"Are you accusing me?" Kat's voice cut through the war room like a whip.
The Brotherhood was gathered in a loose arc around the long conference table. Wrath sat at the head, Beth at his side, his white wraparounds hiding what Kat knew was a searing stare. Rhage leaned against the wall with a grim expression, arms crossed. Zsadist and Butch flanked the door like guards. Vishous stood near the corner, silent, jaw clenched so tight it was a miracle his molars didn't crack.
"No one's accusing anyone," Wrath said evenly. "But the fact remains—your digital signature was found in a system no one should've been able to access."
"I didn't plant that node. I didn't even know it existed until last night," she snapped.
V didn't say a word.
And that silence burned more than any accusation.
Kat looked around the room. "You all brought me here. You said I was safe. Now you're sitting here treating me like I've got a detonator in my hoodie pocket."
"You could've told us you were poking around," Wrath said.
"I did! To him!" she shouted, pointing at V. "But he was too busy playing alpha wolf and getting in my face to actually listen."
Rhage muttered, "Damn, girl."
"Enough," Wrath said, lifting a hand. "Until we know what's going on, I'm ordering a lockdown. Kat, you stay on this floor. No computer access unless supervised."
Kat blinked, stunned. "You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"No," she snapped, "you look like a paranoid king who's about to piss off the one person who could help solve this mess."
The room froze.
Vishous finally stepped forward. "She's right."
Everyone turned to him.
"She didn't plant the node. I watched her reaction. She's not good enough to fake that kind of shock."
"Excuse me?" Kat cut in, incredulous. "Not good enough?"
He didn't take his eyes off Wrath. "You know what I meant."
"I'm going to break your fingers," she growled.
"Wrath," Beth spoke for the first time, her voice calm, measured. "Let her work with V. If she did nothing wrong, locking her down won't help. It'll only slow us."
"She can't be trusted," Zsadist said bluntly.
"She's not the enemy," Beth countered.
"I'm still in the fucking room," Kat hissed. "Y'all can gossip when I'm gone."
And with that—she was.
Kat turned on her heel, stormed out the room before anyone could stop her.
⸻
She waited until 2:17 a.m.
Everyone was asleep or gone on rotation. The cameras were set to low sensitivity at night—she knew, because she had designed the upgrade schedule to make herself useful while bored.
Rogue code slipped into the compound's motion detection grid.
She killed one hallway camera. Froze another. Loop-fed a third.
By 2:31 a.m., she was in the service tunnel, slipping out through a back panel she'd marked during her second night in the compound. It led to a disused maintenance shaft in the woods.
She didn't leave a trace.
Didn't even take a phone.
Just her laptop and a flick knife in her back pocket.
Kat hit the tree line and didn't look back.
⸻
At 3:04 a.m., Vishous walked past her room and noticed the hallway cam blinking wrong.
By 3:06, he was sprinting through the lower levels.
By 3:09, he found the shaft door swinging gently open.
And he exploded.
"Fuck."
He slammed his palm against the concrete wall so hard it cracked. The grid's infrared trails showed her movements—brief, clean, no wasted steps.
"She left," he growled through clenched teeth as the others arrived behind him.
Butch cursed. "How the hell did she get past you?"
"She is me," V spat. "And that's what scares the shit out of me."
