Chapter nineteen: The Quiet Before

Zali didn’t sleep.

She lay on the cot tucked into the corner of her hideout, eyes fixed on the corrugated metal ceiling as the hum of Kavessra crept through the walls—distant trams, leaking pipes, the slow churn of power grids older than most of its citizens. Somewhere, a dog barked. Somewhere else, something howled that wasn’t a dog at all. But inside, there was only breath and thought and the weight of a hex-drive burning a hole in her coat.

When dawn came—or at least the approximation of it, filtered through the cracked skylight and the perpetual haze of smokeleaf and city grime—she rose and dressed without ceremony. Jonah was already up, sharpening the blade he didn’t pretend not to carry. He didn’t say anything, just offered her a nod.

"You eat?" he asked.

"Not hungry."

"That makes two of us."

She checked the hex-drive again, still encrypted, still humming with quiet menace. Whatever secrets it held, they were buried deep.

They stepped out into the waking sprawl of the Lower Ring, where the streets never truly slept, they just shifted tone. Vendors were already setting up, their carts steaming with spice and rot. Workers trudged toward underpaid shifts. Gangs thinned into shadows. Life rolled forward with mechanical inevitability.

Zali adjusted her scarf and turned toward the warehouse district.

"Remember the plan?" she asked.

Jonah gave a dry look. "I play ghost. You play bait."

"You make it sound romantic."

"No," he said. "Just reckless."

They walked in silence after that.

The warehouse was exactly what she expected—half-collapsed, drowned in rust, its old security glyphs long since shattered. It loomed at the edge of a dead tramline, where the city forgot its promises and left its refuse to fester.

Jonah peeled off before the approach, vanishing behind a slagheap of fused concrete and twisted steel. Zali moved forward, steps light, posture easy. Her coat hid the drive, but her eyes told a different story. Alert. Ready.

Raoul was already there.

He looked worse than the night before, which Zali hadn't thought possible. His clothes were soaked through. He smelled of sour synthwine and desperation. But his posture was upright, alert. Sober.

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"Didn’t think you’d show," he said.

"Didn’t think you’d stand."

He gave a dry chuckle and held up a small device—a signal jammer. "We’re off-grid now. Just like you like it."

Zali stayed three paces away. "Talk."

"I met the contact here," he said. "Tall. Masked. Voice like static. They had credits. Names. Maps. They knew everything about me. About you, too."

That landed like a blow.

"What did they want?"

"The drive. They didn’t say what was on it. Just that if I took the job and did it clean, I’d never have to work again."

Zali frowned. "And you said no."

Raoul shrugged. "Didn’t like how they knew about Seabrook. Didn’t like how they said your name."

For a second, her expression softened.

Then she heard it.

A footfall.

A whisper.

She dropped low as the shot rang out.

Raoul staggered, blood blooming across his shoulder. Zali rolled behind a crate, blade in hand. Jonah’s voice crackled through her comm.

"Sniper. Rooftop. Northeast corner. Two more moving in."

"Engage?"

"Already am."

Another shot, this one wild. Zali caught movement to her right—a figure darting between columns. She moved like breath, silent and fast, intercepting before they cleared cover. Her blade flashed.

One down.

Jonah’s silhouette danced across the roofline, aethergun in hand. He fired, once, twice. A scream answered. Then silence.

Raoul leaned against a rusted beam, breathing hard.

"They followed me," he said. "I didn’t think they’d come so fast."

Zali pressed a patch against his wound. "No one ever does."

The third attacker burst from the shadows, a stunblade raised high. Jonah landed on him mid-charge, both of them crashing into a heap of shattered crates.

The fight ended quickly.

Jonah limped over, dragging a bloodied coat sleeve across his brow. "Warehouse is clear."

Zali nodded. She turned back to Raoul. "You still think this isn’t a war?"

He looked hollow. But his voice was steady. "I think we just found out who fired the first shot."

They hauled him to his feet.

"We can’t stay here," Jonah said. "More could be coming."

"I know a place," Zali replied.

They slipped into the shadows of Kavessra, three ghosts moving through the arteries of a dying city. Above them, the skyline blinked with artificial dawn. Below, secrets stirred in the dark.

Zali held the hex-drive tighter.

The purge was real.

And it had already begun.

They took a long, circuitous path through the industrial veins of the Lower Ring, passing half-collapsed freight lifts and sealed tunnels tagged with courier sigils crossed out in red. As they walked, Raoul's weight leaned more on her than he’d admit, his breath short but stubbornly steady.

Jonah scouted ahead, pausing at every corner, every blind alley. The city was quieter now—but that silence wasn’t peace. It was the kind that came just before something bad started again.

They ducked into an abandoned supply tunnel, the floor slick with oil runoff, the air humming faintly with residual energy. In here, echoes traveled too far. Zali led them into a breaker’s hollow—a small safe spot used by off-grid mechanics and smugglers. Dusty, low-ceilinged, but dry and shielded.

Raoul sank to the floor, wincing. Jonah sealed the entry hatch with a pulse-lock. Zali crouched beside the injured man, unwrapping the patch she'd applied earlier. Blood still leaked, but slower now.

“You’re lucky,” she muttered.

“Never felt lucky in my life,” Raoul said, then grimaced. “Still don’t.”

Jonah tossed a clean rag her way, then slid down the wall opposite. “We’ve got one shot at using that drive. After this? They’ll double down.”

Zali glanced toward her coat, where the drive waited. “Then we better make the most of it.”