Kenza knocked the obsidian chip straight out of his palm.
The drive skittered across the dark composite tile, stopping against the leg of a modular sofa. "You think I'd walk out that blast door and leave my blood behind? You don't know me, Dastan. You never did."
"Then teach me," he said, voice stripped down to rough gravel. "Because the only version of you I've had for half a decade was a phantom sitting in the corner of a grease-scented bar in the Sinks."
Five years ago, the rain had smelled of burnt copper and cheap synthetic gin. She had been raw, dumped on an alley curb by a low-rent smuggler who stole her rig and left her with empty accounts. She had crawled into the Rusty Valve, pulled a dripping hood over her brow, and ordered whatever would burn out her throat. A man in grease-stained mechanics' coveralls had sat two stools down, his hands scarred, his posture that of someone carrying a falling sky. He hadn't given an empire name. He called himself Dan. For four hours under flickering red neons, neither traded tactical assessments or threats; they offered small, foolish dreams. He listened while she talked about wanting an off-grid cabin where the sky was clear of exhaust. He confessed he wanted to smash every server tower he owned with a sledgehammer. At dawn, in an hourly boarding capsule, their bodies had collided with a tender, desperate hunger that belonged to condemned souls. She had vanished before the city woke, stealing his lighter and leaving nothing behind.
Now, the mechanic stood in a tailored combat coat, the ruler of an industrial empire, demanding her son.
"You weren't Dastan Moray that night," she spat. "You were just a ghost with warm hands."
"And you disappeared like smoke before I could ask for your real name." Dastan turned his back on her, walking toward the transparent viewport separating the living quarters from the adjoining sleeping pod.
Kenza followed, her boots making no sound on the deck. Her sidearm was holstered at her hip, thumb flicking the safety catch back and forth out of sheer muscle memory. Every survival instinct she possessed screamed that she was in a kill-box, surrounded by automated perimeter turrets tuned to his biometrics. Her mind mapped three distinct angles to break his windpipe if he reached for an alarm.
Through the reinforced glass, Kitt slept on a low cot. The boy had kicked off his therm-blanket, curled tightly around a salvaged optic drive he refused to sleep without. One eyelid was cracked open just enough to show the distinct dual-pigment iris that mirrored the towering man watching him.
Dastan leaned his forehead against the pane. The glass misted under his exhalation.
"Look at him," Dastan murmured. His broad shoulders dropped an inch, the steel-cable tension draining out of his posture, leaving only an aching hollow. "Five years. I combed every sub-net in Korsav. I set scraping algorithms to scour every registry, every clinic, every transport manifest. I told myself I was hunting a breach. A security risk."
He laughed, a dry, broken sound.
"It wasn't a breach. It was you. And while I was burning billions trying to locate a rumor, he was growing up in basements, learning to crack military encryption between meals. You taught him how to survive, Kenza. And every single second he spent looking at you... I was rotting in an empty boardroom, suffocating on jealousy for a life I didn't know existed."
The knot in Kenza's chest, bound by years of paranoia, gave way. She looked at his reflection in the dark glass. No corporate arrogance remained. The predatory mogul who had unleashed automated slaughter in the lobby downstairs was gone; only the hollow-eyed man from the dive bar stood there, mourning five birthdays he never got to see.
Her hand, hovering near the grip of her pistol, slowly fell to her side.
"He likes sugar sticks," she said, the words slipping past her defenses before she could stop them. "And he refuses to sleep unless there’s an optic diode flashing green within arm's reach. He says green means the air isn't poisoned."
Dastan closed his eyes. "He shouldn't have to worry about whether the air is poisoned."
"This is the world we have, Dastan."
"Then I'll burn Korsav to the waterline and build him a different one." He turned to face her, the space between them collapsing to mere inches. The heavy musk of rain, gunpowder, and cedar rolled off him. "And I won't let you run into the dark again. Not with him. Not without me."
She looked up, searching for a lie, an angle, a corporate gambit. She found none. Just the raw, aching wound of a man who had everything and possessed nothing.
When his fingers brushed her jaw, she held her ground. Her fingers tangled into the lapels of his heavy coat, pulling him down as his mouth crashed against hers.
It was not gentle. It was the colliding impact of two freight trains on the same rail, fueled by five years of solitude, guilt, and mutual starvation. His arm locked around her waist, lifting her against the cold structural pillar behind them, his mouth devouring hers with a savage, desperate tenderness that made her ribs ache. Kenza forgot the layout of the corridors. She forgot the ammo counts in her bandolier. For three breathless seconds, she wasn't a runner waiting for an ambush; she was a woman finally coming in out of the freezing rain.
A violent metallic crash shattered the air.
"Kenza! Boss lady! Big tech tyrant! Holy mother of scrap, we got a catastrophic code red!"
Kenza shoved Dastan back, her weapon drawn and leveled at the doorway before her heels hit the floor. Dastan stepped in front of her anyway, shielding her torso with his own bulk, his gaze snapping toward the intruder.
Boz tumbled into the room, tripping over his own scav-rig cables, his round face slick with sweat. He gripped a heavy, modified comm-link that spat static and purple diagnostic text into the dim light.
"I swear on my mother’s junk haul, I never meant to barge in on... whatever high-tier mingling was happening," Boz squeaked, waving both hands frantically. "But the Viper band isn't silent anymore! They piggybacked on an encrypted corporate carrier!"
"Explain," Dastan commanded, his voice returning to absolute zero in a fraction of a heartbeat.
"The fortress perimeter shields!" Boz slammed the device onto a low glass table. "They aren't impenetrable! Somebody just pumped an emergency handshake sequence straight into the thermal exhaust port on the western bluff. The Vipers never tracked us here on their own. They were invited! They’ve got three gunships inbound, fully loaded with thermite penetrators!"
Dastan leaned over the console, his fingers flying across the cracked interface of Boz's jury-rigged unit. His face hardened into absolute granite. "That handshake requires an executive-tier hardware token. Only three people hold that clearance."
"Well, whoever it is just handed them the front door keys," Kenza said, her tactical paranoia slamming back into place, cold and sharp. She stepped up beside him, peering at the decoded hex strings racing across the tiny pane.
At the bottom of the data stream, a single digital watermark flickered in bright crimson text: an authorization stamp and an internal employee routing signature.
`AUTH: VP_TALENT_ACQUISITION_V_PALMER`
Kenza gripped Dastan's forearm, her knuckles turning bone white as the realization hit like a round through glass. "Palmer. He sold your fortress to the syndicate."