“Maybe it needs to start,” she replies.
I hold her gaze, searching for anything that says she might reconsider.
There’s nothing there.
Just resolve.
Cold.
Unyielding.
“You’re not going to wait,” I say.
“No.”
I nod once, slow.
“Then you’re not giving me a choice,” I say.
Her expression flickers, just slightly.
“What does that mean?”
I hesitate, just for a second, then force the words out.
“It means if you push this wrong,” I say quietly, “I’m not going to help you do it.”
Her shoulders square.
“Then don’t,” she says.
The words land like a door closing.
We stand there, the space between us heavier than anything we’ve said.
Then she turns.
And this time?—
I don’t follow.
CHAPTER 19
JOLIE
The corridor breathes heat against my skin as I move through it, the recycled air thick enough that I can taste the metallic residue sitting at the back of my throat with every controlled inhale. Overhead lights flicker in uneven intervals, casting sharp bursts of white across the walls before dropping back into dim shadow, and each shift in illumination forces my eyes to constantly adjust. My boots strike the metal floor in a measured rhythm that echoes just slightly too long, the sound bouncing off the narrow walls and returning distorted, while somewhere deeper in the structure, a pipe vents with a low hiss.
I keep moving forward, letting the sensory noise sharpen my focus instead of dull it, because hesitation has already cost too much and I do not intend to add to that count. The corridor feels wrong without him beside me, not because it is quieter or safer, but because the absence disrupts the rhythm I had unconsciously adapted to over the past weeks. I notice it in the lack of a second set of footsteps syncing with mine and in the absence of that constant pressure at my side that used to challenge every decision I made, and I force myself to ignore itbecause I cannot afford to recalibrate around something that is no longer there.
“You don’t get to think about that,” I mutter under my breath as I turn into a narrower passage that slopes downward.
The air changes immediately as I descend, growing heavier and damper, and the scent of insulation and stagnant moisture replaces the sharper tang of overheated circuitry. My shoulder brushes the wall as I move, the surface warm and slightly rough beneath my sleeve, grounding me in the physical space as I adjust my pace to match the tighter angles of the corridor. I reach the first access node without slowing, dropping into a crouch as my fingers find the edge of the panel and press into it, feeling the faint vibration of energy running unevenly beneath the surface.
“Come on,” I murmur, watching the interface flicker to life.
The screen stutters once before stabilizing into a dim glow, and I lean closer, the light reflecting back against my eyes as I start pulling data immediately. My fingers move across the interface with practiced precision, filtering for irregular timing patterns and cross-referencing movement logs with the breach windows Hrask identified earlier. The system resists in subtle ways, not by failing outright, but by smoothing edges that should remain jagged, and that resistance confirms I am looking in the right place.
“Yeah,” I say quietly, narrowing my eyes as I isolate a cluster. “You tried to hide it, but you didn’t bury it well enough.”
