Chapter 36. Cold Start

Chicago in late winter didn’t forgive.

The cold had edges; it found seams in clothes, slipped under doors, cut straight to the bone.

Lia lived now in a converted storage unit behind a mechanic’s shop—twenty dollars a night and no questions asked.

Her bed was a mat.

Her gym, a corner of cracked concrete with a hanging bag that leaked sand when it moved.

She didn’t mind.

Silence cost extra, and she was done paying for noise.

Each morning started the same: coffee that tasted like metal, three sets of footwork drills, ten minutes of shadow sparring.

The rhythm became a kind of prayer.

The first week, her muscles screamed.

The second week, they adapted.

By the third, the pain had a name: survival.

***

She filmed everything.

It wasn’t vanity; it was evidence.

Cassian had taught her that cameras didn’t lie—they just remembered better than people did.

So she set up her old phone on a crate, hit r