Sarah Burks

Sarah Burks's Arc
Chapter 13 of 13

Sarah Burks's dream is earning the full trust and partnership of the Atomic Cats leader.

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by @Dodger-McGee
Chapter 13 comic
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Chapter 13

Sarah watched the technician pack up their radiation counter and walk back toward the subway entrance without another word. The leader stood silent beside the metal bench, still holding the notebook. Sarah knew what came next—they'd compare notes, verify her story, decide if she'd earned enough trust to keep moving forward. But something nagged at her. The technician had documented everything about the photographer's surveillance pattern, tracked every tower access, mapped every angle. Yet they'd stopped logging entries two days ago, right when the photographer disappeared. Sarah reached for the notebook. "Can I see that again?" The leader handed it over without hesitation, and Sarah flipped to the final pages. There it was—a second entry she'd missed during the first read-through. Not about the photographer. About her. The entry was clipped to an old yellowed page with a rusted metal clip, the handwriting smaller and more careful than the surveillance logs. "Leader's partnership with Burks compromises operational security. Analyst knows vault layout better than anyone—including what's really down there. If entity activation goes wrong, leader will protect Burks first. Cats' survival becomes secondary." Sarah's throat went dry. The technician hadn't just been protecting the leader from a potential security breach. They'd been documenting how Sarah herself had become the leader's blind spot. The vault expedition wasn't just dangerous because of what lay below. It was dangerous because the leader trusted Sarah enough to risk everything the Cats had built. Sarah looked up from the notebook and found the leader watching her. No anger in those eyes, just recognition that Sarah had found what the technician had been hiding. The choice crystallized in Sarah's mind with brutal clarity. She could keep this to herself, pretend she'd only seen the photographer surveillance logs, and maintain the partnership she'd worked so hard to build. Or she could be the analyst she'd always been—someone who confronted hard data even when it threatened everything she wanted. Sarah stood and walked to the stained metal locker where the technician kept their equipment. She pulled out the old clipboard the technician used for field notes and wrote a single line. "You're right. The leader shouldn't risk the Cats for me. I'll scout sublevel three alone first." Sarah turned and held out the clipboard to the leader, who read it twice before setting it down on the bench. The silence stretched between them, and Sarah felt the partnership she'd built over weeks of transparency start to fracture. Then the leader picked up the notebook and tore out the technician's entry, folding it carefully before handing it to Sarah. "The technician was wrong about one thing," the leader said. "You're not my blind spot. You're the only person who's proven they'll choose truth over safety." The leader gestured toward the old wooden door leading deeper into the subway platform. "We go down together tomorrow. All three of us. And if the technician has a problem with that, they can document it in another secret notebook." Sarah took the folded page and felt something shift—not trust earned, but something harder and more permanent. The leader wasn't just willing to risk the Cats for her. The leader was betting everything that Sarah's commitment to truth would keep them all alive when the vault finally opened.

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