The third volley came in tighter.
They were learning him.
Kael ducked behind the crate as stun fire chewed chunks out of the wall above his head, scattering hot dust into his hair. Someone to his left swore, then bit it back as another shot clipped the edge of their cover.
"Shields pegged," the heat‑fisted man gasped. "They're adapting."
"Yeah," Kael said. "That's what they do."
He risked a glance.
The front line of security had fallen back a few meters, regrouping behind portable barriers that flickered with pale blue hex‑patterns. The armor was standard Twelve‑North issue, but the way they moved precise, economical, no wasted motion told him everything he needed to know.
Orion.
His old unit had arrived.
"Contact right!" someone shouted from their side.
Kael twisted as two more guards tried to flank them through a side door. The tattoo‑ink woman snapped her fingers; shadows leaped from her skin and slammed the newcomers into the frame, holding them just long enough for the kid with shaking hands to send a panicked crackle of force at their helmets.
The hit wasn't clean.
It didn't have to be.
Both guards dropped.
Kael grinned at the kid.
"Good shot," he said.
"I meant to aim lower," the kid said, eyes wide.
"Even better," Kael replied. "They'll have headaches when they wake up."
"If they wake up," muttered someone else.
Kael pushed that away.
"Keep them busy," he said. "Short bursts. Don't show them everything you can do at once."
He sent another pair of lightning darts at the front barriers. This time, the energy spread thin across the hexes and dissipated without punching through.
"They've re‑tuned their shields to you," the tattooed woman said. "Congratulations, you're special."
"Always knew it," Kael said.
He shifted aim.
If he couldn't crack the barriers head‑on, he'd make them uncomfortable.
He targeted the floor instead, sending a current through the metal panels at the front line's feet.
Shields were calibrated for direct hits, not for the ground turning into an electrified griddle.
Several guards yelped and jumped back.
The formation wobbled.
"Now!" Kael shouted.
Heat‑fists hurled a compressed blast through the gap, catching the edge of a barrier and blowing it sideways. The tattooed woman's shadows surged, wrapping around a fallen piece of plating and yanking it over like a makeshift wall.
For a brief, ridiculous second, it felt like they might actually push the line.
Then the voice came.
"Hold your fire."
It was not shouted.
It didn't need to be.
It cut through the chaos with the precision of a blade.
The Orion line stuttered, then stilled.
Kael's stomach dropped even before she stepped into view.
Mara walked down the center of the corridor like it belonged to her.
Her coat was darker than the others', longer, the reinforced plates worked into it in discrete lines instead of obvious panels. Her shield band glowed at her wrist, ready but dormant.
She did not draw a weapon.
She didn't have to.
"Fall back ten meters," she told the line without raising her voice. "Reform on Gamma‑two. Non‑lethal only unless I order otherwise."
The officers moved at once, peeling back to widen the space between them and Kael's group. The portable barriers shifted with them, locking into a new, more flexible formation.
Kael's throat went dry.
He forced a crooked smile anyway.
"There it is," he muttered. "Longer coat."
"Who is that?" the heat‑fisted man whispered.
"The one I told you not to solo," Kael said.
Mara stopped just beyond effective stun range, close enough that he could see the tiny tension at the corners of her mouth.
Her gaze swept the scene, fast.
Crates.
Improvised cover.
A handful of Deviants braced behind him.
The scorch marks on the walls, recalibrating her expectations of what he could do now.
Finally, her eyes settled on him.
"E‑seventy‑three," she said.
Kael barked a laugh.
"Really?" he said. "We're still doing numbers?"
Her jaw flexed.
"Kael," she corrected, after the barest pause. "You picked an ambitious stage for your protest."
"Always did like making an entrance," he replied.
They stood there, two lines breathing hard between them, guns half‑raised and powers coiled.
"Stand down," Mara said.
Kael tilted his head.
"Us or them?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
The absurdity of it almost made him laugh again.
"People are running," he said instead. "Away from the labs you swore didn't look like that. You're welcome, by the way. Free evacuation drill."
"You overloaded the core of a containment facility," Mara said. "You crippled systems that protect civilians topside. This isn't an evacuation drill. It's sabotage."
"Protect," Kael repeated softly. "Is that what you call what they do down there?"
He saw the flicker in her eyes.
She had watched the feeds.
Maybe not today.
But enough times.
"Whatever you think you're achieving," Mara said, "this is not the way. You're giving the Board every justification it needs to escalate. They will use this. On you. On everyone like you."
"Funny," Kael said. "Because from where I'm standing, they were already doing that. I'm just… changing who sees it."
He shifted his weight, subtly.
Behind him, the others did the same, watching him, waiting for a signal he hadn't decided on yet.
Mara noticed.
Of course she did.
"Your people are hurt," she said, eyes flicking to the kid clutching their leg. "If this continues, they will die. So will mine. You can still stop that."
He almost believed her.
Almost.
"What's your offer?" Kael asked.
"Stand down," she repeated. "I order my line to hold. You and your group come forward, hands visible. We escort you out under containment protocols. No lethal force. No collars without medical clearance."
Her mouth twisted faintly around that last word.
He heard the compromise in it.
She was negotiating with herself as much as with him.
"And the others?" he asked. "The ones Lysa's leading out through the ducts. The ones still trying to stand up in ring three. What happens to them?"
Mara's silence was answer enough.
Kael laughed, without humor.
"There it is," he said. "The fine print."
"Kael—"
"No," he said.
He let the refusal sit there, solid.
"You told me once," he went on, "that the Order exists to keep the city from tearing itself apart. That you carry the weight so other people don't have to see what lives under their feet."
Her expression tightened.
"I remember what I said," she replied.
"Good," he said. "Because this is you seeing it. No more blindfold. No more 'necessary evils' you don't want to look at directly. You want me to walk back into a cell so you can wrap this in a nice internal‑incident report. I'm not doing that."
A muscle jumped in her cheek.
"Neither am I letting you turn Twelve‑North into a firestorm," she said.
"Too late," he said. "You feel that?"
He meant the shudder under their boots, the distant boom of the omega chamber venting its fury.
He meant the field of freed power washing up through the levels as collars died.
Mara heard it.
She felt it.
The line of Orion behind her shifted, uneasy.
"Last chance, Kael," she said. "Don't make me choose between you and everyone else."
"You chose a long time ago," he said quietly. "You just didn't have to look at it."
His hand itched for lightning.
He could end this stand‑off in a blaze that would leave scars on the walls and on whoever survived it.
He could also get a lot of people killed.
He realized, with a flicker of bitter amusement, that he was thinking like an agent again running probabilities, calculating acceptable losses.
Except the numbers had changed.
His acceptable losses had shrunk.
"Listen," he said, raising his voice so both sides could hear. "You all know how this goes. They push, we burn, they justify it, we get blamed. I'm done playing that script."
He raised his hands slowly, fingers spread, letting the faint crackle gather where everyone could see it.
"We're leaving," he said. "You can try to stop us. You'll probably succeed with some of us. Maybe most. But here's the thing, Captain: people have already heard the alarms. The systems are already glitching. Whatever happens in this corridor, the story's out of your hands."
Mara's eyes darkened.
"There is always a choice," she said.
"Yeah," he said. "This is mine."
He snapped his fingers.
The lightning he'd been holding didn't go forward.
It went up.
It slammed into the overhead lights, racing along the fixtures and bursting them in a shower of sparks.
For an instant, the corridor went pure white.
Then pure dark, emergency strips flickering as the system scrambled to compensate.
"Down!" Kael shouted.
He dropped flat.
The others followed, drilled now on the rhythm of his voice.
On the Orion side, someone flinched and fired instinctively.
Stun bolts went wide, chewing into the ceiling, into walls, ricocheting in the confusion.
Mara swore a rare, sharp sound and threw a shield dome over her immediate line, crouching.
In the chaotic strobe of half‑failing lights, Kael rolled toward the left wall, hand smacking a panel he'd spotted earlier: a maintenance hatch, half‑obscured by grime.
"Shadow ink!" he barked.
The tattooed woman understood.
Her living tattoos surged off her arm, slamming under the lip of the panel and prying it open.
A narrow service conduit gaped black.
"Go!" Kael yelled.
Heat‑fists shoved the injured kid toward the opening.
The first three Deviants dove inside.
Bolts hissed past, closer now.
Mara yelled something an order, sharp and clipped but the words blurred under the alarms and the ringing in Kael's ears.
He caught one last clear image:
Mara, half‑lit by red strips, shield dome sparking around her, eyes locked on him with something that was not simple anger.
Regret.
Resolve.
Fear.
He didn't have time to parse it.
"Kael!" someone shouted behind him.
He twisted, grabbed the edge of the hatch, and shoved one last person through.
"Move!" he snarled. "Hands and knees, don't stop till you hit a junction."
"What about you?" heat‑fists demanded.
Kael flashed him a grin that felt more like bared teeth.
"I'll be right behind you," he lied.
He turned back to the corridor, pulling enough lightning into his arms to make his muscles scream.
"Cover!" Mara barked on the other side.
Shields snapped up.
Kael didn't aim at them.
He slammed the bolt into the floor between their lines.
The explosion of light and force threw up a wall of dust and scorched metal, a temporary curtain.
In the half‑second of obscurity, he threw himself into the hatch and dragged the panel half‑shut behind him.
Stun fire hammered it a moment later, making the metal ring.
He scrambled forward, shoulders brushing tight walls, the taste of ozone thick on his tongue.
Ahead, hands reached back to pull him along.
He let them.
Behind him, muffled by steel, Mara's voice cut through the echoes.
"Seal every maintenance route out of level three," she snapped. "Now. And find me where that surge originated. I want Lioren's location five minutes ago."
Kael grinned into the darkness, breath harsh.
"Looks like you got her attention," heat‑fists muttered.
"Yeah," Kael said. "That's what scares me."
The conduit sloped upward.
Far above, the heart of Twelve‑North beat irregularly, struggling to find a rhythm that no longer belonged to the Order alone.