“Bring me Vincent.”
Ice slips through the room.
Not kill.
Bring.
Moss notices immediately.
“You still intend to activate her.”
Wu finally smiles faintly.
“Sentinel needs a successor.”
Meanwhile…twenty-three rescued children disappear into the storm beneath Bucharest while Hannah Bowers unknowingly becomes the most hunted woman in Europe.
55
Clay
The safehouse outside Bucharest used to be an abandoned vineyard estate.
Now it looks like a military triage center.
Children asleep beneath borrowed blankets in upstairs bedrooms.
Armed guards rotating the perimeter.
Medical kits spread across antique dining tables beside half-empty coffee cups and rifles.
Nobody’s slept.
Nobody trusts the silence outside.
Not after the river.
Not after the tunnels.
Not after Wu.
Rain still taps softly against the old Romanian windows while dawn slowly bleeds gray across the countryside.
I stand alone on the rear balcony overlooking rows of soaked grapevines disappearing into morning fog.
Exhaustion finally catches up hard when the adrenaline fades.
My shoulder aches.
Body running on fumes.
But none of that compares to the weight sitting in my chest right now.
Hannah.
Her face on that river ladder.
The fear in her eyes when she asked if she’d become one of them.
