The flames spill skyward, lighting the frozen river in violent orange. It looks like the world is burning from the inside out.
Harper turns, watching through the window. Her reflection blends with the flames, her features carved in flickering gold. She holds herself still, as if movement might shatter her.
The safe house is silent when we arrive, the kind of silence that makes every sound too loud. The vehicle doors slam.
I sit beside her in the dim living room, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly my palms ache. Nothing has set in yet. My world feels like it’s stuck in one place, and the whole world has left me behind.
Words feel small, flimsy against the ruin we just left behind. I have Harper with me, looking at the fire staining the horizon as though trying to memorize its shape.
I open my mouth, the words on the tip of my tongue when the door crashes open.
Kiro storms inside, sweat on his brow, a laptop under his arm like a weapon.
“Damian, look.”
He flips the screen toward us. A line of code stares back at us unassumingly.
Harper’s brows furrow. “What is this?”
Kiro exhales through his teeth. “The trigger sequence for the assault on the estate. Someone activated it from inside our own servers. Look at the embedded root key.”
Her face drains of color.
“That’s…that’s my encryption prefix,” she whispers. “That’s—that’s my old schema, from before—”
Harper’s code.
Her work twisted into a weapon. My lungs finally unlock, dragging air in with a sound that feels like breaking.
Kiro looks between us as he goes on, “The signal that called the mercenaries, that identified the estate as a valid target—it originated from her algorithm. It’s a perfect mirror of her work.”
Harper’s hands fly to her mouth.
“I—I didn’t do this,” she says, voice cracking. “Damian, I swear to you—I didn’t—this isn’t—someone replicated my code, someone used—”
“I know,” I say.
But knowing the truth doesn’t make this any less catastrophic.
The screen continues flashing the lines of betrayal, each string of data another twist of the blade. The sirens are now an approaching chorus, closing in like wolves following blood-scent.
Kiro lowers his voice.
“If we stay here, the Council will find us in minutes. And if they believe she triggered the attack—”
“They won’t take her,” I snap.
He nods, but he’s pale.
“Then we run now.”
Behind me, Harper is shaking her head, bewildered, frantic.
“Damian, I don’t know how they got this—I don’t know how—”
“Harper.” I grip her shoulders. “Look at me.”
She does, with those brown eyes that have stabilized me ever since I’ve known them.
