Chapter Six

The silence inside the vault thickened.

Trade her?

Sera's pulse slammed behind her ribs. “What do you mean trade me?”

Aiden didn’t blink. “Mara doesn’t just work for herself. She was hired. Contracted. Someone out there still wants what Elise hid. And if they think you’re the key…”

“They’ll use her,” Lucien finished, his voice raw and brutal. “As leverage.”

Sera staggered back, fury lighting through her like a fuse. “No. No, I’m done being someone’s collateral. I’m not a pawn in Elise’s game, or yours, or Mara’s ”

“You already are,” Aiden said, softly. “We all are.”

Lucien moved suddenly slamming a fist against the sealed vault wall. The clang echoed, but the steel didn’t give. “We’re wasting time.”

Aiden folded his arms. “There’s another way out. But you won’t like it.”

Lucien turned, deadly. “Try me.”

“There’s a maintenance corridor behind the south server bank. Unmarked. Elise used it once. You have sixty seconds to override its failsafe. After that, the system purges everything. Including us.”

Lucien was already at the terminal, fingers flying.

Sera looked at Aiden. “Why are you helping us?”

He looked at her with something colder than pity. “Because I already failed your sister once. I’m not doing it again.”

The lights above flickered.

Lucien cursed under his breath. “System’s dirty. The code’s bleeding, someone's overriding me from the outside.”

A pause.

Then Sera stepped forward.

“I can do it.”

Lucien looked over. “You don’t even know the system.”

“No,” she said, pulling open the terminal casing and exposing the manual switches beneath. “But Elise taught me how to break one.”

Her hands flew switches, levers, override keys.

The lights stopped flickering.

A beep sounded from the far wall. A panel slid open.

The tunnel.

Lucien looked at her eyes unreadable. “How many secrets are you keeping, Sera?”

“Fewer than you,” she snapped, brushing past him.

They entered the corridor.

And the door sealed behind them.

The Corridor

The walls pulsed with emergency red lights. Narrow. Hot. Like a throat.

Aiden led. Lucien followed. Sera walked between them trapped in more ways than one.

“Where does this go?” she asked.

“Calder’s East Annex,” Aiden said. “If Mara thinks you’re trapped, she won’t have eyes there yet.”

Lucien’s voice was sharp. “She doesn’t need eyes. She’s already in the system.”

“Then we move fast,” Aiden said.

But the corridor wasn’t empty.

Halfway through, a motion sensor blinked.

A laser grid lit up ahead one Lucien didn’t remember installing.

“Trap,” he muttered. “Mara’s improvising.”

Behind them, something hissed.

A door began to close.

“We don’t have time,” Aiden growled.

Lucien grabbed Sera’s arm. “Jump.”

“What ?”

He didn’t wait.

He lifted her by the waist and threw her through the grid just as it began to ignite.

She hit the floor, gasping, scraping her palms on concrete. Rolled.

Lucien followed, barely clearing the beam.

Aiden stayed behind.

“Go,” he shouted. “I’ll find another way out.”

Lucien opened his mouth to argue but the door slammed down between them.

Gone.

The East Annex

Lucien’s safehouse wing was quieter. Older. Less wired.

Sera sank onto a velvet bench, chest heaving, hands still shaking.

Lucien crouched in front of her. “You good?”

She met his eyes. “Define good.”

He almost smiled. Almost.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he said. “Override a military-coded vault.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of trusting anyone long enough to admit you needed help,” she shot back.

They stared at each other.

Then

His hand brushed her cheek. Light. Hesitant.

She didn’t flinch this time.

Her voice cracked. “Why do I feel like I’m falling?”

Lucien’s eyes burned. “Because you are.”

And then he kissed her.

It wasn’t soft.

It was a confession and a collapse years of silence breaking against skin. Her hands tangled in his shirt. His breath hitched. For one moment, there was no Mara. No secrets. No war.

Just heat. Hunger. Something dangerously close to need.

But the moment shattered as fast as it came.

Lucien pulled back.

His phone buzzed.

He looked down.

One new message:

“You’ve made your move. My turn.” M

Sera saw it too.

“What does she mean?”

Lucien’s face changed. All emotion gone.

“She means we’re not the hunters anymore.”

He stood.

“We’re the bait.”

Sera stood slowly, the heat of Lucien’s kiss still on her lips, but the buzz of Mara’s message already sinking like ice into her spine.

“We’re the bait?” she repeated, heart hammering. “For what?”

Lucien didn’t answer right away. He moved to the console on the wall, an analog fallback system, disconnected from his usual networks. His fingers hovered over the panel before typing in a string of numbers that unlocked a hidden drawer behind the bookshelf.

Inside was a file. Paper. Thick.

Sera stepped closer. “What is that?”

“Everything Elise found on Project Halo,” Lucien said, voice low. “Or at least… everything she gave me.”

Sera’s breath caught. “She trusted you with that?”

“She didn’t trust me,” he said. “She used me. Just like she used you. Aiden wasn’t wrong.”

He opened the file. The first page showed a list of codenames. Dates. Transactions. Government seals.

One name was underlined twice in red ink.

A. Caulder.

Sera froze. “Is that…?”

Lucien stared at the page, his face going unreadable again.

“My father,” he said quietly. “August Caulder.”

Her stomach dropped.

“I thought he was dead.”

Lucien nodded once. “He is. But his operation isn’t. He started Project Halo. Elise didn’t just uncover corruption, she uncovered my bloodline.”

Sera stepped back. “Jesus.”

“She used that to get to me. She didn’t want my tech. She wanted my guilt.”

A bitter pause.

“She knew I’d try to bury it. Or burn it. She counted on me being a coward.”

Sera swallowed. “You’re not a coward.”

He looked up sharply.

“I’ve seen cowards,” she said. “They run. They lie to themselves. You, you hate yourself too much for that.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened. For a second, he looked like he might say something else. But the console blinked again.

New alert.

South Tower Breach.

“Someone’s inside the second wing,” Lucien said, eyes narrowing.

“Not Mara?” Sera asked.

He shook his head. “She doesn’t move this loud. This is a hit.”

Suddenly, the lights snapped off.

Total blackness.

Sera gasped, backing up as a whirring noise started overhead.

Lucien grabbed her wrist. “Move. Now.”

They sprinted toward the hallway just as a window exploded down the corridor.

Two figures in full black gear dropped through rifles raised, visors down.

Lucien shoved Sera behind a wall and returned fire, pinning one of the intruders with a clean shoulder shot.

The second one turned

And hesitated.

Then slowly… lowered their gun.

Lucien’s weapon didn’t waver. “Mask off.”

The figure paused, then pulled the helmet free.

It was a woman.

Late thirties. Blond. Cold eyes.

Lucien stared. “Emery.”

Sera peeked out. “You know her?”

Lucien’s tone was flat. “She used to run extraction for my company. Went off-grid two years ago.”

Emery gave a small smile. “Correction. I was erased by your company.”

Lucien lowered his weapon an inch. “What are you doing here?”

She tossed a small USB to the floor. “Delivering a message. From Elise.”

Sera lunged for it.

Lucien caught her hand. “It could be a trap.”

“I don’t care.”

She plugged it into the emergency port.

A single file appeared: "SERA_DO_NOT_TRUST HIM.mp4"

Lucien’s expression darkened. “Play it.”

Sera hesitated.

Then double-clicked.

The video loaded. Grainy. Dark room. Elise sat on the edge of a bed, blood on her sleeve, eyes hollow.

“Sera,” her voice cracked. “If you’re watching this, I’m either gone, or… worse.”

Sera’s breath caught.

Elise continued. “Lucien Calder is not your enemy. But he’s not your savior either. He’s the reason I disappeared. The reason I had to fake my death.”

Lucien turned ghostly.

“I loved him,” Elise whispered. “And I was wrong.”

The screen glitched.

Elise leaned closer, eyes wide. “He doesn’t know the whole truth. But if he finds out he’ll burn the world down to stop it.”

Static.

The video cut.

Silence stretched long and cruel.

Sera stood frozen.

Lucien whispered, “I didn’t know…”

And that’s when the final line of text appeared across the screen:

"TRUST NO ONE. NOT EVEN HER."