The white cone of halogen pinned Beatrys against the damp brickwork, glaring off the sweat beaded on Maartin’s collarbone.
"Well, look at the lovebirds in the dirt," Chief Inspector Kaelus Vanhof boomed, his heavy boots grinding glass into the threshold. His service sidearm was drawn, muzzle angled casually toward Maartin’s chest. Four armed guards filled the frame behind him, helmets dull, carbines raised.
Maartin shifted, teeth bared, trying to muscle himself between Beatrys and the guns despite the red stain soaking his side. Beatrys didn't let him.
She shoved him backward onto the sacks of rutabagas and scrambled to her feet, hands flying up to clutch her cheeks. Her mouth opened in an ear-splitting, shrill wail.
"Oh thank God! Oh, sweet holy mercy, actual police!"
Vanhof froze mid-step, his sneer hitching. "What the hell—"
"Look at this place!" Beatrys shrieked, stumbling forward three frantic steps into the center of the beam, waving her dirty hands in Vanhof’s face. "Just look at my nails! Two hundred and fifty guilders for custom acrylics in the North Quarter, and now they are completely snapped off because this idiot dragged me down here to look at potatoes! Potatoes, officer! Do I look like a woman who eats tubers?"
One of the carbine-bearers shifted his stance, his rifle dipping an inch. The chief blinked hard, the glare of his beam bouncing wildly off the lime-washed walls as Beatrys advanced on him, tears welling on cue, dripping down pink, rounded cheeks.
"Step back, lady," the chief grunted, bewildered.
"Step back? I have been held hostage by agricultural insanity for three weeks!" She grabbed his heavy nylon sleeve, giving it a violent, hysterical tug. "First there’s cider pressing, then some goat gets loose, and now this miserable corporate prick decides to get himself shot and thinks I’m going to nurse him? I sell designer hats on the internet! I am an influencer! If blood gets on this wool blend, the dry-cleaning bill alone will bankrupt my agency! Tell me you have wet wipes in your cruiser. Please tell me your department budgets for basic sanitary hygiene!"
Maartin lay against the burlap, staring at her back with an expression bordering on sheer terror. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again.
"Shut up," he barked, trying to shake his arm free. "Shut your mouth right now, woman, or I swear to—"
"Don't you take that tone with me! My uncle knows the commissioner's golf partner! You can't just barge into a private cellar and shout at a taxpayer who has endured catastrophic cuticle trauma!"
While the chief grimaced, leaning away from the barrage of high-pitched nasal indignation, a small shadow peeled away from the dark recess behind the heavy cider casks.
Ouma Hessel did not make a sound. Her felt slippers moved like smoke over the damp flagstones. In her gnarled right hand, she held a battered stainless-steel flask with an unscrewed stopper. With the precision of a woman salting soup, she reached out toward the open canvas pocket of his field vest, tipped three drops of clear oil into the spout of his exposed drinking flask, and recapped her flask.
Beatrys caught the faint scent of crushed elderberry and almond. She didn't pause.
"And another thing!" Beatrys lunged, deliberately tripping over an iron potato scale. She collided squarely with his chest, shrieking in simulated panic as they both stumbled against the frame. Her manicured fingers tangled in his webbing, her shoulder driving hard into his ribs. "Catch me, you brute!"
"Get off me!" He shoved her violently away. Beatrys hit the dirt floor with an exaggerated yelp, curling into a sobbing ball by the foot of the rack.
He stood over her, red-faced, panting with sudden irritation. He reached down instinctively, pulling his water bottle from his chest rig to clear his throat after the sudden exertion. He unscrewed the cap, tipped his head back, and took two deep, greedy swallows.
Ouma Hessel stepped into the light from the side, a bundle of dried rosemary in her apron pocket. "Good evening, Inspector. You're trespassing on harvest grounds."
He lowered the bottle, wiping his mouth on the back of his glove. "Save it, old hag. Your immunity just expired. We're taking Kest, and we're taking the girl, and if you so much as twitch, I'll burn this whole valley to—"
His sentence died in his throat.
His tongue thickened visibly, his lips sliding into a lopsided, slack grimace. His pupils contracted in terror as the metal cylinder slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the stone. His knees buckled with a dull thud. The four men behind him shouted, raising their barrels, but Ouma simply reached out and tapped the exposed brass valve of an overhead copper pipe running along the ceiling.
A pressurized hiss echoed through the tight stone passage. Dense, sulfurous pruning gas—stored for winter fumigation—billowed down in a thick gray curtain, blinding the doorway.
Coughing and shouting erupted in the mist. The guards fell back, choking, their boots stumbling on the broken steps.
Beatrys didn't waste a second. Her hysterical persona vanished instantly. She scrambled across the floor on her knees to where the enforcer lay, completely paralyzed from the neck down, his eyes rolling in frantic circles. She ripped the encrypted agency handset from his hip holster, smashing his limp thumb against the glass sensor to clear the biometrics.
The screen unlocked.
[ACCESS GRANTED: CENTRAL DIRECTIVE - AREND HOLDINGS]
Her thumbs flew over the interface. It was all there. Every routing number, every extortion ledger, the direct offshore wire transfers authorizing the hit on her father's firm, signed with digital keys that could dismantle the syndicate in an afternoon. Her hands trembled, not from cold, but from an intoxicating, lethal triumph.
All she had to do was hit upload to the federal clearinghouse. Her father’s name cleared. The monsters stripped of their towers.
Then she saw the pinging server node in the corner of the display.
*Relay Node: Rustenveld Local Subnet - Tower 04.*
If she transmitted from this local IP, the federal payload would automatically flag the farm's encrypted relay as the origin point of the leak. Rustenveld's secret digital signature would be broadcast across every police and underworld frequency in the province. The sanctuary's absolute veil would shatter. Before sunrise, fifty armed mercenaries would descend on this peaceful valley with heavy artillery, wiping every tree and cabin off the map.
Ouma would die here. Maartin, bleeding out against the potato sacks, would never make it out alive.
Beatrys knelt in the dirt, her thumb hovering over the glowing green send prompt. Her breath came shallow and harsh through her teeth.
Ten years of swallowing bile. Ten years of smiling like an empty-headed idiot while her world burned, all coming down to a single millimeter of screen space.
Destroy them now and burn the only home she had left, or stay silent and let them hunt her forever.
Maartin coughed, a wet, agonizing sound from the shadows, his eyes finding hers in the dimming halogen.
Beatrys looked at the button, and her thumb shook violently above the glass.