Finders Keepers - Part Three: Dawn

The firefight is over in seconds, and it isn't Victoria's aim that ends it. When the dust settles, the thing they came to recover stirs to life in the dark - barely powered, unable to move, and speaking in a flat machine tone that puts Victoria's finger back on the trigger. A damaged prototype is still worth more than none. She's ready to make that call.What stops her isn't mercy. It's a single observation the machine makes about her - one thing it can see that no one else ever has. What follows is quieter than a gunfight and lands twice as hard: a recognition passed between them in words older than either of them, and a decision that turns a recovery job into something none of them planned.Four days later, Em still won't take his prototype back. She hasn't left Rubyn's apartment, and she isn't going to. And in the small hours of the morning, she asks Rubyn a question about forgetting that neither of them is ready for - and answers it, in five words, with the first thing she has ever wanted for herself.This is where she begins.Content warning: gun violence, including a captive threatened at gunpoint.The final episode of Book 2 of First Light: An Audio Drama. Written, narrated, and produced by Scott McGowan; featuring the voice talents of Sean Hiebert as Rubyn and Nancy Macdonald-Kerr as Victoria. Also featuring the original audio track, "Silverlight Dais", by Taylor Moorey (Dead Weight Citizens Brigade).