I reach into the pack. Pull out a flashlight. Hand it to her.
“Stay behind me. Move when I move. Stop when I stop. If I say run, you run. No arguments.”
She takes the flashlight. Our fingers brush.
“No arguments.”
“I mean it, Cassie. This isn’t a courtroom. There are no objections, no sustained, no approach the bench. If somethinggoes wrong in there, you do exactly what I say, exactly when I say it.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because yesterday you logged into a monitored system against direct orders. Yesterday?—”
“Yesterday, I learned what happens when I don’t listen.” Her voice is quiet. “I saw those men come through the door. I saw what they would have done to me—to us. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
I study her face in the fading light. Looking for doubt. Looking for the fear that might make her freeze at the wrong moment.
All I see is determination.
“Okay.” I open my door. “Let’s go.”
We step out of the van into the gathering dark.
The air is cold, sharp with the smell of pine and dead leaves and something else underneath—something chemical, faint but present. The facility looms ahead of us, its metal walls catching the last light of day.
The gate swings in the wind. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Waiting.
I pull my weapon. Check the safety. Look at Cassie one more time.
“Stay close.”
We move forward into the dark.
The facility waits—silent, abandoned, holding secrets neither of us is prepared to find.
FIFTEEN
“The Breach”
CASSIE
The fence loomsin the darkness like a promise of violence.
Twelve feet of chain-link topped with razor wire, the coils catching what little moonlight filters through the clouds. Beyond it, the facility hunkers against the mountainside—three buildings of prefab metal and institutional gray, the kind of architecture designed to be forgotten.
Diego moves ahead of me, a shadow among shadows. He’s different out here. In the van, in the motel rooms, in the quiet spaces between danger, I can almost forget what he is. Almost see just the man—the one who holds my hand, who told me about Sofia, who looks at me like I’m something worth protecting.
Out here, there’s no almost.
He flows through the darkness with a predator’s economy, each step deliberate, each pause calculated. His head moves in slow sweeps—left, right, up, scanning angles I wouldn’t think to check. The gun in his hand is an extension of his arm, as natural as breathing.
This is Halo. This is what he was built for.
Watching him work is terrifying and beautiful in equal measure.
He holds up a fist. Stop.
