Trust was once the resistance's strongest armor. Now, it was cracking.
The broadcast attacks. The surveillance leaks. The near miss with Kirion's daughter.
Paranoia seeped into the underground like water through fractured stone.
"We have a mole," said Ayo, the resistance's logistics commander. His voice was sharp, his fingers twitching near his sidearm. "Someone's feeding our positions to the government."
Kirion didn't flinch. "Then we flush them out. But we don't turn on each other like wolves."
Too late.
Whispers bloomed. Eyes narrowed. A team in Sector 9 went silent—later found, their hideout torched from the inside. Supplies vanished from safehouses. Anonymous messages warned of betrayal from the top.
Even Kirion wasn't safe.
"I've seen the files," muttered a young engineer. "He used to be on the inside. How do we know he's not playing both sides?"
The girl heard it. She almost broke his jaw for it.
But Kirion stopped her.
"Let them doubt," he said. "Doubt can be useful. But don't let it harden. That's how we lose."
To regain control, he gathered the resistance's core. Around a war table lit by a flickering holo-map, he made a promise:
"Any one of you could be the leak. Including me. So here's what we do. We segment intel. Triple-check routes. And we stop treating each other like strangers with guns."
Then he did something rare: he gave access—full access—to his daughter.
Not just to missions, but to every name, every path, every secret buried in The Nest.
"I trust her more than I trust myself," he said.
One by one, the others followed.
It wasn't unity. Not yet.
But it was a beginning. A cracked foundation held together not by certainty, but by shared purpose.
Because even in fragmented trust, there can still be faith.
And faith, when earned, is a weapon the regime can't destroy.