specialized supplies, passage through checkpoints.

“We don’t use money much around here,” Granny Lu explained. “Too easy to track, too tied to corporate systems. We trade skills and goods instead. But having reserves for emergencies—that’s just good sense.”

It felt surreal after all of the running, of looking over their shoulders, of never knowing if they’d see another sunrise.

“Any regrets?” Dante asked, hanging his antibiotic IV bag on a hanging planter hook, later that evening as they sat on the porch of what would be their new home, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and pink.

Orion considered the question seriously. Three weeks ago, he’d been a prisoner with no hope of freedom. Now he was sitting beside the man he loved, in a place where no one would ever own him again, with enough money to ensure their safety if they ever needed to run again.

“Just one,” he said.

Dante tensed. “What?”

Orion grinned, leaning against Dante’s shoulder. “I’m going to miss Leo’s terrible coffee. It was so bad it was almost impressive.”

Dante’s stuttered laugh filled the evening air, bright and genuine and free, before it devolved into a series of coughing chest spasms.