Page 66 of Veil of Smoke

I close the lid on the first case. Open the next. Two more devices. Smaller, flatter, still humming.

“He plans to sell them?”

I shake my head. “No. He plans to use them. Hold cities hostage, wipe Caldera’s enemies off the map. Or worse—hand them off to some foreign bidder with a taste for blackouts.”

She circles the table slowly, eyeing the crates. “And this is just what he let slip through.”

“Imagine what he’s keeping.”

She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away. She brushes ash off the table like it offends her. Then sets a second device down beside the first.

“They’re all the same?”

“The cores are. Casings are different. Might be tailored for different kinds of sabotage.”

She presses her palm lightly to the case—testing it. “You ever use one?”

“No. I read the specs. Ran recon. Watched what happened when they were tested in Eastern blocks. Whole districts going dark. Hospitals... rail lines. People cooking in their cars when gridlocks froze in place.”

“Then we burn the switch,” she says.

I look up. “What?”

She taps the metal casing with her finger. “You said he wants the switch. So we melt it. Break the circuitry. Smash the casing. Make sure these never hum again.”

I blink once. Twice.

Viviana Torrisi—florist, accidental courier, woman with blood still dried on her hands from a kill she never asked for—is now talking about disarming military-grade tech like it’s a vase she didn’t like the shape of.

“You know what that means, right?” I ask.

“Means we make ourselves enemies to the one man who doesn’t care what he touches to stay in power.”

I snort. “We already did that.”

Her eyes lock onto mine. “Then we might as well go all the way.”

She’s serious. It’s not adrenaline talking. Not vengeance. It’s purpose. Her voice is clear. Her stance unwavering.

My palms flatten against the table. The hum through the steel echoes through my bones.

“You ever think you were supposed to be safe?” I ask, not sure where the words come from.

“Yeah,” she says. “I also thought flowers were enough to keep nightmares out of reach.”

“They were,” I say.

She tilts her head. “Not for me.”

The way she says it—matter-of-fact, resigned—cuts deeper than anything she could’ve cried or shouted.

I walk around the table. The space between us shrinks.

“You’re not meant for this,” I tell her.

“I wasn’t. But then I was. That’s how it works, right?”

I nod. Slowly. “That’s how it works.”

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