Page 106 of Fractured Loyalties
If he connected her to me—if he thinks she has access to something I buried—then this isn’t about blood.
It’s about leverage.
And if it’s both?
Then he’s not just coming to kill me.
He’s coming to destroy everything I’ve let myself love.
The car hums low as I crest the next rise. I slow down near the curve and pull off behind a dense line of scrub oak. From here, I can see the train yard where Virelli's last signal hit. Neutral ground. Exfil point for half a dozen silent handovers.
I pop the trunk and check the cache again. Steel, ammo, pressure masks, and one unregistered signal jammer. Everything is tight. Everything is ready.
I don’t just want to cut this off.
I want to gut it from the inside.
And when I’m done, Vale will know that I didn’t just survive his message.
I answered it.
The train yard looms quiet, the tracks stretching out like veins under a pale morning sky. Steel glints where dew hasn’t yet burned off. It smells like rust and oil and something older—memory maybe. Or bone.
I climb out and shut the trunk with a soft click, double-checking the cache behind my jacket. I’ve bled here before. Not on this ground specifically, but in places like it—old exchange points where no one screams and the wind takes blood like a bribe.
I cross the lot slowly. Calm. Let them see me coming if they’re watching. Let them think I’m alone.
Because I am.
But I’m not defenseless.
Movement. Six o’clock high. Grain silo. Fast shape, too smooth to be wildlife. I don’t turn. Don’t break rhythm. Justshift the weight in my step, like I’m walking downhill, and draw the first blade under the cover of my arm.
“Eidolon.”
The name echoes from ahead.
I stop.
Because that name doesn’t exist anymore. Not publicly. Not in any system that hasn’t burned.
The figure steps forward.
Toma Virelli. In the flesh.
Lean. Sun-starved. A slight twitch in his left hand like a relic from an old injury I never gave a fuck to ask about.
“You’re late,” he says.
“I wasn’t invited.”
He smiles, but it’s brittle. “Vale thought you’d come faster.”
“And yet here I am.”
He shrugs like it costs him. “You shouldn’t have brought her into it.”
“I didn’t.”
