Elara stared at the screen, her body frozen, her mind refusing to process what her eyes were seeing. The photograph of Maeve filled the monitor, her honey-colored hair spread across a hospital pillow, her pale blue eyes closed as if in sleep. But the headline beneath the image left no room for doubt. AETHELGARD SURVIVOR FOUND DEAD IN HOSPITAL ROOM.
"No," Elara whispered. "No, she was fine. She was safe. We were both safe."
Dorian stepped beside her, his expression grim but not surprised. "I am sorry," he said. "I did not want you to find out this way."
Elara turned on him, her grief crystallizing into something sharper. "You knew? You knew she was dead and you did not tell me?"
"I knew five minutes before I entered your room. One of our operatives at the hospital sent an alert. Maeve was found approximately two hours ago. Cause of death is listed as cardiac arrest, but the operative noted signs of asphyxiation. She was smothered. Someone put a pillow over her face while she slept."
The words landed like physical blows. Smothered. A pillow over her face. Maeve, who had set fire to the dormitory to give Elara time to escape. Maeve, who had been dragged to the chapel and beaten and bound and still refused to break. Maeve, who had clutched her daughter's locket in her hand and dreamed of the day she would find Lily again. Dead in a hospital bed, murdered by someone who had walked past the military guards and the Commission agents and the medical staff without being stopped.
"Who?" Elara demanded. "Who did it?"
"We do not know yet. But we can guess. Crowe's people are cleaning house. Maeve was a witness. Her testimony, combined with the data relay, would have been devastating. Someone decided she was too dangerous to live."
Elara felt the room tilt around her. Maeve was dead. Sorcha was dead. The thirty-seven women in the Paradise Wing were dead or dying. And somewhere in a black site in the Seventh Ward, Jasper was being held by men who had already proven they would kill anyone who threatened their secrets.
"How many more?" she asked, her voice cracking. "How many more people have to die before this ends?"
Dorian did not answer. He did not need to. They both knew the answer. As many as it took. As many as Crowe decided were necessary.
"We need to move," he said finally. "The hearing is in six hours. If we are going to get the bypass device into the evidence vault, we need to go now. Before they tighten security. Before they realize you are missing from the hospital."
Elara wanted to argue. She wanted to demand time to grieve, time to process, time to mourn the young woman who had sacrificed everything to save her. But she knew there was no time. Maeve was dead, and the only way to honor her sacrifice was to make sure that her death was not in vain.
"All right," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "What is the plan?"
The Commission headquarters was a massive neoclassical building in the heart of Corvus City's government district, its marble facade gleaming in the pale light of early morning. Elara had seen it before, on the television screens in the communal kitchen back in the Fourteenth Ward, a symbol of justice and accountability and the rule of law. Now she saw it for what it really was. A monument to power. A temple built by the same men who had built Aethelgard.
Dorian had given her a new identity for the mission. She was no longer Elara Sennett, survivor of Aethelgard. She was Carla Voss, a junior administrative assistant from the Valorian Health Ministry, assigned to deliver documents to the Commission's evidence division. The identification badge hanging from her lapel was a forgery, but it was a good one, and the documents in her briefcase were real enough to pass inspection. Veritas had prepared them in advance, anticipating a moment just like this.
"Remember," Dorian had told her before she left the safe house, "the evidence vault is in the third subbasement. It is a restricted area, but your badge should get you through the first two checkpoints. The third checkpoint is biometric. You will need to use the bypass device to override it. Once you are inside, find the storage unit labeled Aethelgard-01. That is where the data relay is being held. Attach the bypass device to the unit's access port and activate it. Our team will do the rest."
"And if I get caught?" Elara had asked.
"Then you were never part of Veritas. You were acting alone. You stole the badge and the documents and the bypass device. We will disavow any knowledge of your actions."
The words had been cold, but Elara understood them. Dorian was not her friend. He was not her ally. He was an operative, and she was an asset, and if she was captured, she was expendable. The only thing that mattered was the mission.
She walked up the marble steps of the Commission building, her briefcase clutched in one hand, her heart hammering against her ribs. The lobby was already crowded with people, journalists and lawyers and government officials, all of them gathering for the evidence review hearing. Security guards stood at every entrance, their faces hard, their hands resting on the weapons at their belts.
Elara approached the first checkpoint and handed her badge to the guard. He scanned it, his eyes flicking from her face to the photograph on the badge and back again. "Carla Voss, Health Ministry," she said, her voice steady. "I have documents for the evidence division."
The guard studied her for a long moment. Elara held her breath. Then he nodded and handed back the badge. "Third floor, room 312. Take the east elevator."
She walked through the checkpoint and into the main corridor, her heels clicking on the marble floor. The east elevator was at the end of the hall, an ornate brass cage that looked like it had been installed when the building was first constructed. She stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor.
But when the elevator doors closed, she did not go to the third floor. She pressed the button for the basement instead.
The evidence vault was exactly where Dorian had said it would be, at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor in the third subbasement. The walls here were bare concrete, the floor bare cement, the air cold and dry. The first checkpoint was a simple security desk, manned by a single guard who looked bored and tired.
"Documents for the Aethelgard evidence unit," Elara said, handing over her badge.
The guard scanned it, yawned, and waved her through. "Down the hall, second door on the left."
The second checkpoint was more serious. Two guards, both of them armed, both of them alert. They took her badge and her briefcase, examining both carefully. "You are not on the approved visitor list," one of them said.
"I am a last-minute addition," Elara said, her voice calm. "The Health Ministry received a request for supplementary documentation. You can call my supervisor if you need to verify."
The guard stared at her for a long moment. Then he handed back her badge and briefcase. "You have fifteen minutes. Do not touch anything you are not authorized to touch."
The third checkpoint was the biometric door. A metal scanner mounted on the wall, its red light blinking steadily. Elara waited until the guards at the second checkpoint were distracted by another visitor, then pulled out the bypass device and pressed it against the scanner. The red light flickered, turned green, and the door clicked open.
She was inside.
The evidence vault was a vast, cavernous room filled with rows of metal shelving units, each one stacked with boxes and files and sealed evidence bags. The air was cold and still, the only sound the hum of the climate control system. Elara moved through the rows, her eyes scanning the labels on the shelves. Aethelgard-01. Aethelgard-02. There. Aethelgard-01.
The storage unit was a locked metal case, about the size of a small suitcase. Elara knelt beside it and examined the access port on its side. It was a standard interface, identical to the one on the server in the Paradise Wing. She pulled out the bypass device and attached it to the port, her fingers steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
The device beeped softly, and a series of lights flickered across its surface. Green, then blue, then green again. Elara held her breath.
And then the vault's alarm began to blare.
It was not the rhythmic klaxon of the fire alarm on Aethelgard. It was a different sound, higher and more urgent, a piercing shriek that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Red lights flashed on the ceiling, bathing the vault in a hellish glow.
Elara grabbed the bypass device and ran. Behind her, she could hear the sound of heavy doors slamming shut, the clatter of boots on concrete, the shouts of guards mobilizing for a lockdown. She did not look back. She ran through the rows of shelving units, her briefcase banging against her leg, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
She reached the vault door just as it was sliding shut. She threw herself through the narrowing gap, her shoulder scraping against the metal frame, and tumbled into the corridor beyond. The guards at the second checkpoint were on their feet, their weapons raised, but she was already past them, running toward the first checkpoint, toward the elevator, toward the surface.
"Stop!" someone shouted. "Stop or we will shoot!"
Elara did not stop. She ran faster, her lungs burning, her vision narrowing to a tunnel. The elevator was ahead of her, its brass doors still open. She threw herself inside and slammed her hand against the button for the lobby. The doors closed, and the elevator began to rise.
She leaned against the wall of the elevator, gasping for breath, her body shaking. The bypass device was still in her hand, its lights still flickering. She did not know if it had worked. She did not know if the data had been transmitted. She only knew that she had done what she came to do.
The elevator doors opened onto chaos. The lobby was filled with people, all of them staring at the elevators, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear. The alarm was blaring throughout the building now, and security guards were running in every direction. Elara stepped out of the elevator and merged into the crowd, her head down, her briefcase clutched against her chest.
She was almost at the main entrance when a hand closed around her arm. She spun around, ready to fight, and found herself staring into the face of Lena Petrova.
"You," Lena said, her sharp eyes widening with recognition. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Elara said.
"I am covering the hearing. But the alarm—did you have something to do with that?"
Elara did not answer. She looked past Lena, toward the main entrance, where a line of security guards was forming a barricade. They were checking everyone who tried to leave, examining badges, searching bags. She would not make it past them. Not with the bypass device in her pocket.
"Follow me," Lena said suddenly. "I know another way out."
She pulled Elara through the crowd, toward a side corridor that was roped off with a sign that read "Authorized Personnel Only." They ducked under the rope and ran down the corridor, past empty offices and dark conference rooms. At the end of the corridor was a service door, and beyond it, an alley that smelled of garbage and rain.
"Go," Lena said, pushing Elara through the door. "I will cover for you. Tell them you were with me, doing an interview. I will say you left before the alarm went off."
"Why are you helping me?" Elara asked.
Lena smiled, and it was the same sharp, fierce smile that Elara had seen in the hospital room. "Because you are the story," she said. "And I am not done telling it yet."
Elara ran. She ran through the alley and into the street, through the narrow back ways of the government district, through the gray morning light that was just beginning to break over the towers of Corvus City. She did not stop until she reached a small park on the edge of the district, where a black sedan was waiting.
Dorian was behind the wheel. "Get in," he said.
Elara collapsed into the passenger seat, her body trembling with exhaustion. "Did it work?" she asked. "Did the data transmit?"
Dorian's expression was unreadable. "Partially," he said. "The bypass device triggered the alarm before the full download could complete. We have about sixty percent of the data relay's contents. Enough to be damaging, but not enough to be definitive."
"Sixty percent. That is not enough. Crowe will fight it. He will say it is incomplete, out of context—"
"I know." Dorian pulled the sedan away from the park and into the flow of traffic. "Which is why we need the other forty percent. And we need Jasper. He knows things that are not on the data relay. Things he never wrote down. If we can get him out, we can fill in the gaps."
"But the hearing—"
"The hearing is a loss. Crowe will use the alarm as an excuse to postpone it. He will tighten security, lock down the evidence, purge anyone who might be a threat. We have hours, at most, before he realizes what was taken and starts covering his tracks."
Elara closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window. The cold glass was a relief against her skin. She thought about Maeve, dead in her hospital bed. She thought about Sorcha, dying in the Paradise Wing. She thought about Jasper, alone in a black site, waiting for a rescue that might never come.
"Then we go after Jasper," she said. "Tonight. Before Crowe has time to move him or kill him."
Dorian nodded. "I was hoping you would say that."
He turned the sedan down a side street and headed toward the Seventh Ward, where Jasper was being held. But as they drove, Elara noticed something in the rearview mirror. A car, dark and unmarked, was following them at a distance. It had been behind them since they left the park.
"Dorian," she said quietly. "We have a tail."
Dorian's eyes flicked to the mirror. His expression did not change, but his hands tightened on the wheel. "I see them," he said. "Hold on."
He pressed the accelerator, and the sedan surged forward, weaving through the narrow streets of the industrial district. The dark car followed, matching their speed, its headlights glowing in the gray morning light. Elara gripped the door handle, her heart pounding. The chase was on.
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