(The Day Before)

  When they arrived on Mia's property, the doors to her shelter were still wide open, hanging askew on warped hinges. Getting out and inspecting the damage, Dane gave an internal wince as he took in the full scope of disrepair. The hinges on Mia's shelter door were worse than he remembered—one of the heavy metal sbs barely clinging to its mooring, the other bent at an unnatural angle, metal fatigued beyond what normal wear should cause.

  Gavin moved past Dane, his cybernetic arm already extending tools as he approached the doors to start working on them. His jaw was set in that familiar look of grim determination as he assessed the damage, mentally calcuting angles and leverage points. With a grunt of effort, he braced the hanging door against his shoulder and began the tedious process of realigning the hinge pins, his broad frame tensing with the weight.

  "When she is feeling better, she can fix it her way, but at least this will hold," Gavin muttered, crouched beside the busted frame with a fresh hinge kit and a determined look on his face. His cybernetic arm whirred as it extended tools, the sound both familiar and unsettling in the stillness. "Probably. Maybe." He added under his breath, eyes narrowing as he assessed the damage with a soldier's precision, the way he'd once assessed broken barricades and compromised shelters.

  "Let's shoot for better than maybe," Dane replied, stepping over scattered tools to scan the walls again. "Not when we damn near left her to die behind it."

  Guilt twisted hot in his ribs. He masked it with a grunt and turned back toward the shelving unit they'd shoved out of the way earlier. His eyes narrowed as he took in the disarray, a physical manifestation of the turmoil Mia had endured, tools scattered like the broken pieces of her life.

  "You fix," Dane said, his voice gruff but tinged with concern. "I'll poke around."

  Gavin didn't bother answering. Of course Dane would poke around. They were cops. Poking around was the job—even when it wasn't. Even when it meant invading a private sanctuary. Gavin felt a twinge of unease, but pushed it aside, focusing on the task at hand, the metal cool beneath his fingers.

  Inside, the shelter still held the crisp scent of ionized air. Clean. Organized. Too quiet. The silence was a stark contrast to the chaos that had unfolded outside, a reminder of the fragility of peace. Dane's footsteps echoed softly as he moved deeper into the space, his eyes scanning every nook and cranny, cataloging the life Mia had built for herself in this hidden pce.

  And then he saw it—wedged neatly in a weatherproof crate, tucked beneath a bench stacked with repair gear. Notebooks.

  Old. Worn. Filled with scribbled charts and hand-drawn filtration diagrams. The covers were familiar—Dane had seen identical ones on Elian's shelves at the clinic, leather-bound and sturdy, built to st through anything. He reached for the top one, expecting more of the original doctor's fine, looping handwriting.

  But when he opened it, the writing inside was different. Sharp, neat block print. Mia's. The realization made him hesitate. His fingers hovered above the next page, callused tips barely brushing the worn paper. He shouldn't read this. Not after everything. Not after the night she'd had. But the system had lied. The files had lied. If there was any truth to be found, it was here—in her hand, in her words, in the private sanctuary she'd created away from judging eyes.

  He opened it fully.

  The ink had bled in pces, water damage maybe, but the structure of it—dates, intake readings, waterline analyses—was meticulous. A tapestry of knowledge woven together by a mind that refused to be silenced, even in the face of adversity. Page after page of numbers. Of data. Of evidence. Comprehensive and damning in its precision.

  She'd been tracking water contamination for years.

  Dane's stomach turned. He swallowed hard against it, but the burn was there—guilt, shame, and something sharper that cut through his practiced indifference. Because all this time, he'd looked at her and seen the ghost of a girl who broke things.

  He hadn't seen the one who was building. Quietly. Alone. In the shadows where no one bothered to look.

  And damn if that didn't make it worse.

  "She was trying to warn someone," he muttered, his voice ced with a mixture of awe and regret, rough with the weight of realization.

  Gavin looked up from the hinge he was working on, his brow furrowed. "What?"

  Dane turned, holding up the open book. "These journals—she's been cataloging the town's water since before the bombing." His eyes met Gavin's, a silent understanding passing between them.

  Gavin frowned, wiping grease from his fingers as he approached, leaving dark smudges on his worn pants.

  He took the journal from Dane and flipped through it slowly, his eyes scanning the pages with a newfound sense of reverence. "These are real numbers. She knew the water was off. Was proving it. Sheriff Lorne said he wouldn't take her theories to SVC because there was no proof. But she had solid proof right here." His voice dropped lower, tinged with disbelief and something that might have been respect.

  Dane nodded, jaw tight as he processed the implications of Mia's meticulous records, years of work ignored by those who should have listened.

  "This doesn't fit," Gavin said softly, his voice ced with a newfound sense of doubt. "This isn't someone pnning to blow up a dam. This is someone trying to fix it."

  Dane leaned against the workbench, arms crossed tightly over his chest as his heart thudded hard against his ribs. The evidence before them contradicted everything he thought he knew about that fateful day. He swallowed hard, his throat constricting with a mix of guilt and confusion, the taste of it bitter on his tongue.

  "If it wasn't her..." he started, the words hanging heavily in the air, den with implications neither of them wanted to face.

  "Then someone else set that charge," Gavin finished, his brow furrowed as the realization dawned upon them both.

  Silence descended, thick and suffocating, as they pondered the unsettling possibility that they had been wrong all along. Their minds raced, considering the implications, and a single name surfaced, unspoken but unmistakable.

  Kerron.

  The kid had been sharp, his intelligence undeniable, but was he angry enough? It was well known he had unshakable loyalty that bordered on obsession. There were rumors about how much he loved Mia. But Mia only had eyes for Tav, their connection as natural as breathing, built on shared dreams and grease-stained blueprints, te nights bent over schematics.

  The thought gnawed at Dane, festered like an open wound. Would he go too far to try to prove his love for Mia, channeling that obsession into violence against SVC, the corporation she bmed for her parents' slow, painful deaths? His father, Commander Thane was a demolition expert back in his day—would he have shared that knowledge with Kerron? Would his loyalty, once given, know no bounds?

  Dane exhaled through his nose, a heavy sigh escaping his lips as he grappled with the weight of the situation. "Maybe he did it thinking he was helping her."

  "Or protecting her," Gavin murmured, his voice tinged with a hint of understanding. "Or trying to expose the corp."

  "Didn't matter," Dane said, his tone hardening as he confronted the bitter truth. "They bmed her." He was trying to make sense of a puzzle whose pieces refused to align. Especially when he'd been handed the puzzle already finished, the final image obscured by shadows and lies, official seals stamping out the truth.

  His gaze shifted toward the shelf that blocked their path.

  It was on heavy-duty industrial casters, clearly meant to be moved. Mia had shoved this here on purpose, deliberately obstructing something from view. With a renewed sense of determination, he pushed it aside, muscles straining against the weight, revealing a metal door set into the wall. Smooth and dark, it bore a mechanical handle that didn't even lock, as if inviting them to uncover its secrets.

  Dane gnced back at Gavin, who was already grabbing a fshlight from his belt, his eyes alight with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity.

  "Well shit," Dane muttered, yanking the door open with a grunt, the hinges protesting with a low metallic groan.

  Darkness poured out like breath held too long, enveloping them in its embrace.

  The tunnel walls were reinforced with old mining struts, cables winding along the ceiling like veins. Their boots echoed on concrete as they moved deeper, the air growing cooler and damper. It smelled of iron and dust and something older—something buried, forgotten by all but those who needed to remember.

  Gavin gave a soft whistle. "We didn't know about these tunnels. But clearly someone else did."

  "It's a security risk," Dane muttered, sweeping his light along the wall. "These run under the whole damn town. If Mia found them, who else has?" His voice carried a note of professional concern, but beneath it y something more personal—worry for what Mia might have encountered down here alone.

  Dust shifted under their boots, but the path was clear. Used often. Recently. The ground worn smooth by repeated passage.

  They came to a hand-painted sign. <——— Town ———> Dam.

  Dane nodded toward the dam path, and they moved that way, winding deeper beneath the surface. The tunnel slowly changed from stone to something more industrial. Metal pipes. Reinforced panels. Old water lines. The infrastructure of a town built on promises and shortcuts.

  They passed through a floodgate door, and suddenly they were standing beneath what had once been the SVC offices.

  It was a maze of rusted infrastructure. Leaking joints. Sagging pipes. The air was stale and humid, thick with the scent of rot and rust, the legacy of corporate neglect.

  "What do you think, Gav? Bombing or neglect?"

  Gavin crouched, inspecting a pipe, his fingers tracing a crack that had been patched with something that didn't match SVC standard issue. "It was SVC. So... both. But mostly neglect. They left this pce to rot long before the explosion." His words carried the weight of a soldier who'd seen too many abandoned outposts, too many promises broken.

  Then—"Dane," he said, pointing, his voice suddenly tight with discovery.

  A small box was tucked between two old valves. Metal casing, faint blue light blinking underneath. Sleek. Too sleek. Out of pce among the decay, like a star fallen among ruins.

  Gavin moved closer, crouching to examine it. "This isn't just a purifier," he murmured, awe creeping into his voice. "This is alien-level tech. I don't even recognize half these connections." His cybernetic fingers hovered over the device, sensors likely reading data his human hand never could.

  "She's been fixing the town," Dane said, more to himself than anyone else, the realization settling in his chest like a stone.

  "And hiding it," Gavin added, his voice soft with newfound respect.

  They looked at each other, a new weight settling between them. One of respect. Of understanding. Of guilt. Of a truth they'd been too blind to see.

  They followed the second tunnel path, which let out beneath the fountain in the town square.

  Cables. Conduits. More hidden systems. And at the heart of it—another device. Another piece of evidence that Mia had been quietly working to save the very people who condemned her.

  Dane scrubbed a hand down his face, overwhelmed, the stubble rough against his palm.

  "She could've done anything down here," he said. "Level the square. Bring down half the city." His voice was tight with the implications, with the knowledge of what revenge might have looked like in hands less merciful than hers.

  "But she didn't," Gavin said quietly, the words hanging in the damp air between them.

  They stood there in silence, surrounded by the evidence of Mia's true character. Then Dane whispered:

  "She wasn't the threat. She never was."

  And this time, they both knew it to be true, the weight of their misjudgment settling on their shoulders like the tons of earth above them, inescapable and crushing.