Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Achilles came through the tent flap first. Zelda followed a beat later, laptop tucked under one arm. Kira didn't waste the opening. She set the red file organizer on the bench between them and flipped the lid back. Folders fanned out — signal logs, the codebook page, Donovan's reader printout, the brass key on its tag. "You both need to see this together," Kira said. "The signal under the yard is on a Ranger bunker channel. Live keys. Someone inside HQ has been feeding it." Achilles studied the printout without touching it. He said nothing. Zelda set her laptop on the bench and opened it. Five files glowed on the screen — schematics, waveform captures, the sketch she'd shown Kira before. She turned the screen so Achilles could read. "Frequency pattern matches the one buried under the carrier," Zelda said. "Funny what survives when no one knows what they're looking at. I think we're standing on a Vault-Tec medical clinic." Kira tapped the manifest tab on the laptop. Prewar inventory codes lined up with the transmitter's location ping. Surgical kits. Diagnostics. Sealed pharmaceuticals — exactly the gear her Rangers bled for. She watched Achilles' jaw set. He believed it. So did Zelda. The three of them were now in this together, whether Kira had planned it that way or not. "Then we dig," Achilles said. "Quietly. Before whoever's on that channel does." Kira closed the organizer. The alliance was real now — and so was the race.