Chapter 25
title: "The Ironclad Insignia" wordCount: 2251
Kess is already bleeding when I arrive, one hand pressed to her side, the other holding a data tablet like it's the only thing keeping her upright.
"You're early," she says, and tries to smile. Blood seeps between her fingers.
I'm running before I finish processing the scene. Griz is three steps behind me, his hand already on his knife. The checkpoint's walls loom around us, concrete cracked and overgrown with those weird System-mutated vines that glow faintly in the dark.
"What happened?" I reach for her arm but she flinches back.
"Don't. I'm fine, I just—" She sways. The tablet slips from her grip.
I catch it before it hits the ground. Catch her a second later when her knees buckle. She's lighter than I expected, or maybe adrenaline makes everything feel weightless. Her jacket is soaked through on the left side, warm and sticky against my hands.
"Kid." Griz is scanning the perimeter, his body coiled tight. "We need to move."
"She's hurt."
"I can see that." He doesn't look at us. "Question is why she's hurt and who did it."
Kess laughs, which turns into a cough. "My handler. Tracked my comms. Used my message to you as bait, which, like, super rude considering I was trying to help and—"
"Save it." I lower her against the wall as gently as I can. Her face is too pale. "How bad?"
"Not bad. Barely a scratch, really, just a little—" She lifts her hand from her side and we both watch blood well up through the slice in her jacket. "Okay, maybe medium bad."
The tablet is still in my hand. I look at the screen and my breath stops.
It's a schematic. Sub-level detention facility, three floors below Ironclad headquarters. And there, in cell D-7, a name: Marcus Voss.
"Is this real?" My voice sounds strange. Distant.
"Took me three weeks to find it." Kess is watching my face. "I've been searching every database I could access without triggering alerts. Your dad, he's been there the whole time, Remy. Thorne's been keeping him as leverage in case you ever became a problem."
"Which I did."
"Which you did." She tries to shift position and hisses through her teeth. "I was going to tell you everything tonight. Show you the proof, help you plan the extraction. But my handler, she's been suspicious for a while, and when I sent that message—"
"How many?" Griz cuts in.
Kess blinks at him. "What?"
"How many enforcers were tracking you?"
"Four. Maybe five?" She's fading, her words starting to slur. "I lost three of them in the old market district, but the other one, she was fast, and she had this blade that was definitely System-enhanced because normal steel doesn't cut through reinforced leather like—"
Movement in the shadows. Griz sees it the same moment I do.
"Down!" He tackles Kess and me sideways as something whistles through the space where our heads were. I hit the ground hard, the tablet skittering away across broken concrete.
Enforcers. Six of them, emerging from the buildings around us like they've been waiting. Like they knew exactly where we'd be.
"Kess Orinai." The lead enforcer is a woman with silver hair and a scar bisecting her left eyebrow. "You're under arrest for treason against Ironclad Corporation."
"Treason seems harsh," Kess says from somewhere behind me. "I prefer 'creative interpretation of my employment contract.'"
The enforcer's expression doesn't change. "Remy Voss. You're wanted for questioning regarding illegal System manipulation and the destruction of corporate property."
"Here's the thing," I say, and pull the wrapped blade from my belt. "I'm not really in a questioning mood."
The silver-haired enforcer signals. Three of them move forward in perfect synchronization, their weapons drawn. System-enhanced, all of them—I can see the faint glow of active skills around their hands.
Griz is already moving. He's faster than he should be for a man his age, faster than anyone without a class should be. His knife finds the first enforcer's throat before the man can activate whatever skill he was charging. The second enforcer swings a baton crackling with electricity, but Griz ducks under it and drives his elbow into her solar plexus.
I unwrap the blade.
The metal hums in my hands, that same resonance I felt when I first forged it. The enforcers see it and hesitate, just for a second, but a second is enough. I'm not a fighter, not really, but I know leverage and balance and how to make a tool do what it's supposed to do.
The blade cuts through the third enforcer's weapon like it's made of paper. He stumbles back, staring at the severed hilt in his hand. I don't give him time to recover—I slam the pommel into his temple and he drops.
"Remy!" Kess's voice, sharp with warning.
I spin. The silver-haired enforcer is behind me, her blade already descending toward my neck. Too fast. I'm not going to—
Kess crashes into her from the side. They go down together in a tangle of limbs and blood. The enforcer's blade skitters away. Kess is on top, her hands around the woman's throat, but she's weak from blood loss and the enforcer is trained and in three seconds their positions are reversed.
The enforcer raises her fist. System energy crackles around her knuckles.
I drive my blade through her shoulder.
She screams. Rolls away. Griz is there, his knife at her throat, and the remaining enforcers freeze.
"Leave," Griz says. His voice is flat. Empty. "Take your wounded and leave, or I start killing."
The silver-haired enforcer clutches her shoulder. Blood runs down her arm, dripping onto the concrete. She looks at me, then at Kess, then back at her remaining team.
"Fall back," she says through gritted teeth. "This isn't over, Voss."
"Never is," I say.
They retreat into the shadows, dragging their unconscious teammates. We wait until the sound of their footsteps fades completely before anyone moves.
Kess is still on the ground. Not moving.
"Kess?" I drop beside her, my hands hovering over her body like I'm afraid touching her will make it worse. "Kess, come on."
"'M fine." Her eyes are closed. "Just resting."
"You're bleeding out."
"Barely bleeding out. There's a difference."
Griz crouches on her other side. He pulls her jacket open, examines the wound, and his jaw tightens. "We need to move her. Now."
"Where?"
"You know where."
I do. Petra showed me a shelter once, hidden in the ruins near the old Undercroft entrance. Said it was for emergencies, for when everything went wrong and you needed a place to disappear.
Everything has gone wrong.
The shelter is exactly where Petra said it would be—behind a false wall in what used to be a maintenance tunnel, accessible only if you know which section of pipe to pull. It's small, barely ten feet square, but it has a cot and a first aid kit and most importantly, it's hidden.
Griz lays Kess on the cot while I dig through the first aid kit. Bandages, antiseptic, a suture kit that looks older than I am. My hands are shaking.
"Let me." Griz takes the kit from me. "You keep watch."
I should argue. Should insist on helping. But my hands won't stop shaking and Kess's blood is on my jacket and I can't—
I move to the entrance. Press my back against the wall. Try to breathe.
Behind me, Griz works in silence. Kess makes small sounds of pain that she tries to muffle. I count the cracks in the opposite wall. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.
"She'll live," Griz says finally. "Blade missed anything vital. She's lucky."
"Lucky," I repeat. The word tastes wrong.
"Kid—"
"She took that hit for me." I'm still staring at the wall. "The enforcer was aiming for me and Kess just... threw herself in the way."
"I saw."
"Why would she do that?"
Griz doesn't answer. When I finally turn around, he's cleaning blood off his hands with a rag that's already more red than white. Kess is unconscious on the cot, her side wrapped in clean bandages. Her jacket is draped over the back of a chair.
The jacket shifts. Something metallic catches the light.
I cross the room before I decide to move. Pick up the jacket. It's heavier than it should be, weighted down by something in the inner pocket. I reach inside.
My fingers close around metal. Cold. Shaped like a shield.
I pull it out.
The Ironclad insignia stares back at me. Official issue, the kind they only give to active operatives. Pinned to the inside of the jacket where no one would see it unless they were looking.
There's something else in the pocket. Paper, folded multiple times. I unfold it with hands that have stopped shaking and started going numb.
It's a mission brief. Official Ironclad letterhead. Date stamped six weeks ago.
PRIMARY TARGET: Remy Voss OBJECTIVE: Establish contact. Gain trust. Document all crafting techniques and System interactions. Report weekly. HANDLER: Agent Thorne Malchek OPERATIVE: Kess Orinai
My photo is clipped to the corner. Someone has drawn a circle around my face in red ink.
"Kid." Griz's voice is very quiet. "What is that?"
I can't answer. Can't speak. Can't do anything except stare at the words on the page and feel something inside me crack and break and shatter into pieces too small to ever put back together.
She was a spy. From the beginning. Every conversation, every smile, every moment I thought maybe, just maybe, I could trust someone—
All of it was a lie.
"Remy." Kess's voice, weak and rough. "What are you—"
She sees what I'm holding. Her face goes white.
"I can explain," she says.
"Can you." My voice sounds like someone else's. Someone calm. Someone who isn't dying inside.
"It's not what it looks like."
"It looks like you're an Ironclad operative who was assigned to spy on me." I hold up the insignia. "Is that not what this is?"
She tries to sit up. Gasps and falls back. "Yes. I mean, I was, but—"
"But what?"
"But I stopped!" The words come out in a rush. "Three weeks ago, I stopped filing reports. I've been feeding my handler false information, buying time while I tried to find your dad and figure out a way to get him out without Thorne finding out."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because I just took a blade for you!" She's crying now, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "Because I blew my cover to warn you about your father. Because I'm here, bleeding, instead of safe in Ironclad headquarters collecting my paycheck."
"Or because your handler was already suspicious and you needed a way to maintain your cover." I fold the mission brief. Tuck it in my pocket along with the insignia. "How long were you planning to keep this up? Another week? Another month? Until you had everything you needed?"
"I wasn't—" She chokes on the words. "I fell for you, okay? I know how that sounds, I know you have no reason to believe me, but it's true. I fell for you and I couldn't keep lying and I thought if I could just find your dad, if I could prove I was on your side—"
"Get out."
The words hang in the air between us.
"What?"
"Get out." I can't look at her. "You can walk, so walk. Leave."
"Remy, please—"
"Now."
Griz moves to help her up. She shoves his hands away, struggles to her feet on her own. Her bandages are already seeping red but she doesn't seem to notice. She's staring at me like I'm the one who betrayed her.
"I love you," she says. "I know you don't believe me, but I do. I love you and I'm sorry and I—"
"Don't." The word comes out sharp enough to cut. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that to me again."
She flinches like I hit her. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Turns and limps toward the entrance, one hand pressed to her side.
She stops at the threshold. Doesn't turn around.
"The data tablet," she says. "It's real. Everything on it is real. Your dad is in that cell and Thorne is planning something and you're running out of time."
Then she's gone, swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel.
I stand there for a long time. Staring at nothing. Feeling nothing. The insignia is cold and heavy in my pocket.
"Kid," Griz says finally. "You okay?"
"No."
"Yeah." He picks up something from the floor. The data tablet. Kess must have dropped it during the fight. "Probably not."
He taps the screen. His face goes pale.
"What?" I don't want to know. Don't want to care. But I'm already moving toward him.
He turns the tablet so I can see.
It's a live feed. Security camera footage from a cell—cell D-7, according to the label in the corner. The image is grainy but clear enough to make out details. A man sitting on a narrow cot, his back against the wall. Gray hair. Burn scars on his hands. My father's leather jacket, the one he never took off, even in summer.
My father.
He's staring directly at the camera. His lips are moving.
I can't hear him, but I can read the words: It's a trap. Don't come.
Behind him, the cell door opens.
Thorne walks in, carrying my custom spear.