The message came encoded through a secure line his daughter had designed—a string of numbers disguised in a corrupted weather report.
Kirion decrypted it within seconds:
"Looking for a healer. Offering blueprints in return. Neutral zone. Midnight."
He didn't trust it. But in this war, trust was a luxury. Calculated risk was a currency they all had to spend.
Midnight arrived, and Kirion waited at the edge of the neutral zone—an abandoned metro station below the city's southern grid. The air was heavy with mildew and decay, the kind that clung to your lungs like a warning.
Then he saw her.
She moved like someone trained to be invisible, but not to him. Combat boots, dark tactical gear, and a scarf pulled tight around her face. But her eyes—amber, alert, and unwavering—spoke louder than words.
"You Kirion?" she asked, voice low, calm.
"Depends," he replied. "You offering those blueprints?"
She tossed him a sealed data drive. "Government testing facility. Coordinates. Layout. Guard patterns. Everything. In exchange…"
"You want help," he guessed. "Someone hurt?"
She hesitated. "My brother. Took a bullet during a data extraction. Infection's spreading. We have no one."
Kirion nodded once. "Take me to him."
They moved fast, cutting through alleys and underground corridors until they reached a dark room lit by a single emergency lantern. Her brother lay sweating, pale, trembling.
Kirion worked quickly—cleaning, draining, stitching. His daughter arrived halfway through, summoned by his signal, assisting without a word.
By dawn, the boy's fever had broken. The woman, finally pulling down her scarf, looked at him properly.
"Name's Nira," she said. "You saved him. I owe you."
"You owe the fight," Kirion replied. "Not me."
She smiled—tight-lipped, but real. "Then let's make it count."