“Okay,” Cam says, business reasserting itself in the set of his shoulders. “We’ll refine the plan. In the meantime, we still have two high-value problems in the basement.”
Dr. Reyes and Evelyn. The ghosts I haven’t finished with yet. “I’ll handle them,” I say.
Sterling’s head snaps toward me. “We’ll handle them,” he corrects.
I shake my head sharply. “You’ve both had your turn,” I say. “This part is mine.”
Sterling’s jaw flexes. “I’m not letting you go down there alone.”
“I know,” I agree, looking at him. “But you don’t talk unless I ask you to. No questions. No interventions. No pulling me off them if I go for the jugular.”
Sterling’s eyes search mine, waiting for me to back down. “Fine,” he says at last. “I can do silent.”
Lila snorts. “That I’d like to see.”
“Stay,” I tell her and Cam. “Figure out how we make this new war work. I’ll be back when there’s one less loose end.”
“One less?” Cam echoes.
I meet his gaze, let him see what’s already decided. “There will be no other endings for them,” I say. “We’ve already agreed on that.”
Cam doesn’t argue. “We’ll be here,” he says. “Take the walkie. If anything feels off…”
“It won’t,” I cut in. “Not this time.”
Sterling pushes off the table. “Let’s go.” He gestures toward the door. We head for the service stairs. The deeper levels of the warehouse were never meant to be hospitable, concrete, steel, the kind of utilitarian ugliness that doesn’t care if you bleed on it. We pass through two key-coded doors. The air gets colder, quieter. “Last chance to let someone else get their hands dirty,” he says as we hit the final landing.
“Not a chance.”
The hallway is short and windowless, with two reinforced doors facing each other. We put Reyes and my mother opposite on purpose; let them feel each other’s presence without ever seeing, two halves of the same wound. I stop between the doors, palm flat against the cool metal under my mother’s keypad. “How do you want to do this?” Sterling asks.
“One at a time,” I say. “Her first.” He nods, then steps back, taking up a position where he can see both doors and the staircase—a silent sentinel. I key in the code, the lock clicking open with a sound that makes something ugly curl in my gut. The room is small and bare except for a bolted chair and a camera in the corner. Evelyn is sitting on the edge of the chair—hands cuffed in front of her, ankles shackled to a floor ring. Her hair is flatter than I’ve ever seen it, makeup long gone, the clinical polish stripped away. She still straightens when she sees me. “Kiera.” Not Sunshine. My heart stutters at the use of my given name. “I was wondering when you’d come.”
I step inside and shut the door behind me. “We’ve been busy,” I say.
Her gaze flicks over me, cataloging. Bruises. The fact that I’m not limping anymore. She’s always been good at reading bodies for data. “You look well,” she says. “Considering.”
“Considering you tried to turn me into a lab report?” I ask. “I’m full of surprises.”
Evelyn’s mouth tightens. “We both know you were never just a report.”
“We both know that’s a lie,” I retort.
She exhales slowly, as if she’s the one who has to be patient here. “Is that why you came? To trade barbs? I expected more from you.”
“Of course you did,” I say. “You expected me to be you with better aim.”
A flash of something, pride, maybe, twisted and wrong, flickers across Evelyn’s face. “You survived,” she says. “You thrived. We gave you…”
“Stop,” my voice rises, the word has enough force that it cuts through whatever script she was about to read from. “You don’t get credit. I survived because I watched what I thought was my mother dying. I survived because I thought my father had killed her. I SURVIVED,” I yell the last word. “Because I had no other fucking option in a world you shoved me into with no information! I survived because of the memory of a stupid song and nickname that apparently meant more to me than it ever did you…”
Evelyn’s eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t be alive without us.”
“I might have had a life without you,” I counter. “You don’t get to call that a favor.”
There’s a beat where we just look at each other, two mirrors from different timelines. Finally, she asks, “What do you want from me, Kiera?”
The honest answer lands before I can soften it. “I want you to admit what you did,” I demand. “All of it. I want to hear you say the words without hiding behind the program and the work.”
