Dawn didn’t come softly.It broke over the ridge like something snapping, light tearing across the valley and catching on every wet leaf, every blade of flattened grass. The fog was thin but fast, crawling over the forest floor like it had somewhere to be. Cassian was already up, crouched with his back to a tree, scanning the slope below with the stolen scope. Maris hadn’t slept at all.Anaïs sat with the child curled beside her, both of them draped in a mylar blanket that shimmered like something out of a broken future. She hadn’t closed her eyes. Not really. Sleep was a memory she didn’t trust anymore.Cassian looked over his shoulder. “You two ready?”“No,” Anaïs said quietly. “But we’ll go.”Maris adjusted the strap on her thigh holster. “We go in, split up. Get what we need. No contact. No lingering. No second guesses.”Anaïs nodded. “Where do we meet?”Cassian pointed toward the far end of the town, where the buildings thinned into countryside. “Barn outside the mill. Looks aban
The forest didn’t feel like safety anymore.It felt like a holding place, like the breath between two screams. Every branch was a surveillance line. Every shadow waited to turn into a threat.Anaïs stood with her back against a moss-covered rock, her arms wrapped tight around the child. She wasn’t even sure when the trembling had started—hers or the child’s—but it hadn’t stopped since Julien vanished into the smoke. Since they heard the last of his voice on that comm. Since Cassian pulled her through the trees with blood on his hands and no words in his mouth.No one said Julien’s name.Not even Maris.The silence was harder than crying.Cassian paced a narrow perimeter around them, his shirt still soaked through with sweat, blood, and dirt. He hadn’t stopped moving since they set camp. There wasn’t much to call a camp—just a patch of flattened leaves beneath a jutting rock face, concealed from above. The rain had passed hours ago, but everything was damp. Their clothes. Their skin. T
They buried Julien just after dusk.No words. No markers. Just a cairn of stones under a hollowed pine, deep in the northern wood where the trees stood close and the air held still. Cassian did most of the digging. Anaïs placed the first stone. The child didn’t speak, didn’t cry—she just held Maris’s hand tightly, her face locked in that too-old stillness that no child should wear.“I thought he’d make it,” Cassian said, finally. His voice was rough, not from grief but from the dry crack of smoke that still clung to their lungs. “He always said he would.”“He did,” Anaïs said quietly. “Just not in the way we wanted.”The fire had taken the cabin. The last safehouse. The final line. But the archive drop hadn’t been stopped. The story was out. Too many people had seen it now. The faces of the missing. The contracts. The labs. The experiments that were never called by name.Some governments denied it. Others went silent. A few issued vague promises of internal review.But people were ask
The snow hadn’t stopped. It came down quiet and slow, blanketing the world in something that looked like peace but felt like suffocation. Inside the cabin, the silence was sharp. Maris sat with the child pressed against her chest, her back to the wall, her legs curled protectively around her niece like she was trying to shield her from the weight of the air itself.Julien stood by the window. Watching. Still. Always watching.The storm hadn’t touched the forest much—only dusted it white—but the cold had crept in through the floorboards, into the walls, into their bones. No one had spoken since the transmission.Cassian leaned against the table. His hands were braced flat on the wood, head bowed low. Anaïs stood opposite him, not touching, not moving, not blinking. She was the only one breathing like she knew she had to. Everyone else felt suspended in a moment too heavy to carry.“They know,” Julien said, his voice almost calm. “Everything we sent out—Morgan Crane aired it. It’s publi
The silence was unnatural. Not peaceful—just the absence of sound after something violent. The child was still in Maris’ arms, cheek pressed against her chest, his breathing uneven but steady. Cassian stood at the window, watching the tree line, weapon tight in his grip. Anaïs hadn’t spoken in almost ten minutes.Julien’s blood had dried on her sleeve. She hadn’t noticed.“We have maybe five minutes before they regroup,” Cassian said without turning. “Assuming that wasn’t the last of them.”“It wasn’t,” Anaïs said flatly. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “They were testing the perimeter. Making sure we’re still afraid of dying.”Cassian glanced back. “Are we?”“No,” she said, and finally met his eyes. “We’re past that.”Maris shifted the child gently, her jaw tense. “Where’s the nearest way out?”Cassian pulled a folded map from inside his jacket and laid it out on the floor. “There’s a drainage route here, about half a kilometer east. Leads under the old rail line.”“Won’t they e
The cabin was still. Too still.Anaïs moved first, stepping around the broken chair with the kind of caution that didn’t come from fear but instinct—honed, sharpened, tested. Cassian followed a step behind her, weapon drawn but lowered, his eyes flicking to every shadow like they might come alive.Julien closed the door behind them, slowly, deliberately. The wind had picked up outside. That forest stillness that had carried them this far was gone.Maris stood close to Anaïs, her small hand gripping the hem of her jacket. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.Cassian’s voice cut through the quiet. “Whoever was in here didn’t stay long.”There was a smell—old smoke, damp earth, a trace of something metallic. The back window was cracked open. Julien moved toward it, scanning the tree line. Nothing moved. But that didn’t mean nothing was out there.“They didn’t take supplies,” Anaïs said. “Whoever it was didn’t come to raid.”Cassian crouched near the table, picking up a torn page.