Chapter 6: Hearts on the line

“Roman? Harlow? What the hell are you doing here?” Riven’s voice echoed off the pine-paneled walls, sharp with surprise.

Roman stepped forward, his tone steady but urgent. “We got the burner alert about the fire. First flight out. We drove straight from the airport.”

Harlow didn’t bother with a greeting. “This wasn’t some accident. You know that. So do we.” Her hood dropped back, revealing her platinum bob as she scanned the room like she expected something hidden in the walls.

Kael turned from his workbench and cleared his throat. “Am I supposed to know what’s going on?”

“I’m Kael Quinn.” He extended a hand to Roman.

Roman met it with a firm grip. “Roman Vale. Riven’s brother.”

Kael gave a brief nod, then looked to Harlow.

“She’s my manager,” Riven said quietly.

Kael studied her. “You’re the one who keeps him alive, huh?”

“Most days,” Harlow replied, her voice dry but not unfriendly.

“They’re here because this fire wasn’t random,” Riven added. “Someone set it.”

Kael’s expression hardened. He nodded once. “Alright. What do we know?”

Roman pulled a small hard drive from his bag and connected it to a weathered laptop on the workbench. Code filled the screen, followed by a list of video files. The air in the room thickened with a kind of dread only secrets could summon.

“Let’s start with this,” Roman said, opening a file labeled FIELD_TEST_2015.

The footage flickered to life. A teenage Kael stood in a school hallway, gripping a small camera, face tight with anger. Two boys appeared in the background—one of them unmistakably Riven, younger and visibly cornered. Kael shouted something, shoved the camera toward Riven, who flinched.

“Pause,” Harlow said, stepping in. “Back it up.”

Roman scrubbed back a few seconds. A third figure appeared deep in the background, standing still, holding another camera. Their face was hidden, but their posture suggested they weren’t just a bystander.

“They were recording you both,” she said. “From two angles.”

Riven leaned closer to the screen. “I remember that night. The hallway. The yelling. But I thought I imagined it.”

Kael’s voice was low. “We weren’t alone. And we weren’t safe.”

Roman tapped a key. “There’s a metadata log in this file. Someone uploaded it to a restricted server within an hour. It was deliberate. They knew what they were doing.”

“You think it was Mason?” Riven asked.

Kael nodded, gaze fixed on the screen. “He controlled school security. He installed the cameras.”

Roman didn’t look up. “I traced a second upload from that night to an encrypted off-grid vault. Same IP used by Silas Greaves' tech firm. They didn’t just monitor you. They stored it. Cataloged it.”

“Why?” Kael asked.

Harlow stepped forward. “To build a profile. To decide which ones were useful, and which ones were threats.”

Riven’s voice was tight. “And I was a threat.”

“They didn’t want your truth. They wanted your silence,” Harlow said. “So they erased what you knew. They made you believe it was your choice.”

The weight of it all pressed against Riven’s chest. “I thought I ran. But I was pushed.”

Kael didn’t let him off easy. “You still ran.”

“I know.”

Roman cut in. “We’ve got more. This is just phase one. The real story’s on this.” He slid over a second drive. “Harlow intercepted it from Leo Vane’s private server.”

Riven’s eyes narrowed. “Leo had access to this?”

“Silas used him,” Harlow said. “And now we have his data. They’re selling these surveillance tools to defense contractors. Tracking emotional responses. Memory suppression trials. It's worse than we thought.”

Rain began to tap against the windows as storm clouds rolled in outside.

Kael crossed his arms. “What’s the move?”

“We leak it all,” Riven said. “Everything.”

Roman launched the decryption, lines of code racing across the screen. Names. Dates. Transfers. And then — a new video appeared. Grainy, but clear.

Two figures walked toward Riven’s cabin. One held a fuel-soaked rag.

The timestamp was minutes before the fire started.

“They didn’t just want to scare you,” Harlow said. “They wanted you gone.”

Ari Hollis burst through the side door, soaked from the rain. “You’re gonna want to see this.” He held up his phone, displaying a photo. The doorpost outside had been carved with a fresh emblem — a jagged B inside a circle.

“Mason’s mark,” Kael said quietly.

He turned, grabbed a hammer from the wall, but Riven stepped in front of him.

“Don’t be reckless.”

Kael looked at him for a long beat, then set the hammer down. “Then we go smart. But we go hard.”

Roman glanced at the clock. “We hit Mason’s server before midnight. That’s the only window.”

Harlow nodded. “Once he sees the footage was copied, he’ll wipe everything. We won’t get another shot.”

Thunder rumbled deep and long above them.

They gathered what they could — laptops, drives, jackets — preparing for a night none of them could take back.

But just as Riven reached for the doorknob, it turned on its own.

The door creaked open.

And there he stood.

Mason Briggs. Dripping from the rain, coat dark and heavy, boots caked in mud. He said nothing at first. Just watched them. Studied each face.

Kael’s fists curled at his sides.

Riven’s heartbeat pounded in his ears

.

Then Mason spoke, his smile was slow and cold.

“I wondered when you’d come knocking.”