“You let me leave,” I say.
That lands hard.
“That’s not happening,” Lorens says immediately.
I don’t react.
“Then you die,” I say quietly.
The room stills, the guards shifting subtly behind me.
“You don’t have the leverage to make that claim,” Lorens says, though the certainty is gone.
“I don’t need leverage,” I reply. “I have inevitability.”
He stares at me.
And I can see it now.
The doubt.
The fear.
Growing.
Behind my sleeve, the device continues its subtle vibration, the broadcast still active, still feeding outward into the void.
And somewhere out there?—
He’s getting closer.
“Think carefully,” I say. “Because whatever you decide next… you don’t get to undo it.”
Lorens doesn’t answer.
But he’s already changing.
And now?—
All I have to do is keep him there long enough for Tyrok to arrive.
CHAPTER 29
TYROK
The estate comes into view like a pretty lie—too clean, too still, too composed for something that’s about to be torn open, and as I bring the strike vessel down through the upper atmosphere, I can already see the defensive grid begin to shift in response to my approach. It’s subtle at first, a flicker across the outer perimeter, energy nodes waking in sequence, layered shielding coming online in a pattern that tells me exactly how confident they are in their ability to hold.
Not confident enough.
“Targeting grid active,” the onboard system reports, its tone steady as it maps the estate’s defenses across my display. “Surface batteries charging.”
“I see them,” I reply, my eyes tracking the pattern instead of the weapons themselves, because the weapons aren’t the problem.
The structure is.
I adjust my trajectory slightly, not slowing, not deviating enough to trigger a full recalibration on their end, just enough to shift the angle of approach.
“They’re expecting a direct assault,” I say, more to myself than the system.
