“It’s empty, Jex,” she says, pointing down into the dark. “The basement. The clinic. There’s nothing down there but us. There never was.”
I move toward her, but the floorboards groan, the wood charring beneath my boots. The boat is a tinderbox. Every time I take a step, the world flickers one last time—the high-tech laboratory walls shimmer for a fraction of a second, cold and blue, before being incinerated by the reality of the burning tugboat.
“Come with me,” I plead, reaching my hand through the heat. “We can jump. We can disappear. The Choir—they’re waiting under the pier?—”
“The Choir is dead, Jex,” she says, and for a second, her eyes are so old they look ancient. “They were just kids who were lonely enough to believe your stories. They’re gone. And we’re the ones who sent them.”
She looks at the fire, then back at me. She doesn’t look like a prototype. She looks like a girl who has finally finished a very long, very painful book.
“Tell Ryker it’s okay to let go of the paper,” she whispers.
Behind me, I hear Ryker hitting the deck. He’s crawled up the side, the ‘Ledger’ clutched to his chest, his eyes darting around the burning deck as he looks for the soldiers who aren’t there.
“Where is the Mother?” Ryker gasps, his face lit by the inferno. “Where is the extraction team?”
Hallow smiles—a real, devastatingly human smile.
“She’s right here, Ryker,” Hallow says, stepping back into the mouth of the fire.
The fuel drums go.
The explosion isn’t a cinematic blast; it’s a wet, heavycrump that lifts the deck and throws me backward. I hit the railing, the air punched out of my lungs, as a wall of liquid fire cascades over the prow.
“HALLOW!”
I see her for one last heartbeat—a figure of gold and black, sinking into the centre of the heat, her arms open as if she’s finally being embraced by the woman she spent ten years inventing.
The tugboat lists sharply to the port side, the black harbour water rushing in to meet the flames. The hissing is deafening—the sound of the dream finally being extinguished.
Ryker is screaming, his ‘Ledger’ falling from his hands and sliding into the fire. The pages catch instantly, the white paper turning to grey ash before the water can even touch them. He’s reaching for the flames, his body halfway into the engine room hatch, and I have to grab him. I have to wrap my arms around his waist and drag him back as the Mercy begins its final, heavy tilt into the dark.
“She’s gone, Ryker! She’s gone!”
We hit the water together as the boat slides under, the suction pulling us down into a whirlpool of ash and diesel.
When we break the surface, the harbour is quiet. The fire is just a shimmering orange stain on the oil-slicked water. The police boats are closing in, their blue and red lights finally the only reality left.
Ryker is sobbing into my shoulder, his hands clutching at my wet tactical vest. “The signal… Jex, I can’t hear the signal anymore. Why is itso quiet?”
I don’t answer. I just hold him, looking at the spot where our sister chose the fire over the lie.
As the searchlights pin us against the dark, a voice booms over the water—a real voice, through a real megaphone.
“Keep your hands where we can see them! It’s over!”
I look at the shore, at the dozens of officers, the ambulances, the reality of the ‘revolution’ we’d spent years building. We weren’t the kings of Oakhaven. We were just the monsters in the basement.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I see it.
A single, white lace sleeve floating on the surface of the black water, pristine and untouched by the soot.
I blink, and it’s gone. Just a piece of trash. Or the beginning of a new ghost.
The water is a grave of ice and oil, but the hands that grab me aren’t human.
As the police boat pulls alongside, the officers reaching down look like towering, faceless sentinels in white ceramic armour. Their flashlights aren’t LEDs; they are searing beams of ultraviolet light that peel back the layers of my skin.
“Target Jex secured,” a voice booms, but it’s filtered through a digital vocoder, metallic and cold. “The Mother requires the primary brain-tissue for analysis.”
