Midway through the tunnel,before the hatch, I stopped.
Not fear—a different kind of cold. The laptop. When the cabin blew, it was on the table. Whatever is left of it is evidence, wreckage, gone. And the transmission lives on a remote server I can't touch without my authenticated device.
"My laptop's destroyed." My voice is flat, working the logic in real time. "The dead man's switch—I can only cancel from my hardware. Biometric plus rotating token. Both on the device."
Kade's breathing fills the silence.
"Which means I can't cancel it." I turn this over, making sure it's true. "It doesn't matter what happens to us in the next few hours. The packet fires on its own. Thirty-one hours from when I armed it—no intervention required."
"You built a safety net," Kade says, his voice rough, "before you knew you'd need one."
The weight of that lands. I armed it at the kitchen table while he watched, because it was the right tactical move. Because I wanted to fight. Not because I thought we'd end up bleeding in a tunnel with a team of operators above us, tearing the cabin apart.
But the math is the same either way.
"FBI, DOJ, Homeland," I say. "Times and ProPublica. Staggered fifteen minutes apart. There's no single intercept that stops all five."
"Then Black Helix's network burns whether we make it out or not."
"Yes."
He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't have to. We move.
Night air rushes in—crispand cold, smelling of pine and damp earth. It stings my eyes, still streaming from the lingering gas.
Through the hatch opening, the granite boulder stands above us. Down the hill, the cabin is a disaster. Smoke pours from the front, illuminated by the tactical lights of the assault team sweeping the interior.
"Tree line," Kade hisses. "Now."
I scramble out, staying low, and pull him up after me. He stumbles, boots slipping on pine needles. When his hand grips my shoulder, it's dead weight.
"I got you."
His Henley is soaked on the left side. In the moonlight, the blood looks black and slick.
We sprint for the trees, our noise swallowed by the wind. We make the shelter of the pines just as a high-pitched whine cuts the air.
ZZZZZZZT.
"Down." Kade drags me into the dirt.
We collapse into the brush. Above the boulder we just cleared, a drone hovers—camera gimbal swiveling in mechanical jerks, looking for heat.
Kade presses me into the freezing earth, covering my body with his good side. "Stay cold." His skin is clammy, burning with fever heat.
The drone buzzes and scans. It lingers on the boulder, then sweeps the treeline. My lungs burn.
Finally, it banks away toward the cabin.
"Move." Kade rolls off me and struggles to get his feet under him. Slipping in the mud.
"Kade." I grab his right arm. "You're losing too much blood."
"We have to make the ridge. Extraction point is two miles east."
"You can't walk two miles."
"Watch me."
