then settles into a steady blue glow.
Gone.
Director Wu is gone.
For a second nobody moves.
Nobody speaks.
The bunker trembles around us while steam pours through fractured pipes and emergency alarms echo through collapsing corridors.
But somehow—
the room feels lighter.
Like something evil finally stopped breathing.
Clay pulls me against him so tightly my feet barely stay under me.
His heart pounds violently against my chest.
“You okay?”
The question almost makes me laugh.
Am I okay?
No.
Not really.
Maybe never again.
But I’m alive.
And for the first time in my life—
I’m free.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
Clay closes his eyes briefly against my forehead like he needs to hear it more than anything.
Russ reloads calmly beside the ruined reactor railing.
“Well.”
A beat.
“That was satisfying.”
Honestly?
Very.
Gabriel looks down into the reactor shaft one last time.
Then quietly says:
