Oryn Ashveil hid a signal-splitter under her mask and swore she would put the truth on every screen in Tremormaw. Tonight the leader would give his address. Tonight she would hijack the broadcast and show the city the regime's darkest secret. But a patrol had just flagged her district for a sweep. Boots hammered the street outside her hideout. If they searched, they would find her splitter, her cables, her plans. She crouched behind a stack of crates and counted the footsteps. Six officers, maybe more. They banged on doors. They dragged people into the street. Her hideout sat three doors down. She had minutes, not hours. A knock rattled her back door. Oryn grabbed a wrench, then froze when the knock came in a quick, uneven pattern. She knew that rhythm. She opened the door. Petra Blane slipped inside, all elbows and motion, her courier vest smeared with grease. The girl ran sealed packages through checkpoints every day and had never been searched once. Oryn had traded her stolen wire for years. She trusted no one more. "They're two doors off," Petra said, already moving. She dropped a bundle on the table. "Put this on. Fast." Oryn unfolded it. A clerk's uniform, blue and stiff, with silver buttons and sharp shoulders. The kind the regime's office workers wore. "Where did you get this?" "A package that never reached its clerk." Petra grinned. "They won't stop one of their own." Oryn shoved her splitter into the uniform's inner pocket. She pulled the jacket over her jumpsuit and buttoned it to the throat. Petra jammed the cracked visor mask into a bag and covered it with rags. "Leave the mask," Petra said. "Never." Oryn took the bag herself. Fists pounded the neighbor's door. Petra pushed Oryn toward the front. "Walk out slow. Look bored. Clerks are always bored." They stepped into the street together. An officer swung his flashlight across Oryn's face. She lifted her chin the way the regime's people did, like the street belonged to her. "This building's cleared," she said, flat and cold. "I logged it myself." The officer's eyes dropped to her silver buttons. He hesitated. Then he waved his squad past her, toward the next door. Oryn walked. Petra matched her stride, whistling. They turned the corner before Oryn let herself breathe. "You're clear," Petra said. Then her whistle died. She pointed. At the corner stood a squat gray building, its door ringed with cameras and blinking locks. The city's data vault. A patrol truck idled at its gate, loading crates of confiscated gear. Oryn understood. They weren't just sweeping homes. They were hauling every scrap toward that vault. And the regime's darkest secret, the one she needed for tonight's broadcast, was locked somewhere inside those walls. "I got you out of your hideout," Petra said quietly. "But your proof just moved behind six inches of steel."

Oryn stared at the gray vault across the street. Cameras ringed its door. Blinking locks lined the frame. She still wore the stiff clerk's uniform, but a uniform meant nothing if she didn't know where inside her proof was hidden. A blind rush through those doors would get her caught in minutes. She needed a map of the place before the leader's address. Petra crouched beside her, chewing a thumbnail. "You can't just walk in and guess," the girl said. "Guards, floors, sealed rooms. You'd hit a wall and they'd have you." "Then I need someone who's seen the inside," Oryn said. Petra's face changed. "I know someone. She runs deliveries nobody else will touch." The girl was already moving, tugging Oryn down a side lane. "Come on. She won't wait." They found her three blocks off, leaning against a concrete wall with a dented metal case at her feet. A woman in a faded red delivery jacket, sharp eyes flicking over both of them at once. Petra clearly trusted her; Oryn didn't. The stranger studied Oryn's silver buttons and smirked. "Nice costume," the woman said. She tapped the case. Forged clearance codes were stamped right on the metal. "I'm Nev. Petra says you want the vault. Nobody wants the vault." "I need its layout," Oryn said. "Where they store confiscated files." Nev crouched, opened the case, and slid out a worn press badge. Scuffed metal edges, a regime eagle, a stranger's photo. STATE MEDIA. "Delivered a crate there last week," she said. "They log press separate from the rest. Confiscated media goes to the lower level, behind a coded gate." She turned the badge in her fingers. "This gets you past the front. It won't get you through the gate below." Oryn took the badge. Warm from Nev's hand. "How do you know the gate?" "Because I stood in front of it and couldn't pass." Nev pulled a scrap of paper from the case and sketched fast. Front desk. Two guards. A stair down. A heavy door with a keypad. "Lower level. That's where your proof sits. Behind numbers I never got." Petra leaned over the sketch. "So we know where it is now." "We know where," Oryn said. She folded the map and the badge into her jacket. The blind break-in was dead. She had a floor plan and a face to wear at the front door. Nev snapped the case shut and stood. "You'll clear the lobby with that badge. Then you'll reach a locked gate underground and a keypad you can't crack." She met Oryn's eyes. "I gave you the map. I can't give you the code." Oryn looked at the folded sketch. The vault no longer felt blind. It felt like a straight path to one sealed door she still couldn't open. And the leader's address was hours away.

Oryn spread Nev's map on the floor of her hideout. The badge got her through the lobby. The keypad below still stopped her cold. Worse, she saw the real trap now. To reach the vault's lower level, she'd have to steal the proof and carry it out fast. But the broadcast needed her at the signal-splitter across the city, ready the moment the leader spoke. She couldn't hold the file and run the hijack at once. She needed someone else's hands on one end. A knock came at the door. Petra slipped in first. Behind her shuffled a soft-bellied man in a sweat-stained grey uniform, ink smeared across his fingers. He clutched a folder to his chest like a shield. "This is Foss," Petra said. "He logs vault access all day. He's the one filing copies where the regime can't find them." Foss wouldn't meet Oryn's eyes. "I shouldn't be here," he said. "If they find my duplicates, I'm gone." But he set the folder on the table. "I brought proof I'm not lying." Oryn opened it. Records. Access logs. Dates and names the regime buried. Her pulse jumped. "You have the keypad code." "I've seen it typed a hundred times," Foss said. His voice shook. "I can't walk it in. My face is on every camera down there." The door swung again. A lanky teenage boy leaned in, grease on his cheeks, a stolen access card taped to his forearm. Finn Tarro. Everyone knew he ran packages through locked zones and vanished through the old bunker between checkpoints. "Petra said you needed a runner," Finn said. He grinned. "I get in and out of places nobody else can." Oryn looked at the three of them. The plan came together like gears clicking. "Foss gives Finn the code. Finn takes the badge, clears the lobby, and pulls the file from the lower level. He carries it to the broadcast tower." She tapped the map. "I hold the signal-splitter. The second the leader's face hits the screens, Finn hands me the proof and I air it." Finn's grin held. "I can do the vault. Easy." Foss scrawled six numbers on a scrap and pushed it to the boy like it burned. "Don't get caught with that." Oryn split the load. Badge and code to Finn. The map memorized. Petra would watch the lobby door and signal if it turned bad. Two ends of one plan, held by hands she chose to trust. They shook on it. Foss left first, sweating harder than before. Then Petra's contact came running up the stairs, breathless. The regime had moved the leader's address. Not hours away now. Tonight. Oryn folded the map into her jacket. The plan was set. The clock had just cut itself in half.

Oryn crouched over the signal-splitter in her hideout, cables spread across the floor. She ran the test one last time. The splitter hijacked one screen. Then it died. She tried a second feed. The first went dark. Her stomach dropped. The device could only seize one screen at a time. Tonight the regime aired the leader on every public screen at once. If one screen showed her proof while the rest stayed clean, the regime would cut the whole feed in seconds. One screen was not enough. She needed all of them. A knock came. Foss shuffled in, the vault clerk who filed secret copies of the regime's records. Sweat ran down his neck. He clutched his folder like always. "Finn made it into the vault," he said. "He has the file. But Oryn—the address starts in an hour." "The splitter can't do it," Oryn said. She showed him the dead cables. "One screen. That's all it takes. They cut the feed and we're done." Foss stared at the device. His inked fingers twitched. "The screens don't each pull their own signal," he said slowly. "I've seen the wiring logs. They all feed from one relay. One central line splits to every screen in Tremormaw." Oryn went still. "So if I hijack the relay itself—" "Every screen flips at once," Foss said. "But the relay isn't in your tower. It's a sealed building on the edge of the district. Layered panels. Antennas on the roof. Nobody walks in." Oryn grabbed the clerk uniform folded on her chair. She pulled it on over the jumpsuit, buttoned the stiff collar, cinched the belt. "Regime patrols wave clerks through," she said. "They won't stop one of their own." Foss shook his head. "The relay staff know each other's faces. You walk in cold, they call it in." "Then you walk in first." Oryn met his eyes. "You're regime. You clock in. I follow as your transfer." Foss's face went pale. "If they trace it back—" "They trace it back to your copies anyway," Oryn said. "You knew that when you brought the folder." He swallowed. He set the folder down and nodded once. They moved. An armored transport rolled past as they crossed to the relay building. Oryn kept her chin up, clerk's collar tight. Foss badged them through the outer door. Inside, she found the central console and spliced the splitter straight into the relay's main line. This time every test screen flickered together. All of them, at once. She locked the feed and cut Finn a signal to bring the file. Then boots hammered the corridor behind them. A relay worker had seen Foss's ghost badge flag in the log. Voices shouted for the door. Oryn had the relay. She had every screen. But now she was trapped inside the building, and the file wasn't in her hands yet.