A shadow loomed over me, and I glanced up to see Vex standing there, his VR headset pushed up onto his forehead. His smirk was as greasy as his unwashed hair.
“Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall beside me. “You’re always so serious. Relax a little. We’ve got time to kill. Might as well have a little fun.”
“Not interested,” I said flatly, turning back to my screen.
“Come on, Eon. You’re stuck down here just like the rest of us. Don’t you ever get bored?”
“Not bored enough to entertain you.”
“Aww, I’m not half bad. We could have some fun, right? Me and the boys are getting pent up being trapped down here.”
It always came back to that. The transaction. My body, their needs. “Not my problem.”
His smirk faltered, replaced by an irritated scowl. “You think you’re better than us, don’t you? Pretty snotty for someone who gets paid to ride dick.”
I’d heard it all before. “Better than you? Some wannabe anarchist? Absolutely.”
“We’re helping this city, freeing it from the oppressors. What are you doing, exactly? Swallowing babies for the braindead?”
“Nah, that costs extra. When you blew up that server, the whole grid went down. I wonder what happened to all the patients on life support. All the people whose homes burned down. Did you free them too?”
He was pissed, and I sat up, DITA chiming something in my ear that I ignored. I got up in his face. “When you burn thesystem down, who is going to protect everyone who needed it to survive?”
“You bitch, you don’t understand anything!” He pulled back his fist, and that electricity in me sparked, almost screaming for me to let it out.
“Vex!” a voice cut through the tension like a blade. Taos stepped into the room, her presence instantly commanding attention despite her petite frame. She had that kind of charisma; the kind that made people like Vex back down without a fight. It didn’t hurt that he probably wanted to fuck her too.
Vex grumbled something unintelligible and skulked away, leaving Taos and me alone in the corner. She shot him a pointed glare before turning to me, her expression softening into something resembling concern.
“You okay?” she asked, leaning against the wall beside me.
“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging it off. “He’s an idiot. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“I know,” she said, her lips quirking into a half-smile. “But it’s my job to make sure things stay…civil around here.”
“Civil,” I repeated, raising an eyebrow. “In a basement full of horny teenage anarchists?”
She frowned, “No one here is a teen…well, I guess Spike is nineteen…but that’s not the point. Eon, you’ve helped us, no doubt about it, but it’s almost like you don’t want to be here.”
“I don’t,” I said, deadpan.
She laughed, a genuine sound that made her seem younger, almost innocent. “Fair enough. It’s like a fucking frat house in here, right? Come on,” she said, gesturing for me to follow. “Let’s get some space from these idiots. I want to talk about the Kinetic Shield anyway.”
I gripped my knees, propelling myself up off the couch and followed her down a cramped corridor to what passed for a command center. It was a repurposed storage room stuffed tothe brim with old terminals and hardware—anything they could scrounge up. One wall was dominated by screens showing news feeds from all districts, data streams scrolling too fast for most eyes to process. I glanced at the terminal she had left open—a complex code architecture far beyond the basic rebel systems, with multiple errors flagged in red. She quickly minimized the window when she caught me looking, a flicker of something defensive crossing her features.
“Still having trouble with the encryption protocol?” I asked.
“It’s not important,” she said a little too quickly. “Just a side project.”
I recognized that dismissive tone—the sound of someone who’d never had to admit they couldn’t solve a problem themselves. She tapped a few keys, bringing up a different screen. Her fingers kept returning to her temple, massaging small circles there.
“You okay? I mean last time I saw you, you were still recovering from that bullet wound.” One put into her by Cy.
“Fine,” she said, the word clipped. “Just a headache. Too many hours staring at screens.”
But I’d spotted something else—a small device nestled behind her ear, partially hidden by her blonde hair. A neural stimulator. High-end medical tech—definitely not standard rebel equipment. The kind of thing you’d find in a Sky District clinic, not an underground bunker.
Except this bunker was full of medical equipment. Not just first-aid supplies, but professional-grade systems and medical kits.
