Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kira Dallas crossed the yard with the wand sealed in her pack and the call to Kevin still unmade. Her shortwave chirped before she reached the fence. Donovan, fast and dry. "Boss, you need to come back. The signal Zelda's chasing — it's not random. I ran it twice." She found him hunched over the open tool kit beside the clinic cot row, headphones half off. Schematics fanned across the bench. He tapped a frequency penciled on the sketch. "That's a bunker channel. Ranger bunker channel. Hell if I know how it ended up buried under a junkyard, but it's ours." Kira set her pack down and pulled the small brown rolodex from its side pocket. She flipped past tabbed cards until her claw stopped on a brass key, scratched and worn, its symbols faded but readable to anyone who had carried one. She laid it on the schematic beside Donovan's pencil mark. The cuts matched the channel index. The symbols matched the handshake. "Confirmed," she said. Her tail did not flick. That was the discipline talking. Inside, something colder moved. A dish was broadcasting on a channel only Reilly's Rangers should know, and someone outside the Rangers had built the transmitter. A shadow crossed the tent flap. Sinclair Feldman ducked in, hands open, eyes on the key before they reached her face. "Friend," he said, quiet. "We need to talk. Before you call Kevin. Before anyone calls anyone. What's under this yard isn't just yours — and some of it Red Hills put there." Kira closed the rolodex slowly. The wand was bought. The signal was named. But the channel was compromised, Red Hills was already inside it, and the hard call to Kevin had just become a harder one. She looked at Sinclair and pointed to the bench. "Sit. Talk fast."