"It’s going to be intense, Asa," Mira says, her voice tight. "The resonance from that much energy... your body is already under a lot of strain."
Asa doesn’t look at her. He looks at me. "I can do it. I have to."
Mira nods slowly, her fingers flying over the keys. "I’m uploading the sequence to your comms. If the readings spike above ninety percent, you pull out. No arguments. I don't care if the whole city goes dark."
I stand up, the chair scraping against the floor. It’s time. The city outside is gray, the light filtered through a thick layer of smog and industrial haze. It looks like a place waiting to die. I walk over to where Asa is gathering his coat, my body feeling heavy, the Black Current buzzing under my skin in anticipation of the fight.
I don’t say anything. I just pull him into my arms, my hands sliding up his back to cradle the back of his head. He presses his face into my chest, his hands fisting in my jacket. I can feel the heat of him, the steady, stubborn pulse of his heart. I lower my head, my mouth pressing against the soft skin of his throat, just above the collar of the shirt.
I breathe him in, pear, vanilla, and the sharp, clean scent of iron-willed resolve. I scent him deeply, marking him, memorizing the exact texture of his skin and the way he shivers when my teeth graze his pulse point.
"I have you," I murmur into his skin. "I have you both."
Asa steps back, his eyes dark with the same fierce, protective energy that’s currently keeping me from falling apart. He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, his touch grounding the static that’s already starting to rise in my hands.
"Don't get cocky, Eni," he says, the old sarcasm flickering back to life like a pilot light. "I’m the one who has to do the heavy lifting. You’re just the muscle."
I manage a short, sharp smile, the first one in days. "Let's go, then. Let’s go break a network."
Asa
The data doesn’t lie, but it does scream. I spread the printed flare patterns across the kitchen table, overlapping them with Silas’s stolen maps and the brittle, yellowed archive records Mira smuggled out of the university. When you look at them individually, they’re just statistics—spikes in local temperature, clusters of flare-sick civilians, the rising rate of Guide burnout in District Four. But when you layer them, the truth emerges like a bruise surfacing through skin.
"It’s not a coincidence," I whisper, my finger tracing a jagged line of energy spikes. "The city isn't breaking. It’s being broken."
Jorak is behind me, a silent, heavy presence that smells of black cedar and the metallic ozone of the Black Current. He doesn't need to look at the math to know I’m right.
"Mercer’s containment zones," Jorak says, his voice a low grate of gravel. He leans over me, his heat radiating through my thin shirt. He points to the red-shaded areas on the ESAtactical map. "They align perfectly with the oldest nodes. He’s not planning to fix them. He’s planning to wall them off."
"It’s worse than that," I say, sliding a transparency of the population density over the map. "Wall them off and let the pressure build until they pop. Sixty thousand people in the East End, Jorak. He’s going to turn those districts into a graveyard to save the city center. It’s a controlled demolition of human lives."
I reach back, finding his hand. His skin is hot, vibrating with a tension that makes my own marrow ache.
"Silas wants to blow it all up," Jorak mutters, his grip tightening on my fingers. "He wants to rip the network open. Show the world the rot."
"Which would flood the city with decades of buried stray power in a single heartbeat," I counter, turning in my chair to face him. "It would be a massacre. Different intent, same result. We can't contain it, and we can't detonate it."
I pull the Anchor notes toward me. I’ve spent the last six hours translating the design theory into something functional. It’s not about suppression; it’s about sequence. It’s about a needle instead of a hammer.
"The nodes are linked in a series," I explain, pointing to the primary hub at the central grid. "If we dismantle them in this specific order—one through six—the energy doesn't explode. It bleeds off. It grounds itself back into the earth through the old conduits. But it requires a specific frequency to cut the seals. Something that can move faster than the corruption can recalibrate."
Jorak’s eyes find mine. They are dark, swirling with that entropic power he’s been told his whole life is a curse. "My current."
"Your current," I confirm. "You’re not a weapon, Jorak. You’re a scalpel. You can cut the nodes away from the network one by one. But you can't do it alone. The feedback would fry yournervous system before you finished the second node. You need an anchor at the origin point to keep the frequency stable while you work."
Jorak’s face hardens. I can see the moment the protective instinct slams into place, the feral need to keep me behind glass, away from the lightning. He pulls his hand away and paces the small length of the kitchen, his boots heavy on the linoleum.
"No," he says. It’s flat. Final. "I’ll find another way. Silas has people. We’ll use their equipment."
"Equipment can't anchor an S-Class Enigma during a full-vent sequence," I say, standing up. My legs are a little shaky, a lingering gift from everything the last few days have done to me, but I keep my voice steady. "The machines will melt. I’m the only one who can hold you steady enough to do this. You know the math, Jorak. You’ve seen the resonance tests."
"The resonance tests almost killed you in the facility!" he snarls, turning on me. He looks terrifying in the dim light. "You were shivering, Asa. You were sick. And now... now there’s more than just you to think about."
His eyes drop to my stomach. There’s no visible change yet, nothing anyone else could point to, but he senses it anyway. I move toward him, stepping into his space until the ozone scent is all I can breathe.
"I am an Anchor," I say, placing my hands on his chest. His heart is thudding against his ribs like a trapped beast. "For ten years, I thought I was a failure because I didn't fit their boxes. But I fit this one. If we don't go, those people die. If we don't go, Mercer wins, and our child grows up in a cage or doesn't grow up at all."
"I won't lose you," he whispers. It’s not a command. It’s a plea. The S-Class Enigma, the man who could level a city block, is trembling under my palms.
