Semua Bab Cold Hands, Warm Lies: Bab 11 - Bab 16

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