All Chapters of Cold Hands, Warm Lies: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The next morning, the world looked the same.But Sera wasn’t.She stood at the edge of Lucien’s command room, bathed in low light, her arms crossed tightly as if she were holding herself together with pressure alone.Lucien entered silently.Paused.He didn’t ask if she’d slept. They both knew she hadn’t.“She gave me more than a message,” Sera said without turning.Lucien approached slowly. “What else?”“Coordinates. Embedded in memory triggers.”She faced him now, eyes sharper than he’d ever seen them.“She coded them into me repetition, visual anchors, old lullabies. I didn’t realize it until I saw the necklace again.”Lucien’s mouth tightened. “How many locations?”“Three. One is local.” She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket. “Abandoned comms tower in Hudson Yards. She used it as a relay hub. It’s likely still hot.”He scanned the coordinates.“Looks clean on satellite. But that doesn’t mean anything anymore.”“I want to go alone.”Lucien gave her a long look. “No.”“I wasn’t

The first alert hit at 2:13 a.m.A red pulse blinked through the stronghold's comm wall.Lucien woke instantly.He’d learned to read the color codes without checking the screen.Red meant priority. Red meant burn.And this red wasn’t about Sera.It was about Elise.Stronghold – Command RoomLucien pulled the alert into view.The system Sera had rewritten now quietly pulsing across servers she didn’t even know she’d infected had flagged a Level One Containment Breach.One name was attached:> DUVALL, ELISETagged: Disinformation ArchitectLocation: UnknownRisk Level: IrreversibleDirective: EXPOSELucien stared.Sera’s system hadn’t just tagged Elise as a threat.It had activated a dead man’s switch buried deep in Halo’s old public network structure, something meant to go off only if a high-level agent crossed a specific moral boundary.Elise had tripped it.And now, if Lucien didn’t shut it down…The entire world would know exactly who Elise Duvall was.What she’d built.And what she

The drive clicked into place.Sera sat in a locked room beneath one of Lucien’s oldest dead-grid safehouses no signal, no surveillance, no one watching.Except her.The screen lit up.A single folder.> [C:CALDER // PRIVATE // E_DUVALL // 0427]Her fingers hovered.She opened it.VIDEO LOG TIMESTAMP: 2 years ago, 04/27 3:03 a.m.The footage was grainy. Black and white. But real.Lucien’s penthouse.Night vision.One camera angled from above.Elise stood at the edge of the room. Hair tied back. Eyes sharp.Lucien stood across from her, bleeding from the mouth.They were arguing.But the footage had audio.> ELISE: “You think you can protect her from this? From you?”> LUCIEN: “She doesn’t need to know how deep it goes.”> ELISE: “That’s the problem. She’s already in it.”> LUCIEN: “Because you dragged her into it ”> ELISE: “Because you funded it.”Sera froze.The audio kept going.> ELISE: “You knew what Project Halo was built for. You knew what they were doing with the ghost file

> 11:42…Sera ran.Not away.Toward.Toward the place where the system could be killed. Toward the moment she'd either let the truth go free or let it consume her.She wasn’t just hunted now.She was the reason they were running.Back at the Stronghold – LucienHe watched her location blink off his screen.She’d cut her trace.She didn’t want to be found.Which meant he had to find her.And if he didn’t?Someone else would.He grabbed a weapon.Left the safehouse.And told himself this wasn’t about love.This was about stopping the woman who could take everything down including herself.10:54 – The Server RoomSera reached the original Halo relay vault a buried chamber beneath the city’s forgotten subway lines.The lock clicked open with the coin.The temperature dropped like the system knew she was here.She was almost at the core when she felt him.Lucien.> “You should’ve stayed away,” she said without turning.> “You knew I wouldn’t.”> “That’s not a strength.”> “No,” he said, st

> 00:47…Lucien’s breath faltered.Not loud.Not dramatic.But different.Sera caught it instantly.She grabbed his wrist and the pulse was slowing. Skin cold.The gas wasn’t knocking him out.It was targeted.It was killing him.> “Lucien.”No response.She dug into the medpack. Injected the secondary adrenaline.He jolted once eyes fluttering.> “You with me?”His head tipped. Barely. Enough.> “She wants me to die in your arms,” he rasped.> “She’s going to regret not doing it herself.”Flashback: Elise’s CodeSera remembered the phrase Elise used years ago “a clean kill lives in the moment before love becomes liability.”At the time, Sera thought it meant emotions made you weak.Now she understood:Elise never feared love.She just knew exactly when to weaponize it.Back to the Red RoomSera ran to the terminal, bypassed the security feed, forced a backdoor into the gas relay.Override access: DENIED.Control: REMOTE LOCKED SOURCE: ELISE.Lucien collapsed behind her.> “Sera…”She