“Coordinates. East coast,” Branson replies quickly. “Exactly as suspected, it’s an old military medical site. Mostly underground, like I said before. Black-listed after 2012. On paper it doesn’t exist. But it’s drawing power and it matches your signal window. We managed to get an exact ping and the location, but we can’t tell you much more than that yet about security and how armed the place is. Tex is working his magic as we speak but I knew you wouldn’t want to wait any longer.”
My hands are already moving. Blades. Ampoules. The small necessities of violence.
“Send details,” Bones says.
“I can’t,” Branson replies. “Not over this line. Too exposed.” A pause. A breath. “I’ll give them to Tex. He’ll get them to you. Different channel. Different device. If you don’t have one, get one.”
Valentine swears under his breath. “He’s right. I’ll get another burner. Leave it with me.”
Branson’s voice drops. “And Graves? After this, you never ever call me again. I have a family to protect now.”
The line goes dead.
Silence holds for half a second.
Then I’m on my feet.
“We move,” I say.
Valentine steps in front of me. “We don’t have transport ready. I need to get the burner?—”
“Then make it ready.”
“Night—”
I stop so close he can feel the heat off me. “You either come with me or you don’t. But if she’s alive, she’s not waiting another night.”
Valentine’s jaw works, calculating. He looks past me at Honey, Bones, Hatchet, Ghost, Snow – six men shaped like catastrophe.
Then he nods once, tight. “Give me forty minutes.”
“Thirty,” Bones corrects.
Valentine’s mouth twitches. “Thirty, then.”
Honey cracks his knuckles once, slow. “Finally.”
Ghost whispers, “He says she was here,” and his eyes go wide as if he surprised himself.
Snow smiles like he’s pleased the story is catching up to him.
Hatchet’s gaze locks on Snow for one heartbeat longer than necessary.
I see it.
I don’t comment.
Not yet.
Because we have a direction now.
And if anyone stands between me and Kayla – handler, facility, board, god – they’reallgoing to learn what the word inevitable actually means.
We don’t talkonce the van starts moving.
The road east narrows and unravels, trading streetlights for tree lines, concrete for wet gravel, civilisation for the kind of dark that feels watched. The city lets us go without noticing. The marsh doesn’t. Fog crawls low over the road, pale and patient, swallowing the headlights just fast enough to make distance unreliable.
Valentine drives without music, without comment, jaw set, eyes flicking to mirrors that never show what he’s checking for. Bones keeps glancing at the notebook where he’s written down the information that Branson’s contact sent through – numbers, partial schematics, fragments that refuse to settle into a map.
