CHAPTER 7: No Crown Without Teeth
1284 Words
The skyline was gray with early morning light when Aria Vex rose from her desk, stiff from hours hunched over lines of code. The file still blinked on the wall-screen behind her, each word burned into her mind like flame.
> SUBJECT: VEX_ARIA // STATUS: UNRETRIEVED. MUST SECURE FOR BREEDING PROGRAM
Her hands trembled—not with fear, but with fury.
She stood at the edge of her penthouse’s glass wall, eyes sweeping across New Echelon like a hunter watching her prey from above. Cars blinked below. Screens flickered across buildings with Nova Quinn’s face—laughing, singing, dancing in someone else’s spotlight.
All of it—fake.
She pressed her fingers to the cold glass. “They were going to breed me like a prize dog,” she whispered. “Like a commodity.”
Behind her, Kellen stood silently, arms crossed, unreadable. He had stood like that for hours, since they uncovered the final log file.
“They won’t stop,” he said. “Not unless you make them.”
“I will.” Her voice was flat steel. “But not with claws. Not yet.”
He raised a brow. “You’re thinking politics now?”
“I’m thinking strategy,” she replied. “They use the media to sell control. I’ll use it to sell the truth.”
She stepped back from the glass. The gears in her mind were already shifting, faster than adrenaline. Every instinct she’d ever honed in the underground networks of the old Vex house sparked to life again.
She would hack her image the same way she once hacked firewalls—patiently, precisely, and without mercy.
“Schedule a livestream,” she said.
Kellen blinked. “You’re going to talk to the world?”
“No.” She turned, a bitter smile ghosting her lips. “Nova Quinn is.”
---
She descended into the private recording room two floors below, alone. The light here was colder—clinical. Mirrors lined the walls to create angles she’d once found oppressive, designed to show every pore, every imperfection, to keep Nova flawless and compliant.
Now, Aria used them like a war room.
She sat on the stool. Checked the camera feed. She stared at her reflection for a long, silent minute.
Nova’s face.
Her lips.
That too-perfect skin.
But it was Aria’s eyes now. And behind them, the fire was real.
She began recording.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Her voice was calm. Not the breathy, practiced tone of a teen idol—but cool, clipped. “But when the world turns you into a headline, you get two choices. Be their victim—or be their reckoning.”
She held up the leaked footage from the vault. She didn’t edit it. Didn’t blur the hybrid. Didn’t hide the blood.
“This wasn’t a hallucination. This wasn’t a breakdown. This was an attack. And I fought back.”
She leaned in slightly, eyes sharp.
“There are people in this city who are terrified of truth. Not because it’s dangerous. But because it’s free. Because it can’t be bought.”
She stopped recording.
The file was uploaded to twenty-one secure nodes before she even left the room.
Let them try to censor her.
They’d learn soon enough: this wolf had learned how to howl through wires.
---
The public reaction was instantaneous.
The clip went viral in under an hour. It played on street screens, popped up in underground chatrooms, and blared across boardroom feeds. It was trending in thirteen countries by noon. Commentators couldn’t decide whether she was insane or brilliant. Nova Quinn had gone rogue—and no one could look away.
Inside ValeCorp Tower, Dominic watched the footage with clenched fists.
“She’s not being subtle,” said Vincent, one of his lieutenants.
“She doesn’t do subtle,” Dominic replied.
“She’s forcing our enemies to respond.”
“I know,” Dominic said. But his voice held something else. Something closer to awe.
He picked up his phone.
“Find her. Quietly.”
---
Aria was already gone.
She had slipped out of the penthouse in a wig and sunglasses, traded her ID signal for a burner badge, and moved through the streets like a ghost. The city buzzed around her, still reeling from the message.
She didn’t need to watch the panic. She could feel it.
She headed straight for The Verge.
The place Dominic told her not to go.
---
The Verge was where the city forgot itself. Neon signs blinked over rusted balconies. Street vendors sold black-market enhancers next to broken-down mechs. Here, supernatural laws bent and corporate surveillance looked the other way.
Aria walked into a graffiti-covered arcade and knocked three times on a hidden panel behind the last claw machine.
The wall opened. A narrow stairwell led down.
A familiar face waited at the bottom. A girl with silver dreadlocks and eyes that flickered digital-blue.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“Jinx,” Aria said, smiling faintly. “Still stealing from syndicates?”
“Still wrecking them for fun.”
They hugged—quick, tight. Family, once.
“I need data,” Aria said. “Old logs. Hybrid blueprints. Anything tied to Crownbite.”
Jinx whistled. “You’re picking a hell of a fight.”
“I didn’t pick it,” Aria said. “They bred it. I’m just burning the leash.”
---
They dove into the underground hub’s core—a vault of humming servers, scattered wires, and retro monitors. Jinx pulled up encrypted links from vampire consortia, spliced logs from shifter DNA clinics, and early drafts of the Crownbite project’s phase tree.
Aria read, cataloged, memorized.
Her old hacker instincts kicked in like second nature.
One file caught her breath:
> HYBRID DESIGN TEST 009: Quinn, Nova
She stared.
Nova hadn’t just been a host.
She had been the prototype.
---
“Aria,” Jinx said quietly, “You need to see this one.”
She turned.
It was a live feed.
A high-security transport moving across the undercity. Inside it: a woman. Bound, drugged, and tagged.
Her face was familiar.
It was the nurse who helped her escape the hospital.
“They’re moving her,” Jinx said. “Likely to a disposal site.”
“Not if I get there first,” Aria said.
---
She was already running.
Through the Verge. Over rusted scaffolds. Down sewer veins. Kellen’s voice barked in her ear—he’d tracked her location. Dominic’s signal pinged five blocks out. She ignored them both.
The truck rounded a curve into a back tunnel near the canal when Aria dropped down from the overpass, a stolen stun baton in hand.
The first guard never saw her. The second barely raised a weapon before she slammed him into the grill.
She yanked the door open.
The nurse looked up—eyes glassy, throat bruised.
“Nova?” she whispered.
“No,” Aria said, unfastening the straps. “My name is Aria Vex. And no one takes what’s mine.”
---
When Dominic arrived minutes later, the truck was smoking. The guards were unconscious.
And Aria was standing in the middle of the road, wind in her hair, blood on her collarbone, and defiance in her eyes.
She looked at him.
“I warned you,” she said. “I won’t be owned. Not by them. Not by you.”
He stepped forward.
“I’m not here to claim you.”
“Then why are you here?”
He reached into his coat. Held out a file.
The Project Crownbite master list.
Her name wasn’t the only one on it.
There were hundreds.
---
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