Hammond avoids my eyes.
Stanton smiles. “That’s what makes it poetic. Every tool is just that—a tool. We decide what it becomes.”
I look at Hammond, the man who mentored me. Trusted me. Who stood beside me when I launched my first prototype. “You said it wasn’t personal. But it is. You neededme. You needed my mind. And now you’re forcing me to watch while you turn it into a weapon.”
He looks away like a coward.
Stanton approaches, crouching in front of me like I’m a child. “Whether you help us or not, this test run happens tonight. But if you cooperate, maybe we let you live long enough to see what a legacy your work leaves behind.”
“You’ll never get away with this.”
He grins. “By the time your team finds you—if they do—it’ll already be done.”
I’ve been trained to solve impossible problems. I’ve been underestimated before.
But they made one mistake.
They left me breathing.
And I know one thing for damn sure… Crewe Hawthorne is coming for me.
FIFTEEN
CREWE
The wind up here is mean.
It bites through my gloves and tries to shove me sideways even before I step to the edge of the ramp. Below us, the mountains are a jagged black mouth full of snow and shadow. Somewhere in that darkness, Riley is tied up and scared and trying to stay awake while men who don’t deserve her air are getting ready to use her work to hurt people.
I don’t feel fear.
I feel focus.
And something hotter underneath it—something that has a name now, whether I want it to or not.
Love.
“Two minutes,” the loadmaster calls over the roar of the aircraft, and my team checks each other’s straps like we’ve done a hundred times. Their faces are set. Calm. Ready.
Major Chen’s voice comes through my earpiece, steady as stone. “We’ve got eyes on the compound. We’re tracking drone activity. Hammond and Stanton are inside. They’re prepping a launch.”
“Copy,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. It never does when it matters.
The light turns green.
The world narrows to a clean decision.
I jump.
Cold air slams into me. The kind of cold that steals breath and tries to make you forget your own name. I drop fast, the storm clawing at my gear, but my body knows this dance. I keep myself steady, falling through darkness and snow like I belong to it.
A few seconds later, I pull.
The chute snaps open, the jolt shooting through my shoulders, and the chaos becomes quiet—just wind and the soft hiss of snow. Below, a scattered cluster of buildings comes into view, half-buried in drifts. Old training land. Old structures. A small outpost that looks abandoned from a distance.
My team drifts down around me, dark shapes against darker ground. We land in staggered silence, cutting chutes, moving fast, going low.
I hit the snow hard, knees flexing, boots sinking deep. I’m already scanning.
