They met at Safe Route Delta—an abandoned train tunnel deep beneath the outskirts of Sector 6. The platform was damp, overgrown, and choked with rusted debris, but to the resistance, it had always been more sanctuary than scrap.
Kirion reached first, his weapon drawn, eyes scanning every shadow. Then she emerged.
His daughter.
Hair tangled, bruised on her cheek, but alive. She ran to him, and for a moment—just a moment—he dropped his guard and embraced her like the child she still was, despite everything.
"I'm okay," she whispered. "But we lost everything. The servers. Our backups. Even the black-box encryption vault."
"And Kael?" he asked.
"Gone. Before I even made it to the fallback."
They sat in silence for a moment, joined by Nira and a handful of loyal fighters who'd escaped other breached outposts. Thirty in total. Down from nearly two hundred.
"What now?" someone asked. "Half the cells are wiped out. The rest are hiding. We can't mount anything like before."
Kirion stood. "We don't rebuild what we had. We build smarter. Leaner. Invisible."
He paced slowly, thinking aloud.
"We fragment into cells—independent, untraceable. No shared codes, no shared storage. Each group controls their own operation. No one knows more than they need."
His daughter stepped forward, wiping blood from her brow.
"We'll set up air-gapped systems," she said. "Old-school analog fallback methods. Burner comms, shortwave radio chains, even paper drop points."
"And me?" Nira asked.
Kirion turned to her. "You lead a strike cell. Covert sabotage, recon, pressure points."
She smirked. "Like old times."
As plans took form and quiet purpose filled the bunker, Kirion felt it again—not hope, not yet. But clarity. That razor edge of resolve.
They had been hit hard.
But they weren't finished.
The storm hadn't scattered them. It had made them sharper.
More dangerous.
And somewhere out there, Kael was watching.
Let him.