Chapter 13: The Firestarter
875 Words
By the time the data finished uploading, the city had already begun to change.
It started with a flicker.
One journalist in the underground circuit posted an encrypted thread. Then another. A leak to the tribunal servers triggered internal alerts. By dawn, a storm had cracked open over the Reyes regime. Civilian groups across five sectors were downloading files they were never meant to see—experiments, fund laundering, classified disappearances.
And Elena Reyes’s name was all over it.
She watched the fallout unfold from the cracked screen of a stolen monitor in the backroom of the metro base. The headlines weren't subtle.
"Reyes Heiress Exposes Father's Crimes—Project Ouroboros Confirmed."
"Children of the State: The Genetic Trials Buried Beneath the City."
"From Royal Blood to Rebel Signal."
“Elena.” Kai knelt beside her. His voice was quiet but urgent. “We have to move.”
Ivy burst in through the side door. “They’ve locked every outbound route from Sector 9 to 11. He’s got mercenary units sweeping street by street—and guess who’s at the top of the wanted list?”
Elena looked up from the monitor. Her face was pale but resolute. “He’s trying to erase me.”
“He can’t,” Kai said. “Not now. The whole world’s watching.”
“That’s what makes me dangerous,” she said softly. “Now everyone knows I was created to be his perfect successor—and I rejected it.”
“Rewrote it,” Ivy corrected. “And now he’s cornered.”
Elena stood, gripping the steel edge of the desk for balance. “What about the source lines? Are the resistance still getting the files?”
“They are,” Ivy said. “And your mother’s encryption held. We’ve confirmed that the tribunal can’t scrub it without public record."
“Then we’ve done what we can here,” Elena said, voice steadying. “It’s time we disappear.”
—
The old utility tunnels beneath the metro station were damp and crumbling, but they offered something precious: a way out that Rodrigo couldn’t see. Not yet.
Kai led the way, flashlight cutting through the stale dark. Elena followed close behind, the chip containing the last remaining physical copy of the data sealed in her jacket. Ivy trailed them, one hand always on the grip of her sidearm.
“Where are we going?” Elena asked, her breath fogging in the stale air.
“There’s a resistance hub outside the border of Sector 3,” Ivy said. “Deep in the copper flats. Not even the drones can trace signals out there.”
“And from there?” Elena asked.
“We rebuild,” Kai answered. “Smarter this time.”
They emerged from a rusted hatch onto the outskirts of the city—worn brick alleyways, buildings reduced to skeletal frames, the forgotten edges of Rodrigo’s empire. The perfect place to vanish.
But they weren’t the only ones in the shadows.
The first bullet clipped the corner of a wall just above Elena’s head.
“Down!” Ivy shouted, drawing her gun as masked enforcers in black armor moved in from both ends of the alley.
They scattered—Elena and Kai diving left as Ivy held them off with suppressing fire. Elena's heart pounded so hard it drowned out the sound of the gunshots. Her knees scraped concrete. Kai pulled her behind an overturned dumpster.
“We need to get to the river,” he said breathlessly. “Now!”
Elena nodded, her fingers brushing the memory chip inside her jacket as if it were a heartbeat.
Kai grabbed her hand. “Ready?”
“Always.”
—
They ran through the dying streets like hunted ghosts. Sirens wailed in the distance. Overhead, drones zipped by, their sensors searching, calculating, hunting.
But Elena was no longer the girl who clung to shadows in silence.
When they reached the canal bridge, Ivy was already waiting in a stolen hovercraft, its engine purring low and ready. Blood dripped from a graze on her temple, but her hands were steady on the controls.
“Go, go, go!” she shouted.
They jumped aboard as enforcers crested the hill behind them.
Elena hit the accelerator as Ivy took the gunner seat.
The hovercraft surged forward, speeding down the old waterway as bullets sprayed the air behind them. The city shrank in the rearview—beautiful, cold, poisonous.
And burning.
A few sectors away, one of Rodrigo’s administrative towers had caught fire. Protesters filled the streets. The people were no longer afraid.
The world had seen too much to turn away now.
“Do you think he’ll survive this?” Elena asked, eyes fixed on the smoke climbing the skyline.
Kai touched her hand, grounding her. “He’s already lost the only thing he truly cared about—control.”
“And us?”
Kai met her gaze. “We’re what he never saw coming.”
—
As the hovercraft sped into the copper flats, the city faded behind them—reduced to lights and smoke and memory. But inside Elena burned the knowledge of who she was and who she’d chosen to become.
A daughter reborn.
A rebellion begun.
A firestarter.
- Writer
