NOWHERE TO STAND

Agents moved swiftly through the underground lot, sweeping every corner, clearing lines of sight. The impostor operatives had vanished — but the tension they left behind had not. Elena could feel it in the way everyone moved: tight shoulders, clipped speech, eyes scanning not for enemies outside… but inside.

They escorted her and Adrian to a secondary lift — not the front corridor, but a sealed freight elevator with biometric locks. Two agents stood inside already, one tapping into a secure relay, the other watching them both with a kind of deliberate neutrality. Not hostile — but not trusting either.

The doors shut. Heavy. Final.

The lift ascended.

Adrian didn’t leave Elena’s side. Even when the agents positioned themselves opposite them — not with guns drawn, but with the awareness that they might need them — he didn’t step away.

When they emerged, it was into a dimly lit command floor. Not a safehouse. Not a bunker. A war room.

Monitors lined the walls. Maps. Data feeds. News coverage. Government seals blurred under redacted overlays.

And at the center table —

a woman in a dark suit turned toward them.

Late forties. Composed. Cold eyes that saw everything twice and regretted none of it.

“Wells,” she said. “You’ve made quite a storm.”

Adrian’s posture shifted ever so slightly. “Deputy Director Lang.”

So this was it — not foot soldiers now, but the threshold of people who could rewrite fates.

Lang’s gaze moved to Elena. Assessing. Measuring. Not as a person — as a variable.

“This must be the student,” she said.

Not the witness.

Not the survivor.

The student.

Already a category. Already stripped down.

Lang gestured. “Sit.”

Elena did not move until Adrian did. He pulled out the chair beside her. Not across. Beside. Visible alignment.

Lang clocked it.

“You’ve forced us into containment protocol,” Lang said. “And compromised three field networks in seventy-two hours.”

“I exposed corruption,” Adrian replied evenly. “They compromised themselves.”

Lang didn’t flinch. “Idealism is a luxury you cannot afford at this level.”

Then her gaze cut back to Elena.

“And you. I need to know if you’re an asset — or collateral.”

The word landed like a slap.

Elena didn’t break eye contact. “I’m neither.”

Lang arched a brow. “Then tell me what you are.”

Elena’s voice was steady. “The reason you can’t bury this quietly.”

A faint tightening at Lang’s jaw indicated the hit landed.

Adrian didn’t interject. He didn’t need to. He was watching her — not to see if she faltered, but with something new in his eyes.

Recognition.

Lang leaned back. “You’re under federal protection until we determine how compromised this breach is. You don’t speak to press. You don’t contact anyone. Your identity stays sealed until—”

“Until what?” Elena asked. “Until you decide which version of me benefits your optics?”

Lang’s lips thinned.

Adrian cut in, voice like flint. “We’re not negotiating her personhood.”

Lang’s gaze flicked to him. “You lost the luxury of negotiating when you violated chain of command.”

“And you lost jurisdiction when your own division tried to extract us off-record,” he fired back.

A single charged silence passed.

Then Lang shifted gears. “You want names,” she said. “You want to know who inside Division leaked the safehouse.”

“Yes,” Adrian said.

“You won’t get them,” Lang replied. “Not yet. This investigation outranks your clearance.”

“So it was internal,” Elena said quietly.

Lang didn’t confirm. Which was confirmation.

She stood. “You’ll be transferred to a secure facility in the morning. Separately.”

The word dropped like a blade.

Adrian’s voice cut in, sharp. “No.”

Lang looked at him. “Your objections are noted.”

“You separate us,” he said, “and she disappears into the bureaucracy as a footnote.”

“Not if she cooperates.”

“If she cooperates,” Adrian said, “you’ll brand her a victim to protect institutional credibility. If she resists, you’ll brand her complicit to neutralize her. Either way, you erase her.”

Lang stared at him — calm, surgical, unbothered.

“You’re assuming I care which outcome she receives,” she said.

She might as well have said: You are not people. You are leverage.

Elena’s hands curled into fists beneath the table.

“So what happens now?” she asked. “You hold us like chess pieces until the news cycle moves on?”

Lang didn’t answer.

Because she didn’t need to.

That was the plan.

Adrian exhaled slowly — and Elena saw it then, the shift behind his eyes: his final reserve snapping into place.

“We’re done here,” he said.

Lang’s gaze sharpened. “You don’t walk out of this room on your own terms.”

“I don’t need to,” he replied. “I just need to make it clear to every person in this building that if she vanishes — or if you frame her — I go public with every off-record detail of this operation. Including the internal sabotage Division is trying to outrun.”

Something cold and calculating slid through Lang’s expression.

“That sounds like a threat,” she said.

“It’s a guarantee.”

Silence thickened.

Lang didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.

Then — quietly:

“You just put a countdown on both of your heads.”

“No,” Adrian said. “The conspiracy did. I just refused to let you outsource the body count.”

Lang regarded him for three long seconds…

…then turned away.

“Take them to holding,” she instructed the nearest agent. “Together.”

It wasn’t mercy.

It was containment.

Together — because if she separated them now, in front of witnesses, it would validate his accusation.

Before they were escorted out, Lang gave Elena one last look — not hostile, not pitying.

Studying.

Predator evaluating whether prey might have fangs.

They were led down a corridor into a reinforced room — not a cell, but not freedom. A couch. A table. Bulletproof glass. Observation.

The door sealed.

Silence.

Elena turned to Adrian, adrenaline still pulsing hot beneath her skin.

“They’re not protecting us,” she said. “They’re staging us.”

“I know,” he replied.

“And you’re still choosing to stand with me.”

His eyes found hers.

“There was never a moment I wasn’t.”

She didn’t breathe.

Didn’t blink.

Because now it was said clearly: not an accident, not a crisis-born proximity —

a choice.

For the first time since this began, she felt the floor tilt not from fear — but from the terrifying clarity of knowing she wasn’t alone anymore.

Then — through the glass —

a ripple of movement.

An agent sprinted past the viewing hall, shouting into a comm.

Another alert lit the corridor screens.

Leaked.

Somewhere, somehow,

her confidential status had just been breached.

The wall monitor flashed with a breaking headline:

IDENTITY OF THE STUDENT CONNECTED TO PROFESSOR LEAK COMING SOON — SOURCES CLAIM NAME CONFIRMED

Not tomorrow.

Not morning.

Now.

Someone was burning the fuse early.

And whoever it was…

…was inside this building.