Outside the small chamber where Dina Fritz lay, her face pale and drawn, Grisha Yeager had not slept. He looked haggard, the shadows under his eyes deep from a night of trembling prayer and restless waiting.
Lock watched him for a long moment, then stepped forward, voice low with concern.
"You think she's awake?"
Grisha shook his head, trying to steady himself. "Not yet. Her vital signs are steady now, though. She should wake soon."
When Grisha spoke, there was a tiredness that made Lock catch at his chest. For a long time, the man had carried loss and guilt like a second skin; seeing Dina alive in his arms had loosened that weight for a breath, and then the world forced more burdens on him.
Grisha's expression shifted — the anxious pleading about Dina softened into something else: urgency mixed with an appeal. He looked at Lock with a plea that had nothing to do with gratitude. "Lock… give her time," he said. "Please. She's been through… a lot. Let her learn this on her own terms."
Lock's voice was steady when he answered. "Of course. The power of the Founding Titan doesn't become an ordinary tool to be used at will. Unless she's forced to, we won't push her to use it."
Grisha's thank-you was quiet and immediate. "Thank you." He bowed his head a fraction, relief leaking through the cracks for the first time that morning.
"Stay here with her," Lock told him. "I'll send Petra to fetch something to eat and have someone inform the base. Don't worry."
Grisha nodded, every movement small and thankful. He settled beside the bed, keeping vigil like someone guarding a fragile flame.
Lock left the room and, as he crossed the corridor, took inventory of what needed doing. There was no time to waste — even if Dina recovered, the political aftershocks of last night would ripple through every institution inside the Walls.
In the sitting room, Petra Rall, Ymir, and Hrista were gathered, speaking in hushed tones. Petra's relief was obvious when Lock entered; she blinked hard and smiled, as if the simple presence of their leader steadied her like a tether.
"You're back," she said. "Thank God."
"It's done," Lock answered shortly. He ran a hand along the back of a chair, eyes moving over the faces before him. "Petra, recall every corps member scattered across the mainland. Have them await deployment instructions. Now."
Petra straightened and nodded without hesitation. "Understood."
Ymir, sitting silent and watchful, said nothing but met Lock's eyes with a steady calm. Hrista, younger than the others and still trying to shake off last night's ghosts, listened with wide, uncertain eyes.
"Ymir, Hrista — stay here for now," Lock said, looking between them. "It's going to be turbulent. Don't go out unless I tell you."
Both women answered in unison. "We'll stay." Their voices were small but resolute.
Lock left them with a single nod and walked toward the chamber where Rod Reiss was being held. The manor's underground prison had become, for the moment, a sealed stage for the aftermath. As he approached the secret room, he found Darius Zackly already there, studying the fallen scion of the Reiss line as if inspecting an artifact.
Zackly looked up and smiled thinly when Lock entered. "You're back," he said.
Lock returned the greeting with a quick, measured tilt of his head. He watched Zackly's eyes for a beat too long — the man's attention was clinical, indifferent on the surface, but there was a hunger behind it. Zackly's face suggested he could reduce a person to components, measure usefulness, and discard the rest.
"You're staring," Lock said coolly. "What do you see?"
Zackly's gaze flicked back to Rod, and he made a small motion with his fingers, as if sketching the man's silhouette in the air. "He's strangely… plain," Zackly answered. "Two eyes, a nose, a mouth — but there's an emptiness. Fix him and he could be art."
"Art?" Lock echoed, amused despite himself. He knew the president's tendencies toward aestheticizing the grotesque — a small, private vice Zackly indulged in when the political theater got suffocating.
Zackly's lips twitched. "Not a hobby. A curiosity. When the old is gone and the new is being made, those who are no use become material."
Lock let the remark pass. This was not the time for argument. He steered the conversation toward substance. "Has the message been delivered? Have you sent word, as we discussed?"
"Already," Zackly replied. "Men are en route. They'll be where we asked by lightfall."
Lock nodded, not telling Zackly that the truth of their new order could be fragile if any of the institutions resisted.
"How do you plan to handle the Military Police and the Garrison?" Zackly asked then, voice neutral.
"That depends on them," Lock said evenly. "If they choose cooperation, we can move swiftly. If not, we coolly apply pressure until they cannot resist."
Zackly's eyes glittered, but he said nothing more. He had seen the night's violence in Rod's blood-splattered coat and Dina's fragile awakening. He knew the stakes.
Across the city, inside Wall Sina, the aftershock of the Titan attack and the Reiss collapse reverberated through the upper echelons. High officials gathered in anxious clusters — some alone, others with a retinue — their faces drawn and whispers low.
"Do you know why we've been summoned?" an official asked in a low voice.
"I do not," another replied. "But with the Tide of Titans behind us for now, I slept better than I have in months."
"It's because of Lock," someone said. "Those soldiers — not Military Police, not Garrison — they're different. They've seen Titans and blood. They don't break like our men."
A murmur ran through the group. Old alliances had been strained, loyalties tested. Many of them felt an unease the size of a chasm opening under their feet.
Near the council hall, Neil Dekker of the Military Police walked alongside Commander Pisis of the Garrison Corps. Both men scowled — they were not in a celebratory mood. This gathering, larger than any in recent memory, had sapped away the usual chain of command. Everyone who mattered had been summoned; power had been centralized to a place they could not reach.
"If the Titans attacked now," Dekker muttered, "we'd be leaderless. The soldiers would have no one to follow."
Pisis' jaw tightened. The air tasted of iron and fear. He had been a soldier his entire life, and this premonition chilled him to the bone.
Unseen by them, in a nearby safehouse, Kenny Ackerman lounged and smoked, watching the city's heart with a predator's calm. A human army member at his side shifted nervously. "Captain?" the young soldier asked, voice low. "What are we to do next?"
Kenny crushed the cigarette between his fingers, flicking the ember into the street. His eyes were hard, a bright, feral light in them. "When they're all inside the hall," he said, voice flat, "surround it. Let no one out."
The soldier's eyes widened. "Yes, Captain."
Kenny smiled, something that looked dangerously like delight. It was not cruelty so much as appetite — for order, for the neatness of a plan executed without noise.
Back at the manor, Petra and Ymir had drawn close, their conversation turning practical and sharp. Petra's hand casually rested on the hilt of her blade, though the weapon had not been drawn; she had watched too much death to be careless.
"We can't celebrate yet," Ymir said in that low voice she used when her thoughts were heavy. "Even if Rod's secured, the Military Police and Garrison still outnumber us."
Petra's eyes flashed with a stubborn resolve. "If it comes to it, Ymir and I will step forward. We won't let more people die."
The younger woman — Hrista — watched them, her features folding into an expression that wanted to be brave but was still raw with fear. "I'm not a child anymore," she argued when Ymir's gentle rebuke rose like an ocean. "I can fight."
Ymir's glance was soft, almost amused. "You still have a lot to learn," she said, not unkindly. "But you'll be ready. We'll make sure of it."
Lock's return from the holding cell was quiet. He had a list of orders in his head now, priorities sliding into place like pieces on a board. They were not yet in the open, but the move had been made. The Reiss family had fallen, and a vacuum yawned where their shadow monarchy had once ruled.
It would be filled, or it would swallow them all.
As dawn edged thinly across the world beyond the walls, Lock felt the weight of that truth settle on his shoulders like armor. The city still slept in the fragile pause between two storms. Inside that pause, men and women would decide whether to cling to old lies — or to step, however shakily, toward a new order.
He allowed himself a small, steadying breath and turned to the faces around him — to Petra, to Ymir, to Hrista, to Grisha sleeping now at Dina's bedside — and found, in that ragged group, the thing that would carry them: stubbornness, loyalty, and the willingness to do what had to be done.
No one would walk this dawn unscarred. But some wounds could be healed. Some foundations could be remade.
Lock looked once more toward the city and then down the corridor, where the secret rooms held the sleeping and the captured alike. Orders were already forming on his tongue; names of messengers and rendezvous points, contingencies, and a single, unavoidable truth: they had to act quickly, decisively, and together — before the old world stitched itself back together.
Outside, the city awoke. The first birds, impossibly brave, began to sing. Inside, plans shifted and alliances bent like tempered steel testing its strength.
The next move would determine everything.
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