OFF THE GRID

The corridor behind the auxiliary panel was narrow, unfinished — a service passage not meant for personnel transit. Exposed wiring. Raw concrete. Dim emergency lumen-strips casting skeletal light. It didn’t feel like a hallway; it felt like an escape route someone never expected to be used.

Adrian guided her through without touching her hand again — not out of distance, but because both of them understood the truth now: if someone was recording illegally, even proximity could be shaped into narrative. Every step they took had to be intentional — theirs, not harvested as evidence.

“Where does this lead?” she whispered.

“A secure wing built before the modernization overhaul,” he said, scanning the walls for tamper triggers. “It predates the surveillance net. It wasn’t folded into Division’s monitoring system when they upgraded internal oversight two years ago.”

“Why not?”

“Internal power politics,” he said dryly. “The old guard didn’t want full transparency. They wanted discretionary shadows. Conveniently, this is the last shadow left.”

She absorbed that. A wing of a federal facility built for secrecy — now their only chance at unedited truth.

They followed the corridor until it split. Adrian paused, checking orientation.

“This way.”

They turned left. The hum of climate vents and distant server cores deepened — like the belly of a machine. Elena glanced back once, instinctively checking for pursuit.

“Someone’s going to notice we left the holding room,” she murmured.

“They already have,” he said. “But if there’s a recording operation staged in there, they’ll be too busy scrubbing the feed to chase us yet. They’ll want to edit it before anyone in oversight sees what they captured.”

“They’re suppressing evidence to fabricate more.”

“Yes.”

Far ahead, the corridor opened into a steel hatch door with a rotary lock — analog, not biometric.

He spun it once, shouldered the door open, and motioned her through.

The room beyond was low-lit and windowless — half-operations center, half-forgotten archive. Stacks of decommissioned tech lined one wall; the other held dusty terminals still wired into backbone infrastructure no one in modern Division bothered to audit. Which meant if a message left from here —

—it disappeared off their grid.

Adrian sealed the hatch behind them.

Only then did he face her fully.

“We have to decide the narrative before morning,” he said. “Not just what you’ll say — what we will stand on. Because if our story fractures at any point, they’ll carve us apart.”

She nodded slowly. “Then tell me what they’re going to hit first.”

He paced once — not out of tension, but alignment of strategy.

“There are four fronts they’ll weaponize:

1. Power.

They will say you were too young, too subordinate, too dependent — that I held authority and you had none.

2. Legitimacy.

They will claim your interest wasn’t genuine — that you were manipulated, groomed, pressured, or naive.

3. Corruption.

They will insist you’re a smokescreen — that your involvement is a distraction or fabrication.

4. Autonomy.

They’ll insist you’re not an agent in this story. Just fallout.”

She absorbed each word.

Then:

“And what’s the counterweight?”

His eyes fixed on hers.

“You stand as choice — not casualty.”

That hit somewhere deeper than fear could reach.

“And you?” she asked.

“My defense is not institutional. It’s relational.” His voice was steady, unvarnished. “If I deny you, they win. If I protect you without acknowledging you — they win. The only path through is truth said without apology.”

Heat rose beneath her sternum — not romantic heat, but something older: dignity finding its spine again.

She moved closer to the table, bracing her hands on its cold steel edge.

“Then tell me the rest,” she said. “Everything I don’t know yet. Everything I walk into tomorrow blind if you don’t say it now.”

He hesitated —

for the first time since the name leak.

Not reluctance.

Grief.

“There were two leak attempts before this,” he said.

She stilled. “Two?”

“One from a political channel aligned with the board. They wanted a controlled reveal — paint you as unstable, fold me into bureaucratic removal, tie everything up quietly. I blocked it.”

“And the second?”

He met her eyes.

“Blackmail.”

Her breath caught.

“Against you?”

“No,” he said. “Against you. They wanted leverage through your silence. They threatened your academic record, your immigration status, your research fellowship — everything they could erase without paperwork trail. I killed that attempt too.”

She stared at him — not in shock, but in the sudden comprehension of scope.

He hadn’t just been protecting her physically.

He had been protecting her existence.

“For how long?” she whispered.

“Since the night we ran.”

The room thickened with a different weight — not fear, not adrenaline —

the weight of understanding.

“You should have told me,” she said — not accusation, just truth.

“I know,” he said — not excuse, just fact.

“Why didn’t you?”

He exhaled once.

“Because I didn’t want your first awakening to agency to be born out of terror. I wanted you to choose — not react.”

He looked at her then — fully, without guard.

“And you did.”

Something inside her settled into place.

That was why the storm hadn’t broken her yet.

Not because she was shielded

—because she had not been owned.

He stepped closer — not touching, but near enough that the air shifted.

“Elena,” he said quietly, “after tonight, they will come for the version of you that is easiest to kill. Tomorrow — you steal back every version.”

Her voice was low. “With you beside me.”

“Yes.”

The hatch rattled once.

Not a knock —

a test of whether it was locked.

Someone had followed.

Not Lang.

Lang would come with clearance.

This was someone who didn’t want to be seen approaching at all.

Adrian’s eyes hardened.

“They’re not hunting evidence anymore,” he murmured. “They’re hunting control.”

The handle twitched again.

Stronger.

Elena’s pulse surged.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

Adrian turned toward the hatch, jaw set.

“We stop waiting for their terms.”

The rotary lock shifted again —

someone working a bypass from the outside.

A click.

A second click.

They had seconds.

Adrian didn’t step back.

He stepped forward.

Between her and the door.

And just before the seal gave way, he said —

“Whoever comes through that door decides our next enemy.”

The lock snapped.

The hatch began to swing open slowly,

and the figure stepping through… was not who either of them expected.