Toric’s head shook automatically, but he felt a prickle of doubt climb up his spine.

“If Solen’s moving publically,” he said, “He’s trying to prove he’s not the coward everyone says he is. That means our pressure is working.” He let the sentence hang before he finally pushed it. “And if his son’s at the relay—well. That changes things doesn’t it?”

Someone spoke up from the corner. “You think we should hold off our attack?”

Toric shook his head before responding. “I think it means we have to.”

Some faces tightened with practical hunger; others with unease. But a few heads nodded in agreement. One of the lieutenants whispered, “Capture him and the regime’s image collapses. No better leverage than that.”

Toric met those eyes, holding them steady. “Take the relay while he’s exposed and we cut them off at the root. If his son’s taken in the chaos, we hold the one thing Solen might actually trade for.”

Mira, as always, was first to speak. “Draeven. You’d better be right about this.”

Commander Taylor leaned forward, voice going taut. “Hitting their pride’s one thing. But if they shut us in, we’ll be boxed and buried. We might have the bodies, but we don’t have tech that can compete with them.  We’ve got a few launchers, but no drones. Our trucks won’t do shit once we're inside. I’m not planning on carrying my squad out in bodybags.”

Toric’s jaw tightened as his eyes narrowed.

“Did the meta mention the convoys?” Taylor pressed. “Or the fact that Solen Jr. is posted up at the relay? He didn’t tell you the President’s security detail was headed straight for the same fucking zone?”

“—If it was worth worrying about,” Toric said carefully, “he would’ve told me.”

He said it with conviction. But as the words left his mouth, they tasted sour.

Wouldn’t he?

The thought coiled tight under his ribs. Why hadn’t Vox mentioned Solen’s son being stationed there? Or the President’s sudden visit? It was possible that he didn’t know. But Vox was never careless. This seemed like the type of oversight that was uncharacteristic of him. And if he had known, and didn’t say—why? Was it to test him? Or was it to bleed the Sparrows a little thinner, and prove a point about their fragility? A point that would say, this doesn’t work without me.

Toric forced the spiral back down, jaw grinding on the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t ready to believe that. Everything Vox did was intentional. Cold, maybe—but not unnecessarily cruel. 

He wasn’t a monster.

So Toric pressed on.

“I’m assembling a strike force from my division, but I’ll need yours too,” he said to the other commanders. “Every inch of this is fortified. We go in under the conduit and push through fast. I’ll need one charge team, one relay team, and one team to hold the exit route.”

The commanders around the room exchanged looks.

And one by one — reluctant, but resolute — they agreed.

Mira gave the final call. “Three days,” she said. “Then go.”

The air was thick with smoke, and the raw stink of blood. It clung to everything. Got in your mouth, your hair, your gear, and stayed there. Underneath it all was the too-sweet edge of plasma burns, like wires melting into flesh.

This was supposed to be a stealth operation. They knew the staff rotations by heart. They knew the schematic of the building. They had the architecture of it mapped out. 

Toric had crawlers in the vents, twelve of them, sweating through the ductwork ready to drop straight into the core and disengage the security locks from the inside. But once they reached the retry point, there was no way to force their way through. The grates had been welded shut. Fresh metal seams stared back at them.

Then everything folded in on itself. Everything moved too fast to track, too loud to think. Comms went dead mid-call, and voices sliced off mid-word. He saw movement up ahead, two black and gray uniforms pivoting toward the noise, hands reaching for alarms.

Toric didn’t think. Just raised his rifle and fired, dropping them both before they had the chance.

He screamed, “Push!” and everything raged tenfold.

His team placed a set of explosive charges that cracked the blast doors clean down the center. They jammed halfway open with a screech loud enough to rattle teeth.

“Move now! Get our men out of there!” 

Drones screamed overhead, two of them diving low with red-eye beams scanning targets. Pulse fire answered the movement. 

Then came the screams, but they came in waves, like water finding new holes to rush through. The charge team scattered, trying to avoid the attack, but one got hit in the spine before he even got his rifle readied. Toric ducked through the chaos, coughing hard as concrete dust sprayed from the fortress walls. Sweaty fingers were slipping on his weapon.

Every channel was blocked. The stairs, side halls, and his men were still trapped in the ventilation chamber. The resistance had numbers, but not for this. This hadn’t been what they had been prepped for.

A warning chirped in his ear. It wasn’t a blaring alarm, just a polite little tone. Then everything went white. He didn’t even have time to turn his head.

The blast came from the wall. Or the floor. His head was spinning, he didn’t know for sure. He felt the air fold before pressure slammed into his chest, sending him flying, suddenly weightless.

Then came the impact of the ground—rattling his brain around his skull like a pinball.

He didn’t even remember falling. Just the sound of something like screaming metal, and the jagged pain that bloomed through his side. He was pinned. Not just trapped — skewered in place. A rebar or perhaps a rod from the ceiling structure had punched clean through his flank and into the concrete below. He struggled to breathe.

Blood flooded his mouth, choking him. His leg didn’t work. He could barely squeeze his hands together. He reached for the rod, fingers slippery with something warm and fast-moving.

He could hear movement. Someone yelling. The rapid pulse of gunfire. Someone called his name. Could’ve been Kael. Could’ve been someone already dead.

Another body hit the ground nearby, hard. It was just a kid. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Half his helmet was gone, his jaw gone slack, with his eyes already glassing over. Blood was pumping out of his ear.

Toric blinked. The noise of it all seemed to quiet, like everything was echoing through cotton. He tried to shout but couldn’t. All he managed was a cough, wet and rattling.

He saw Gideon up ahead, dragging two of his people back toward a fallback corridor. He was always a brave bastard. Then a drone cannon came around the corner. Blue light pulsed, then went white.

Toric blinked, and they were gone. 

Vaporized by a drone's EMP cannon. Leaving behind nothing, not even a speck of ash.

He felt the aftershock of heat rush against his skin.

Toric's lungs gave another spasm, struggling to breathe. He choked on it, the pain flashing hot as a blade as the taste of copper hit the back of his throat. Hot blood ran down his ribs with every inhale, dripping across his spine. 

His fingers trembled against the rebar, useless.

Shapes moved in the smoke. Outlines of soldiers falling, and plasma slicing the air. Bloodsparrow patches caught flashes of light as their bodies collapsed. His people. The ones who followed him here.

Behind it all, the relay hummed along, unbothered. Still running. Mocking them.

Toric’s vision blurred again. All he could feel was heat, pain, the icy chill of numbness. The buzz of static scrambling his brain.

Then everything finally went black.