It was a stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, flanked by pine trees and abandoned farmland, where the cell towers didn't reach and the GPS signal flickered into static. I'd found it months ago, during a solo reconnaissance mission Nathan didn't know about—one of the small rebellions I'd committed before I even understood what I was rebelling against.
I pulled over at a derelict gas station, its pumps rusted and its windows shattered. The silence here was absolute, broken only by the wind in the trees and thedistant call of a bird I couldn't name. I turned off my phone. Removed the battery. Removed the SIM card. Then I retrieved a burner from my bag—one of three I'd purchased with cash at a convenience store Nathan didn't know I'd visited.
The first call was to Matt.
"It's done," I said when he answered. "I'm clear."
"How long?"
"A week, maybe less. He'll get suspicious if I'm gone too long."
"Be careful. If he figures out what you're doing—"
"He won't." I stared at the rusted pumps, the shattered windows, the sky that stretched endless and indifferent above me. "He thinks I'm tracking a lead for him. He thinks I'm being his good little soldier."
"And instead?"
"Instead, I'm going to find Gabriel Mire and ask him what really happened. Then I'm going to decide who deserves to die first."
Matt was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was grim. "You know this could go sideways a hundred different ways."
"I know."
"And you're still going through with it?"
I thought about Nathan's hands on my skin. Nathan's voice in my ear. Nathan's files on my laptop,reducing my life to a retrieval protocol and a dosage schedule.
"Yes," I said. "I'm still going through with it."
"Then good hunting." Matt's voice softened, just slightly. "And Bunny? Whatever you find out there—make sure you come back. You're the closest thing to family I've got."
The words hit something in me, something I'd thought was too frozen to feel. "I'll come back," I promised. "I'm not done yet."
I ended the call and sat in the silence, the burner phone heavy in my hand. Somewhere out there, Gabriel was waiting. Somewhere out there, the answers to my questions were hiding.
And somewhere behind me, Nathan Cross was counting the hours until his asset returned to her cage.
Good hunting,I told myself, and turned the key in the ignition.
The road stretched ahead, empty and endless and full of possibility. For the first time in months, I was alone. For the first time in months, I was free.
And I was going to use that freedom to burn everything down.
12
Into the Shadows
The safehouse was exactly where Gabriel's notes had said it would be.
I stood in the shadow of a derelict church on the edge of a town that had died before I was born, its steeple crumbling against a sky the color of old bruises, its windows staring blank and empty like the eyes of the dead. The coordinates from his journals had led me here—a place he'd described in clinical detail during one of our final sessions, when he'd still believed I would never escape the cagehe'd built for me.
"If anything ever happens to the Institute,"he'd said, his fingers tracing patterns on my bare shoulder while I knelt at his feet,"there's a place I've prepared. A sanctuary. You'll find it if you need to."
I'd thought it was a fantasy. A manipulation. Another layer of the conditioning designed to keep me tethered to him even in his absence. But here it was—real and solid and waiting, just as he'd promised.
I'd ditched the car two miles back, hiking through overgrown farmland and the skeletal remains of an orchard that had long since gone wild. My phone was dead in my pocket, battery removed. My tactical gear was hidden beneath a nondescript coat I'd bought at a gas station three states ago. I carried nothing that could be traced, nothing that could be tracked, nothing that could lead Nathan to where I was going.
The church's front door hung on rusted hinges, and it opened with a sound like a death rattle. Inside, the air was cold and still, heavy with the smell of dust and decay and something else—something sharp and clean that didn't belong in a place this abandoned. Antiseptic. The faint chemical trace of medical-grade cleaning supplies.
