CHAPTER 19: WATCHED
———
Kira's Apartment — Midspire Level 45
Tuesday, 22 June 2083 — 05:47
Kira woke before the sun.
Old habit. Merc schedule. The body never forgot, even when the mind desperately wanted to.
She lay still for a moment, taking inventory. Calla's small form beside her, breathing soft and steady. The faint amber glow of the city bleeding through half-closed blinds. The ever-present hum of Corereach's infrastructure vibrating through the walls.
Another day. Another set of bills. Another twenty-four hours of keeping everyone alive.
She slipped from the bed. Careful. Silent. Years of practice moving without sound, leaving before Calla woke to see the exhaustion in her mother's eyes.
The apartment had the heavy, enclosed feel of a sanctuary built from necessity rather than design. Walls lined with exposed conduits and black piping, carrying power and light through the building's bones. The main living space was dominated by an enormous sectional sofa, worn graphite-gray leather sprawled around low tables cluttered with toolkits, tangled cables, and data pads. One entire wall was a panoramic window, the city stretching into infinity beyond it—flickering neon, aerial traffic lanes, high-rise silhouettes pulsing like a living circuit board. The place very similar with the crew’s apartment.
Home. Such as it was.
She walked to Maya's room first. Always first.
The door slid open, and the sound hit her. Beeping. Rhythmic. Constant. Life support machines maintaining what biology couldn't maintain alone—keeping Maya suspended in the grey space between living and dying where machines did the work and Kira paid the bills.
The bedside monitor displayed the numbers that ruled her life:
Three years of saving. Thirteen percent. At this rate, Maya would die before Kira saved enough.
She sat on the edge of the bed. Took her sister's hand. Cold skin. Slack muscles.
"I almost took a bad job yesterday," she whispered. "The kind you would've talked me out of. The kind Rhys would've seen through in ten seconds flat."
No response. There never was.
"A month, Maya. They've been gone a month. Thirty-one days." Her voice cracked slightly. "And I keep expecting Rhys to walk through that door with some ridiculous plan. Or Cipher to call with intel he's scraped from the net. Or Nyx to just... appear, the way she always did, when you needed her most."
The machines beeped. Maya's chest rose and fell. Artificial breath.
"I don't know how much longer I can do this alone."
She stayed for ten more minutes. Holding a hand that didn't hold back. Remembering when Maya's grip had been iron-strong, when she'd led the crew through impossible odds with nothing but nerve and brilliance, when the neural backlash from the augmentation had still been years away.
Then she stood. Placed a kiss on Maya's forehead—cold skin, unresponsive, but alive. Still alive.
"I'll keep you breathing," she whispered. "No matter what it costs."
The door closed behind her. Sealing Maya in with the machines.
She walked to the kitchen.
Morning light filtered through the window. Soft. Golden. The kind of light that made everything look clean when nothing was clean. A lie the city told every morning.
The refrigerator hummed, its surface covered in photos and magnets holding memories in place. Her—younger, twenty-two—holding a newborn Calla. The day everything changed. Maya before the mods took over, arm wrapped around Kira's shoulders, wide smile full of life. And a hand-drawn picture by Calla: stick figures holding hands, three of them. The family Calla remembered.
Kira poured water. Drank. Checked her interface.
Arthur's last message still sat there, unchanged.
Connection blocked. No way to respond even if she wanted to.
Part of her was relieved he was alive. Part of her was furious he'd abandoned her.
But mostly she was just tired.
Through the window, a maintenance drone hovered past. Third one this week. City infrastructure doing city infrastructure things.
She dismissed it and went to wake Calla.
* * *
"Mommy, your eyes are red."
Calla stood in the kitchen doorway, dark hair tangled from sleep, bare feet on the cold floor. Six years old and already too observant. Survival trait inherited from her mother.
"Just tired, baby. Mommy didn't sleep well."
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Breakfast routine: synthetic protein, fruit supplement, the good coffee saved for Calla.
Calla ate slowly, watching her mother with that unsettling perceptiveness.
"Is Uncle Arthur coming back?"
Kira's hands stilled on the counter. A month since Calla had seen him.
"I don't know, baby. Sometimes people have to go away for a while. Grown-up stuff."
"Like Aunt Maya?"
The words hit like a blade. Different situations. Same result: people Kira loved, gone.
"Different. Aunt Maya is still here. She's just sleeping."
"For a long time."
"Yes. For a long time."
Calla accepted this with the adaptability of children. It broke Kira's heart.
She dropped Calla at Mrs. Okonkwo's apartment two floors down. Retired nurse, no questions, paid in cash. The crew used to watch Calla—Rhys making her laugh, Cipher teaching her to count in binary, Nyx braiding her hair. Now it was hired help and hope.
"Be good, baby. I'll pick you up before dinner."
"Love you, Mommy."
"Love you more."
Walking back to the elevator, Kira noticed a man leaning against the hallway’s wall. Average build, average clothes, average face. The kind of person designed to be forgotten—which was exactly why she noticed him. Forgettable people were usually trying to be forgotten.
He was reading something on his phone. Standing still while everyone else moved. His eyes flicked up toward her, then back down.
Paranoia? Or pattern recognition?
* * *
The workshop was three kilometers from the apartment. Different district. Different identity.
Ghost Crew's old safehouse.
She entered through the reinforced service door, locks recognizing her biometrics. The space opened up around her—high ceilings crisscrossed with old pipes and conduits, scarred concrete floor, the faint smell of machine oil and ozone.
A month of dust on everything. The sofa where Rhys used to brief them. The corner where Cipher's equipment still sat, screens dark, waiting for hands that would never return. Nyx's weapons rack, still organized the way she'd left it—blades arranged by length, each one cleaned and oiled for a mission that would never come.
Memorial. Mausoleum. Same thing.
Her netstrider setup dominated one corner: multiple screens, hardened connections, Ghost Crew security protocols still in place. Old habits. Dead friends' work keeping her safe.
She settled into the chair and scrolled through job boards.
Freelance work. Data extraction, security consultation, corporate espionage for those with flexible morals.
Most paid 2,000-5,000?. Barely covered a week of Maya's treatment.
The good jobs went to crews. She was one person now.
A new message arrived. Encrypted, routed through legitimate channels.
She opened it.
Kira stared at the number.
Fifty thousand credits. Six months of Maya's treatment. Rent paid. Breathing room.
Too good.
Her instincts screamed.
She researched Helix Analytics. Real company, established 2071. Mid-level data processing, nothing classified. Security: standard corporate, nothing special. No red flags in their public profile.
But the pay was wrong. This job should be 15,000? maximum. Someone was overpaying.
Why?
She dug deeper.
Three Helix employees had transferred to "undisclosed projects" in the past month. Financial records showed irregular payments from a shell company. The shell company traced back to nothing. Dead end. Cleaned professionally.
She ran a trace on the job posting itself.
Twelve proxies across four sectors. The routing was military-grade. Not corporate standard. Government level. Or megacorp.
Rhys's voice in her memory, a month dead but still teaching:
She pulled up everything she had on the crew's last job.
The fixer had sold them a milk run. Easy score. A NovaForge shipment logged as "outdated cyberware and exoskeleton parts." The manifest said scrap. The pay said otherwise.
They'd walked in expecting minimal resistance. Found a three-way firefight instead. Corporate black ops teams—military-grade ECM jamming communications, cutting off all support.
Rhys. Cipher. Nyx. All dead in the crossfire.
She'd survived because she wasn't there. Because Calla had her birthday that day, and Kira had chosen her daughter over her crew.
Arthur survived because he'd stayed behind too. Their medic, not needed for a simple heist.
Two people who should have died with the rest of their family. Both saved by absence.
She looked at the Helix job again.
Anonymous client. Overpaid. Military-grade routing.
The same fingerprints.
Someone was fishing. And she was the catch.
The afternoon disappeared into research. By the time she closed the boards, the light through the workshop's grimy windows had turned orange. She'd found nothing new—just confirmation of what her instincts already knew.
She closed the workshop at six. Time to become a mother again.
* * *
Mrs. Okonkwo's face was wrong.
Kira saw it the moment the door opened. The careful neutrality. The slight tension around the eyes.
"Calla's in the back, watching cartoons," Mrs. Okonkwo said. Then, lower: "There was a man earlier. Asking about families in the building."
Kira's blood went cold. "What did he look like?"
"Forgettable. That's what made me remember him." Mrs. Okonkwo's eyes were steady—former nurse, former soldier's wife, not easily rattled. "Census worker, he said. But census doesn't knock on doors anymore. Hasn't for twenty years."
"Did he ask about me specifically?"
"Asked about everyone. But he watched your door a long time before he knocked on mine."
Kira forced her breathing steady. "Thank you. For telling me."
"I don't know what trouble you're in, Chen. I don't want to know." Mrs. Okonkwo's voice softened. "But that little girl loves you. And I've seen what happens to children when trouble finds their mothers."
Calla appeared in the hallway, all smiles and sticky fingers from whatever snack she'd been eating. Oblivious. Safe. For now.
"Mommy!"
Kira scooped her up. Held her tight. Breathed in the smell of her hair—soap and something sweet.
"Hey, baby. Let's go home."
* * *
Evening.
Dinner was rice, vegetables, the last of the protein. Simple meal. Honest meal. The kind that didn't require thinking about how little money remained.
Calla sat at the table doing homework. Reading exercises. Basic math. Childhood.
Kira's personal comm buzzed.
Encrypted channel. One she didn't recognize.
She stepped into the hallway, away from Calla.
"The job you're considering." Modulated voice. No visual. The Masked Guardian. "Walk away."
"How do you know about that?"
"I know what threatens you. That's all that matters."
"That's not good enough anymore." Kira's voice dropped to a hiss. "You keep appearing. Warning me. Protecting me. I want to know why."
Silence. Then: "I made a promise. To someone who can no longer protect you herself."
Kira's heart stuttered. "Maya."
No denial. No confirmation. Just: "The job is a trap. Powerful people. Patient. They've been watching you for weeks. You're a means to an end—bait for something they want."
"The same ones who killed my crew?"
"What do you think?"
Her fist clenched. "I've been hunting the fixer for a month. Trying to find out who set us up. If you know—"
"The fixer was a pawn. The real players are beyond your reach." The Guardian's voice remained calm. Infuriatingly calm. "Walk away from the job. Stay quiet. Keep your daughter close. That's how you survive."
"And Arthur? Do you know where he is?"
Longer pause. "Arthur Jones is beyond my reach. And yours. Let him go."
"He was family—"
"He was. Now he's something else. Something that draws the wrong kind of attention."
The connection died.
Kira stood in the hallway. Heart pounding. More questions than answers.
But one thing was clear: the Guardian knew about the crew. Knew about the trap. Knew more than they were saying.
And they'd mentioned Maya.
Not the fixer. Someone bigger. Someone patient enough to wait a month and try again.
"Mommy?" Calla's voice from the kitchen. "Are you okay?"
Kira forced her voice steady. "Fine, baby. Just a work call."
