I replayed it twice. The second time, I closed my eyes and let the echo play through the hollow of my skull.
The fourth file was short. “You’re safe,” Nitro said, and I remembered the way it felt, to almost believe him.
I set the watch on the desk, pressed both hands flat against the surface, and stared at the blinking cursor on my darkened monitor.
The plan wasn’t complicated. Not if you ignored the consequences.
I toggled the network back on, then brought up the list of contacts from the project directory. I scrolled past the chain of command, past Holloway and the rest of the security apparatus,and found the one name I hadn’t expected to need: Senator Carly St. James.
Her email was locked behind two layers of encryption and a phone number that rerouted through a switchboard somewhere in Maryland. But if you worked for the Lab, you could reach her office. And if you were scared enough, you could pretend the call was a matter of national security.
I hesitated, thumb on the call button.
My heart hammered, and the old animal urge to run was back, stronger than ever. But I’d lived my whole life with a ghost in the passenger seat—this was just another turn in the maze.
I pressed the button.
It rang five times, then routed me to a staffer. A brisk voice answered: “St. James office. How may I direct your call?”
“This is Dr. Seraphina Dalton. Los Alamos Adaptive Systems. I have to speak with the Senator. It’s urgent.”
There was a pause, the kind only trained assistants can make sound like routine. “The Senator is unavailable. Is this regarding the current appropriations bill?”
“No,” I said. “It’s about Blue Spirit. It’s about Russian operatives infiltrating American soil, and about the possibility of imminent loss of life.”
Another pause. Longer.
“I’ll need your credentials.”
I gave them. The staffer verified. Then transferred.
Five minutes later, I was on with a different voice, female, clipped, direct. “Please state your emergency for the record.”
I didn’t say what had happened to me. I didn’t describe the van, or the duct tape, or the way Nitro had come for me with the certainty of a bomb finding its target. I just said, “They want Blue Spirit. The code is not safe. I have evidence of a foreign actor, and I have proof that the official story is a lie.”
The line was silent for a full breath. Then: “Can you come to the Senator’s office in Santa Fe? Nine a.m. tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I said.
The call ended. I let my hand drop to the desk, the watch face smearing a line of sweat onto the fake wood grain.
At home, the place was exactly as I left it, with lights off, curtains drawn, the ghost of the fire pit lurking behind the sliding glass. I set my bag on the table and moved through the rooms in a pattern, locking every window, checking every blind spot. The coffee mug I’d abandoned two days ago was still in the sink, a ring of dried brown at the bottom.
I didn’t shower. I didn’t undress. I just sat on the edge of the bed, watch still on my wrist, and waited for the fear to bleed out of me.
It never did.
At 3 a.m., I woke to the sound of the elevator in the hallway, a distant metal rattle. I sat up, pulse racing, and waited for footsteps that never came. I realized I was at home.
At 4:17, I dreamed of the van, and the duct tape, and the way Nitro’s arms had felt when they wrapped around my ribs to pull me free. I woke with my hands at my neck, tracing the line where his fingers had checked for a pulse.
I wanted to call him. I wanted to tell him what I was about to do. But the last thing I wanted was to bring him into this again.
He’d saved my life. He’d done enough.
I lay back down, the ceiling above me a blank white expanse. I closed my eyes, counted to a hundred, then to a thousand, and let the numbers scrub my mind clean.
When dawn broke, I got up, dressed, and drove to Santa Fe with the watch on my wrist and the plan alive in my skull.
