CHAPTER 171 - THE SIGNAL

Reaper had been home for six days when the alert hit my phone at 3 a.m.I was already awake. I'd stopped sleeping well the moment Sophia said *a year, maybe less.* I was sitting at the kitchen table with cold coffee when the notification came through on the secure channel. Priority one. Encrypted. Origin unknown.I opened it.Four words.*Eva isn't the target.*I stared at the screen. Read it again. Then I called Phoenix."I saw it," he said. He picked up before the first ring finished. So he was awake too. "I've been trying to trace the source for twenty minutes. It's bouncing off six different servers. Whoever sent this knows what they're doing.""What does it mean?" I asked."It means Dr. Vasquez wasn't the one running this," Phoenix said. "It means someone used her. Someone pointed her at Eva specifically so we'd be looking the wrong direction."I set my coffee down. "So if Eva wasn't the target—""Then whatever they actually wanted," Phoenix said, "we gave it to them. While we we

CHAPTER 171 - THE TRAITOR

I had everyone in the main room by 4 a.m.Twelve people. All of them pulled from sleep. All of them standing in the harsh overhead light in various states of confusion and exhaustion. Hayes still had her sidearm. Vera was barefoot. Eva stood near the back wall with her arms crossed, watching everyone the way I'd taught her. Reading faces.I stood at the front and didn't waste time."Someone in this room sent an encrypted message to my phone two hours ago," I said. "Same person accessed the Kethros dimension four days ago and stole Elara's master template. I want them to step forward. Right now."Nobody moved."The message tipped us off," Phoenix said from beside me. "Which means whoever did this wants us to know. They're not hiding anymore. So step forward."Still nothing.Then Grace said, "Check Maren."Every head turned. Maren was standing near the kitchen doorway. She was the compound's systems analyst. Quiet. Efficient. She'd been with us for three years. She didn't flinch when ev

CHAPTER 172 - THE LOCATION

Reaper was inside the Kethros dimension for eleven minutes.It felt longer. Sophia monitored his vitals on the portable equipment she'd set up beside his chair. His heart rate spiked twice. His blood pressure dropped dangerously at the eight minute mark and she had her hand on the emergency disconnect when he opened his eyes."I found it," he said. His nose was bleeding. He didn't reach up to wipe it. "Carver's operating from an offshore research platform. Decommissioned oil rig. 340 kilometers northeast. He has twelve armed personnel, one scientist, and my daughter."Everyone looked at Maren."She's alive," Reaper said, answering the question before she asked it. "I saw her. She's in a lower level containment room. Unharmed."Maren pressed her hand over her mouth. Nodded once."How long was he inside our network?" Phoenix asked Maren."Two years," she said. "He told me himself. He was patient. He built access slowly so nothing triggered our detection systems. The template was always

CHAPTER 173 - THE LOCATION

Reaper was inside the Kethros dimension for eleven minutes.It felt longer. Sophia monitored his vitals on the portable equipment she'd set up beside his chair. His heart rate spiked twice. His blood pressure dropped dangerously at the eight minute mark and she had her hand on the emergency disconnect when he opened his eyes."I found it," he said. His nose was bleeding. He didn't reach up to wipe it. "Carver's operating from an offshore research platform. Decommissioned oil rig. 340 kilometers northeast. He has twelve armed personnel, one scientist, and my daughter."Everyone looked at Maren."She's alive," Reaper said, answering the question before she asked it. "I saw her. She's in a lower level containment room. Unharmed."Maren pressed her hand over her mouth. Nodded once."How long was he inside our network?" Phoenix asked Maren."Two years," she said. "He told me himself. He was patient. He built access slowly so nothing triggered our detection systems. The template was always t

CHAPTER 174 - THE DEAD MAN

The name Reaper said was Daniel Holt.My former intelligence director. Fifteen year veteran of our operations. The man who had designed half our security protocols. The man who knew every weakness in every system we'd ever built because he'd built them with us.The man who had died in a facility fire three years ago. Whose remains we'd identified through dental records. Whose ashes were in a grave outside the city with his name carved in stone."Say it again," I said."Daniel Holt," Reaper said. "The dimensional frequency signature is his. I'd recognize it. He was nexus adjacent. We always knew he had partial sensitivity to the Kethros layer. He used it. He used it to build a communication channel that looked like background noise.""Dental records confirmed his death," Phoenix said. He wasn't arguing. He was thinking out loud, working through it the same way I was. "The body was burned but enough remained for identification. We ran it twice.""Someone else's teeth," Eva said flatly.

CHAPTER 175 - THE PLATFORM

We hit the water at 5:43 a.m.Hayes' four divers went in first. Cold, dark ocean, forty meters from the platform's eastern leg. Phoenix, Eva, Hayes and I followed. Eight of us total. Reaper was back at the compound monitored by Sophia, which had taken six minutes of argument and ended with me telling him I needed him alive more than I needed him present.He didn't like it. He stayed.The maintenance shaft was exactly where Eva predicted. A corroded access panel on the underside of the platform's second support leg. One of Hayes' divers had it open in ninety seconds. We came up inside a flooded equipment bay, dark and smelling of rust and saltwater.We cleared the bay in under a minute."Twelve armed personnel," Hayes said quietly into the earpiece. "Thermal imaging from the drone shows eight on the upper deck, two on level three, two mobile. The mobile pair are rotating a pattern. Four minute intervals.""Maren's daughter?" I asked."Level two. Stationary. One guard outside the door."

CHAPTER 176 - The Choice

Carver reached the weapon on the table.Hayes shot him through the doorway before his hand closed around it. He dropped. I didn't look at him again. I kept my eyes on Holt."Fourteen minutes," Phoenix said in my earpiece. "I need that code."Holt hadn't moved. He was still standing at the window, hands at his sides, watching me with that exhausted expression."You were going to let it complete," I said. "A fully synthetic nexus point with no human host and no killswitch. You'd hand that to who exactly? Who takes control of it after?""Nobody," Holt said. "That's the point. It exists inside the dimension permanently. Ungoverned. Uncontrolled. Every government, every organization, every group that's spent twenty years trying to weaponize the Kethros dimension loses access permanently. Nobody owns it. Nobody uses it. It becomes untouchable.""It becomes a weapon pointed at everything," I said."It becomes a lock," Holt said. "On a door that should never have been opened.""Sarah wouldn't

CHAPTER 177 - Buried

I hit the debris with my shoulder and it didn't move.Hayes was beside me in seconds. Two of her divers behind her. All four of us pulling at the collapsed equipment blocking the lab doorway. Metal shelving. Overturned machinery. A section of ceiling panel that had come down with the blast."Phoenix talk to me," I said."I'm here." His voice was weak and coming from the wrong direction. Further back than the doorway. "Something came down on my legs. I can't move them.""Are you bleeding?""Yes.""How bad?"A pause that lasted too long. "Bad enough."Hayes got a section of shelving moved. One of her divers squeezed through the gap. I heard him reach Phoenix and immediately call back. "He's pinned under a support beam. It shifted in the blast. I can't lift it alone.""Nobody lifts it alone," I said. "Get back here and we do it together."The smoke was thickening. The explosion had started a fire somewhere in the platform's lower structure. I could feel heat coming up through the floor.

CHAPTER 178 - Coming Home

The boat ride back took forty minutes.I stood at the front the entire time. Didn't sit. Didn't eat the ration bar Hayes pushed into my hand. Just watched the water and kept my phone in my fist and didn't call Sophia back because I was afraid of what she'd say if I gave her the chance to say it before I got there.Phoenix was stable. The bleeding had slowed. He was going to need surgery within the hour and he knew it and had stopped pretending otherwise. He lay on the deck with his eyes closed and his breathing steady and let Eva manage his legs without argument, which told me more about his pain level than anything else could.Holt sat at the stern the whole way back. He didn't speak. Didn't ask questions. He watched the horizon with the look of a man who had made his decision and was now waiting to find out what it cost him.I didn't talk to him. I didn't have the words yet.We docked at 7:20 a.m. Two medical vehicles were waiting. Phoenix went into the first one immediately. Eva cl

CHAPTER 179 - The Debrief

Holt sat across from me at the compound's main table at noon.Hayes stood behind him. Not because he was dangerous. He hadn't resisted since the platform. He'd walked onto the boat, sat down, and stayed quiet the entire ride back. Hayes stood behind him because procedure required it and because some of the people in the room hadn't decided yet whether they wanted him alive.Grace was one of them. She sat at the far end of the table with her arms crossed and her jaw set and hadn't taken her eyes off Holt since he walked in. Grace had known Sarah. They'd trained together. That history was sitting in the room with us whether anyone named it or not.Vera sat beside Grace. Maren was absent. I'd told her to stay with her daughter. She'd been through enough and what she knew she'd already given us. The rest of this conversation didn't require her.Eva sat to my left. She'd come straight from the hospital after Phoenix's surgery, changed clothes, and arrived looking like someone who had slept

All Chapters of THE BIKER'S NEW FOUND MATE : Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

CHAPTER 171 - THE SIGNAL

CHAPTER 171 - THE TRAITOR

CHAPTER 172 - THE LOCATION

CHAPTER 173 - THE LOCATION

CHAPTER 174 - THE DEAD MAN

CHAPTER 175 - THE PLATFORM

CHAPTER 176 - The Choice

CHAPTER 177 - Buried

CHAPTER 178 - Coming Home

CHAPTER 179 - The Debrief