They marched them down through the service ways, lower and lower, until they reached a steel door with a keypad. One of the men in a blue bandanna rapped twice on a pipe. Short. A signal. From the other side came the same reply.

  What waited beyond was not a basement. Not a burrow.

  The corridor was clean. The lighting was steady. City schematics hung on the walls beside old administrative posters stamped with faded seals. It smelled like paper and cheap coffee, not rot.

  Lothar walked without speaking. His throat still burned, but it had eased into something he could endure. He forced his breathing into an even rhythm. Wilt kept pace beside him, her face set like stone. Goodman kept looking over his shoulder, as if expecting a shot from every corner.

  They brought them into a room that looked like an office. A wide table. Several monitors. A shelf lined with real books, paper spines and worn corners. The man behind the desk rose to meet them.

  A suit, not military, sat on him like a decision already made. Strict civilian cut, clean and well fitted. Hair combed back with care. Hands kept, nails trimmed. Educated. Used to speaking, not shooting.

  “My name is Yaropolk Smirny,” he said calmly. “You are Inquisitor Wilt Norcutt. And this, I assume, is your Lord Dragon.”

  Wilt did not offer her hand.

  “Get to the point.”

  Smirny nodded as if he had expected nothing else.

  “A military committee seized power on Nozer. They murdered the president. They started purges. They shut down communications. They will shoot anyone who pushes back. We are the resistance, and we intend to put civilian authority back in place.”

  Goodman made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh, then swallowed it.

  Wilt held Smirny’s gaze.

  “You call yourselves resistance, and your people had me covered at gunpoint.”

  “That was sensible,” Smirny said without heat. “You are outsiders. You arrived wearing Confederacy symbols. We did not know which side you were on.”

  “I am on the side of order,” the inquisitor said. “And the hunt. I need Adam Graf.”

  Smirny lifted an eyebrow, just a little.

  “We have heard the name. But something else matters more. If we do not settle the question of power, you will not catch anyone on this planet. Nozer will burn.”

  He gestured, and a map bloomed across one of the monitors.

  “Look.”

  Pins and lines. Depots. Hidden workshops. Safe houses. Routes through maintenance shafts and drainage channels.

  “This is not a student club,” Smirny continued. “This is an organization. Trained people. Weapons. We can strike and take the city.”

  Goodman exhaled.

  “And start a street war.”

  The resistance leader turned his head toward him.

  “The war is already here, Captain. Right now it is being waged against people who cannot shoot back.”

  Wilt folded her arms.

  “What do you want from me.”

  Smirny answered at once, as if the sentence had been waiting in his mouth for days.

  “Legitimacy. Confederacy words. A paper. A recording. Any document stating the Confederacy recognizes a transitional administration and elections. If that exists, parts of the army will not fight to the last. They like hiding behind law. Give them law, and they will step back.”

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  “You want me to appoint you the government,” Wilt said.

  “Temporarily,” Smirny replied, steady. “Until elections. I am not clinging to a chair. I am clinging to the planet not becoming a barracks.”

  Wilt stayed quiet for a few seconds. Lothar could see her weighing it, and hating that she had to.

  “The military has already shown what it does,” she said. “They took power and started shooting. It will get worse if no one stops them. Fine. Temporary. I agree.”

  Smirny nodded, and for the briefest moment relief crossed his face.

  “Good. Then you should hear one more thing.”

  He leaned forward.

  “The usurper, Iorvet Dew, is dead. Your shot did its work. The committee is weaker now. Soon we take our home back. When people see the Confederacy stands with us, they will stop being afraid.”

  Goodman’s voice went dull.

  “Your usurper was a colonel. And you sound pleased he’s dead. That comes easy to you.”

  Smirny looked at him levelly.

  “It does not come easy. But I do not have the right to be weak. If I sit and mourn, their people hang ten more tomorrow.”

  Wilt cut in before the argument could grow teeth.

  “Enough. What are you doing now.”

  Smirny stood.

  “We hit the presidential residence. It is a symbol. The committee is inside. We go in fast, show them they are not gods. You will be with us. Your presence will break their confidence.”

  “And how many people do you kill for a symbol,” Wilt asked.

  “As many as it takes,” Smirny said, without theater. “But I do not want a slaughterhouse. I want them at a table.”

  Wilt nodded once.

  “Then we move. But hear me. I will not let you start executions.”

  A faint smile touched his mouth.

  “You are not in a position to dictate.”

  “I am,” Wilt said. “Because without me you get years of civil war. You need a victory in a week.”

  He met her eyes and understood she was not bluffing.

  An hour later they were close to the residence. From the outside it looked like a fortress, concrete and floodlights and hard points. Smirny moved with blunt speed. His people advanced in teams, no shouting, no heroics. The kind of work done by people who had rehearsed.

  Lothar stayed behind the main push. He heard the shots, but did very little himself. His throat started to burn again from the tension alone, and he did not want to touch the dragon language. The fear was simple: something inside him would slip.

  The residence did not fall instantly, but it fell quickly. One entrance was smothered with smoke. Another was cracked with a breaching charge. The posts were taken. The guards fell back into the building.

  Ten minutes later one of the resistance fighters ran up.

  “They want to talk. The committee is asking for a line. They say they’re ready to negotiate.”

  Smirny’s mouth curled, but his eyes were hard.

  “Too late. Now they die.”

  Wilt stepped in close.

  “No.”

  For a beat, Smirny looked at her like she had become an obstacle.

  “They executed the president. They killed civilians.”

  “Iorvet is dead,” Wilt said. “The man who gave the order is not breathing anymore. Anything after this is just butchery. You do not need blood. You need stability.”

  “I need a guarantee they never raise their heads again,” Smirny snapped.

  “You will get it,” Wilt said. “Elections. Public. Monitored. You take power through a ballot box, not a firing squad. Otherwise a second committee rises tomorrow, only this time it will be yours, and the circle starts again.”

  Smirny pressed his lips together. Lothar could see him trying to push through by force of will, a man who moved people with words and orders.

  “You are defending them,” Smirny said.

  “I am defending the planet from both of you,” Wilt replied. “From chaos. If you start executions, the Confederacy will turn its back on you. You asked for legitimacy. Do not make me regret giving it.”

  For a moment, the resistance leader went silent. Then came a short nod.

  “Fine. Negotiations. But if they try to stall…”

  “Then I decide,” Wilt said. “Not you.”

  Inside the residence, the committee’s people met them. Tired. Angry. Armed. Their old certainty had bled out somewhere along the corridors. They looked at Smirny like a terrorist, at Wilt like a problem they could not simply shoot.

  Wilt spoke with a hard, spare calm.

  “You are alive because I chose it. Remember that.”

  One of the officers started in on orders and security, but Wilt cut him off before he could build a story.

  “You owe a debt,” she said. “For your lives. For the fact you are not being carried out in pieces. You sign an agreement for a transitional administration and elections. You pull troops off the streets.”

  “And if we refuse,” one of them asked.

  Wilt looked at him without blinking.

  “Then you die. Not as heroes. As men who tried to keep a planet in a fist and lost. You concentrated forces all over Nozer. How long before reinforcements reach you now. You missed an underground army living under your feet.”

  Smirny stood beside her and said nothing. He wanted to finish it, to grind them down until nothing was left, but the room had shifted. Wilt had the control now, and if Smirny broke it he would lose what he had bled for.

  In the end, the officers agreed to talks. Not because they had grown kinder, but because they understood the next step was either elections or total war.

  When it was done, Smirny went outside and addressed his people.

  “Soon we take our planet back. The usurpers have stepped down. The Confederacy stands with us.”

  The speech carried, loud enough to travel through a city.

  Wilt stood at his side and did not smile.

  Lothar watched her and understood what she had done. She had tied her own hands on purpose, because tomorrow on Nozer could not be allowed to become a knife fight that never ends.

  He understood something else too.

  Now she had a new problem.

  Smirny. His armed network. His hunger for control.

  And somewhere close, Graf was listening to all of it, and waiting.