The screen stayed blank.

  Dev tapped his fingers against the desk. Then stopped. Then started again. The rhythm off-beat, uneven, his knee bouncing under the table. He should be writing. Should be reporting in.

  Martinez was waiting.

  He flexed his hand, rubbing a thumb over the ridge of his forefinger. The cursor pulsed, steady, unmoved by the fact that his brain felt like it had been wrung out.

  It wasn't like there was nothing to say.

  Zedd was working himself into the fucking ground.

  That wasn't an exaggeration. That wasn't Dev being dramatic. It was just facts. Zedd didn't sleep right. Barely ate. Locked himself in the lab for hours, pushing past exhaustion like it personally offended him.

  Which was the kind of thing Martinez wanted to know about.

  So why couldn't he just type it?

  The door creaked open.

  Dev didn't look up, but he knew that silhouette, the way Kira leaned against the frame like she had nowhere better to be. Like she'd been there long enough to make up her mind about something.

  "You look like you wanna hit something.".

  Dev exhaled, dragging a hand down his face. "Yeah. Maybe."

  Maybe more than maybe.

  Kira didn't answer. Just stood there, arms folded, watching. Not pushing, not nudging, just... waiting.

  Like she already knew.

  Of course she fucking did.

  They were both in the same situation. Both expected to keep an eye on Zedd. Both supposed to be reporting back.

  Neither of them had talked about it.

  His jaw tensed. He cleared his throat. "What'd you put in yours?"

  Kira let out a slow breath. Not an exhale. Just enough air to say she was thinking. "Didn't submit one."

  Dev blinked.

  He sat up a little straighter, like that was supposed to make the answer make more sense. "You what?"

  She met his gaze, unflinching. "He's my friend."

  That landed like a short circuit to the brain.

  Dev stared at her, pulse ticking in his jaw. His fingers curled against the edge of the desk. That wasn't just an answer. That was a line in the sand.

  His mouth felt dry. "And if Martinez pushes?"

  Kira didn't hesitate. "Then she pushes."

  Like it was that simple.

  She didn't wait for a response. Didn't try to convince him. Just turned, pushing off the doorframe, walking out like that was all there was to say.

  The door clicked shut behind her.

  Dev stared at his screen.

  The cursor blinked.

  And blinked.

  And blinked.

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  The hum of machinery filled the underground lab, steady, rhythmic, a constant backdrop to the glow of diagnostic screens and the faint scent of ozone. The V.E.S.T. prototype hung suspended, skeletal frame gleaming under the harsh lab lights, servos twitching as Zedd fine-tuned the actuator strength by hand, his movements quick, precise.

  Too precise.

  The kind of focus that edged into something unnatural.

  AY-E hovered nearby, its sleek frame shifting slightly as it monitored the readouts. AY-U stayed back, moving in slower, more deliberate motions, assisting where needed. The diagnostic interface projected a stream of data across Zedd's vision, numbers flickering faster than the human eye could process, but he wasn't just human. His fingers flexed, adjusting pressure calibrations without looking, without hesitating.

  "Power redistribution lag detected," ADAM's voice cut through the hum, crisp, smooth. "Point three milliseconds outside optimal range."

  Zedd exhaled sharply, jaw tensing. "Unacceptable," he muttered. "Run it again."

  The exoskeleton's reinforced fingers curled, pressing into a polymer testing block. The pressure registered, but there was a stutter, a half-second delay that shouldn't be there. His brow furrowed. Still wrong. Not good enough.

  Again.

  He ran the test again. And again. Each time, the delay was there, slight but present, a flaw threading through his work like a splinter beneath skin.

  "Boss," ADAM said, voice unreadable. "This is iteration seventeen. You're in diminishing returns."

  Zedd ignored him.

  From the doorway, Kira and Dev watched.

  "He's doing it again," Kira murmured, her weight shifting against the doorframe.

  Dev didn't answer. Didn't need to.

  Zedd's fingers curled into a fist before relaxing, the strain flashing across his face for just a second before it was buried beneath something sharper. Colder.

  Kira stepped forward. "You do realize there's a limit, right?"

  Zedd didn't look up. "The limit is when it works."

  Kira's eyes narrowed. "You're pushing everyone away."

  That made him pause. Not long. But it was there.

  Then he scoffed, turning to her with a grin that was too sharp to be casual, too mocking to be cold. "People always say that," the inventor said, tapping the side of his head with two straight fingers. "And yet no one ever actually leaves me alone. Funny how that works, huh?"

  Kira moved closer, steps slow, deliberate. "So, you're doing it on purpose?"

  The grin faltered. Barely. "No—no, I'm not—" He licked his lips, expression flickering. "I'm not saying that."

  "Then what was that for?"

  Zedd blinked. "What was wh—"

  "Don't." Kira's tone cut through him, clean, direct. "You know exactly what you just did."

  His fingers stilled down at his sides. "Look… I didn't mean it."

  Kira didn't flinch. "I think you do. You don't mean it like other people would it, but you mean it because you want to give people reasons to leave you alone."

  Zedd exhaled. "Kay—"

  "Just be real," Kira said, voice sharp, unwavering. "For like five seconds."

  "I am."

  She didn't blink.

  "I am," Zedd repeated, quieter this time.

  Still, she stared.

  "I am."

  Nothing.

  Zedd sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "Fine. It's just—instinct, okay? I can't help it. That what you wanna hear? I just like my space, okay? Is that asking too much? I push a bit sometimes."

  Kira's voice didn't soften. "And what happens when you push too hard? When you hit a wall with everyone?"

  Zedd's jaw locked. "Then I push through it."

  Kira shook her head, barely more than a breath.

  "Yeah," she murmured. "That's what I'm afraid of."

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  The lab wasn't quiet. Not really.

  The machinery still thrummed in the background, the faint electric hum of systems running diagnostics, the soft chime of status reports updating in his periphery. But it felt quiet. Too quiet. The wrong kind.

  Zedd sat hunched over his workstation, fingers drumming against the metal in a fast, uneven rhythm, the only outward sign of the irritation pressing sharp behind his ribs. Kira had left him alone hours ago, but her stupid stupid words remained where they shouldn't, taking up precious brain space and bandwidth. The omnitool display flickered in front of him, scrolling data feed too fast, too dense, lines blurring slightly before snapping back into focus. His brain parsed it instinctively—error reports, server pings, resource logs—but the numbers layered over each other, overlapping, shifting in real time. Surveillance attempts.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  "Boss," ADAM's voice cut through the air, smooth, even, the same practiced efficiency it always carried. "I intercepted multiple unauthorized attempts to access system infrastructure."

  Zedd blinked. Then frowned. "How many?"

  "Thirty-seven distinct probes in the last seventy-two hours," ADAM replied. "Most from anonymized sources."

  Zedd exhaled sharply through his nose. That wasn't random.

  One probe? Fine. Could be some dumbass script-kiddie seeing if they could poke at a high-profile system. A handful? Corporate interest, some opportunist hoping to find a crack in his security.

  Thirty-seven? Someone was looking for something.

  His fingers flexed against the desk, knuckles pressing white against the metal. "Can you trace them?"

  "Not all," ADAM said. "Some originate from Arkadia's networks. Others are routed through civilian proxies."

  Arkadia's networks.

  His stomach went tight. Fucking Martinez.

  His jaw locked, molars grinding slow and steady as he forced himself to breathe through the spike of irritation, to shove it somewhere useful. Thirty-seven probes and most of them from militia origins. She wasn't even trying to be subtle about it.

  He didn't doubt David approved some of them, but at the very least, he liked David.

  "Shall I begin countermeasures?" ADAM asked after a beat of silence.

  Zedd didn't answer immediately. His gaze stayed fixed on the flickering readout, on the silent confirmation that someone was pushing, waiting for him to slip up, for a weak point to dig into.

  He could shut them down now. Brick their access, fry their surveillance attempts, remind them exactly who they were fucking with.

  But that wasn't the move. Not yet.

  His fingers tapped against the desk. "No," he said finally, exhaling sharp. "Just... watch them."

  He leaned back, rolling the tension out of his shoulders, but his eyes didn't leave the screen.

  "They push harder," he muttered, tapping a command into his interface, "we push back."

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  Nina knew what she was walking into before she even opened the door.

  The lab was quiet, not the usual quiet—never truly silent, not with the hum of machines running their endless loops, the faint static charge in the air, the low flicker of holo-displays running some background process. But it was too still. Thick. Like the air itself had stopped moving, like the space had absorbed his exhaustion and was holding it there, waiting for someone else to acknowledge it.

  She stepped inside, door hissing shut behind her.

  Zedd was slumped over his workstation, one arm curled under his head, the other half-draped across the desk like he'd meant to reach for something and forgot halfway through. His omni-tool was still active, casting dim, shifting light against his face—lines of diagnostics, schematics, heatmaps, data feeds he'd clearly been obsessing over right up until he wasn't.

  Nina sighed, already feeling the shape of this conversation before it even started.

  Dios mío, Zee.

  She moved in slow, careful. Like sudden movement might set him back in motion, like waking him up wrong would just have him running again, pushing, burning, circling back into whatever spiral had gotten him here. She'd seen it before.

  Too many times.

  Zedd didn't crash like normal people. Didn't have the good sense to slow down, to pace himself, to recognize when he was at the edge of something unsustainable before tipping straight over it. He just ran out. Like a machine hitting its last cycle before shutting off. No warnings. No lead-up. Just awake, awake, awake—gone.

  Her fingers brushed through his hair before she even thought about it. A reflex. Just for a second, just long enough to confirm what she already knew.

  Dead to the world.

  Her hand dropped to his shoulder. She shook him, gentle at first.

  "Zedd. Wake up."

  Nothing at first. Then a sluggish noise, a half-formed groan, more vibration than voice. A shift, barely even a movement.

  "M'working..."

  Nina huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Dios. It wasn't funny. It wasn't.

  But it was so fucking Zedd.

  "No, you're passing out on your desk again," she corrected, voice low, steady, firm in a way that had nothing to do with volume.

  Zedd's eyes cracked open, unfocused, sluggish, slow to process. She could see it, the way his brain was trying to pull itself online, trying to scrape together enough processing power to argue with her.

  He started to sit up.

  She pushed him right back down.

  "No."

  A slow blink. "...Just—"

  "No," she repeated, voice flat, unwavering. "Bed. Now."

  His head tilted slightly, like he was actually considering fighting her on this.

  He didn't. He exhaled, long and slow, body sinking back into the desk. Too tired to argue.

  Nina let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Watched his breathing even out, his body go slack in that way that meant he was actually out, not just waiting for her to leave so he could pull himself back to his feet.

  Her fingers hovered over the holo-display, shutting off his omni-tool with a few practiced taps, the last flickers of light fading into the dim glow of the lab.

  She turned to leave, but the words slipped out before she could stop them.

  "I love you, idiot."

  Soft. Too soft for him to hear.

  Maybe.

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  The room felt smaller at night.

  Dev sat at his desk, the glow of his omnitool casting sharp angles against his face. The quarters weren't cramped—Zedd's house had space, more than any of them had expected—but something about the walls felt closer right now. Like they were pressing in, waiting for him to make a move.

  The orange screen of his omni blinked, steady, patient.

  Martinez was waiting.

  His fingers hovered over the interface, unmoving. It wasn't like he didn't know what to write. The words had already been forming in the back of his head for weeks—observations, patterns, concerns, all neatly catalogued whether he wanted them to be or not.

  Zedd hadn't slowed down. If anything, he was accelerating. More tech, more hours locked in the lab, more time spent on something he refused to explain to any of them. The way he worked wasn't normal. Not for a kid. Not for anyone.

  And then there was the other stuff.

  The attention. The quiet, creeping realization that people weren't just talking about Zedd anymore—they were tracking him.

  Dev wasn't stupid. He saw the security logs, the flagged activity, the way the VI's notifications kept coming in at odd hours. He didn't know what exactly Martinez was looking for, but he knew she wasn't alone.

  That was the part that stuck in his chest.

  He tapped his fingers against the desk and exhaled sharply, flexing his hands before resting them back against the interface.

  Zedd was his friend.

  Martinez was his commanding officer.

  His fingers curled into a fist, then unclenched.

  The cursor blinked.

  His stomach twisted anyway.

  He hit send.