Vance’s video.The deepfake.
I replayed it in my head. The generated image of me, crying, confessing.I lied on the medical forms. If they knew I was passing... I'd lose everything.
It had been a lie about me. But Vance hadn't just pulled the script out of thin air. Deepfakes work best when they are built on a kernel of emotional truth. A frequency that rings true to the subconscious.
He had accused me of being a passing Omega.
Whythatlie? Why not an anarchist? Why not a thief? Why not a corporate spy?
Because that was the specific fear that would destroy someone in our position. That was the nuclear option.
I looked at the dashboard clock. The blue digits fuzzed in my gaze as I tried to make sense of what was happening.
"The cabin," I asked, my voice small. "Is it secure?"
"It’s a black site," Stephen said, swerving around a fallen branch without slowing down. "Off the grid. No digital footprint. Purchased through shell companies. Vance doesn't know it exists."
"Good."
We hit a pothole. The car jarred violently.
From the back seat, a small, involuntary whimper escaped Juno’s throat.
It was the most heartbreaking sound I had ever heard. It was raw, stripped of all the artifice and charm Juno wore like armor.
The car swerved slightly as Stephen corrected, his control slipping for a fraction of a second at the sound.
"Almost there," Stephen murmured, more to himself than us, his hands tightening on the leather wheel. "Almost there."
Ten eternal minutes later, the tires crunched onto gravel.
We were in the middle of nowhere. A small, cottage appeared out of the darkness, barely visible against the dense tree line.The rain was coming down harder now, hammering against the roof.
Stephen killed the engine.
The silence that followed was deafening. The ticking of the cooling engine. The relentless rain. And the sound of Juno’s ragged, starving breaths filling the cabin.
"Out," Mateo ordered.
He didn't wait for us to move. He opened his door and was out in the rain in a second, ignoring the downpour. He pulled Juno’s door open.
Juno practically fell into him. Mateo caught him, scooping him up into his arms like he weighed nothing, shielding him from the rain with his own body.
"Key," Mateo barked at Stephen.
Stephen threw a set of heavy metal keys through the rain. Mateo snatched them out of the air with a reflexes that bordered on supernatural and stormed toward the cabin door.
I scrambled out, grabbing my folio, old habits die hard, and followed, my heels slipping and sticking in the mud.
The cabin was freezing. The air inside was stale, smelling of pine, dust, and long disuse. Mateo kicked the door shut behind us, plunging us into total darkness until Stephen found the breaker switch.
A single bulb flickered to life in the center of the room, casting long, harsh shadows.
Mateo carried Juno to a dusty leather sofa and set him down, but kept his body curved over him, a human shield against a threat that wasn't in the room.
Juno was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. He looked up, his eyes wild, golden, and terrified. He wasn't seeing the cabin. He wasn't seeing us. He was seeing threats. He was seeing predators.
The scent was overwhelming now. In the enclosed space of the room, stripped of the car’s ventilation, it was heavy enough to taste. Burnt sugar. Scorched earth.
