Page 46 of Hardline Torque
“There’s more,” Bateman said, a thread of disgust to his tone.“His shirt was open, and there is a message for you.”
The screen changed, to an image that turned his stomach.There was indeed a reminder carved into the poor man’s flesh and delivered with precision, placed exactly where Victor would eventually see it.
You were never free.
Kael swore under his breath, anger tight and controlled.“They don’t do subtle, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” Victor agreed.“And they’ll be wanting to revoke my freedom as soon as possible.”
He felt Tane’s hand settle at his back—steady, familiar, unremarkable in the best possible way.Not grounding him.Standing with him.
Victor straightened, gaze fixed on the screen as it went dark.
Whatever the Directorate thought they were reclaiming, they’d miscalculated one thing.Victor wasn’t alone anymore.
****
Alow, deliberate tonerolled through the compound, subtle enough that anyone without clearance wouldn’t have noticed it at all.Tane felt it in his bones before the display lit—years of living inside layered security taught him the difference between noise and intent.
He was already moving when the lights along the command center walls shifted from neutral to amber.
“Report,” Kael said, calm as ever, even as his gaze swept the room, taking in posture, hands, the way everyone had already shifted closer to stations without being told.
Luca’s voice came in from the tech pit, fingers flying across glass.“External breach attempt.Multi-vector.Clean code, good hardware.Whoever this is, they know what they’re doing.”
Tane felt his jaw set.The boards lighting up in staggered patterns told the same story—probing fingers, not fists.
“But?”he prompted.
“But they’re not getting in,” Luca continued, zooming one display and shrinking another.“Firewalls are holding and the physical perimeter remains untouched.They’re probing, not pushing.”
Tane turned his head slightly, catching Victor in his peripheral vision.The man was utterly still, eyes tracking the data streams with cold precision.
Of course they were probing.
The upgrades they’d put in place after the last bastards who stormed their home hadn’t been cosmetic.Redundant systems nested inside each other like bone beneath muscle.False positives layered over kill-zones.AI loops designed to lie convincingly—to look sloppy, slow, exploitable.From the outside, Black Tide’s compound looked tempting.
From the inside, it was a coffin waiting to close.
“Any attempt to draw us out?”Kael asked.
Niko leaned over a secondary console.“Yeah.They’re lighting up just outside sensor range.Flash-and-fade.Trying to tickle pursuit protocols.”
They want Victor, Tane thought, heat flaring low and dangerous in his gut.
Victor’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping once—but he didn’t move.Didn’t reach.Didn’t offer.
Neither did Tane.
“We stay,” Kael said flatly, planting both hands on the table.“We wanted to test our compound’s security, now’s as good a time to do it than any.”
No one argued.
Minutes stretched, elastic and tense.Systems hummed.Fans kicked up as processors worked harder, the compound breathing around them.Outside, signatures flickered and vanished—pressure without commitment.Whatever play the Directorate had planned, it stalled against Black Tide’s refusal to dance.
Then a new alert chimed.
Different tone.Sharper.
