Chapter 74 When Hunter's Circle
Vale’s voice echoed nearer, soft and cruel. “It doesn’t have to hurt, my little firebrand.”
Lyra’s pulse pounded. “She’s almost here.”
“Then we make her regret it,” Maverick said.
He pulled a metal disk from his pocket—small, blinking red.
“Please tell me that’s gum,” Jonah said.
“EMP charge,” Maverick replied. “Short-range. Should fry her armor sensors.”
“That’s your plan? Blow the lights?” Lyra asked.
“Got a better one?”
“Not yet.”
He tossed it down the corridor. The pulse hit like thunder underwater—low, heavy, disorienting. Syndicate visors flickered out.
“Move!”
They ran for the far exit. Vale shouted something drowned by static. The fury in her tone carried just fine.
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They hit a ladder and climbed. Lyra’s arms screamed halfway up. Jonah cursed below her. The hatch above gave after Maverick slammed it with his shoulder.
They tumbled into a warehouse—rusted shelving, moonlight through broken skylights. The air was cold enough to burn lungs.
Lyra slumped against the wall. “We’re alive.”
“For now,” Maverick said, wedging a steel bar through the hatch handles.
Jonah flopped onto a crate, shaking. “Can we not almost die for five minutes?”
“No promises,” Lyra said. “How’s your leg?”
“Still attached.”
“Good enough.”
Maverick scanned the shadows. “She’ll regroup. We’ve got maybe an hour.”
“Long enough for what?” Lyra asked.
“To decide whether we keep running or make a stand.”
Lyra let herself sink to the floor, legs shaking from adrenaline. The warehouse smelled like dust and oil. Every muscle in her body screamed for stillness.
Jonah was pacing, muttering under his breath. “We need a new definition of lucky.”
“You’re welcome to write one,” Lyra said.
He cracked a weak grin. “Something that doesn’t involve almost dying twice in a day.”
Maverick was at the window, scanning the skyline through a crack. “Drones are sweeping west. We bought ourselves an hour at best.”
“An hour’s a miracle,” Jonah said.
“An hour’s an ambush waiting to happen,” Maverick corrected.
Lyra glanced down at her sleeve; the fabric was burned through in a perfect circle. The faint shimmer beneath her skin had dimmed, but it hadn’t disappeared.
“She’ll come again,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” Maverick replied. “That’s the problem with hunters. They always circle back.”
Lyra pressed her head back against the cold concrete and closed her eyes. The adrenaline was finally bleeding off, leaving behind a tremor she couldn’t stop. Her hands shook in her lap, fingers still half-curled like they expected to be running.
Maverick noticed.
He crouched in front of her, lowering himself to eye level without crowding her space. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Breathe.”
“I am breathing,” she snapped—then immediately regretted it. She swallowed. “Sorry. I just… every time I stop moving, it hits me.”
He nodded once, like that made sense. “That’s normal.”
“Normal for who?” she asked. “Because this is not how my life looked a week ago.”
“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”
Jonah shifted nearby, hugging his knees. “For what it’s worth,” he said, voice rough, “you didn’t freeze. Most people do.”
Lyra opened her eyes. “I almost cut myself open.”
“But you didn’t,” Maverick said. His gaze flicked to her wrist, then back to her face. “You stopped.”
“Because you stopped me.”
His jaw tightened. “Because you trusted me.”
The word settled between them, heavy and uncomfortable.
Outside, thunder rolled again—farther off now. The storm was moving away.
Lyra let out a slow breath. “Next time,” she said, “I want more than an hour.”
Maverick’s mouth curved—not quite a smile, but close. “Then we start planning like we mean to survive.”
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They sat in silence, all of them still catching up to their own heartbeats. The storm outside had eased, but the roof still dripped through cracks.
Lyra looked down at the mark, now dim again. “She called me an imbalance.”
Maverick didn’t look up. “She would.”
“You know what it means.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “It means you’re not supposed to exist. The Syndicate made people like Vale to erase things they couldn’t control.”
Jonah frowned. “Erase what exactly?”
“Anything unpredictable,” Maverick said. “Power that doesn’t follow their formulas.”
Lyra’s voice went flat. “So me.”
“Yeah.”
She exhaled, slow. “Perfect.”
Jonah shifted uneasily. “Why do you know so much about them?”
Maverick didn’t answer. The silence was enough of one.
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Lyra’s laugh was short and bitter. “Let me guess. You used to work for her.”
He met her eyes. “Used to.”
Jonah blinked. “That’s… comforting.”
“She’ll use that connection against us,” Lyra said.
“She already is.”
The quiet that followed was heavier than before.
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Jonah finally broke it. “You know, when I saw you back in the tunnels, I thought you were both insane.”
“Fair,” Lyra said.
“Now I think you’re something else.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled faintly. “Trouble worth following.”
Maverick rolled his eyes. “You’re not joining the team.”
“Sure I am,” Jonah said. “Someone’s gotta keep you two from killing each other.”
Lyra snorted. “We don’t kill each other. We just threaten to.”
“Frequently,” Jonah said.
“Occupational hazard.”
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Lightning flashed through the skylight, bleaching the room white for half a second. The three of them flinched like soldiers expecting impact.
When the light faded, Lyra looked at Maverick again. “You think she’ll stop?”
“She doesn’t stop,” he said quietly. “She waits.”
Lyra leaned her head back against the wall. “Then we don’t give her the chance.”
Maverick almost smiled. “That’s the spirit.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Wasn’t.”
Jonah groaned. “Please stop flirting. I’m traumatized enough.”
Lyra grinned despite herself. “Get some rest, Jonah.”
“Not a chance.”
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Below them, deep in the tunnels they’d fled, Vale stood ankle-deep in floodwater. Her soldiers knelt, armor fried and sparking.
One of them looked up. “Orders, Director?”
“Pull the bodies,” she said without looking at him. “Recover what’s left of the data cores.”
“And the fugitives?”
She tilted her head, eyes on the flickering readouts across her wrist console. Two faint signatures still pulsed—one steady, one erratic. She smiled.
“Alive,” she murmured. “Good. I’d hate for the experiment to end early.”
“Director?”
“Seal the north exits. Deploy trackers to the river line. And send me the next prototype. We’ll need something stronger.”
The soldier nodded and hurried off. Vale watched him go, expression softening into something colder than anger.
“Run as far as you want,” she said to the empty air. “You’ll only make the hunt more interesting.”