"The Custodians aren't unified. They never have been. Ten houses, ten agendas, ten different visions of what The Silent should be." I lean forward. "Webb represents one faction. The hardliners who believe the Foundry protocols are sacred, that conditioning should be absolute, that any deviation is a threat to the entire system."
"And the other factions?"
"Some are neutral. Some are sympathetic to change. And some..." I pause. "Some have been waiting for an excuse to move against Webb for years."
Briar is quiet for a moment. I can see him processing, connecting dots the way I connected them.
"You want to turn the Custodians against each other," he says. "Use Webb's overreach as a catalyst for a power shift."
"I want to burn down the part of The Silent that treats people like property. The auctions. The conditioning. The collars." I hold his gaze. "I want to make it so that what happened to Elliot can never happen to anyone else."
"That's not a rescue mission. That's a revolution."
"Yes."
"And you think the two of us can accomplish that in forty-one hours?"
"No." I set down the cup. "I think the four of us can start it. The rest will take longer."
Briar looks at Landon. Something passes between them, a silent communication I can't read.
"Why should we trust you?" Landon asks. His voice is steadier now, the fear giving way to something sharper. "You came here to kill us. You said so yourself."
"I did."
"So what changed?"
"I found something I can't lose," I say. "Something that matters more than the mission. More than survival. More than anything they trained me to value."
"Love?" Landon's voice is skeptical. "You expect us to believe a Reaper fell in love?"
"I don't know what to call it." The admission costs me something, but I make it anyway. "I don't have the vocabulary. All I know is that when I think about a world without him in it, every calculation I run returns the same result: unacceptable. I would rather burn The Silent to the ground than let them take him from me. Besides, Briar wasn’t supposed to be capable of it either, and yet here you are. Hiding yourselves. Is that the life you want?"
The silence stretches. The fire crackles. Outside, wind rattles the windows.
Then Briar laughs. A real laugh, warm and unexpected.
"My God," he says. "You really are broken."
"Probably."
"Good." He leans back in his chair, crosses his arms. "Because it takes one to know one. And I've been looking for someone broken enough to free us."
He extends his hand across the table.
I take it.
"So," Briar says. "Where do we start?"
We talk for three hours.
Briar knows things about the Custodian power structure that I don’t. Alliances and rivalries. Old grudges and older debts. The pressure points that could fracture the system if pressed in the right places at the right times.
"The ten houses have never been unified," he explains, pulling out a tablet and drawing connections on a digital map. "Harrington and Rose have been rivals for three generations. Webb and Cross align on most issues, but she's never forgiven him for what happened to her nephew at Westpoint. Abernathy plays neutral, but he's been building his own power base for years."
"Jinx messaged me while I was in the air. Abernathy visited Elliot," I say. "Told him he couldn't stop Webb directly, but he wouldn't stand in my way."
"That's more than neutral." Briar's eyes sharpen. "That's tacit support. If we can get him to move openly—"
