Keanu’s office. Third night running. The conference table buried under documentation. Pizza boxes stacked by the door—Mika’s contribution, ordered without asking, because somebody had to feed the people running this operation and Keanu’s idea of dinner was a granola bar and righteous determination.
Zeir stood at the window and watched the room work.
The table had disappeared under three nights of documentation—timelines, printouts, evidence folders organized by severity. Everyone had a role and nobody had stopped.
Every person in this room showed up by choice.
Not obligation. Not hierarchy. Not loyalty bought with a paycheck.
He watched Lumi flip to the next sketch. Lamplight caught the dried stain under her fingernail, the sharp angle of her jaw,the fresh ink smudge she’d acquired between the last coffee run and now.
The team worked until midnight. Keanu locked the final brief at 12:47. Kael confirmed the media schedule at 12:52. Nyx closed her laptop with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who’d sealed every digital exit.
Mika fell asleep on Keanu’s office couch with her cell still in her hand. Keanu draped his suit jacket over her without comment. Kael raised an eyebrow. Keanu glared. Kael raised both eyebrows. Keanu’s glare intensified.
“Not a word.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say your jacket looks nice on her.” Kael’s grin resurfaced. “Professionally speaking.”
Keanu picked up his briefcase and walked out. The tips of his ears were red.
Lumi noted this. Filed it without comment.
Mika slept on. Her hand had curled around the lapel of the borrowed jacket in her sleep—a small, unconscious grip. Lumi looked at that for a moment too.
Lumi gathered her sketches. The archive—organized, documented, and devastating. Years of careful preservation about to become the weapon that ended the man who’d tried to steal her voice.
She paused at the door. Looked at Zeir.
“Thank you.” Two words. Quiet. Final.
He held her gaze. “You built the weapon. We sharpened it.”
“Poetic.”
“I run a publishing company. It’s an occupational hazard.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. The first real smile he’d seen from her since the siege. Small. Exhausted. The kind of expression that rearranged his priorities.
She left.
He stood in Keanu’s office, surrounded by the evidence of a counterattack assembled by five people who refused to let the lie win, and allowed himself one moment of stillness before the next front opened.
Korr was still at large. Slade was feeling the pressure but hadn’t broken. The legal filing would land in seventy-two hours.
But tonight, the team had built a case so thorough that the fabrication would collapse under its own lies.
The war wasn’t over.
But the counterattack was ready.
THIRTY-THREE
LUMI
