Page 5 of Storm of Stars
“Thousands,” I corrected softly. “People from every Collective with the technology to support it. And there’s in-person Runaway chapters in every Collective, technology or not. Even a good number from within the gates of Praxis itself. People who’ve lost family, who’ve watched their friends dragged into the Run and never come back. People who are angry. People who are done being afraid.”
Ezra let out a low whistle, dragging a hand through his hair. “And no one knows about them?”
“Neither did I,” I admitted, a crooked, bitter smile tugging at my mouth. There was no humor in it, only old pain and sharper memories. “Not until after they took Ma.”
Briar sucked in a breath.
“When they stormed the house, tearing everything apart, she slipped me this card.” My voice hitched just a little. “Told me it was the key to a new Nexum. Said to keep it close. Told me that not every story needed to have a bad ending.”
Slowly, I reached into my pocket, pulling out a small, battered piece of plastic. It was the size of an old ID card, the edges worn soft by years of handling. The ink was faded, barely clinging to the surface like it was holding onto its last breath.
I held it between two fingers, my thumb brushing over a worn symbol in the corner. My mind was flashing to the moment she handed it to me. And everything that came after. “There was a coded message on the back,” he went on, his voice quieter now. “It didn’t make a damn bit of sense at first. Took me a few weeks… once the grief stopped swallowing me whole. But when I cracked it, when the pattern clicked, it led me here.”
Briar was quiet, but her gaze stayed fixed on the screen, lingering like a woman who desperately wanted to believe but didn’t know how.
Ezra’s arms were crossed, his jaw tight as he spoke. “Okay… but what’s this got to do with us actually fighting back? People complain and argue in secret corners all the time. Doesn’t mean they’re willing to put action to their words in the light of day.”
I didn’t flinch at the challenge. Instead, I clicked through the screen, my jaw tight, until I landed on a single image.
A photo. Of the Wildguard.
A name that Zaffir helped coin to draw up support.
The four of us, bloodied and broken, standing side by side at the end of the Transportation Trial. Our faces streaked with sweat, dirt, and blood, eyes burning with something raw. Like fury or defiance. They all stared at the photo. Above us, someone had added the words,For the will of the people. We survive.
Beneath the image, a flood of comments. Thousands upon thousands of messages from anonymous profiles.
They’re the rebels we need to finally take Praxis down.
If anyone can stop the Run, it’s Wildguard.
We need them to stand up and fight.
They have the power to rally the people.
I should have known the Grey twins would be a part of the movement.
I’d been watching from the sidelines for years, quiet, cautious, never brave enough to actually join in. But I saw things. Little patterns that started to stand out once you knew what to look for.
There was one symbol that kept showing up all over the site. It was in the margins of long, frantic posts. Hidden in usernames and message tags. Even in the corners of blurry, shadowed photos. A single moth.
It was their mark, the sign of the Runaways. Of the rebellion nobody dared to speak of out loud. People talked about slipping it into conversations like a secret code. Leaving it behind like a trail for the desperate and the defiant. Scratched into walls, painted behind loose bricks, scribbled on scraps of paper passed from hand to hand.
The moth symbolizes change, transformation…growth. It means overcoming the darkness and finding the light.
Brexlyn’s fingers hesitated over the trackpad, her voice a soft thread of sound in the still room. “If this is real… if we’re not alone in this…”
“We’re not,” I said, steady and sharp. “Not even close.”
The room felt different then. Like maybe, just maybe, the walls Praxis had built around us weren’t as unbreakable as we thought.
But then, Zaffir spoke up. “Ezra is right though, there’s a difference between hiding behind an anonymous profile and standing in the street with your head held high. If you lead… how can we be sure that they’ll follow?”
Brexlyn looked up at us, something fierce in her gaze now. “Maybe we need to get them to trust us. Prove to them that we’re willing to take the risk, and then maybe they will be too.”
“How?” Ezra asked, his voice sharp, wary but needing an answer.
Brexlyn scrolled through the threads, her eyes taking in the thousands of messages that all spoke to a better life.
