Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“Yes,” he says simply. “I do.”
The words land in my chest like a small, bright bomb.
I swallow, suddenly more off-balance than any throw in the last half hour made me.
“Okay, well,” I say lightly, because that’s what I do when I’m in danger of combusting, “that’s enough emotional vulnerability for one training montage. Back to work, coach.”
We return to the table.
The data is waiting.
The threat is still real.
The bounty is still out there, with too many zeros and too many anonymous eyes attached.
But now, something else hums under my skin.
Not just fear.
Not just adrenaline.
Power.
We’re not just running.
We’re learning.
We’re adapting.
And sitting shoulder to shoulder with Knight—our knees bumping again, his fingers flying across keys, my mind spinning webs from strings of code—I realize something:
They might have put us on a list.
They might have painted targets on our backs.
They might think they’re the ones doing the hunting.
But they underestimated the girl with the bat.
And the man who’d burn the world to keep her breathing.
Bad idea.
For them.
Great for us.
ELEVEN
PATCH NOTES
KNIGHT
Time moves weird in the cabin.
In the city, everything’s in microseconds and notifications—pings and pushes and constant digital static. Here it’s just… light and dark. Coffee and not-coffee. Check-in window and waiting for the next one.
We’ve burned through most of today’s data packets. Lark is sprawled sideways on the couch, ankles kicked over one arm, tapping idly at the dead tablet screen like she can will it back online.
“You know it’s off, right?” I say.
She glares at it. “A girl can dream, right?”
The little modem box sits unplugged on the table, antenna folded. Our next five-minute crack in the wall isn’t for another couple of hours.
We’ve mapped everything we can from what we’ve got. ALFA07 is still a slippery ghost. Cathedral’s network is fractaled hell. Dean and his people are chewing on their end. Arrow says they’ve got a couple of promising leads but nothing we can use yet.
So we’re stuck in the worst possible state…
Waiting.
“Entertainment request,” Lark announces suddenly, flopping onto her back and hanging her head upside down off the edge of the couch, light-lavendar hair dangling toward the floor. “My brain is melting.”
I lean against the table, arms folded. “We already trained. We already combed the packet logs twice. We already mocked Ranger’s pantry.”
“We didn’t mock the canned bread enough, but that’s a separate issue.” She squints at me upside down. “We need a game.”
“This isn’t vacation.”
“Everything is a game if you’re fun enough.”
“I’m not fun.”
“Correct,” she says. “That’s why you need my help. Good news… I came prepared.”
I narrow my eyes. “Prepared how?”
She swings her legs off the couch, rolls upright, and plucks a pen and small notebook from her bag. The cover is decorated with a sticker that says root access is nine-tenths of the law.
She flips it open and shows me a page near the back.
At the top, in blocky letters: PATCH NOTES.
Underneath are bullet points, some scratched out, some circled:
learned to poach an egg without crying
finally blocked Kyle’s number
did not, in fact, die
told Knight off and survived
I blink. “What is that?”
“My life patch notes,” she says, like obviously. “You know. Like when a game releases an update and posts all the fixes and glitches and new features? I’ve been doing it for myself for a while. Big changes, little changes, bug fixes.”
I look at the list again, at the mix of stupid and serious.
“That one’s old,” she adds quickly, snapping the notebook shut. “Point is, we’re going to play a version together.”
I raise a brow. “We grew up together, Lark. There’s not a lot we don’t already know.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my emotionally constipated friend.” She points the pen at me. “We see each other. We don’t actually know each other in certain ways. So. Patch Notes game: we take turns. Each round, you give me one ‘note’ about yourself I don’t already know. Bug fix, new feature, vulnerability patch, whatever. I get one follow-up question. Then you get one from me. First person to refuse to answer has to eat the canned bread.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“That’s motivation.”
I almost say no.
We should be reviewing logs. We should be planning contingency routes. We should be… something.
Instead, I hear myself say, “Fine. You go first.”
She brightens, tucking one bare foot under her and clicking the pen. “Okay. Lark v3.2, new patch note: I almost moved to Berlin two years ago.”
That hits like a glitch in a familiar program.
“You what?” I say.
She grins, clearly enjoying my surprise. “See? You didn’t know. Gage doesn’t either, so don’t narc. I applied for an internship with a cybersecurity research group over there. Got in. Spent a week convincing myself I was going to go. Had the plane ticket window open and everything.”
My brain scrambles to overlay that mental image—Lark, different city, different continent, not popping into our living room to steal my chips and my bandwidth.