Chapter 26
- Xander Jade
- Feb 15
- 5 min read
Sleep was out of the question, but Cyrus lay on the cot and simulated it, letting his body rest while his mind churned through possibilities. In the half-dark of the loyalist safehouse, he ran neural traces, looking for patterns in the security protocol that circled them like a noose. The room was unremarkable—a desk, a cot, a wall monitor locked to the local info-feed. But every ten minutes, exactly, he heard the whir of a drone passing in the hallway, followed by the micro-hiss of the air filter resetting. It was the kind of vigilance that bespoke not only paranoia but discipline.
