“This is organized crime,” I whisper.
He says nothing.
“Oh my God.”
Still nothing.
I stare at him standing in my bathroom wearing a ruined shirt and shame like armor, and suddenly the whole situation feels bigger and uglier than I realized.
“Kauss, what did you get involved in?”
His eyes meet mine again. Tired. Angry. Protective. Afraid.
“For once,” he says quietly, “I am trying not to.”
CHAPTER 20
KAUSS
Ileave Evie’s apartment before I say something unforgivable.
Not to her.
To myself.
The hallway outside her door smells like old carpet, radiator heat, and rain blowing through cracked stairwell windows. My shirt still carries faint traces of chocolate milkshake despite the cleaning. Sweetness clings stubbornly to the fabric, humiliating in a way blood never was. Blood belongs to violence. Milkshake belongs to ridicule.
I descend the stairs too fast.
The building groans around me. Pipes rattle. Somebody argues through thin walls on the second floor. A child laughs somewhere upstairs. Ordinary life continues while my nerves grind against each other like damaged machinery.
By the time I step onto Mercy Street, rain has intensified into cold silver sheets slanting through Halo’s neon haze.
I do not bother with the umbrella.
Water slicks instantly across my hair and shoulders while harbor wind shoves through the narrow streets carrying salt, engine smoke, fryer grease, and the metallic tang of incoming storms. Holo-signs flicker weakly overhead. A transit skiffscreams somewhere above the low cloud cover. Halo breathes around me in damp brick and patched steel and weary stubbornness.
My hands ache from clenching too hard.
The milkshake.
Precursors preserve me, the milkshake.
Not because it damaged pride alone. I have endured worse humiliations than dairy products from street trash. War strips dignity from soldiers in more efficient ways. No, what claws through me now is the memory of Evie watching it happen.
The hurt in her face.
The fury.
The confusion when I stood there and took it.
Vakutans are not built for public submission. Our entire culture sharpens around strength, endurance, retaliation. Even restraint must look deliberate and dominant. What happened inside the bakery looked weak.
Worse, it frightened her.
And Lenrog knew it would.
I cut through two side streets and climb onto the transit line heading downtown before fully deciding to go there. My body chooses violence long before my thoughts settle around it. By the time the skiff glides into the upper entertainment district, my pulse has slowed into something colder and more dangerous than rage.
