Chapter Twenty SixAria’s POVPain, then silence.My lungs gasped as dust and debris settled around me. I lay in the wreckage of the theater, the roar of the storm outside muffled by concrete, twisted steel, and dripping water.Everything burned.I hurt.Sharp shards of wood pressed into my ribs. My throat felt on fire. The taste of blood was copper on my tongue. I couldn’t move. But I remembered.Julian’s fingers, warm and fierce on my wrist. His voice trembling, then roaring my name. The explosion.I coughed, convulsing, and spat dust rings into blackness. My chest tightened. But I was alive.I pushed up, arms shaking, head pounding like thunder. Light flickered through a hole in the ceiling, electric white, pulsing. I swallowed past the kick of pain and turned.Where was he?Rubble lay between me and the exit. Flames lit pockets of shadow across the broken seats.I tasted fear as I dug my fingernails into concrete. Every breath burned.It took effort, every scrap of momentum I had
Chapter Twenty Five Julian’s POVShe stood in the ghost of a ruined theater, shoulders stiff, rain clinging to her hair like silver threads. The shattered screen behind her loomed like a cathedral window, watching us.My boots scraped wet marble. I stopped a few feet away. Close enough to feel the heat of her breath, not close enough to touch her. Not yet.“Julian.”My name trembled out of her mouth, not broken, not angry, just… raw. Like something she’d been holding in for too long.I swallowed hard. “You have it. Don’t you?”She nodded and turned slowly. In her palm was the holo-drive Elliot had given me. The one that was supposed to unlock everything. Or undo everything.Dr. Monroe’s voice was in that device.Her voice. The woman who rebuilt me, the one who made sure Aria would be the key to waking me up and maybe the key to destroying me too.Aria stared at it like it was poison. Her fingers trembled.“I didn’t want to open it alone,” she said.Her voice was stronger now, lined w
Chapter Twenty FourJulian’s POVThe tunnel smelled like rust, wet metal, and time, all decaying into each other.The man ahead of me moved with the certainty of someone who knew every inch of the underground. His footsteps were silent on the gravel, but I kept mine loud. I wanted him to know I was still behind him. Still watching. Still deciding if I’d put a bullet between his shoulder blades.We turned a sharp corner. Fluorescent emergency strips blinked dimly on the low ceiling, some flickering, some dead. The light cast his shadow in long, stuttering lines across the corridor walls.I cleared my throat. “What did you mean when you said I wasn’t supposed to wake up again?”He didn’t turn. “Exactly what it sounds like.”“Then you’d better make it sound better,” I snapped. “Or I’m walking out.”He paused at a service door and keyed in an old code on a rusted panel. The door buzzed, then clicked open. Warm air rushed out, thick with ozone and faint electricity. I followed him in a nar
Chapter Twenty ThreeJulian’s POV“Target reacquired. Elevation drop detected. Adjusting route.”The synthetic voice sliced through the night as the drone banked left, engines pulsing with menace.I didn’t look back.“Come on, you bastards,” I muttered, sprinting down the skeletal remains of what used to be a skywalk. “You wanted me? You got me.”My boots hit the metal grating with heavy clangs, each step vibrating through my spine. The wind whipped hard against my jacket, slicing through the seams like tiny razors. My chest burned. But I didn’t slow down.Below, flashes of red lit the shattered street, scanning in waves. A misstep, one moment too long in the open, and it would lock on.The voice returned, no longer mechanical.“She’s not the one we want, Julian.”I skidded to a stop.Not a drone. Not a recording.This was live.“You hear that?” I said aloud, panting. “You don’t get to decide that anymore.”I darted right through the remains of a collapsed corridor, the ceiling cracke
Chapter Twenty Two Aria’s POVThe corridors echoed with our footsteps, fast, frantic, the slap of boots against concrete ringing louder than any alarm.My lungs burned. Not from exertion, but from fear. From adrenaline.Julian’s grip on my hand was tight, unrelenting. His skin was hot and damp, like a fire barely held in check. We didn’t speak. There wasn’t time for words, only movement.Only survival.Behind us, the vault’s lights flickered. Systems shutting down. Or maybe booting something up.The warning that had flashed across the screen still pulsed in my mind.Trace initiated.“Left,” Julian barked, yanking me toward a narrow hall. The ceiling hung lower here. Pipes ran overhead, dripping moisture that smacked the floor like a ticking clock.“How long before they reach us?” I asked between gasps.“Too soon,” he said. “If they’ve mobilized a drone unit or used signal triangulation, we could have five minutes… or one.”I didn’t like either option.We rounded another corner. The a
Chapter Twenty-One Aria’s POVThe screen flickered again, brightening the dark room in ghostly blue light. I took a step forward, heart racing, the taste of Julian still on my lips and the echo of his breath on my skin.And then, there she was.My mother.She appeared on screen with her usual clinical calm, hair swept into a bun, lab coat crisp even in the grainy resolution. But there was something in her eyes. Something I hadn’t seen in years.Fear.“Subject log: Swan Echo Protocol,” she began, her voice steady. “If you’re watching this, it means the failsafe has been breached. It means the people I feared most have already found you, or they will soon.”Julian stood beside me, unmoving. His breath was shallow, his arms folded tight across his chest like he was holding himself together by sheer force.Dr. Monroe’s gaze dropped, her hands fiddling with something out of frame. “This project was never meant to become a weapon. I thought if I could give humanity a second chance… if I co