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Mara stared at the message on her brother's burner account. Three lines. Oryx Dominion acquired my contract. New placement next week. Don't reply. The words sat there like a gun pointed at her head.
She'd kept quiet for two years. Fixed illegal implants, took Oryx's money through six shell accounts, never asked questions. All so she could scrape together enough to buy Danny out of that work camp before he aged into the kill-floor jobs. And now Oryx owned him anyway.
Kade leaned against the tunnel wall ten feet away, one hand pressed to his ribs, watching her face. "Bad news?"
"The worst." Mara shoved the phone into her jacket. Her hands wanted to shake. She didn't let them. "My brother. The one I've been bleeding myself dry for. Oryx just bought his contract."
Kade went still. Not the normal kind of still. The kind that made her remember he'd killed four men in her clinic without breathing hard. "They know about him?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe it's just corporate acquisition, bulk purchase, wrong place wrong time." She dragged both hands through her hair. It came away damp. The tunnel air down here was thick, recycled through sixty-year-old filters. "Doesn't matter. They own him now. If I run, if I help you, they'll know. And they'll use him."
"So you're out." His voice was flat. No judgment. Just tactical assessment.
Mara opened her mouth. Closed it. She should say yes. Cut Kade loose, crawl back to her clinic, hope Oryx didn't connect her to the convoy crash. She'd done worse to survive.
But her mom's passcode was still sitting in Kade's mouth like a landmine, and Oryx had killed her mom in a locked lab, and now they had Danny too.
"I don't know," she said.
Footsteps echoed from the north tunnel. Fast, light, the rhythm of someone who knew these paths. Kade pushed off the wall, and Mara saw his hand drift toward the knife he'd taken off a dead Oryx contractor six hours ago.
Then Juno Pike came around the corner, red hair tied back, carrying a canvas bag that clinked. "You two look like hell."
Mara exhaled. "You're late."
"Yeah, well, the entire upper grid's locked down. Checkpoints every three blocks. Oryx is calling it a safety sweep." Juno dropped the bag at Mara's feet. "I brought the stuff you texted for. You want to tell me why you need black-market coag boosters and a plasma torch?"
"He's got a countdown timer wired to his heart," Mara said. "And apparently some other surprises."
Kade's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue.
Juno looked him up and down, then whistled low. "Military core? Oryx doesn't hand those out for parking tickets. What'd you do, steal a battleship?"
"Don't remember." Kade's voice was cold enough to frost the tunnel air. "That's the problem."
"Right." Juno turned to Mara. "So you dragged me down here because you're in love with a walking Oryx bomb, or because you finally grew a spine?"
Mara felt her teeth click together. "I need information. Oryx bought my brother's work contract. I need to know if it's random or targeted."
Juno's smirk died. "Ah. Hell."
"Yeah."
"Alright. I'll dig. But if it's targeted, you know what that means. They're building leverage. Which means they want you alive and scared." Juno pulled a small scanner from her jacket, flipped it on. "Now hold still, soldier boy. Let's see what else Oryx left in you."
Kade didn't move. "Why?"
"Because Mara asked nice, and I owe her three years of free dental work." Juno stepped closer, ran the scanner over his chest, then his neck. The device beeped. She frowned. Moved it to his left shoulder. Another beep, sharper this time. "Oh, that's not good."
Mara's stomach dropped. "What?"
"Tracker. Subdermal, encrypted signal. Military-grade." Juno met Kade's eyes. "They've known where you are the whole time."
The tunnel went quiet except for the drip of condensation somewhere in the dark. Mara watched Kade's expression do something complicated, then smooth out into nothing.
"How deep?" he asked.
"Maybe two centimeters. Just under the deltoid. You're not getting it out with a pocket knife." Juno looked at Mara. "But you could."
Mara was already opening the canvas bag. Coag boosters, sterilizer spray, a field cauterizer that had cost her two favors and four hundred cash. She'd thought they might need to crack open Kade's chest to access the core. A shoulder tracker was almost easy.
Almost.
"Sit," she said.
Kade sat on the tunnel floor, back against the wet concrete. Started pulling off his jacket and shirt. The core in his chest glowed faint blue through the skin, circuit patterns spreading like frost across his ribs. Mara had seen a lot of illegal tech. She'd never seen anything like that.
She knelt next to him, pulled on gloves. "This is going to hurt."
"I know." He watched her face, not her hands. "They're tracking us right now?"
"Probably. Unless the tunnel's shielded." Mara pressed the scanner to his shoulder, found the tracker's exact position. A little capsule, no bigger than a pill. She could cut it out in ninety seconds if he didn't move. "We do this, we've got maybe ten minutes before they realize the signal dropped and send a team."
"So we run after."
"Yeah." She soaked a gauze pad in sterilizer, wiped down his shoulder. His skin was warmer than she expected. Or maybe her hands were cold. "Hold still."
She made the first cut. Kade didn't flinch. Just kept his eyes on the far wall and breathed slow while blood ran down his arm. Mara worked fast, fingers steady, the same focus she used when she was wrist-deep in someone's spinal column and one wrong move meant paralysis.
The tracker was deep. Oryx had buried it under muscle.
"They wanted it to stay," she muttered.
"Too bad." Kade's voice was tight now, but even. "Keep going."
She did. Blood slicked her gloves. Juno stood watch at the tunnel mouth, one hand on the gun under her jacket. Mara's world narrowed to the cut, the capsule, the pulse jumping in Kade's throat two inches from her face. She could smell the copper-bright blood and the old smoke smell baked into his skin.
Her fingers found the capsule's edge. She worked the scalpel under it, pried gently. It came loose in a hot wash of red.
"Got it." She dropped the tracker into an empty syringe case, slapped a coag patch over the wound. The bleeding slowed. Kade's shoulder was a mess, but he'd live. "You're clear."
Kade looked down at the little capsule sitting in the plastic case. Then he stood, picked up the case, and threw it hard into the dark tunnel. It clattered somewhere far off.
"You still with me?" he asked.
Mara peeled off the gloves. Her hands were shaking now. Adrenaline drop, probably. Or the fact that she'd just cut a tracker out of a man who could snap her neck, and now Oryx had her brother, and there was no safe corner left. "I don't know where else to go."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." She stood, faced him. He was close enough that she could see the edge of the core's light reflected in his eyes. "You said my mom's passcode. Not her name. The code she used in the lab before Oryx killed her. I need to know why."
Kade's jaw worked. "So do I."
Juno cleared her throat. "Hate to interrupt the tragic bonding, but we've got a problem. You need answers. Those answers are in Oryx's private servers. And those servers are in Oryx Tower."
Mara turned. "Juno, no."
"I'm serious. The lab data, the kill records, whatever your mom was working on—it's all up there. Fifty-third floor, executive archive. I've got a contact who used to run cleaning crews. The security's mostly digital, but it's airtight from the outside."
"So it's impossible," Mara said.
"From the outside." Juno grinned, and Mara felt her stomach drop again because she knew that grin. That was Juno's terrible-idea grin. "But Oryx is throwing their annual gala tomorrow night. Investors, city council, the whole parade. Security loosens up for the guests. You get inside as one of them, you've got a shot."
Kade looked at Mara. Mara looked at Juno. "We're street criminals. We don't exactly have gala invitations."
"No. But I know a forger who owes me. And you two?" Juno's grin widened. "You clean up nice. Play rich. Play married. Wear the right clothes and the right smile, and nobody looks twice."
Mara heard herself laugh. It came out sharp and half-broken. "You want us to walk into Oryx Tower. The people hunting us. And pretend to be investors."
"Yeah."
"That's insane."
"That's why it'll work." Juno shrugged. "You got a better idea?"
Mara didn't. That was the worst part. She looked at Kade. Blood still dripped down his arm. The core glowed steady in his chest. He looked like a weapon someone had tried to throw away, and the countdown was still ticking.
He met her eyes. "Your call."
She thought about Danny in an Oryx work camp. About her mom's passcode in a dead man's mouth. About the clinic she'd never see again, and the quiet life she'd already lost.
"Alright," she said. "We go to the gala."
Juno's grin turned sharp and satisfied. "Good. Now let's get you two out of this tunnel before Oryx sends the whole grid down here. And Mara?" She tossed a small case toward her. Mara caught it. Inside was a fake ID chip and a slip of paper with an address. "You're going to need to learn how to lie like you're rich. Rich people lie different."
Mara looked at Kade. He pulled his shirt back on, slow and careful around the shoulder wound. Somewhere above them, the city hummed. Oryx Tower sat in the center like a knife blade.
"How hard can it be?" Mara said.
Kade almost smiled. It looked like it hurt. "Guess we'll find out."