The air hung heavy with cigarette smoke, and half-burned candles stuck to worn tables flickered like the st embers in a scorched city. Sophie, swaying slightly, made her way to the stairs. Her hand traced the railing as if seeking support—but also as if unwilling for this moment to end. A neon sign on the wall pulsed zily over her—now pink, now a pale green.

  Lucien watched from the same spot where he’d stood unmoving for half an hour. His gray, phosphorescent eyes followed her every step. He knew that gait—just sober enough not to colpse, drunk enough to forget who she was, but not drunk enough to dull the pain. Her hair had come undone after the second drink, strands of bck silk tumbling over her shoulders. He remembered that weight, the look on her face when she’d tipped her head back and ughed at her own joke about her dead mother.

  He watched her vanish up the stairs—a lithe silhouette, long legs, that wicked smile that seemed to mock anyone daring to look. But it was her eyes that gripped him most: green like foliage long since withered from these streets. The eyes of someone who’d survived too much—and still ughed.

  Alone, Lucien slipped one glove off and wiped his lips. He wasn’t hungover—yet. Alcohol was an instrument to him, no different than any other tool.

  He gnced toward the back exit. He had everything he needed: guard rotations, shift patterns, the odd alliances between scientists and zealots—and more: the unspoken truths read in posture, tone, stolen gnces. Sophie was loyal—to the city, to Kail, to the cause.

  That was enough.

  He drained his gss in one motion, slid his glove back on, popped his colr, and walked for the door.

  Time to talk to Orin.

  He slipped around the corner where no one could spot him, melting into the alley’s shadow like a wraith. The city slumbered in a restless fit. Above, the moon hung silent—a witness to betrayals and pns unspoken.

  He drew his comm unit from an inner pocket: matte-bck, ft, unmarked. It might have been a polished stone. Yet it worked—better than anything Radon ever built.

  SatRad—the only functioning satellite left over this ruined world. Officially Radon’s; in practice, Vordar’s hackers had burrowed into its systems like a virus. Ghosts in the machine—unseen but omnipresent. Thanks to them, Lucien could contact his commanders not over interceptable lines but through Radon’s own infrastructure. They didn’t even know their satellite was watching their every move.

  He powered it on.

  A quiet click rumbled out. A heartbeat’s silence. Then...

  “Speak.” The voice of Captain Orin Vex—hard and metallic, as if addressing a ptoon, not his brother. No hint of warmth. No trace of feeling.

  Lucien needed no prompting. He knew his orders by heart. That tone had drilled into him since childhood.

  “Link established. I’ve secured intel on the Research Tower’s defenses. Kail—the mutant—is in there.”

  He paused, giving his brother time to process. He heard typing on the other end.

  “Continue,” ordered Orin.

  Lucien held the line a moment, comm unit at his lips, weighing how much more to say. He could have hung up—basic report delivered, mission underway. Any extra words risked exposure. Yet something—maybe the wedge of liquor in his gut, maybe an old, unfunny sentiment—pushed him to press on.

  “How’s the weather in Vordar, little brother?” he asked softly, in the same measured tone he might use to rey bombing coordinates. As if he really cared about the climate, not mocking it. Serious voice. Calm delivery. Words that should have been a joke sounded like a riddle.

  Silence stretched on the line—one second, maybe two. Then Orin’s voice returned, colder, sharper.

  “You sound drunk,” he said dryly. He knew Lucien too well. “This is a professional channel. Get to the point. Details.”

  Lucien smiled to himself. That voice—so familiar. He leaned back against the cold concrete wall and stared up at Radon’s dark sky. One hand held the comm to his mouth, the other tucked into his coat pocket.

  He still wore that faint smile—a ghost of old habits, memories of conversations back when they’d been brothers instead of cogs in the machine.

  “We haven’t shared a beer in ages,” Lucien said quietly, his tone ft. “Maybe it’s time we made up for lost time, Orin?”

  Silence stretched on the line—taut, impossible to ignore.

  When Orin finally spoke, his voice was razor-hard: “Beer is for those who can afford illusions. You can’t. I don’t want to. You have a mission, Lucien. If you want this world to pretend it still makes sense—focus on the mission. You’re not here to reminisce about childhood. You’re here to deliver intel. Efficiently. Soberly. And without your games.”

  His words cut into Lucien like a bde through soft fabric. Orin’s voice wasn’t raised, didn’t sound like a direct order—but precisely for that reason, it was devastatingly effective. Lucien’s sobriety snapped back in an instant, cold as the night air. He pulled the comm away from his lips, closed his eyes, and the smile faded.

  A beat ter, he pressed it back to his mouth. His voice was clipped and precise, as if that fraternal exchange never occurred: “I’ve gained their trust,” he reported evenly. “I know where they hold Kail. He’s in the Research Tower, in stasis. Secure—but not out of reach. Two guards at the entrance. Shifts rotate every four hours.”

  Silence stretched longer than it should.

  “You speak of him like he’s human,” Orin finally said. “Do you know what he is?”

  Lucien gnced at his reflection in a nearby window—distorted, pale, eyes glowing an eerie green. “Of course I know,” he replied. “Css-Six mutant. He retained control. Didn’t transform. He’s a puzzle no one—neither Radon nor the scientists—can solve. But we… we can.”

  “What’s your pn?” Orin asked, ftly.

  Lucien leaned back against the wall. “The Resistance maybe has five or six people who know what they’re doing. The rest are desperates—illusions wearing flesh. As soon as they extract Kail, I’ll be with him. Wait for the right moment—and I’ll pull him right from under their noses. No theatrics. No farewells.”

  Silence returned—this time even heavier.

  Lucien stared into the dark void before him, as if watching the pn unfold in his mind. He traced a fingertip across the cool comm surface, then spoke again in that cool, almost concerned tone: “Any news from Vordar?”

  It sounded like a standard inquiry, but Orin knew his brother well enough to hear the undercurrent. He paused—two seconds, then three—before replying: “We’ve got trouble again in Sector 17.”

  Lucien looked up at the sky—choked with smog, streaked by the neon ribbons of moving ads on magnetic broadcast nes. The glow of distant skyscrers—a mix of old-world concrete and steel—flickered with memories of a bygone era. “What’s happened?” he asked calmly.

  “Mutants,” Orin said. “They’re gathering. Their movement patterns look like troop mobilization. The team we had stationed there… is gone.”

  Lucien frowned. “In Sector 17… that’s where you detected the Artifact two years ago?”

  “Yes. A Css-Six Aberron anomaly—the strongest crystal reading our sensors ever recorded. We thought decontamination would quiet it. But for weeks something’s shifted. Their movements aren’t random. It looks like… an offensive buildup.”

  Lucien said nothing. These things didn’t happen without reason—and mutants had never behaved like soldiers before.

  Suddenly, he caught sight of someone emerging from the alley’s neon haze. He cut the line. The comm unit’s screen blinked off in one fluid motion as he slipped it back under his coat. He remained motionless, pressed into the wall like a shadow, his phosphorescent gray eyes fixed on the figure stepping out into the bar’s glow: a hooded silhouette, lit by neon, wearing that same malicious smile.

  “Is that you, Lucien?”

  Sophie’s voice held equal parts surprise and suspicion. Lucien felt tension coil in his body—not the familiar kind he’d felt on countless missions, but something new: a mix of guilt, unease, and… something he wasn’t ready to name.

  He stepped forward half a pace, shifting from shadow into semi-darkness as if reluctantly surrendering his cover.

  “Sophie.” He spoke her name softly, as though testing whether it alone could erase the sense that he’d been caught up in something he shouldn’t have been doing.

  Her green eyes glittered with suspicion, but there was no accusation there—yet.

  Lucien forced his face into a gentle, controlled expression. “I thought you were already asleep.”

  Sophie didn’t answer right away. She stood with her arms crossed, her head tilted slightly. The corner of her mouth quirked—almost a challenge: Don’t lie to me, Lucien—at least not without real effort.

  He drifted closer, slow and nearly imperceptible—like a predator curious to see if its prey might come of its own accord. Despite the night’s chill, the air between them felt heavy—with tension, with silence, with all that remained unsaid.

  She didn’t step back.

  Her posture was rexed, maybe even a bit unsteady—as if she still carried the ghost of the alcohol she’d drunk, but not enough to blur her awareness. Her green eyes tracked his every movement, but there was no arm—only curiosity. Expectation.

  “You know…” she began, her voice lower than before. “When we sat together at the bar… something happened.”

  Lucien said nothing. He let her speak.

  “I don’t want to leave this… hanging,” she said, tilting her head. “In a world where every day might be your st, there’s no room for half-truths.”

  Lucien smiled—a rare, ambiguous smile hovering between amusement and something more predatory. Relief. A quiet joy that, for once, he didn’t have to fight anyone—especially her.

  He took another step. And then one more. Sophie held her ground.

  “You’re right,” he whispered. “Half-truths are a luxury we can’t afford.”

  He was so close now he could smell her: a blend of smoke, liquor—and something softer, more intimately feminine. He met her eyes, and without warning, gently but decisively, he kissed her.

  He didn’t rush.

  Their lips met with equal intensity—not violently, but with the tension that had charged the air between them for so long. Her body trembled slightly, uncertain whether to respond or recoil—but she stayed. The moment stretched out, dissolving into breaths, the warm softness of proximity, and a tremor that had nothing to do with the night’s chill.

  This was more than a kiss. It was a decration.

  Lucien’s mouth tasted of smoke and bitter liquor. Of a secret no one should know, yet impossible to resist. Sophie felt it immediately—the contrast of hardness and yielding, of ice and fire. She savored the fvor with closed eyes, as if determined to memorize every fragment. He was unlike anyone before. And it wasn’t just his kiss—it was that his very presence struck her like a taut stringed chord that refuses to go silent.

  Lucien smelled of metal, sweat, and midnight mist. It wasn’t pleasant in any conventional sense, but it was real—like a man who has slept for years with a knife under his pillow. His body radiated warmth that spread through her with every inch of contact. When his hand slid along her waist, Sophie felt something in her melt and soften, as if all the tension of the past months found release in this single instant.

  His stubbled jaw grazed her skin. She felt it on her lower lip, then along her cheek as he nuzzled the side of her face. It didn’t sting—instead, it anchored her to this reality, a sign that he existed, that this wasn’t a dream, that it was happening now. A shiver ran down her spine, unreted to the cold night air.

  For a moment, the world dissolved. There was no Radon, no war, no mutants or artifacts, no betrayals or duties. There was only him—and her lips on his.

  Sophie broke the kiss abruptly, but not harshly. She stepped back just enough to draw a breath—short, heavy, charged with anticipation. Her green eyes locked onto his gray ones, as if seeking an answer she already knew. The corner of her mouth curved into that familiar, mischievous half-smile.

  “That’s enough for tonight,” she said softly, her voice steady but tinged with the unsteady thrill of the moment.

  Lucien remained motionless, as though weighing whether it was a game or a wall.

  Sophie took half a step back, never breaking eye contact.

  “I won’t give myself up that easily,” she teased with trademark cynicism. “Otherwise, you won’t care.”

  She turned, her bck coat swirling, and walked toward the bar’s entrance. Pausing in the doorway, she gnced back over her shoulder.

  “Get some rest. Tomorrow morning we pn to spring Kail. And… try not to be so mysterious, or I’ll start digging deeper. I have a talent for unearthing dirt.”

  She winked, then slipped into the building’s darkness, leaving Lucien alone with the quiet night and the bitter taste of her lips.