Chapter 41
Authorized Lies
Elara
The bunker feels different before I hear anything.
It’s subtle at first; a change in pressure, a wrongness in the air that crawls under my skin. The constant hum that has become my clock, my lullaby, my warning system, falters. Not stops. Just stutters. Like a breath caught halfway in.
I lift my head slowly from my knees, muscles stiff, joints aching from holding myself too tightly for too long. My body has learned this place too well. Learned when to be still. Learned when movement is dangerous. Learned when hope hurts more than fear.
“Lucan?” I say quietly, the name leaving me before I can think better of it.
The sound doesn’t belong here. It echoes too much. Comes back wrong.
No answer.
The lights flicker, once, then again, and my heart leaps into my throat so violently it steals my breath. My pulse roars in my ears as footsteps bleed into the silence, above me, carrying through steel and concrete like a threat remembered by the walls themselves.
I’m on my feet instantly, body reacting faster than thought.
Instinct drags me backward, away from the hatch, until the cold edge of the workbench presses into my spine.
My hands search blindly for something, anything, but there is nothing.
He never leaves me tools. Not because he underestimates me.
Because he understands me.
The footsteps stop right next to the hatch.
A groan enters the bunker.
Metal scrapes.
The door opens.
Light cuts into the bunker like a blade, sharp and white, forcing my eyes to burn and blink and adjust. A silhouette fills the opening, broad shoulders outlined against the corridor’s glow.
For one frozen second, my mind refuses to make sense of what I’m seeing.
Because it isn’t him.
“—Elara.”
My name lands softly, careful, like it might shatter if spoken too loudly.
The figure climbs inside, and recognition crashes into me with a violence that leaves me dizzy. The familiar lines of his face. The badge. The posture of a man who has spent decades carrying responsibility like armor.
“Inspector… Halldórsson?” My voice trembles. It doesn’t sound like mine.
He exhales, slow and deep, like he’s been holding that breath since the hatch opened.
“Thank God,” he murmurs, and for the first time I see it; the relief he’s trying and failing to hide. It softens the sharpness of his eyes, eases the tension in his shoulders. For a moment, he looks less like an inspector and more like a man who has been afraid to arrive too late.
“You’re alive,” he says, almost to himself.
I swallow hard, I should feel relieved. “You’re alone.” The words come out flat. Suspicious. “Where’s the rest of them?”
“There is no rest,” he says.
That sets something cold and sharp twisting in my stomach.
“How did you find me?” I ask. “How did you—”
“Sit down,” he says.
I don’t move.
“Elara,” he repeats, gentler now. “Please. Sit.”
There’s something in his voice I don’t like.
Not urgency. Not fear. Finality. I lower myself onto the edge of the bench, my fingers curling into the fabric of my coat to keep them from shaking.
Halldórsson stays standing, scanning the room out of habit, eyes flicking to corners, vents, shadows.
His inspector eyes scanning the bunker of the man he’s been chasing for years.
He finally looks back at me.
“How long have you been here?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Time doesn’t—” I stop. Swallow. “Why are you here?”
He studies my face like he’s memorizing it. Or maybe bracing himself.
“Because he wanted me to find you.”
The words don’t land at first. They slide past my ears without meaning, like a foreign language I don’t speak well enough to understand.
“He?” I repeat.
Halldórsson’s gaze drops.
Slowly, deliberately, he points.
At my ankle.
At the slim black band still wrapped around my skin, the one I stopped thinking about days ago. The one that became part of me, like a scar or a pulse point.
“That,” he says. “That’s how.”
My stomach drops.
“That’s just—” I start. “It’s dead. He said it couldn’t transmit through—”
“Concrete,” Halldórsson finishes. “Steel. Rock. Yes. He was right.”
My heart starts to pound harder.
“So how—”
“It doesn’t transmit everything,” he says. “Just one thing.”
He meets my eyes.
“Your location.”
The room tilts.
“You’re lying,” I say, too quickly. “He wouldn’t send—”
“He did,” Halldórsson says. “A few hours ago. Clean signal. Routed through channels only law enforcement would notice. Deliberate. Precise.”
I shake my head. I can feel it, the beginning of something splitting inside me. “Why would he do that?” Halldórsson doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he says, “Do you know how many times I’ve chased men like him?”
My hands curl tighter. “What’s going on?”
“Men who think they’re in control,” he continues. “Men who decide when truth is revealed and when it isn’t. Men who choose what parts of themselves they let the world see.”
“You don’t know him,” I say, sharp now. Defensive before I even realize it.
His mouth tightens. “I know exactly what he is.”
“He protected me,” I say. “He could’ve killed me. He didn’t, he hasn’t hurt me.”
Halldórsson’s eyes darken. “That’s how they work.”
Something in me recoils at the way he says they, generalizing him.
“Where is he, why would he send my location?” I ask. He would never send my location to anyone unless something is very wrong.
“Because he’s a manipulative liar,” Halldórsson says. “And because dangerous men don’t rescue people out of kindness. They do it when it suits them.”
“That’s not—” I stop. My voice cracks. “You don’t get to talk about him like that.”
The inspector watches me carefully now. Not like a rescuer. Like a man gauging how deep the infection has spread.
“Elara,” he says quietly. “You are not the first woman to believe a monster chose her for the right reasons.”
I stand abruptly. “Get me out of here.” Something’s wrong.
“I will,” he says. “But first, you need to understand something.”
I laugh once — sharp, hysterical. “You think this is the time for lectures?”
“No,” he says. “This is the time for truth.”
The word lands heavier than anything else he’s said.
“I’m listening,” I say.
He takes a breath.
“Your father is alive.”
The world goes silent. Not quiet, completely silent. Like someone has reached inside my skull and cut a wire. The hum of the bunker disappears. My heartbeat stutters. The air feels too thin to breathe.
“No,” I say.
Halldórsson doesn’t look away.
“No,” I repeat, louder. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.”
“My father died fourteen years ago,” I say.
“I was the inspector on that case,” Halldórsson continues.
“You’re lying,” I whisper. I was right, I had always been right. The suspicion I’ve had all these years wasn’t for nothing, he didn’t drown.
“I helped him fake his death.”
The bench presses into the backs of my knees as I collapse back onto it. My hands come up to my head automatically, fingers digging into my curls like I can physically hold my thoughts in place if I press hard enough.
“You’re saying—” I can’t finish the sentence. My tongue won’t cooperate.
“I arranged the body,” he says. “A substitute. Similar height. Similar build. Dental match.”
My chest tightens. “Dental fucking match?”
“Two teeth,” he continues, voice steady, almost gentle now. “Henrik provided them himself. We planted them to ensure the DNA matched.”
Henrik.
My father’s name sounds wrong in my head. Too present. Too alive.
“You’re sick,” I say. “You’re all sick, fuck this.”
Halldórsson flinches, but he doesn’t deny it.
“I’ve known your father since before you were born,” he says. “We went to school together. He was brilliant. Always was. Too brilliant.”
My ears ring.
“He was supposed to be dead,” I say. “He fucking left—”
“He was supposed to disappear,” Halldórsson corrects. “And he did.”
I laugh again, but it’s broken now. “He cared so little about me, and mom? What was the point of the grief? Of the—”
“I won’t justify it,” he says quickly. “I won’t excuse it. You deserve answers. But they won’t come from me.”
“Then why tell me?” I demand. “Why now!?” Anger is the easiest emotion, and right now I’m full of it.
“Because you’re already inside the world he built,” Halldórsson says. “And because you were always going to find out, I knew you were sneaking around in my folders. Starting your own little investigations.”
My head snaps up. “What does this have to do with him, with Vapor?”
The name tastes safer in my mouth than his real one. Like a shield. He trusted me with that.
Halldórsson’s jaw tightens.
“He threatened your father for his formulas, then abducted you as collateral,” he finishes.