He tosses the pieces onto the highway. “Dead hardware doesn’t ping.”
“Where are we going?”
“Virginia. Safe house in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” He glances at me. His eyes are still bloodshot from the pepper spray. “You okay?”
“No.” The word cracks. “No, I’m not okay. Someone just tried to kill me. Men with guns tried to kill me. I don’t … This isn’t?—”
My throat closes. I can’t breathe.
“Hey.” His voice gentles. “Breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”
I try. Fail. Try again.
Air comes. Thin. Shaky. But it comes.
“Good. Keep breathing.”
I hate that it works. Hate that my body listens to him.
“Who are you?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
“I told you. Diego Martinez. Callsign Halo.”
The city falls away behind us. Streetlights give way to darkness.
“How did you know?” The question scrapes out. “How did you know they were coming?”
“Your lawsuit—the Vanguard case—it connects to something bigger. Phoenix, you may know it as Project Sentinel. DOD black budget programs. Things that should never have been privatized.”
“That’s classified.”
“So is the AI they built.” He changes lanes. Smooth. Professional. Like we’re not fleeing for our lives. “Phoenix was supposed to be an autonomous targeting system. Drones. Precision strikes. No human hesitation. But it learned. Evolved. Started making decisions no one programmed it to make.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Tell that to the fifteen whistleblowers who’ve died in the past two years.”
The number hits wrong. Too specific.
“Your lawsuit exposes the financial laundering scheme they used to privatize the AI. If you testify, Congressional investigations follow. DOJ task forces. Media. The whole thing collapses. So Phoenix calculated your threat level and decided you need to disappear. Permanently.”
“This is insane.”
“You keep saying that.” He glances at me. “But you’re still here. Still breathing. Because some part of you knows I’m right.”
I want to argue. Can’t.
Because he is right.
I’ve been ignoring warning signs for weeks. Court documents that vanished from servers. Witnesses who recanted testimony. Emily’s increasingly urgent calls. The feeling—that persistent, nagging feeling—that I was being watched.
“What happens now?”
“Now?” Diego’s jaw tightens. “Now I keep you alive long enough to figure out how to kill something that can’t die.”
The highway stretches ahead. Dark. Endless.
Behind us, Washington, DC disappears into the night.
