Page 102 of South of Justice

The laptop hummed. The screen flared white, then filled with a torrent of data: names, transfers, coded transactions. The ledger was assembling itself.

For a heartbeat, she simply stared at it.

Then she saw the final prompt appear:

> Upload to distributed mirrors? [Y/N]

Her finger hovered. And she pressedY.

The progress bar shot across the screen. Her fail-safes came online, one after another, a cascade of systems she’d built in secret over years—each one relaying fragments of the data through hidden servers, secure clouds, anonymous networks.

DATA PUBLISHED TO MIRRORS: 12/12.

It was done.

The silence that followed felt enormous. Her whole body shook, not from fear this time, but from release. The pain was still there, burning deep, but beneath it was something else.

Freedom.

Lucía exhaled. It came out as a laugh, hoarse and wet. She reached forward and closed the laptop with both hands.

Then she slid to the floor, her back against the table leg, breathing through the pain. The room smelled of burnt flesh and blood and victory. She whispered the phrase once more, softly, tasting the ash of it on her tongue.Trembling doesn’t make a leaf fall alone.

And for the first time in her life, she believed it.

Ryan’s bootfalls were muffled, but the corridor was quiet enough to make every breath feel like a cymbal crash.

He reached a corner. Paused. Listened.

Nothing.

Then, footsteps. Soft. Padded.

Ryan ducked into a shallow recess in the wall just as a soldier passed. Black fatigues. Sidearm holstered. No helmet.

He passed by without spotting Ryan, and without Ryan having to waste anymore of his precious bullets. Somewhere ahead was the hangar. He could feel it in his bones. And inside that…

Lucía.

The silence after upload didn’t last. There were bootsteps outside the door, slow and heavy.

Lucía tensed. Someone was coming to check on her. She got back to her feet, burns stretching like fire across her skin. She needed a weapon now.

The table was littered with industrial odds and ends but her eyes went straight to a metal tray lined with what looked like surgical tools. Scissors. Forceps. A scalpel, sharp and bright, fresh out of its packaging.

Javier’s next instruments of persuasion.

She picked up the blade. Behind her, the footsteps got louder, closer. Lowering herself to the ground, she ducked around the side of the table, blade in her left hand.

The lock clicked. The door opened.

A man stepped in—bored, distracted, adjusting his walkie. He looked like a grunt. One of Phalanx’s nameless bastards.

Lucía didn’t lunge. She waited, coiled like wire, letting him approach, letting him see her naked, bloodied body crouched beside the table.

He leaned in?—

She struck.