I leaned closer, scrubbing back five seconds, then ten. Then I split the feed across three monitors, running waveform comparisons and frequency overlays, and building a model of what I was seeing versus what should be there. The collar wasn’t only proximity-triggered. Not entirely.
Someone was able to tell it when to fire, which meant there was a control somewhere, and not some computer controlling when the collar fired. I ran another search, dug deeper, and linked surveillance of every single person we’d ID’d. We didn’t have names, but we had numbers, and, as at the house where we found Ezra and Seth, there were two men who didn’t fit, and one of them had to be the userSaintMichael.
I cleaned up the footage and ran it through Lyric’s AI until the blur became usable. Michael never carried a weapon that I could see, but he was always surrounded by guards, and sometimes by another man who didn’t fit with the hired muscle.
I tracked their movements against the strange pulses in the collar signal.
The guards were easy to read. Routes, breaks, handovers. Predictable.
The other two weren’t. They moved where they wanted, stopped where no one else could, and guards shifted around them.
Authority.
I reran the data. Every time the collar signal changed, one of those two men was close. I removed the second man, and the pattern fell apart. I put Michael back in, and everything locked into place.
I studied the image Lyric had rebuilt. Expensive coat. Calm posture. Empty hands.
He didn’t need a gun.
Men like Michael let other people do the violence for them.
I leaned back.
If we wanted Noah alive, we needed what Michael was carrying.
I keyed in on Novak’s body-cam feed and routed it to the side monitor. For now, it was nothing but darkness and shifting shapes—branches, ground, the occasional smear of grey as he moved—but I could track his pace, his direction, the subtle dips and rises of the terrain as he closed on the outer perimeter.
Then voices.
I tensed at the edge in Novak’s voice. I couldn’t make out much on the feed, but I listened to the way he handled it. Calm. Controlled. Giving the kid just enough truth to keep him talking.
It worked fast.
The answers came sharp and desperate. Guard numbers. A second team. Where they came in.
Then—
“...People are coming in two days...”
Everything else dropped away.
When Novak headed back, I replayed the audio and cleaned it until the words came through clear.
Two days.
I looked at the map on my screen, at the collar control point, at the man tied to it.
Michael.
If Eden was moved, we could lose her and the baby.
If the collar stayed active, we couldn’t get Noah out.
If we waited, we lost both.
This had turned into a hit fast and get out before the whole place vanished.
I barely noticed time passing until the back door opened and Novak came in, locking it behind him before crossing to me.
