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Chapter 13 — The Defiance
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2026-05-24 21:00:56The clock on the table said 2:14 in the morning.
Watching the red numbers and listening to Tor's boots in the hallway. Heavy and even. Getting quieter as he moved toward the east wing. Four minutes. Same route every time. East wing first. Then the lift. Then the desk at the end of the hall. Then back. Counted without meaning over the past few days until it lived in my head like a heartbeat. Four minutes of no
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I heard him before I felt anything. My name. Over and over. His voice doing the thing it only did when there was nothing left to manage... raw and open and frightened in a way that had no performance in it at all. Then the cold. Stone floor under my back. The weight of his arms around me kept me from sliding all the way down. The dead air of the room in the rock. The bare bulbs swing slightly above. I couldn't answer. My jaw was still locked. My chest was still locked. The gray had pulled back enough that I could see the ceiling but not enough that I could do anything about any of it. The black lines on my wrist were still moving. I knew what they were. Grade four synthetic. I had learned that name in a ballroom from a man with dead eyes and a ruined voice who had told me it shut your lungs down and the fire came afte
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