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Maven’s expression flickered—regret, calculation, maybe both. “Fine,” they said finally. “You’re both in. But if he so much as breathes Authority, I end it myself.”

Kang didn’t argue. He just nodded once, steady, as if he’d been waiting for that condition all along.

For a long moment, Maven’s eyes stayed on him, on the way his arm stayed braced around me, protective, steady. Their jaw tightened, but something in their gaze softened—an almost imperceptible crack in the armor—before they looked away.

Maven let the gun hand relax, then jerked their head toward the dark of the woods. “Come on,” they said. “We can’t stand here all day. Petrov’s men could be anywhere.”

We walked. Maven led, silent, the gait fast and mean, never looking back. Kang and I followed, me using him as a crutch whether I liked it or not. He didn’t speak, but every few steps I felt him glance at me, as if he was measuring how much pain I could handle before I fell apart.

The deeper we went, the stranger the forest became. Patches of grass glowed blue, and the fungus on the trees pulsed with the rhythm of the wind. At one point I heard something moving above us—a bird, or maybe a drone—but it didn’t follow.

When the trees closed in, Maven stopped at a stump and turned. Their face was sharp in the weird light, every scar visible, every line etched by years of too much radiation and not enough hope.

“Sit,” Maven said, and I did, grateful for the chance to breathe.

Kang crouched next to me, hands gentle as he checked the bandage at my shoulder. I winced, but let him do it. Maven watched, their expression unreadable.

After a minute, Maven crouched too. “What happened in there?” They asked it like a real question, not a test.

I hesitated, then told them—about the pit, about the memory chair, about the blocks and the riot. About Kang, about how he’d run interference, how he’d risked everything. Maven listened, head tilted, not interrupting.

When I finished, the silence hung heavy. Maven stared at the ground for a long time, then said “I heard about the riot. Word got out—the whole network rippled when they saw you made it out. Half the Zone is talking about you. The Authority will burn the region just to erase the story.”

I wanted to say it was overblown, that I hadn’t done anything worth the legend, but I bit down and stayed quiet.

Maven stood, dusted off their hands. “We’re close to the safe house. There’s medical, food, comms. Once you’re patched, we move on. The longer we sit, the tighter the net.”

I nodded, tried to stand, but my legs didn’t want to. Kang helped me up. Maven shot him a look, but didn’t protest.

We followed Maven through another fifty meters of twisted trees, then into a clearing surrounded by rock. In the center: a slab of Authority concrete, half-buried and covered in moss, with a hatch at the far end. Maven knelt, brushed the moss aside, and punched in a code. The hatch hissed, then popped open.

They turned to me, then to Kang. “Welcome to the resistance,” Maven said. The words should have sounded corny, but they landed like a promise.

Kang glanced at me, then at Maven. He smiled, just a fraction, and said: “You’re the boss now.”

For the first time in months, I laughed. It hurt like hell, but I did it anyway.

Then we went down the hatch, together.

The hatch breathed Authority air—cold, metallic, dusted with ozone and secrets. Maven went first, boots barely making a sound on the steel rungs. I followed, every rung a spike of pain up my arm, but I gritted through. Kang came last, body tense, face pale under the grime and blood. For a moment the world narrowed to the echo of our boots, the thin blue of the emergency lights, and the rasp of my own uneven breath.

We landed in a corridor so tight I could feel the chill of concrete on both shoulders at once. Maven paused at a keypad, flicked their fingers in a pattern, and the panel flashed green. The hatch hissed shut above us, plunging the tunnel into a hush so total I could hear my own pulse.

Maven didn’t waste words. They motioned forward, gloved hand gesturing me to take the lead. The passage was claustrophobic, lined with pipes sweating condensation. My shoulder throbbed, but I focused on each step, counting them off like a mantra.

We went on like that for a hundred meters—Maven ahead, Kang trailing me, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath on my neck. No one said anything until the corridor opened out into a chamber lined with battered lockers and a bench welded from scavenged rebar. A fluorescent bulb buzzed overhead, casting Maven’s face in harsh planes.

Maven turned, stripped off the glove with a snap, revealing the blackened, fissured skin beneath. Their fingers were thickened, the nails yellowed from years of low-grade exposure. They didn’t try to hide it. “Sit,” Maven ordered, and I obeyed, sinking onto the bench, feeling every bruise. Kang stood behind me, hands at his sides, watching Maven the way a caged animal tracks the hand that feeds.

Maven dug a first aid kit out from the wall, flipped it open, and started cleaning my shoulder. “Lucky,” they muttered, voice all gravel. “Missed the bone. You’ll keep the arm, long as you don’t get infected.”

I gritted my teeth as Maven irrigated the wound, then wrapped it with the kind of speed that said they’d done this a thousand times. Maven’s hands were rough, efficient, never gentle. But when they finished, they rested a palm on my good shoulder and left it there, just a second longer than necessary.

“You’ll get it seen properly once we reach Sanctuary,” Maven added, tucking the kit back into its hiding spot.

Sanctuary… right. But do they even have real doctors there? Or is it just someone who knows slightly more than a first-aid manual? I opened my mouth to ask, but before a single question escaped Maven spoke. “We lost the safe house in sector nine,” Maven said, low. “Your riot set off a panic. Authority raided every known cell in three days. Our network’s down to whispers and lies.”

I shook my head. “Wasn’t my riot. It was theirs. I just survived it.”