Sector Nine was theirs. Rebel colors hung from transit pylons and battered balconies. Even the air had changed, less weighted by the constant hum of surveillance.

Rebel boots stood stationed at every entryway, posted outside food depots, sweeping corners for stragglers. They were thousands strong, and growing. And in Sector Nine, the rebellion didn’t feel like a rumor anymore.

Toric stood near the edge of their newly commissioned command post in the spire, now thick with bodies, clattering weapons, and the acrid bite of smoke. He hadn’t taken his coat off yet. He had blood still crusted at the collar, and soot streaked down one arm. Someone had tried to patch the tear in his sleeve, but it still showed with bright thread pulled tight against the damage.

A cheer went up from down the corridor, someone bringing in two crates of stolen rations. They were fresh, with rare spoils. The kind normally reserved for government staff. Laughter followed, sharp-edged and giddy.

They’d done it.

Sector Nine had been hard fought. The sparrows had fought for months to get to this point. They’d been working in the shadows, staging raids for rations and supplies, clearing out patrol routes one block at a time. And every time they struck a convoy or pulled civilians out of forced labor lines, they left bodies behind. Some of them of their own men.

But in the end, the Nine had shown up for them, and it made the difference. Bringing the pressure they needed to bust through the Spire doors.

But the victory sat bitter in his chest. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy that the push hadn’t been the bloodbath they’d prepared for. But—the victory didn’t feel earned.

Because, when it came down to it, it hadn’t been them. 

He could still feel the charge in the air from hours ago, a twitch in his jaw buzzing with static.

That man in the sky. Vox.

He forced the thought down as Kael approached, data tablet in hand, her ponytail half-loosened and eyes red-rimmed from smoke or crying — he didn’t ask which. 

“Commander.” She saluted as her boots clicked together, stopping in front of Toric.

She looked as wrecked as he felt, but she still moved with purpose and strength.

“Twenty-four confirmed dead. Forty-seven injured, mostly non-lethal. We lost a whole flank to a drone sweep early on, but held the entry points.”

Toric nodded once, jaw set. “Casualties logged?”

“The names are coming in now,” She murmured, pushing the tablet toward him without looking up. “I’ve got three medics sweeping the lower tunnels for survivors. Once we pull the backup servers from the Spire, we’ll know how many civilians were registered in the blast radius.”

Toric didn’t speak. Just took the tablet from her gloved hand and scanned it. Her words were precise. The numbers were still rough, but looked better than they had any right to. It was a win. At least, on paper.

But the prickle of unease climbed his spine anyway. 

Outside, more cheers erupted. A flare bloomed orange through the broken glass above the square. Just another burst of celebration or a signal to the Unified eyes still watching, that they hadn’t been able to short circuit just yet. Hard to tell.

Kael glanced toward the doorway. “We’re getting new recruits already. Civilians are bringing intel, some with weapons. And we’ve got families asking where to go.”

He nodded once, slowly.

They’d come to liberate, not conquer, and that meant building back infrastructure. They’d need medicine. Food was even more dire. The people needed a system they could trust enough to follow. Organizing all of it would be a war of another name.

Toric turned back to the communication center, fingers flicking across a keyboard, logging into the rebels’ database. Once it had accepted the encryption, the Bloodsparrow seal lit faintly across the screen — a red bird, with wings outstretched, stark against the dark interface. He opened the communication voice channel, speaking into the integrated speaker.

“This is Commander Draeven,” he said. “Sector Nine is now under our control. The spire is now secured, but our casualties are still being assessed. We’ve begun the civilian stabilization. These people need food. We’ll need supply caravans rerouted and we request permission to establish long-term command here. Standing by for further instruction.”

There was a pause in his voice, something uncertain. Then he added, more quietly, “There’s something else.”

His eyes drifted to the broken window, where the air still shimmered faintly with static.

“We had contact with a meta. One with an extremely high-power signature. You’ll want to see the feed.”

***

Night fell before they’d even noticed. It flew by as the Sparrows began organizing next steps,  Toric jumping into tactical debriefs, and his team dragging wreckage away from the main arteries of the city in hopes of jumpstarting something like normalcy. 

The quiet hum of coordinated effort had replaced the chaos.

Sector Nine’s skyline that once lit in clean vertical bands from the Spire, now flickered with generators and scavenged floodlamps. The city still buzzed, but with rebel patrols now—with tired, smiling faces filled with warmth and hope. A stark contrast to the harsh glares of Unified troops they’d grown accustomed to. The Sparrows rotated quietly through intersections. Volunteers helped, handing out flatbread and boiled rations to families sleeping in repurposed shelters.

Toric had made his rounds, speaking with his engineers clearing the roadblocks, and the medics still stitching up the worst of it. But had eventually made his way back to the Castellan’s office, where he and his officers had set up the command station for this victory. The blood spatter from their former leader still dried muddily on the walls. 

The body had been dragged out quickly. Tossed to the burn pile before rigor could even set in. They didn’t leave bodies out to draw flies.

He stood, looking down at the plaza through the cracked panels of the window pane where the uprising had started just hours earlier. His boots rested heavily on broken tile. Behind him, Kael shifted, silent as ever, wrapped in the same threadbare jacket, still stained from their earlier skirmish.

“Toric—we’ve got two full regiments on rotation through the northern corridor,” she said. “The sector entry gates are locked. And thank god—airspace is quiet.”

Toric cracked a half smile. “Good.”

“We’ll need to assign someone to the water plant by morning. You know we have to keep infrastructure running smoothly. We want civilians to trust us to take care of them.”

“Of course. We will.”

Kael hesitated. “—You haven’t slept.”

Neither had she, judging by her cracked lips and the dark circles blooming beneath her eyes.

Toric just nodded silently in response, before he clapped a hand on her shoulder and flashed her an exhausted smile. The hour was creeping past 0400, late into the morning, and the street below was still alive with excitement and frantic hands.

Below, another cheer rose up, but it was smaller this time, more tired. A group of children (far past their bedtime even in a warzone) had gathered around an old merchant’s stall. Someone must have rigged a radio. The static-flooded music didn’t sound like anything Toric recognized, but it wasn’t the propaganda slop the Unified Government clogged the airwaves with. And that sounded like real freedom. The people had access to the unfiltered radio waves now. 

The PSYOP teams had worked fast, his communication charge capturing Nine’s largest radio tower before the smoke had even cleared. They needed people to know who was bleeding for them.

They pushed out broadcasts every hour to the districts beyond the active zone. Messaging designed to inform civilians of their new freedoms, and between that–static-laced songs of tinny old recordings, but it felt like something. A small freedom they’d clawed back. 

By the third day, their crew would be running the distribution centers, and repairing damaged or tainted water lines. Calling back doctors, shopkeepers, and engineers was the next step on the path to normalcy — trying to restart life again with the pieces they had. They were fighters, but that wasn’t all they were anymore.

They wanted the kind of momentum that could finally turn the tide of this war.

Kael’s gaze dropped to the plaza below, where scattered fires still smoldered beneath broken archways. 

“You led us to victory, Commander.” She added, with a wink that said she was still getting used to calling him a name that held such authority.

Toric said nothing, but he couldn't hide the faint smile that tugged at his lips.

“We planned this for months,” she went on, her voice low and serious, now. “Sector Nine stood with us. They gave us the push we needed to break through the riot line. Our men knew exactly where to put pressure. Everyone was exactly where they needed to be.” 

Then she smirked, mischievously. “What was it like taking that skeevy bastard Martin Odran down? That fat prick dressed himself in silk while his people fought for scraps in the streets.”

Toric’s tone flattened, looking at her sternly. “It felt good. But—I couldn’t have done it without you leading the charge, getting the path clear. And we lost good men today.”

Kael wiped the smile off her face with a quick twitch, mouth tightening. “We—You’re right. Too soon to be celebrating, sir.”

Toric, ever the voice of reason, the realist. After battles he was always distant. Celebrating with them only when pushed into it with constant jeering and pestering. Not that he didn’t feel it. He just looked ahead, further down the road. He could rest when he was dead, or at least, celebrate when the job was done, and Derek Solen was rotting in a cell. Executed preferably. Either one worked.

She felt a twinge of embarrassment at the rejection. Kael glanced sideways, biting at her lip. 

She'd known Toric forever. Since they were children, making faces at each other in primary school. She was only a year younger than him, and they'd been glued together even before the nights filled with boots and rifles. Back when the lie of elections still mattered.

He’d leaned on her more than once, sometimes without even realizing it, and sometimes with the kind of quiet desperation that made him grip her arm too hard, eyes darting everywhere but her face. 

She leaned on him too, and he’d always caught her, and that built something heavier than just respect. It wasn’t romance either, even if she’d been his first kiss when he was twelve years old, still lying to himself. She was closer to a sister now, the kind he’d protect fervently, even if she was strong all on her own. It was a bond that had worn every skin over the years and still held together, stronger now than ever.

Back when they’d tried to make the pieces fit, when it was almost tender, when he’d kissed her mouth and pretended it fit, he’d thought if he held onto her tightly enough, if he played the part convincingly, maybe he’d trick himself into believing that he was normal.

But shame has a way of finding its way back, even when no one else could see it. 

Kael was the only one who ever truly saw him. She never asked why, or forced him to bury it, she just carried the secret quietly, tucking it away in her pocket.

Toric wasn’t shutting down her praise only because they’d suffered losses today. They’d had greater casualties than they’d suffered today–worse ones where they hadn’t even managed a victory in the end. No, it was because he wasn’t sure the victory even belonged to them. 

Would they have won without the metahuman’s help?

Kael didn’t say it. But he could feel it hanging between them, unspoken and undeniable. She had to be thinking it too.

He wanted to believe they would’ve won without his interference. Their plan had been sound, the bodies and sleepless nights had mattered on their own. But the truth itched beneath his skin like a rash he couldn’t scratch. Uncertainty rotted everything.

It had shaken his confidence. And undermined the momentum that had been so hard fought.

If the civilians started looking to the sky for salvation — to some nameless, glowing deity — they’d trade one master for another without thinking twice. 

Toric had seen how that ended. Every time. How quickly people forgot.

“The people of this Sector are saying his name—” Kael said, cutting into Toric’s thoughts and speaking them aloud. “The meta. Vox. That he turned the tide.”

A muscle worked in Toric’s jaw, the frown curling before he could stop it.

“And what do you think, Kael?”

She exhaled through her nose. “I think that desperate people grab hold of anything that could save them.”

“But I’ve worn a collar before. I’m not looking to trade it for a new one.” She said, voice turning harsh.

Toric let out a slow breath and turned away from the plaza. The heat in the back of his neck hadn’t fully left since the last time he’d felt those pale eyes watching him. The weight of them felt like a question waiting to be answered.

The two of them didn’t speak again as they made their way back to the makeshift base, walking in an easy silence built on history. Soldiers saluted when they passed. 

The halls buzzed with the noise of an active revolution. The buzz of radios, and the scraping of boots against concrete. Outside the walls, Sector Nine had gone still. Quiet in a way that hadn’t been possible before.

Toric lay down some time just before dawn. He had his coat still on, and eyes cast to the ceiling. As his eyes finally started to flutter closed, all he could see was a pair of silver green eyes burned into the backs of his eyelids.