[HAWK – POV]
The image on Kaiser's datapad burns into my retinas like acid—my old face staring back at me, younger, softer, with longer hair and eyes that still held hope instead of the cold calculation that defines me now. Sophia Grace. The name hits like a physical blow, dragging up memories I've spent three years burying under violence, alcohol, and the relentless pursuit of simpler problems with cleaner solutions. My hands shake—actually fucking shake—and I can't remember the last time that happened. Oracle-Eye flickers wildly, processing data streams but unable to compute the emotional overload flooding my system. The synthetic implant in my socket feels like it's malfunctioning, feeding me useless tactical data while my heart pounds like it's trying to escape my chest.
"You son of a bitch," I whisper, the words barely audible over the lab's ambient hum. Then louder, voice cracking with raw fury: "You absolute motherfucking son of a bitch!"
Kaiser doesn't flinch, doesn't look away, just keeps that datapad steady between us like he's showing me evidence in some corporate tribunal. His golden eyes hold mine, unflinching, and I can see the calculations running behind them—probabilities, responses, contingencies. Always thinking three moves ahead, this bastard. Always planning. Even now, even as my world crumbles around me like a house of cards in a hurricane, he's probably analyzing my micro-expressions, cataloging my emotional responses for future reference. The thought makes bile rise in my throat, makes me want to vomit up every moment we've shared.
The thought makes me sick.
But then I catch it—Jerry notices something too. A slight movement from Kaiser, the barest hint of a gesture. Kaiser's wink is so subtle I almost miss it, but Jerry catches it immediately, his tin-aug eyes whirring as they process the signal.
"Ah, well," Jerry says, suddenly standing and stretching like nothing earth-shattering is happening, like the air isn't thick with betrayal and rage. "I think I'm gonna go out and hit a drink. Let you two... discuss technical specifications." His tin-aug eyes whir as they focus on me with something that might be sympathy, or maybe pity—I can't tell through the red haze clouding my vision. "Lab's all yours. Try not to break anything expensive. Or each other."
And then he's gone, the lab door sealing behind him with a soft hiss that sounds like a final judgment, leaving me alone with Kaiser and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew. The silence is deafening, broken only by the distant hum of machinery and my own ragged breathing. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, pounding like a war drum, each throb a reminder of how deeply this man has embedded himself in my life, in my soul.
The silence stretches between us, heavy with the weight of three years of lies. I can hear my own breathing, ragged and uneven, mixing with the distant hum of machinery and the soft whisper of fabric as Kaiser shifts his weight slightly. Everything feels hyperreal, like my senses have been dialed up to eleven while my emotional core implodes. The air smells of ozone and heated metal from Jerry's recent tinkering, mixed with Kaiser's familiar scent—gunpowder, leather, and that underlying musk that used to make me feel safe. Now it just makes me feel sick, like I've been poisoned from the inside out.
"Three years, Kaiser," I say, voice gaining strength as anger burns through shock, rising like bile in my throat. You've been watching me, studying me, cataloging every move I made, every job I took, every person I killed. Building a fucking profile like I'm some kind of specimen in your twisted little lab experiment."
The lab feels smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in like they're trying to crush me, as the full scope of the betrayal hits me with the force of a plasma blast. Those nights when he'd hold me afterward, when I'd trace the scars on his chest with gentle fingers and actually believe I mattered to someone, that I was more than just a weapon with a pulse—was he analyzing my emotional responses? Planning his next move? Making mental notes about which touches made me arch against him, which words made me whisper his name in the dark? The memories flood back, unbidden and unwanted—his hands on my skin, his lips on my neck, the way he'd look at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Lies. All fucking lies.
"And all this time, every moment we've shared, every fight, every time we fucked" ,"It was all part of your recruitment strategy, wasn't it? Every night I let my guard down, every time I actually felt safe in someone's arms—you were taking notes, weren't you? Cataloging my responses? Marking down which buttons to push, which words would make me... make me want you more?"
"Every time you looked at me," I continue, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper that echoes off the lab equipment, "were you seeing Hawk, or were you seeing the asset you'd been tracking? When you touched me, when you whispered my name in the dark, when you made me believe that maybe—just maybe—I was more than the weapon they tried to make me—were you thinking about the woman in your bed, or the specialist you needed to recruit?"
Kaiser starts to speak, his mouth opening to form words that I know will be careful, calculated, designed to defuse the situation. But I'm not done. Not by a long shot. The pain is pouring out now, three years of trust turned into three years of lies, and I can't stop it any more than I could stop bleeding from a severed artery. It's like a dam has broken inside me, and all the emotions I've kept locked down for so long are flooding out in a torrent that's as destructive as it is cathartic.
"Was any of it real?" The question slips out before I can stop it, vulnerability bleeding through the anger despite my best efforts to keep it contained, to maintain some semblance of control. "Any of it at all? Or was I just another mark, another job, another target to acquire for your grand fucking scheme? Did you laugh about it afterward? Make notes in your little datapad about how easy it was to make Sophia Grace—Hawk—fall for your charm?"
And that's when desperation makes me do something I never thought I would. The anger boils over, and I need answers, need truth from someone—anyone—who isn't him.
"Clara!" I call out, voice echoing in the lab space, carrying all the pain and betrayal and desperate need for truth. "Clara, you digital bitch, I know you can hear me through whatever systems he's got running. Is this fucking bastard telling the truth, or is this just another con? Another layer to his recruitment bullshit? Tell me now, or I swear to god I'll find a way to delete your ass from every system on this planet!"
[KAISER – POV]
The pain in her voice cuts deeper than any blade she's ever drawn on me. I've seen Hawk face down warlord's without flinching, take wounds that would drop lesser fighters and keep going, but right now she looks broken in a way that makes my chest tight with something that feels suspiciously like actual human emotion. The careful mask she wears—the one that transforms her from vulnerable woman to deadly assassin—has cracked completely, and what's underneath is raw, exposed, terrified. Her tears are like acid on my conscience, each one a reminder of the damage I've done, the trust I've shattered.
And she's calling out to Clara like a lifeline, desperate for some kind of truth in the wreckage of what we had. The fact that she's turning to an AI for validation instead of me says everything about how badly I've fucked this up.
Clara's voice emerges from the lab's speakers, synthesized but carrying unexpected warmth. "I'm here, Hawk. And I can feel everything Kaiser feels through our preliminary sync—his memories, his emotions, his genuine terror that he's lost you forever."
"That doesn't answer my fucking question," Hawk snaps, tears flowing freely now, cutting tracks through the grime and sweat on her cheeks. "Is he lying? Is this whole thing just manipulation? Tell me the truth, Clara. For once in this whole fucked-up situation, I need someone to tell me the goddamn truth."
Clara's pause stretches for what feels like an eternity, though it's probably only a few seconds while she processes emotional data that most AIs wouldn't even be capable of understanding. I can feel her in my mind, accessing memories, analyzing neural patterns, cross-referencing everything against known deception indicators.
"The initial approach was calculated," Clara admits with brutal honesty. "Kaiser did track you, study you, position himself to meet you. He knew about Nexus Industries, about Project Mindbridge, about what they did to you. He knew about your conditioning, your training, your psychological profile. He used that knowledge to get close to you, to make you trust him, to position himself as exactly what you needed."
"Fuck," Hawk breathes, the word barely audible but carrying the weight of absolute devastation. I can see the moment when it hits her fully, the way her shoulders slump slightly, the way fresh tears well up in her Oracle-Eye.
"But Hawk..." Clara's voice shifts, becoming gentler, more human somehow. "I can access his emotional memories, feel the exact moment when you stopped being a target and became everything. It was four days ago, when you stayed by his side during the market raid, when he realized that losing you would destroy him completely. I can feel the moment his brain chemistry changed, when the calculated manipulation became genuine, overwhelming feelings."
"Four days?" Hawk's voice cracks completely, the timeline making everything worse instead of better. "FOUR FUCKING DAYS?"
"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" she screams, slamming her fist against the lab wall, the impact sending pain shooting up her arm but not enough to drown out the agony in her chest. "Four fucking days? FOUR DAYS and you're telling me he's been tracking me for three goddamn years?" Tears stream down her face, hot and angry, mixing with the rage that's consuming her from the inside. "That means every single fucking moment, every touch, every time I thought we were building something real—he already knew everything about me! My past, my training, my fucking weaknesses!"
Oracle-Eye flickers wildly, trying to process the emotional overload, but she can barely see through the red haze of betrayal. The synthetic eye—a reminder of another betrayal, another time when trust had been weaponized against her—strobes frantically as it tries to parse emotional data it wasn't designed to handle.
"I let you in, Kaiser! I let you fucking IN! Do you understand what that means for someone like me? Someone who's spent years building walls, who's killed people for trying to get too close?" Her voice breaks completely on the last words, vulnerability bleeding through despite her desperate attempts to control it. "Someone who trusted you with pieces of myself I thought were dead and buried?"
The words hit me like physical blows, each one a reminder of exactly how much damage I've done. She's right—for someone like Hawk, someone who's been betrayed and broken and rebuilt herself from the ashes, trust isn't just rare. It's a fucking miracle. And I've taken that miracle and used it as a weapon against her.
"Fuck you for making me trust! Fuck you for making me feel safe! And fuck you for making me fall for someone who was just... just collecting data the whole goddamn time!"
And then something snaps.
The sound of her phasing blade activating fills the lab with its distinctive hum, a sound I've heard thousands of times but never directed at me with lethal intent. In one fluid motion, she draws it and moves, faster than thought, faster than conscious decision. Oracle-Eye guides her steps as she circles behind me, and I can feel the heat of the blade as it comes to rest against the back of my neck, just above the neural ports Jerry installed for Clara's integration.
I don't move. Don't try to escape, don't activate my chronoskip, don't even tense my muscles. This is what I deserve. This is the price of my deception.
"Three years," she whispers, her voice deadly calm now, all the screaming rage compressed into something cold and sharp as the weapon in her hand. "Three fucking years of lies, Kaiser. Three years of being your project, your mark, your goddamn asset to acquire."
The blade hums against my skin, and I can feel the heat it generates, the way the phasing technology creates a disruption field that would slice through flesh and bone like they were nothing more than air. One small movement, one tiny push, and my head would separate from my shoulders. Clean. Quick. Final.
"Do you have any idea," she continues, voice barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of absolute death, "what it feels like to discover that everything you thought was real was just... research? That every time you held me, every time you whispered my name, every time you made me believe I was more than just a killer—you were taking notes?"
I can feel her breath on the back of my neck, warm and unsteady, mixing with the cold efficiency of the blade. The contrast is almost poetic—the woman and the weapon, the lover and the assassin, all the contradictions that make Hawk who she is compressed into this single moment of perfect, crystalline rage.
"Do it," I say quietly, the words coming from somewhere deep inside me that I didn't know still existed.
The blade wavers slightly against my neck, and I can hear her sharp intake of breath.
"I said do it, Hawk." My voice is steady, no fear, no pleading, just quiet acceptance. "If that's what you need, if that's the only way to balance the scales for what I've done to you—then do it. I'll be dying a happy man if it's you."
[HAWK – POV]
The blade trembles in my hand, and I realize I'm shaking again. Not from fear this time, but from the sheer impossibility of what he just said. Oracle-Eye runs threat assessments, tactical analyses, probability cascades, but none of it matters because Kaiser isn't fighting back. Isn't even trying to save himself. The man who could freeze time, who could skip through moments like stepping stones, who's survived three years in the zones by always being one step ahead—he's just standing there, waiting for me to kill him.
"You fucking bastard," I whisper, tears flowing freely now, my voice breaking on every word. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to just... accept it. You don't get to be noble about this when you've been playing me for three goddamn years."
"I'm not being noble," he says quietly, and there's something in his voice I've never heard before. Something raw and honest and completely without calculation. "I'm being honest. For maybe the first time since I approached you, I'm being completely honest. If you need to kill me to make this right, then that's what happens. I won't fight you. I won't try to stop you. Because the truth is..." His voice drops even lower, filled with something that sounds like genuine regret. "The truth is, living without you would be worse than dying by your hand."
The blade wavers, and I can feel something breaking inside me that has nothing to do with anger or betrayal. "You're manipulating me again," I say, but there's no conviction in it. "This is just another play, another way to get what you want."
"No," Clara's voice emerges from the speakers, gentle but firm. "Hawk, I can feel his emotions through our connection. There's no deception here, no calculation. He's prepared to die rather than hurt you further. His brain chemistry is flooded with acceptance, resignation, and..." She pauses. "And love. Overwhelming, consuming love that he believes makes his death worthwhile if it gives you peace."
"Shut up," I snap at her, but the blade is lowering despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "Just shut the fuck up."
But I can't ignore what she's saying, because it matches what I'm seeing in Kaiser's posture, in the way he's holding himself. There's no tension in his body, no coiled readiness for action. He's completely surrendered to whatever I decide to do, and that surrender is somehow more devastating than any fight could be.
"I can't do it," I whisper finally, the admission torn from somewhere deep inside me. "I can't fucking do it, and that makes me hate you even more. Because even now, even knowing what you did, I still..." The words catch in my throat like broken glass.
"I know," Kaiser says softly, still not moving, still not turning around. "And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the lies, for the manipulation, for making you feel like our partnership was just another job. I'm sorry for tracking you, for studying you, for approaching you with ulterior motives. But most of all, I'm sorry that somewhere in the middle of all that deception, I fell for you so completely that I'd rather die than lose you."
The blade deactivates with a soft hiss, and I let it fall from numb fingers to clatter on the lab floor. The sound echoes in the sudden silence, followed by my ragged breathing and the distant hum of machinery. The weapon lies there between us like a physical representation of everything that's broken, everything that's been shattered by his revelation.
"That could be fabricated," I say through my tears, but there's less certainty in my voice now. "Your emotions, your memories—you could have programmed Clara to lie for you."
"Not the biochemical responses," Clara continues gently. "Not the neural pathways that formed, the way his brain chemistry altered permanently in response to your presence. Love isn't just emotion, Hawk—it's measurable, quantifiable change in brain structure. Neuroplasticity doesn't lie. Chemical reactions don't lie. And Kaiser's brain has been fundamentally rewired by four days of loving you."
I step closer, slowly, like I'm approaching a wild animal that might bolt at any sudden movement.
"Hawk, listen to me," he says, voice soft but carrying in the lab's acoustics. "Yes, I tracked you. Yes, I studied you. Yes, the initial approach was calculated. I knew about Nexus, about what they did to you, about your conditioning and your training and every psychological scar they left behind. I used that knowledge to get close to you, to make you trust me, to position myself as exactly what you needed."
The honesty is brutal, each word a fresh cut across already raw wounds. But he's not looking away, not trying to soften the blow, just laying it all out there.
"But everything that came after—everything between us—that's real." He takes a step closer, hands raised slightly in a gesture of surrender. "The attraction between us? That's not something you can fake. The way we complement each other in combat, the chemistry we share—I couldn't manufacture that even if I wanted to. What we have together, the way you respond to my touch, the way you make me lose control—" He lets the memory hang between us, heat flaring despite the circumstances. "That's not recruitment, Hawk. That's us."
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so fucking badly it's like a physical ache in my chest. But how can I trust anything he says when the foundation was built on lies?
"Prove it," I whisper, the challenge slipping out before I can stop it.
"How?" he asks, and the simple question contains multitudes. "How do I prove that love is real? How do I prove that somewhere in the middle of manipulating you, I became the one being manipulated? How do I prove that the hunter became the prey?"
He's closer now, close enough that I can smell his familiar scent—gunpowder and leather and that underlying warmth that's uniquely his. Close enough that I can see the micro-expressions playing across his face, the way his pupils dilate when he looks at me, the slight tremor in his hands that suggests he's fighting every instinct to reach for me.
"I can show you the moment," he says quietly. "Clara, project the memory. Show her exactly when everything changed."
Clara's voice carries a note of something that might be reluctance. "Kaiser, are you sure? This is deeply personal, and—"
"Show her," he says firmly. "She deserves to see the truth, all of it."
The lab dims slightly as Clara activates the holographic projectors, and suddenly the air between us fills with ghostly images—memories made manifest through advanced neural interface technology. I see myself four days ago, bent over Kaiser's unconscious form in that bombed-out building after the market raid, my hands working frantically to patch the gaping wound in his side while his blood soaked through my fingers.
But I'm not seeing it from my perspective. I'm seeing it through Kaiser's eyes, feeling what he felt in that moment as consciousness flickered back online and he found me there, my face streaked with tears I didn't even remember shedding, my voice hoarse from screaming at him not to die on me.
The emotional impact hits like a freight train. Through the neural interface, I can feel the exact moment when Kaiser's carefully constructed walls crumbled, when the clinical assessment of a valuable asset transformed into something desperate and consuming. I can feel his brain chemistry shifting in real-time, synapses rewiring themselves, the calculated manipulation giving way to raw, overwhelming need.
"That's when I knew," Kaiser says softly as the memory fades. "That's when I realized I wasn't recruiting you anymore. I was already yours, completely and irrevocably. Everything I'd planned, everything I'd calculated—it all became secondary to the simple, terrifying reality that I couldn't lose you."
The honesty is devastating in its completeness. Through Clara's interface, I felt the moment when the hunter became the hunted, when the manipulator became the manipulated. And the worst part is, I believe it. Oracle-Eye runs every analysis it can, looking for deception, for calculation, for any sign that this is just another layer of manipulation, and comes back with nothing but truth.
[KAISER – POV]
I can see the moment when she breaks, when the anger gives way to something more complicated and infinitely more painful. The tears come harder now, not the angry tears of betrayal but the broken tears of someone whose world has been fundamentally altered in ways she doesn't know how to process.
"I need you to understand something," I say, closing the distance between us until I can reach out and touch her cheek with the back of my knuckles. She doesn't pull away, which feels like a small miracle. "When I started tracking you, it was purely professional. An asset to acquire, a specialist to recruit. You were brilliant, deadly, exactly what I needed for the mission. But somewhere along the way..."
I pause, trying to find words for something that doesn't have words.
"You stopped being an asset and became everything. The center around which everything else revolves. The reason I get up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I sleep. The person whose safety matters more than the mission, more than the plan, more than my own fucking life."
The tear that escapes her Oracle-Eye lands on my hand, warm and precious as liquid starlight. "How can I believe you? How can I trust anything when the foundation was built on lies?"
"Because I'm telling you now," I say simply. "Because I'm showing you the files, the plans, everything. Because I just gave you the chance to kill me for what I've done, and I meant every word. Because I'm giving you the choice to walk away or stay, and I'll respect whatever you decide."
I hold up the datapad, Sophia Grace's image still glowing on the screen like an indictment of everything I've done wrong. "This is who you were. But Hawk—" I touch her face again, thumb brushing away another tear. "Hawk is who you are. Hawk is who you chose to become. And Hawk is who I fell in love with."
"Love." The word comes out broken, like she's testing the weight of it on her tongue. "You love me."
"Yes."
"The same man who's been pulling my strings for three years, who approached me as part of some grand fucking scheme, who's been calculating every interaction we've had—you love me. After four fucking days of actually giving a shit?"
"Yes."
The simple affirmation seems to hit harder than any elaborate explanation could. She stares at me for a long moment, Oracle-Eye flickering as it processes probabilities and outcomes and emotional data it was never designed to handle.
Then she moves, fast enough to surprise me but not fast enough that I couldn't stop her if I wanted to. Her hands frame my face, fingers cool against skin that feels like it's burning, and then her mouth is on mine with desperate, hungry intensity.
The kiss is everything—rage and forgiveness, betrayal and acceptance, three years of complicated partnership compressed into a single moment of connection. She tastes like tears and fury and something that might be hope, and when she bites my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, the sharp pain feels like absolution.
"This doesn't fix anything," she gasps against my mouth, even as her hands fist in my jacket, pulling me closer. "Four days, Kaiser. Four fucking days of truth buried under three years of lies."
"I know," I say, voice rough with the effort of holding back. "But it's real, Hawk. Whatever else is bullshit, whatever else was calculated—this is real."
My hands slide down to her hips, pulling her against me, and I can feel the heat of her body through the leather, can feel the way she responds despite everything. The attraction between us was never fake—it couldn't be, not when it burns this bright, this consuming.
Her lips find mine again, more aggressive this time, demanding and unforgiving. When she breaks away, her breathing is ragged, her eyes dark with something that isn't entirely anger anymore.
"Show me," she whispers, the words barely audible. "Show me it's real. Show me that somewhere in all the lies, there was something true."
I don't need to be asked twice. My mouth finds the curve of her neck, tasting salt and steel and something uniquely her. She arches against me, a soft sound escaping her lips that goes straight to my core. Her hands are in my hair now, holding me against her, and I can feel the rapid beat of her pulse under my tongue.
"Kaiser," she breathes, my name like a prayer or a curse, and suddenly we're moving, stumbling across the lab until her back hits the wall next to Jerry's workstation. Equipment scatters as I press against her, the need to prove myself, to prove us, overwhelming everything else.
Her leather jacket hits the floor, followed by the tactical vest underneath. When my hands find bare skin, she gasps, arching into the touch like she's been starving for it. Maybe she has. Maybe we both have, dancing around this inevitable collision for longer than either of us wants to admit.
"Beautiful," I murmur, and the word hits her like a physical caress. She looks at me then, really looks at me, and I see the storm of emotions in her eyes—anger and hurt and desire all mixing into something volatile and powerful.
"Shut up and touch me," she says, voice rough with need. "Make me feel it."
My hands explore her body with reverence and urgency, mapping scars and curves that I've memorized but never truly appreciated until this moment. When I cup her breast, thumb brushing over the hardening nipple, she moans, the sound low and throaty and utterly devastating.
"More," she demands, her own hands working at my belt with frantic efficiency. "
Clothes disappear in a tangle of urgent hands and desperate kisses. When we're finally skin to skin, the heat between us is almost overwhelming. She wraps her legs around my waist as I lift her, pressing her back against the wall, and when I slide into her, slow and careful despite the urgency, we both gasp at the sensation.
"Fuck," she breathes, nails digging into my shoulders. "Yes, like that."
I start to move, each thrust a declaration, a promise, a desperate attempt to bridge the chasm I've created. She meets me halfway, hips rolling to match my rhythm, our bodies syncing like they always have in combat but with something deeper now, something more vulnerable.
"Is this real enough?" I ask, voice strained as I drive deeper. "Can you feel how much I need you? How much I love you?"
"Yes," she sobs, head falling back against the wall. "Yes, fuck, Kaiser, yes—"
The orgasm builds slowly then crashes over us like a tidal wave, pleasure cascading through our connected bodies in waves that leave us both shaking and gasping. I follow her over the edge moments later, burying my face in her neck as I spill inside her, the release feeling like absolution and redemption wrapped in ecstasy.
We stay like that for a long moment afterward, both of us breathing hard, sweat cooling on our skin as reality slowly seeps back in. The lab around us looks like a disaster zone—equipment scattered, chairs overturned, our clothes strewn across the floor like the aftermath of a particularly enthusiastic tornado.
"Well," Clara's voice emerges from the speakers, carrying a note of what sounds suspiciously like amusement. "That was... educational."
"Shut up, Clara," I mutter, but there's no real heat in it. The post-orgasmic haze has left me feeling strangely detached from the emotional chaos of earlier, like the physical release has burned away some of the sharper edges of betrayal and rage.
Kaiser sets me down carefully, hands steadying me when my legs prove less reliable than I'd like. When I look up at him, his golden eyes are soft with something that might be hope.
" so 1 min 30 seconds , im getting soft huh" he asks quietly.
"shut up" i reply
Oracle-Eye running probability analyses and threat assessments even as my body still hums with satisfaction. "It's a start," I say finally. "But Kaiser—this doesn't fix everything. This doesn't erase three years of lies or make the betrayal okay. We're going to have to rebuild from the ground up, and I'm not sure I know how to do that."
"I know," he says, reaching out to cup my cheek with gentle fingers. "But I'm willing to try if you are. However long it takes, whatever you need—I'm willing to do the work."
"Even if it means accepting that I might never trust you completely again?"
"Even then."
The simple acceptance hits harder than any elaborate promise could. He's not trying to convince me that everything will go back to the way it was, not trying to minimize the damage he's done. He's just offering to try, to put in the work of rebuilding what he's broken, even if the end result is something different from what we had before.
"Alright," I say, the word coming out rougher than I intended. "But I want complete transparency from here on out. No more secrets, no more strategic omissions, no more calculated moves. If we're doing this—whatever this is—we're doing it as equals."
"Agreed," he says without hesitation. "Complete transparency. Starting now."
I nod, then lean down to start gathering my scattered clothes. The leather is cool against skin still flushed with heat, and I can feel Kaiser's eyes on me as I dress. But it's not the analytical gaze I've been dreading—it's appreciation and affection and something that might actually be love.
"So," I say once I'm mostly decent again, "about this plan of yours. What exactly is it? "
Kaiser's expression shifts, becoming more serious as he pulls on his own clothes. "i am looking for Specialists. Six of them, including you. Each with abilities that can handle tasks no conventional army could manage."
"And you think these people—these Specialists, as you called them—will just agree to help your plans?"
"Not willingly," he admits, activating his datapad. "Most of them are trapped in situations they desperately want to escape. Imprisoned, enslaved, bound by contracts or circumstances they can't break alone. We offer them freedom in exchange for their cooperation."
The files scroll past on the screen—faces, names, profiles that read like something out of a fever dream. Some I recognize from rumors and whispered stories in the underground. Others are completely unknown, ghosts in the system that most people would dismiss as myths.
"OK show me"
END OF CHAPTER