Novels by Erica Owen

POV: AlexMia didn’t speak for two days.After we brought her and the others back to Darkhaven, she barely left the infirmary. The kids were quarantined, evaluated, fed, and sedated—carefully, gently. Most of them had never spoken more than two sentences. They didn’t know how to accept kindness. Every meal placed in front of them was met with suspicion. Every soft touch made them flinch.They had survived the lab, yes.But they weren’t free of it.Not yet.And neither was Mia.She sat at Chito’s bedside, day and night, holding his hand. He was stable now—barely. A punctured lung, two cracked ribs, low blood oxygen. But he was alive. That was enough.She didn’t cry.She didn’t scream.But her silence said everything.And then, on the third morning, she stood up, walked into the council chamber, and said:“We burn it. All of it.”---POV: Mia (Zero)The room fell quiet.Kelly was at the head of the table. Hugo leaned against the back wall, arms crossed. Alex stood to my left.“They won’

POV: Mia (Zero)The emergency tunnel was colder than I remembered.Chito leaned heavily against my side, barely conscious, his breathing shallow and wet. The other children—four who could run, two that could barely walk—clustered behind us like shadows, their bare feet silent against the steel floor.And Echo followed last.Always last.Silent as a ghost.Every footstep toward the surface tasted like hope.But hope, I had learned, was often the bait before the trap.We reached the last bend, and I saw the door ahead.A reinforced steel lock with a palm scanner and a manual override.One more code.One more push.And we’d be free.I handed Chito off to the strongest of the older boys—Rylo, maybe fourteen, already developing the angular shoulders of a fighter—and stepped forward toward the panel.I was halfway there when I smelled it.Not blood. Not sulfur.Tea.Hot and herbal.And then he spoke.“You really thought I wouldn’t be here to say goodbye?”The Broker stepped out from the sha

POV: Mia (Zero)The morning routine went unchanged.Lights up at 0700. Cold protein rations delivered through a slot in the wall. Guard rotation every two hours. I ate half my portion, chewed the rest and tucked it under my cot—out of sight. Everything had to look normal.Because if they suspected me, the Broker would lock me down.And I wouldn’t get another chance.By 1000 hours, the hallways quieted. The next system recycle wouldn’t hit until 1140. That gave me ninety minutes to plan.To move.To burn.---I found the vent panel again by pretending to clean up the water I’d “spilled.” My eyes tracked every camera. I knew how they worked. I used to study them on my first training runs, plotting angles and blind spots. Some things your body never forgets.I cracked the panel open. Slid inside.The tunnels welcomed me like old ghosts.At the second junction, I tapped the wall three times.A beat later, he answered.Three taps. One pause. Two taps.Our old code.I smiled.“Chito,” I whi

POV: Mia (Zero)I didn’t sleep.The bed in my cell was nothing more than a slab of steel and foam, and the air stank of disinfectant and memories. But it wasn’t discomfort that kept me awake.It was her name.Echo.The girl my brother had seen. The one they were building now that I—Mia, Zero, whatever I was—had started slipping through their fingers. She wasn’t just another weapon. She was something worse.Something perfected.I replayed Chito’s words in my head over and over.> “She doesn’t talk. Doesn’t sleep. They wired her in from the beginning. She’s what they want all of you to become.”I remembered the cold way the Broker watched me from behind the glass earlier. Not with anger. Not even with disappointment.With detachment.I wasn’t a loss to him.I was a prototype.Obsolete.And Echo… Echo was the future.---They fed me the next morning. Cold meat, protein paste, and water infused with wolfsbane—a dampener, enough to keep my instincts dull without shutting them off entirely.

POV: Mia (Zero)The air in the Broker’s compound smelled the same.Sterile metal. Bleached floors. Cold blood dried beneath rubber soles.As I stepped through the security checkpoint, I kept my eyes low and my shoulders slouched just enough to sell the story. A broken operative. A failed tool, crawling home with her head bowed and her mind hollowed. I could almost hear his voice in my skull, smug and waiting.Welcome back, Zero.The guards didn’t touch me. They didn’t need to. They recognized me by scent.One of them, a thick-jawed wolf with arms covered in ritual burn marks, sneered as I passed. “Thought you were dead.”I didn’t reply. Zero wouldn’t have.He smirked, satisfied with my silence, and opened the gate with a gesture.Beyond it, the hall stretched into the belly of the machine.Cameras hummed above.Every wall, every tile, every scent made my stomach twist. I had seen it all before. In fragments. In nightmares. Now it was all here, intact and unrepentant.The Broker hadn’t

POV: AlexMia hadn’t spoken since I carried her back from the forest.She sat curled in one of the deep armchairs by the fire, my coat still wrapped tightly around her. Her skin was pale, damp with cold sweat, the curve of her spine pulled in like she was bracing against a blow. The flames threw shadows across her face, highlighting the faint bruises where I’d held her down. Not hard enough to harm, but enough to restrain.It hadn’t been a fight.It had been survival.Mine. And hers.Across the room, Hugo stood with his arms crossed, jaw tense, eyes locked on her like he still didn’t trust that the assassin inside her had truly gone dormant. I didn’t blame him.I didn’t fully trust it either.Kelly entered silently, dropping a rolled-up set of schematics onto the table in front of us. The edges curled toward the firelight, revealing a blueprint of the estate’s underground systems.“We checked the safehouse’s emergency tunnels,” she said. “Eric’s gone. Took a supply bag and a mobile co