Chapter seventeen: Smoke Between

The rendezvous with Raoul had left Zali hollow.

She and Jonah walked side by side now, silence dragging between them like a third companion neither invited. The city moved around them—slow, breathing, unaware. Somewhere above, a tram rattled past. Its flickering underlights threw pale streaks across their faces as they crossed through Kavessra’s lower transit corridor, a place too grimy to be watched, too exposed to feel safe.

Zali gripped the hex-drive in her coat pocket like it might vanish if she let go.

“He looked worse than I expected,” Jonah finally said. Voice low, words careful.

“He always had a talent for self-destruction,” Zali replied. Her tone didn’t hold venom. Just weariness. Familiarity.

Jonah nodded. “You think he’s telling the truth?”

Zali exhaled through her nose. “I think Raoul believes he’s telling the truth. Which is just as dangerous.”

They took a sharp turn down a tighter alley, one choked with conduit wiring and runoff pipes. The scent of rust and old oil clung to everything. Here, shadows hung closer, and the walls leaned like they wanted to share secrets.

“This courier hunt,” Jonah said, “that sound like something you've heard about before?”

Zali shook her head. “No, but I believe it. There’s always someone looking to bleed the system, and couriers carry more than just mail. Some of them are vault access, trade secrets, unregistered bonds. Killing a courier—that’s not desperation. That’s a strategy.”

Jonah rubbed his chin. “You think someone’s building toward something?”

Zali glanced at him. “You don’t gut messengers unless you want to silence what they carry. Or hijack it.”

They reached the threshold of a maintenance walkway, overlooking a freight canal now overrun with moss and algae. Old data buoys blinked in the dark water below, forgotten pulses marking routes no longer in use.

Jonah leaned on the railing. “And now we’re pulled into it.”

“We could walk away,” Zali said.

He snorted. “We won’t.”

“No,” she agreed, quietly. “We won’t.”

Jonah turned to her, serious now. “So what are you thinking? About the meet tomorrow?”

Zali frowned. “I think it’s a trap. I think Raoul’s desperate, but he’s also not stupid. If he came to me, it’s because whatever he stumbled into, it scared him.”

“Then we show up?”

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“We show up cautious. We watch. We don’t trust anyone.”

Jonah tilted his head. “Even each other?”

Zali paused. Met his gaze. “Especially each other,” she said.

For a heartbeat, neither spoke. Then Jonah smiled, faint but real. “Fair enough.”

They began walking again. Somewhere above, rain started to fall—thin, greasy, Kavessran rain that tasted like machine breath and old coins.

“You still carry the blade from Seabrook?” Jonah asked after a while.

Zali nodded. “It’s not just steel. It’s memory.”

Jonah tapped the grip of his own weapon. “Guess I’m sentimental too.”

They shared a quiet moment beneath the overhang of a broken billboard. Faded paint peeled in strips beside them. A half-lit message still blinked overhead: Trust No Signal.

Zali turned the hex-drive over in her palm once more. Felt its weight. “If he’s right,” she said, “we’re not just looking at a new job. We’re staring down a purge. Someone’s tying off loose ends.”

Jonah nodded slowly. “Then we better make sure we’re not one of them.”

Zali turned and began walking again, slower now, more thoughtful. “He said someone offered him the contract to take out a courier. Do you think he was the first choice?”

Jonah shook his head. “More like the cheapest. Someone’s looking for deniable assets. Desperate ones.”

Zali grimaced. “He might’ve been both.”

They passed a rusted-out vending station. A kid sat beneath it, swaddled in patched cloth, nose buried in a blinking datapad. The city raised ghosts and orphans faster than it could bury them.

“What if Raoul’s right?” Zali asked, voice low. “What if someone is targeting the couriers, the ones who matter?”

“Then they’re cutting the lines,” Jonah said. “Trying to make sure no messages get through.”

Zali nodded. “Which means someone’s got something they don’t want getting out.”

Jonah’s jaw tightened. “And maybe Raoul stumbled across it.”

“Or carried it.”

The weight of that thought settled between them.

They ducked into a passage that led through an abandoned checkpoint—cracked scanners and broken lighting. Zali’s eyes caught a symbol etched into one of the rusted beams: a courier’s mark, crossed out with red paint.

Jonah saw it too. “Someone’s sending a message.”

Zali didn’t reply. She just stared at it. The spray-paint was fresh.

Finally, she turned. “We need more than Raoul’s word. We need to know who hired him, and why.”

“We’ll find out,” Jonah said. “We always do.”

“For a price.”

“For a risk.”

Zali glanced up at the smear of artificial light breaking through the alley’s end. “Then let’s get some sleep while we still can.”

Jonah fell in beside her. “You trust him to show?”

She didn’t answer.

Because trust wasn’t the issue.

Survival was.

When they reached Zali’s hideout—a shuttered old mechanic’s loft tucked into the second tier—they moved wordlessly. The entry glyph still flickered, temperamental but loyal. Inside, she dropped her coat and the hex-drive on a dented steel table while Jonah paced the room, studying its layout.

“Clean,” he said. “Minimal. Not what I expected.”

“You expected cigarettes and gun parts.”

He smirked. “Not far off.”

Zali opened a storage locker and pulled out a datapad, slotting the hex-drive into the port. Glyphs shimmered across the screen—encrypted, layered with failsafes.

Jonah stepped closer. “Can you crack it?”

“Eventually.”

They both stared as unfamiliar sigils spiraled and locked, blocking access.

“What’s the layout?” Jonah asked.

“Nested encryption. You break one layer, it resets the rest.”

“Dangerous, then.”

“Yeah,” Zali said. “Someone wanted this buried.”

She powered it down, placed it back in her coat. “Tomorrow, we go to the meet. But we play it smart. I go in alone. You watch from the perimeter.”

He didn’t like that. She could see it in his jaw, the slow tension building.

“You sure?” he asked.

Zali nodded. “If it’s a trap, they’ll only spring it if they think I’m alone.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then maybe we get answers.”

Jonah crossed the room, leaned against the table. “And if we get more questions?”

Zali met his gaze. “Then we ask louder.”