The new hideout didn’t look like a pce where rebellion was born. From the outside, it was a battered bar, its neon signs dark for years. Inside, the stale scent of spilled alcohol and smoke clung to the upholstery. Yet people still came—because there was nowhere else to go, because they craved community, or simply because they were desperate.

  Sophie stood behind the bar, wordlessly drying another gss, though no one clean was left to drink from it. Her spiteful smile had long since vanished—her thoughts were too heavy. Every refuge they’d ever had had ended the same way: broken doors, fire, flight… or death. Now… they had a bar.

  A bar. She’d once come here with Aiden. They’d sat together, drinking something foul, pretending the world beyond the door didn’t exist. Sophie snorted. A bitter joke straight from the past. Now Aiden was somewhere in the Tower, and she was here washing gsses for people who still weren’t sure she wouldn’t sell them out a second time.

  The door creaked open, and a few heads lifted from half-empty mugs. Sophie didn’t look up—not yet. She slid another gss into pce and began to dry it.

  Lucien entered without a sound, like a shadow cutting through the bar’s oppressive air. His coat was still damp from the unrelenting rain. His gray eyes flickered in the gloom, unnaturally bright. A few patrons gnced his way—but no one spoke. They didn’t need to. His presence spoke for him.

  He approached the bar and set a heavy military‐style bag down with a metallic clink. That single sound said more than any question. Sophie didn’t ask. She reached into the bag, retrieved its contents, and closed the door to the back storeroom. The Resistance ran on half-truths and hard-won trust, and Lucien had his secrets. She didn’t need to know where he’d gotten this.

  Before returning to the bar, she peeked at his haul: firearms. Several grenades. top-tier gear—not the kind scavenged from ruins. This was preparation for something specific.

  Lucien eased onto a stool, his movements unhurried. He tugged off his gloves, revealing fingers nicked and raw—proof the past days hadn’t been kind. Sophie allowed herself a sidelong look. Tall, lean but not gaunt—every muscle beneath his coat spoke of a body forged by conflict.

  “All there?” he asked softly, drawing out each word with the same precision that commanded attention even in the bar’s din.

  Sophie nodded. She stayed silent, but the faint, wicked smile only she knew began to return.

  Leaning against the counter, Lucien interced his fingers as though ready to pass judgment. Sophie watched him from the corner of her eye, pretending to polish an empty gss—but in truth, she hung on every word, waiting for the thread that led them to Kail.

  “They change shifts every four hours,” he said evenly. “Only two guards at the entrance. No cameras. No drones outside his b.”

  “Only two?” she raised an eyebrow—surprised, not relieved.

  Lucien nodded. “The head of research doesn’t like the Sons. She barely tolerates them. It’s a marriage of convenience—cooperation only where absolutely necessary. No sympathy. No trust.”

  Sophie set the gss down, feeling a pn form. But it wasn’t just his words fueling her imagination—the bar’s dim, flickering light danced in his eyes, those gray orbs glowing as if harboring their own source of light. For a moment she simply stared. Most people avoided his gaze. The AberScan above the door remained silent—few trusted technology. Folks fear what recalls mutation. What is different. And he was different.

  But Sophie didn’t look away. The glow in his eyes seemed… beautiful. Dangerous, yet in a way that drew her in.

  She reached for a bottle of aged, smuggled Ghaard rum and poured him a drink without a word. The gss chimed softly—this gesture meant more than just offering a drink. She set it before him and didn’t ask what it was. She knew he’d drink it—he always did when he had something to hide.

  “Where did you get this gear? And your intel?” she asked calmly, almost casually—but she watched him intently.

  Lucien looked up at her from half-lidded eyes. “You’re better off not knowing,” he replied. “It’ll cost you less when everything falls apart.”

  There was no arrogance in his tone—only cool precision, like someone who knows the weight of information and the price one pays for it.

  Sophie raised an eyebrow, but instead of pressing him, she grabbed another gss and poured herself a drink. She wasn’t a bartender—here, no one was who they pretended to be. She took a swallow and felt the familiar burn in her throat.

  “To the city,” she murmured, lifting her gss toward him.

  Lucien nodded. They tapped rims as if sealing a quiet pact.

  Sophie leaned in for a top-off and used the moment—her fingers brushed his hand, deliberately. She didn’t look away; on the contrary, she waited. Lucien’s bright, intense eyes met her green ones. For a long moment they held each other’s gaze in total silence. In the bar, only distant footsteps and wind whistling between the containers broke the hush.

  Lucien didn’t pull his hand back right away. His look wasn’t cold—but deep within y something… else. Hesitation? A fsh of sadness? Maybe calcution. Then he withdrew his hand calmly, without a word—almost as if postponing something.

  He slid his gss back as if the previous moment—hand on hand, the long look—had been a hallucination. He locked his gray, penetrating gaze on Sophie and said, nearly dispassionately:

  “Why do people call you ‘Fg’?”

  The question hit like a blow. Sophie’s brow shot up. For a moment she said nothing, trying to retrieve the moment they’d just shared, but Lucien’s question swept it away like a sandstorm. She frowned, sighed.

  “Because I betrayed once,” she answered. She gave a crooked smile. “And I did it spectacurly.”

  Lucien said nothing, just watched.

  “I was on a mission with Kail and Aiden. We were supposed to retrieve something—something important… I don’t even remember the details. I’d known them since the academy. We trained together. We were friends.” She paused briefly. “And then, in the middle of all that, I chose Vordar. I had my reasons. I thought it was the only way to find my brother. I was stupid, na?ve, maybe just desperate. But the fact is—I betrayed them.”

  Lucien shifted slightly but stayed silent.

  “They didn’t die. They survived. But the mission went to shit—and moments ter Vordar struck Radon. It was too convenient: ‘Fg’s betrayal, the attack on the city.’ The pieces fit too well not to believe it.”

  She leaned on the bar, elbows on the counter. Her smile was bitter, ced with self-mockery.

  “Then I came back to Radon. Fought. Did everything to fix it. But…” She shrugged. “Labels are like burn scars. Even when they heal, the mark remains.”

  She fell silent for a beat, then looked Lucien straight in the eye and said: “Fgs are like whores of fate. They stand wherever the pay is better—or where the wind doesn’t blow as cold. I just had too much hope and not enough sense.”

  She snorted, took another swig.

  “But hey, at least I learn from my mistakes. Now when I fuck up, I do it with full awareness.”

  Lucien didn’t break his gaze. There was no judgment in his eyes—only cool, analytical curiosity. His voice remained calm and measured:

  “And what happened next?”

  Sophie paused, weighing how much to reveal. She traced the rim of her gss with a fingertip, staring into the distance over his shoulder.

  “Next?” she scoffed. “Next, Radon swallowed Mat’s sermons like a cream-filled cookie.”

  Lucien lifted an eyebrow. Sophie continued, sarcasm sharpening her tone:

  “The guy showed up with his holy-mans grin and a promise: die, and you go to a world without pain, mutation, or fear. And for now, he can even keep you from turning into slimy carcass. He said Aberron’s radiation can be controlled. And people… People? They pped it up like they’d never heard a better bedtime story.”

  Lucien didn’t flinch.

  “The Tower’s scientists confirmed there’s something to it—that their artifact really can block the radiation, that just touching it halts mutation. Boom—Mat got a halo from science. The city turned on a dime. Fear and hope… there’s no better glue.”

  She raised her gss to him, looked into his eyes, and snorted:

  "And that’s how a fanatic with ambition took over Radon. The Council? The Mayor? Tossed aside like yesterday’s papers. Mat walked in preaching and walked out a prophet—without firing a single shot."

  She grimaced, her smile hard as gss.

  "And me, idiot that I was, tried to rebuild the city the old-fashioned way. Democracy. Cooperation. You can imagine how far that got me. People would rather blindly believe some radiation god’s holding their hand than admit none of this makes any real damn sense."

  She sighed and set the gss down.

  "But who can bme them? If the only alternative is turning into a snarling, eyeless husk with sludge for a brain... even Mat starts sounding like a pn."

  Lucien remained still, as always. Calm. Attentive. Only a slight tilt of his head betrayed interest when he asked:

  "Why are you in the Resistance?"

  Sophie hesitated. She pushed her gss aside, braced both hands on the bar. For a moment she stared into the weak light spilling from the makeshift mp above them. Then she met his gaze and shrugged.

  "Because a smart person doesn’t make the same mistake twice. I made it once. That’s enough."

  She gave a bitter smile.

  "I betrayed Radon. Yeah, I was a fg—fpping in the wind of my own stupid decisions. But I won’t blow with it again. I made a choice. I know what I’m fighting for now, and I’m going to fight until the end."

  Lucien didn’t interrupt. He waited. Sophie continued, her voice slower now, deeper.

  "Besides... Mat, that holy man of Aberron—once he got power, he cleared the path. The City Council? Sughtered. My mother too."

  She fell silent. For the first time that night, true quiet settled between them. Even Lucien shifted slightly, as if he hadn’t expected that revetion.

  "We didn’t have an easy retionship," she said at st, her tone subdued. "Distant. Political. All pride and legacy. Evelyn Corth—it sounds like someone who should have a statue in city hall, doesn’t it?"

  She smiled with irony—the kind of smile that hurts more than tears.

  "But even if we disagreed… she was still my mother. And for us, for the Moreno–Corth family, blood meant more than ideology. He killed her without a word. Couldn’t even look her in the eyes."

  Sophie raised her gss and tapped it gently against the bar.

  "So yeah, I’m in the Resistance. Not just because I want to fix what I broke. But because I want that self-righteous bastard to look me in the face someday… and know he lost."

  She leaned in toward Lucien, lowering her voice into a dark, almost joking whisper—like delivering the punchline to a very cruel joke:

  "And maybe then I’ll tell him my cold, dead mother sends her regards… straight from hell."