Chapter 4

Late that night, an all-black armored SUV pulled up outside my building.

Professor Elliot Vance, the crisis management mentor who'd brought me into the field, video-called me one last time.

He looked at the black car behind me, his voice heavy.

"Cora, are you really going alone? A place like Dayaka will eat you alive."

"That's the fight I want."

On the screen, the professor sighed.

"If you run into anything you can't handle, call me. You're the student I'm proudest of. Don't throw your life away for someone else's future."

My eyes stung.

In a place like Nova City, where profit came first, at least there was still someone who actually cared whether I lived or died.

As for Jared and the others...

After they left my apartment, they went to the club we used to go to all the time, to get ready for Faye's senior partner welcome party.

The unread count in the group chat I'd muted kept climbing.

Nash posted a picture of a flower wall.

"Cora, you've got the best taste. Get over here and fix this. The colors are a mess."

Grant replied underneath, cold as ever.

"She's still throwing a fit. Don't spoil her."

Ray posted a picture of a custom cake with five little figures on it.

"Give her a few days of eating sand in Dayaka, and she'll fall in line. Then we'll set up a livestream for her."

I ignored them.

Reyes opened the car door for me.

"Cora, once you're in the car, the highest-level radio silence protocol kicks in. You'll lose access to your personal phone and social media accounts. Is there anyone else you need to contact?"

"No."

I got in the car.

A notification popped up at the top of my screen.

Faye had changed the group name from "The Founding Five" to "Nova City Core Team."

Right after that, she sent a screenshot.

My nickname in the group had always been "The Irreplaceable Brain," which Jared had picked himself. Now it had been changed to "Exiled to Dayaka."

Faye added a giggling emoji.

"I was just trying to lighten the mood. Cora won't be mad, will she?"

Nash replied right away.

"If she's mad, she can walk back from Dayaka and change it herself."

Ray posted a string of laughing emojis.

Grant didn't say anything, but he liked Faye's message.

Jared replied last.

"Suits her."

I watched the whole circus and felt nothing.

They had no idea.

In a moment, I wouldn't even be their so-called Dayaka exile.

I opened the settings and left the group.

Then I deleted all four of them from my contacts, one by one.

My finger was hovering over Jared's name when a private message from him came in.

"Stop this.

"Come to Faye's party later, and bring that hard drive with you."

An order, like always.

Even now, he still thought I'd come running whenever he called.

I didn't reply. I just hit delete.

Reyes handed me a metal pouch that blocked tracking signals.

"Turn it off and put it in here. For five years, you can't contact anyone on the outside without authorization, and nobody on the outside can track you."

I held down the power button.

The second the screen went dark, ten years of ties to Nova City were cut clean.

The black SUV eased into the night traffic.

Outside the window, the familiar bright city streets slid away behind us.

We were about to pull up to the checkpoint for the high-security airfield when my hand brushed something cold and hard in my trench coat pocket.

It was my metal badge, the one I'd tossed to Faye that day. Its shine had faded over the years.

She must not have wanted it with my name engraved on it, so she'd slipped it back into my coat pocket when nobody was looking.

We'd grown up together and spent ten years building something from nothing, side by side. In the end, there wasn't even a goodbye.

The security gate slowly lifted.

Reyes looked at me.

"Once you're through this gate, there's no turning back."

I rolled down the window.

The cold night air rushed in and swept away the stuffiness.

I opened my hand and took one last look at the metal badge with the company emblem on it.

I flicked my wrist.

The badge hit the concrete barrier beside the checkpoint with a clang, then bounced into a dark recess at the edge of a storm drain grate.

The car didn't slow down.

It carried me toward the waiting military plane, bound for a battlefield halfway around the world.

And I didn't look back once.