Chapter 24

Isabella's POV 

​Gravity is the only law that doesn't care about a Vane’s signature.

​The wind was a roar of cold needles against my skin. For a heartbeat, the city was upside down—a grid of electric fire and predatory shadows spinning around the axis of Liam’s hand. He didn't let go. His fingers were a vice around mine, the only solid thing in a world that had lost its floor.

​The net from the DOJ drones hissed above us, a web of carbon fiber catching nothing but the empty air where we had stood a second before.

​"The chute!" Liam’s voice was torn away by the gale.

​I didn't answer. I couldn't. The air was being forced out of my lungs.

​We weren't falling into the abyss. Liam had timed the jump for the maintenance track of the window-washing rig—a steel rail that jutted out three floors below the roofline. We hit the reinforced plastic of the cradle with a bone-jarring crack.

​The impact vibrated through my teeth. I rolled, my shoulder hitting the metal frame. Liam landed heavy beside me, a grunt of pain escaping him as his injured shoulder took the brunt of the slide.

​"Movement," I rasped, pushing myself up.

​"Drones are recalibrating," Liam said. He was already at the control panel of the rig. "They can't dive this close to the building’s skin without risking a collision. We have ninety seconds."

​"My mother," I said. The image of the black sedan was burned into my retinas. "She was in the car, Liam. She wasn't in Westchester."

​Liam didn't look up from the wiring he was ripping out of the rig's console. "She played the board. She played Leo. She played us."

​"She’s heading for the Jersey uplink."

​"Then we go to the street."

​He jammed two wires together. The rig lurched. It didn't descend with the smooth, motorized hum of a luxury building’s maintenance tool. It dropped in a series of violent, mechanical stutters.

​I looked up. Above us, the steel shutters of the boardroom were still sealed. Somewhere behind that metal, a boy who looked like my mother was holding a room full of billionaires hostage with a sonic emitter.

​"Leo isn't the primary," I said. "He’s the distraction."

​"A high-cost one," Liam replied. He stood up, bracing himself against the swaying guardrail. He looked at me, his eyes scanning for damage. "You’re bleeding."

​I touched my forehead. My fingers came away red. A shard of the dissolved glass must have caught me.

​"It’s a scratch. The market is the one hemorrhaging."

​"The market is dead, Isabella. We’re in the autopsy phase now."

​The rig dropped another ten floors. The wind whistled through the gaps in the plastic shielding.

​"You knew she was capable of this," I said. "In Chapter 1, at the gala, you told me Eleanor was a 'structural risk.' You weren't talking about her health."

​"I was talking about her ambition. I didn't realize it had a second branch."

​"Leo."

​"If he’s real, the trust is a lie. The marriage is a liability."

​"Is that what you're worried about? The legal standing of the cage?"

​Liam stepped closer. The rig was swinging wildly now, the cables groaning under the uneven weight. He reached out, his hand hovering near my face before he dropped it.

​"I'm worried about the basement," he said. "If your mother is at the Jersey house, she’s not there for the memories. She’s there for the core."

​"She can't have it. I locked the frequency."

​"You locked the Zurich exit. You didn't lock the physical hardware in the basement. If she pulls the drives, the lockout doesn't matter. She can sell the raw data to the highest bidder. Arthur. The state. Anyone with a billion to spare."

​"She wouldn't."

​"She already did. She sold you to me, didn't she?"

​The words were a cold splash of reality. I looked away, toward the blurring lights of the 20th floor.

​"We're not going to Jersey," I said.

​"We have to."

​"No. We’re going to the pharmacy."

​Liam paused. "The one in Queens? Why?"

​"The photo," I said. "The one from the gossip site. The one taken through the window. It wasn't just a camera, Liam. It was a transmitter. My mother didn't just watch me. She used the apartment as a relay node. If I can get to that node, I can intercept her signal before she hits the Jersey house."

​"It’s a long shot."

​"It’s the only math that works."

​The rig jerked to a final, jarring halt at the fourth-floor mezzanine. We were above the street now. The sirens were a chorus below us. Blue and red lights danced on the undersides of the stone gargoyles that decorated the Sterling Tower’s lower tiers.

​"Jump?" Liam asked.

​"Jump."

​We vaulted over the railing, landing on the stone ledge of the mezzanine. We moved like shadows through the decorative arches, heading for the service stairs that led to the alley.

​The alley smelled of rain and exhaust.

​We ran three blocks before the first police cruiser screamed past the end of the street. I kept my head down, my hair matted with blood and mist. Beside me, Liam was a ghost in a ruined suit. He walked with a slight limp, his shoulder held stiffly.

​"The subway," I said. "No GPS. Like before."

​"They'll have the facial recognition at the turnstiles," Liam warned.

​"Not if we don't use the turnstiles."

​I led him to a construction site on 34th. A gaping hole in the sidewalk led down to a utility tunnel—a relic of the old city that the new Sterling Tech maps didn't bother to update.

​We descended into the dark.

​The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and iron. I pulled a small flashlight from my pocket—the one I’d kept in my trench coat since the island. The beam was weak, a yellow finger poking at the grime-coated walls.

​"You're very prepared for a woman who just wanted a bakery coffee," Liam said. His voice echoed in the narrow space.

​"I grew up with Arthur Vane, Liam. I learned early that the exits are more important than the entrances."

​"And the marriage? Was that an exit?"

​I stopped. The light of the flash hit the rust on a massive steam pipe.

​"It was a transaction," I said. "You know that. You're the one who drafted the terms."

​"The terms changed on the roof."

​"The roof was adrenaline. This is the dark."

​"I meant what I said, Isabella."

​I turned the light on him. He didn't flinch. He stood there, covered in dust and blood, looking like a man who had lost everything and found something he didn't know how to hold.

​"You said you didn't know how to ask me to stay," I said. "That's not an admission of feeling, Liam. That's an admission of failure. You couldn't code me, so you tried to compile me."

​"It’s the same thing to me."

​"Then you’ve never really listened to the frequency."

​I turned back to the tunnel and kept walking. My chest hurt. It wasn't the fall. It was the weight of the words we weren't saying.

​We reached the Queens-Midtown tunnel access after twenty minutes of silent trekking. The roar of the subway trains was a vibration in the soles of my shoes.

​"Wait," Liam whispered.

​He pulled me into a niche behind a transformer box.

​A shadow moved at the end of the tunnel. It wasn't a worker. It was a man in a grey uniform. Not police. Not Sterling.

​"Vane Security," I breathed.

​"Arthur’s people. He’s not waiting for the legal fallout. He’s hunting."

​"He thinks the core is on me."

​"He's right. It is."

​Liam reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, glass vial. He had taken it from the tech hub on the roof.

​"The override?" I asked.

​"A localized EMP. If I trigger this, everything within fifty feet goes dark. The cameras, the radios, the Vane trackers."

​"And my phone?"

​"Including your phone."

​"Do it."

​Liam smashed the vial against the concrete.

​There was no sound. No flash. But the hum of the transformer behind us died instantly. The emergency lights in the tunnel flickered and went out.

​"Run," Liam said.

​We burst out of the niche. The Vane guard shouted, his flashlight beam swinging wildly, but his radio was a dead weight in his hand. We scrambled up a ladder, through a manhole, and out onto a rain-slicked street in Long Island City.

​The bakery was two blocks away.

​The apartment was exactly as I had left it.

​The linoleum was still peeling. The air still smelled of burnt sugar. But the quiet was gone.

​I walked to the window. The crack in the curtain was still there.

​"Isabella, don't go near the glass," Liam warned.

​I ignored him. I went to the nightstand. I didn't look for a camera. I looked for the wiring. I pulled the bed away from the wall, exposing a small, recessed outlet that hadn't been there when I moved in.

​"A hardline," I said. "She wasn't using the air. She was using the building’s copper."

​I sat on the floor, my laptop open. The screen flickered to life, its battery struggling against the EMP's lingering interference.

​"I'm in," I whispered.

​"What do you see?"

​"The Jersey house. She’s there. She’s in the basement."

​I opened the camera feed from the Jersey server.

​The basement was a cathedral of server racks and cooling fans. In the center of the room stood Eleanor Vane. She wasn't in a hospital gown. She was wearing the same white coat she had worn the day she "collapsed."

​She was holding a tablet.

​Beside her stood Leo. He was holding the sonic emitter.

​"Mother," I whispered.

​Eleanor looked up at the camera. It was as if she could see me through the miles of fiber-optic cable. She smiled. It wasn't the smile of a mother. It was the smile of a founder.

​"Isabella," her voice came through the laptop speakers, crisp and cold. "I hope the fall didn't damage the asset. You always were the most durable of my projects."

​"Projects?" I asked. My fingers were shaking on the keys.

​"Arthur wanted a daughter. I wanted a legacy. Leo was the prototype. You were the final build."

​"Liam," I said, looking up. "The second child. He isn't my brother."

​"No," Eleanor said. "He’s the first iteration of the Medusa logic. A biological core. Why do you think he can use the emitter without a suit, Isabella? Why do you think he looks so much like me?"

​I looked at Leo on the screen. He wasn't breathing. Not really. His chest didn't move.

​"He's a ghost," I said.

​"He's the future," Eleanor replied. "And now, I need the final piece. The frequency you've locked in Zurich. Give it to me, or I’ll have Leo begin the purge."

​"The purge of what?" Liam asked, leaning over my shoulder.

​Eleanor’s eyes shifted to him.

​"The Sterling board, Mr. Sterling. I’ve left a secondary emitter in the boardroom. If I don't enter the override code in five minutes, the vibration will increase until the structural integrity of the 48th floor reaches its limit. The tower will fall."

​"You’d kill them all?" I asked.

​"They are variables, Isabella. And variables are meant to be eliminated."

​Cliffhanger:

​I looked at the screen. I looked at the code.

​I could give her the frequency. I could save the building. But I would be handing her the key to a weapon that could rewrite humanity.

​My phone buzzed on the floor.

​A message from an unknown sender.

​Look under the bed, Isabella. The real gift isn't in the wires.

​I reached under the frame. My fingers hit something cold. Metal.

​I pulled it out.

​It was a small, sapphire-encrusted box. The one Arthur had given me on my sixteenth birthday. The one I thought had been lost in the fire.

​I opened it.

​Inside was a single glass slide. And a note in my father’s handwriting.

​She isn't your mother, Isabella. And you aren't a build. Look at the blood.

​I looked at Liam.

​"Liam," I whispered. "The lighthouse fire. Who pulled me out?"

​Liam didn't answer. He was staring at the slide.

​"Isabella," he said, his voice a rasp of pure terror. "The drones. They’re here."

​The window shattered.