“You should have thought,” Morgan said, her voice steady even as her hand shook, “about how you’d get me to cooperate before you killed the only person who ever loved me.”
The gun’s barrel was cold against her skin. Real. Solid. The one variable she still controlled.
“Put it down, Morgan.” Randall’s voice had shifted—careful now. “You’re not going to shoot yourself.”
“You don’t know what I’ll do.” Her finger rested on the trigger. Light pressure. Enough that he could see she meant it. “You never did. You thought you could break me with a box and a knife. You thought you could turn me into a filing cabinet. But I’m still here. And I decide how this ends.”
“Think about what you’re doing.”
“I have. For weeks. Every time I woke up remembering what you did to me. Every time I looked at the scars you gave me.” The tears came, but her hand didn’t waver. “Youtook everything. My career. My freedom. And now Lincoln. So tell me—what do I have left to lose?”
For one stretched moment, she saw it in his eyes. Uncertainty. The realization that he’d miscalculated something fundamental about her.
But then the guard lunged.
Morgan saw him coming but couldn’t move fast enough. His hand closed around the barrel, wrenching it sideways. The gun discharged into the ceiling—the sound deafening—and then another guard was there, grabbing her arms, forcing them behind her back.
She fought. Kicked. Twisted. But she was exhausted and outmatched, and they forced her to her knees on the concrete.
Randall stood over her. The mask was back, but something colder lurked underneath. She’d surprised him. Embarrassed him.
“I was going to give you time to adjust,” he said quietly. “But I think you need a reminder of what happens when you make things difficult.”
His hand closed in her hair. Fingers wrapping tight, pulling until her scalp screamed. She gasped as he stood, dragging her with him, her feet scrambling for purchase.
He pulled her toward the box.
Morgan dug her heels in. Twisted against his grip. The guards followed close behind, ready to intervene.
The box loomed larger with every step. Its door stood open, darkness waiting inside like something hungry.
“No.” The word came out broken. “No?—”
Randall didn’t respond. Just kept pulling.
The darkness reached for her. The walls pressed in before she was even inside, her mind collapsing the distance. She couldn’t breathe. Could only feel the pull toward the thing she feared most.
Lincoln was dead. No one was coming. Her defiance had failed.
This time, the darkness would keep her forever.
Randall shoved her forward, and Morgan fell toward the waiting void.
Chapter 26
Eighteen months ago
Binary: Instinct is just pattern recognition the conscious mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
Mercury: That sounds like a compliment dressed as dismissal.
Binary: It’s an observation. I don’t trust instinct. I trust data.
Mercury: What if someday the data isn’t there?
Binary: Then I’ll be in trouble.
The world came back in fragments.
