Page 40 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

A new line cuts in—Millie. "Don't sign anything, don't authorize anything, don't acknowledge any emergency governance request that comes through tonight. The board'sbeing told you're incapacitated. There's a council filing claiming Crowe oversight is in crisis, asking for temporary control. It's drafted clean."

"Gregory."

"Unreachable. Or unwilling. I can't get through to him, and that has never happened in my life."

On the feeds, the lobby cameras show me an empty corridor that should be full. A safety order is moving the human staff out under a gas-leak protocol no one in this building issued. They are being walked, calmly, helpfully, out of the way of whatever comes next.

"Get them clear," I tell Gid.

"Already moving them. I'm holding the server level. Four of ours up here and a lot of well-dressed strangers coming up through access that says they belong." A grunt, a door, his weight against something.

The wall keeps emptying. I watch the network bleed out of my protection. One protected route at a time. I realize that if I do nothing for ten more seconds, there will be nothing left to do anything with.

There is one move. I have always known there was one move and prayed I would never use it.

"Elias. The home node still answers to me?"

"Yes. Why—" Then he hears it in the silence. "If you cut from your end you lose everything downstream. The western relays. Every ally hanging off them. You won't get it back, Sebastian. Unless you ask those who'll know you bled."

"They take it or I keep this." My hand is on the button. "I keep the spine. They get the limbs."

"Sebastian—"

I sever it. The wall goes black in a wave that moves outward from the room and keeps going, route after route folding dark, and somewhere out there relays I have nursed for decades dropoff the map and do not come back—and the men and women who trusted those routes to keep them hidden are no longer hidden. I do that. I choose it.

The channel hisses. A new voice arrives on a line I did not open, because he can open my lines now. Short. Unhurried.

"You were always going to be alone for this," Cyrus says. "I only chose when you'd feel it."

Then he is gone.

Gid's line is still live. Fighting now—I can hear it, the particular economy of someone who has done this for two centuries. "Tell me you held something."

"I held the house. I lost the rest."

"Then we've got a house and a war." A pause. "She's out of it? The city measures?—"

"Are up. Broad. Nothing that will endanger her."

"Bash." Quieter, almost gentle. "He's potentially going to win."

"Doubt it."

It should sound absurd, one estate against multiple others. Deep down, I'm aware a scattered empire can be eaten room by room. Cyrus may have forced me smaller, but that doesn't mean he will succeed. Rather than acting though, I stand in the gloomy study with a single point of light at my back and the whole machinery of my world coming apart in coordinated, courteous order, and I am as alone as he wanted me. The first gate has fallen.

25

JASMINE

Ordinary life refuses to fit without Sebastian. I push to stay calm. "I sent the updated portfolio Tuesday. You said the partners loved it."

"They did." The recruiter's pause says everything. "Jasmine, something came up. A reference. I can't get into it."

"A reference from where? I gave you three. Call any of them."

"It didn't come from your list." Not Owen directly, then. Someone using the old rumor with new reach. Papers shuffle on her end, the sound of a woman already moving to the next name. "I'm sorry. The role's closing internally."

"Two days ago it was mine to lose."