Lian shut the metal gate behind them and waited for the lock to click before she finally let her shoulders drop. The room went still with that one breath.

  Kai walked past her and sat on the edge of the couch. He didn’t collapse exactly but he didn’t have the usual spring in his movements either. His face still carried the strain of the fight they had pushed through earlier. The fixer had been their most important target since the start of this arc, and the whole thing had nearly gone wrong more times than Kai wanted to admit.

  Lian crossed the room quietly and placed a bottle of water in his hand. He didn’t open it, just let it sit there while he stared at the floor.

  “You’re thinking too loudly,” she said, settling beside him.

  He huffed a small laugh. “Can you not do that? It makes me feel like my brain has no privacy.”

  “You don’t hide things well,” she said. “Not from me.”

  There was no accusation in her tone. It was simply true. Kai kept his face easy most days, but he never learned how to mask the way his mind churned when something got under his skin.

  He took a long breath. “That wasn’t just a fixer. He had security teams that moved like they actually trained together. Not guards from a nightclub. Not the usual black market trash. I don’t think they were expecting us specifically but they were expecting someone.”

  “And we happened to be the someone,” Lian said. “It doesn’t change what had to be done.”

  Kai nodded, though it looked like he did it more for himself than her. The fixer had been on their list for months. He was the link between the traffickers who escaped during their early missions and the larger network connected to their past. Getting him eliminated meant cutting off an artery that fed too many of the city’s worst crimes.

  He finally opened the bottle of water and took a sip. “You ever get tired of it?” he asked quietly.

  “Tired of what?”

  “All of it,” he said. “The running. The killing. The constant feeling like we’re scraping pieces off people who were already rotten.”

  She leaned back into the couch. “I get tired of the noise,” she admitted. “But not the work.”

  “Even when it nearly kills us?”

  “It didn’t nearly kill us,” she said, though the cut on her arm suggested otherwise.

  He pointed at it. “You bled through two layers.”

  “I’ve bled worse.”

  Kai shook his head. He didn’t argue because that was a pointless path with her, but the worry stayed visible. He’d always been the one with the sharper sense of danger. Lian could push through pain without hesitation. Kai felt every shift in the air and didn’t like when something felt off.

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  Tonight had felt off.

  He rubbed his hands together as if trying to scrub away the memory of the fight. “I keep thinking someone else is going to show up. Not now, but soon. The fixer was connected to people who don’t like leaving loose ends.”

  Lian set a hand gently on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Silence made her thoughts clearer.

  “Then we deal with whoever comes,” she said. “We always have.”

  “That’s not comforting,” he muttered.

  “It wasn’t meant to be.” She gave him a dry smile that softened the edge. “It’s meant to remind you that you’re not doing any of this alone.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. Something in him eased, the tension around his eyes loosening. He leaned back into the couch and let his head fall against the wall.

  “You know what I keep thinking about?” he asked.

  “What.”

  “That picture I found in the old box. The one with Mom holding that strange little tablet. I can’t get it out of my head. She looked… proud.” He paused. “I didn’t even know she could look that way.”

  Lian understood. Their mother had been strict. Brilliant, but distant. The picture had been rare, a moment caught in time before everything fell apart.

  “It’ll make sense eventually,” she said.

  Kai shifted to face her, eyes narrowing. “You say that like it already makes sense to you.”

  She shook her head. “No. But whatever they were working on, it mattered. Enough that people wanted it buried.”

  He leaned his elbows on his knees. “And we’re digging it back up without even knowing what it is.”

  “That’s why we keep moving.”

  He let out a long breath. “I know. I just wish everything didn’t feel so connected. The traffickers. The fixer. The old files. Mom’s hidden gear. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “Just stay present. One step at a time.”

  Kai rubbed his face. “Sometimes I forget you’re younger.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Only by minutes.”

  “Still counts.”

  His smile finally returned, faint but real. She nudged him with her shoulder. He nudged back.

  The room felt calmer now. The adrenaline had drained. The fear had settled. What remained was the steady awareness that their world had shifted again. The fixer was gone, but the echo of him lingered. The people he worked for would notice. The city would feel it.

  Kai stood and stretched. “I’m going to check the windows again.”

  “You already checked them.”

  “I’m checking them again.”

  She didn’t stop him. Letting him handle his nerves his own way was better than pushing him to sit still. She watched him cross the room and inspect the locks with practiced movements.

  When he finished, he came back to the couch but didn’t sit. “Where do we go from here?”

  Lian answered with calm certainty. “We find the next lead.”

  “And if the next lead is another dead end?”

  “Then we keep going.”

  Kai sighed but nodded. He trusted her even when the world didn’t make sense.

  She reached for her bag and pulled out the fixer’s phone. It was cracked and half-fried from their fight, but it might contain something useful. She handed it to Kai.

  “See what you can pull,” she said. “Maybe there’s a name. Or a location. Anything.”

  He took it gently, as if it were a fragile animal instead of a piece of evidence. “I’ll try.”

  Lian leaned back again. Her arm throbbed. Her body ached. But there was something grounding in the simple act of watching her brother settle into a task. They had survived another night. They had taken another piece off the board. For now, that was enough.

  Outside, a delivery truck rumbled past. The city kept moving even when they felt like the world had narrowed down to one small room and one broken phone.

  Kai sat beside her, pulled out his laptop, and began working.