Phoenix didn't call it a mutiny.
They called it a containment adjustment.
Operatives were reassigned. Missions delayed. Leadership rotated. The Phoenix comms channels went dark for twenty hours — and when they came back online, five familiar call signs were gone.
Scrubbed.
Erased.
Ash read the updates without blinking. She'd seen the signs long before anyone admitted something was wrong. The moment Hollow showed up and their response was to use her as bait again, she knew. Phoenix wasn't about justice. It was about control.
Just another system designed to keep the wild things in cages.
She and Haru moved into a new safehouse on the city's edge — a forgotten shipping warehouse surrounded by silent train tracks and weeds. No tech. No cameras. No one but them.
"I don't trust them anymore," Ash said, unpacking what little she carried: two knives, a canteen, and a folder of DaeCorp schematics she hadn't turned in.
"I didn't trust them to begin with," Haru said. "I just didn't think they'd fall apart this fast."
They were tired.
Not from fighting — they were used to that.
But from the rot that seemed to follow them, no matter where they stood.
That night, they shared the mattress in silence. Not touching. Not speaking. Just existing in the same space, breathing in sync, like survival had made them its own species.
Ash turned toward him in the dark.
"If they come for us," she said, "you don't protect me."
He turned his head to face her. "Why not?"
"Because I need to know I can bleed for myself."
"I've already bled for you."
"I know," she whispered. "That's the only reason I haven't left."
In the morning, a coded transmission hit their backup comm line — untraceable, encrypted, and urgent.
From Jin.
Not dead. Not safe. There's a mole. Not in DaeCorp. In Phoenix.Someone greenlit Hollow. They're working with him. Possibly Arlen. Possibly more.Stay away from command. Trust no one.I'll find you. – J
Ash stared at the screen long after it faded.
Haru read it over her shoulder, his voice low.
"That explains too much."
She nodded. "Too much, and still not enough."
They began working out of the safehouse like their lives depended on it.
Because they did.
Ash rebuilt old schematics from memory — DaeCorp layouts, Phoenix bunkers, supply routes. Haru ran cross-checks on every file she'd copied from the old system, uncovering communications scrubbed from official channels.
They were chasing ghosts through corrupted servers and bloodstained hallways.
And they were getting close.
Too close.
Two nights later, someone set fire to their safehouse.
It started in the east wing, where they stored weapons and backup files. The alarms were cut. The power blinked out. The door jammed.
Ash and Haru fought their way out through smoke and heat, coughing, bruised, skin blistering in patches. Ash dragged Haru out by the sleeve when a ceiling beam collapsed inches behind him.
They didn't look back until they were half a mile down the tracks.
The warehouse burned bright against the night sky.
No signature. No name.
But they both knew.
Phoenix had declared them compromised.
They found shelter in the undercity — a tangle of abandoned metro stations and sewer intersections where data packets didn't reach and light was a stranger.
Ash stitched the cut on Haru's side with trembling fingers. He didn't make a sound, but his grip on her wrist was firm. Grounding.
"You're still here," she said, wiping blood from her palms.
"Where else would I be?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she leaned into him — slow, deliberate — and rested her forehead against his shoulder.
"I don't know what we're doing anymore," she whispered.
"Staying alive."
"No," she said. "This. You and me."
Haru didn't pull away.
He tilted his head down, brushed his lips against her temple.
"We're bleeding in the same direction," he said softly. "That has to count for something."
Later, as they lay together on the old concrete floor — wrapped in a blanket stolen from a derailed train car — Ash spoke again, her voice barely above a breath.
"Promise me something."
"Anything."
"If they come for me — Phoenix, DaeCorp, anyone — you don't protect me because you love me."
Silence.
Then:
"Then why should I?"
"Because I'd rather you stand beside me and die," she said, "than live kneeling beside my grave."
His hand found hers in the dark.
Fingers twined.
"Then I'll die on my feet," he whispered, "with your name in my mouth."
They didn't sleep that night.
But for the first time, they didn't need to.