Chapter 111 Partial Transmission
Lyra moved first. “Hello?” she called quietly. “Can you hear me?”
The figure lifted their head slowly. A woman. Her face was pale under grime and blood. A faint, burned-in mark glowed weakly on her throat—different shape than Lyra’s, more linear.
“Healer,” Maverick murmured. “Energy conduit. They use them to stabilize unstable core tests.”
The woman’s eyes focused on Lyra. “You’re… real.”
Lyra knelt beside the bars. “We’re getting you out.”
The woman shook her head weakly. “Too late. He took it.”
Lyra’s chest tightened. “Who?”
She swallowed. “Your friend. The angry one. He said… he’d trade us for immunity.”
“Dax,” Maverick said flatly.
Lyra’s stomach twisted. “What did he take?”
The woman nodded toward a small console near the far wall. “Data slate. Codes. It was keyed to my mark. He forced me to unlock it.”
Kade swore softly. “If that slate had access keys for the old grid, he can give the Syndicate a way to rebuild the tracking net—even without the reactor.”
Lyra’s fingers tightened around the bars. “Which direction did he go?”
“Up,” the woman whispered. “Said he had one call to make.”
Maverick was already turning. “Kade, get her out and patch what you can. Lyra—you’re with me.”
Lyra hesitated. “She needs—”
“I’ve got her,” Kade said. “Go.”
Lyra nodded once, then sprinted after Maverick.
As they raced back up the stairs, Lyra’s mark flared hot under her skin. The station itself seemed to hum louder, as if reacting to the same signal they were chasing.
“Feel that?” she panted.
“Yeah,” Maverick said. “He’s already talking to them.”
They hit the top level and burst into the relay room.
Dax was there.
He stood at the central console, back to them, fingers flying over the controls. A compact data slate sat in a dock beside the terminal, its screen glowing with unfamiliar symbols. The tower’s internal lights pulsed in rhythm with whatever he was doing.
“Step away from the console,” Maverick said, voice low and dangerous.
Dax didn’t turn around. “You’re too late.”
Lyra stepped up beside Maverick, mark burning hot enough to hurt. “Turn. Around.”
He did.
His face was thinner than she remembered, eyes darker, but the stubborn line of his jaw was the same. There was no guilt in his expression. Just tired anger.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said.
“You’re the one selling us out,” Lyra snapped. “People died today because of you.”
“People were always going to die,” Dax said. “Difference is, I picked who.”
Maverick’s fire flared along his knuckles. “Bad answer.”
Dax glanced at the console. “The Syndicate already knows the valley’s compromised. I just made sure they know who did it.”
Lyra’s blood went ice cold. “What did you send?”
“Your mark’s signature. The dragon’s resonance. Names of the safehouses still standing.” He met her eyes. “They were going to find them eventually. This way, at least some of us get to live.”
Maverick took a step forward, fury burning in his gaze. “You sold them our people for what? A pardon?”
“For survival,” Dax shot back. “You think we all have magic and wings? Some of us just have families who didn’t sign up to die for your crusade.”
Lyra’s voice shook. “So you decided everyone else was collateral.”
“I decided I wasn’t going to watch another safehouse burn because someone wanted to play hero,” he said. “They offered amnesty for intel. I took it.”
“You think they’ll keep that promise?” Maverick asked. “You of all people should know better.”
Dax’s jaw clenched. “Maybe they won’t. But at least I tried something that didn’t end with bodies in a crater.”
Lyra’s mark pulsed hard enough to make her gasp. “What exactly did you send? Coordinates? Names? All of it?”
He hesitated just long enough.
Maverick saw it. “You bastard.”
Dax’s gaze flicked to a sidearm holstered at his hip. Maverick tensed.
Lyra stepped forward, raising her hand. “Don’t.”
“Or what?” Dax asked. “You’ll heal me to death?”
She focused, forcing her mark to flare—but not outward. Inward. She reached for the flow in the room, the hum of the relay tower, the echo of the woman’s mark on the slate. The power that connected them all.
The console flickered.
Dax’s eyes widened. “What are you—”
The relay field stuttered, then snapped. Sparks cascaded from the ceiling. The tower lights went from steady to chaotic, light slamming through the room in violent bursts.
Maverick grinned, feral. “That’s my girl.”
“Shut up and move,” she snapped.
He lunged.
Dax yanked his sidearm free and fired—but the shot went wide as Maverick slammed into him. They crashed to the floor, grappling for the gun. The console behind them blared a warning, symbols flashing red.
TRANSMISSION CORRUPTED. SIGNAL PARTIAL. RETRYING…
Lyra didn’t wait. She grabbed the data slate from its dock.
The moment her fingers touched it, her mark flared white-hot. Information surged through her—a screaming rush of incomplete sequences, coordinates, names half-formed. She saw flashes of maps, safehouse markers, relay nodes.
And then she burned them.
She pushed magic into the slate, not healing this time, not mending—unmaking. Lines of code scrambled under her grip, collapsing into useless static. The device sparked and died in her hands.
Dax saw it and choked out a furious noise. He bucked under Maverick’s weight, rage twisting his features. “You idiot! That was our only bargaining chip!”
“Exactly,” Lyra said.
The tower shuddered around them. Somewhere outside, alarms wailed. The half-sent transmission pulsed again, weak and fractured.
PARTIAL DATA RECEIVED. SOURCE LOCKED. RESPONSE UNITS DEPLOYED.
Maverick slammed Dax’s wrist against the floor until the gun skidded away. “Congratulations,” he said through gritted teeth. “You pissed off everyone.”
Boots pounded in the hallway outside.
Lyra looked at the dying console, then at the doorway, then at Maverick pinning Dax to the floor.
“Time’s up,” she said.
Maverick met her eyes. “Call it, Lyra.”
She swallowed.
They could leave Dax. They could kill him. They could drag him with them.
None of the options felt clean.
She stepped closer, mark still glowing faintly. “You want to survive so badly?” she said to Dax. “Then you’re going to help us do the same.”
He laughed bitterly. “You think I’m going to switch sides now?”
“You don’t have sides anymore,” she said. “You burned both. The Syndicate has your name on a list, and the resistance just watched you sell them out. Congratulations. We’re the only people standing between you and a shallow grave.”
His eyes flicked to the doorway, then back to her. The footsteps grew louder.
“What do you want?” he asked hoarsely.
“Everything you know,” she said. “Every code, every patrol pattern, every hidden base you decided not to mention before. You give us that, we keep you alive long enough to make it worth something.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked.
Maverick’s voice went flat. “Then I let them have you.”
The footsteps stopped just outside. Someone shouted an order. The door lock cycled.
Dax swallowed. “Fine,” he said. “Get me out of here.”
Lyra nodded once. “Maverick.”
He hauled Dax to his feet with one arm and snatched up the fallen gun with the other. “You try to run, I break your legs. We clear?”
“Crystal,” Dax muttered.
The door slammed open.
Three Syndicate soldiers rushed in.
Maverick’s fire hit them before they finished raising their weapons.
The relay tower screamed its alarm as they fought their way back into the hall—three fugitives now, not two. Behind them, the console flickered one last time, then died, its tower still glowing like a beacon against the storm-heavy sky.
Whatever came next, the Syndicate knew one thing for sure:
Lyra and Maverick were still alive.
And now, they weren’t hiding anymore.