39. Ronan
Ronan
T he ops room is too quiet.
That’s never a good sign.
Quiet means somebody found something ugly.
I step through the doorway and immediately catch the tension sitting heavy across the room.
Cal’s at the main terminal, fingers moving fast across the keyboard.
Lance leans against the far table with his arms folded, jaw tight enough to crack concrete.
Neither of them looks relaxed.
Great.
“Tell me you’ve got something.”
Cal doesn’t glance away from the monitor.
“We do.”
The answer lands wrong instantly.
Too flat.
Too careful.
“What kind of something?”
Lance pushes off the table and turns the screen toward me.
My stomach tightens before I even fully process it.
Video file.
Paused.
A woman frozen mid-frame beneath dim overhead lighting.
Dark hair.
Sharp eyes.
Way too much resemblance to Sienna.
“Elizabeth,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” Cal says quietly. “We think so.”
I stare at the screen a second longer.
The room around her looks concrete.
Industrial maybe.
No visible windows.
No identifiers.
Professional containment.
My chest tightens slowly.
“This is bait.”
“Yep.”
“Is it real?”
That’s the question that matters.
Lance finally looks at me fully.
And the expression on his face tells me I’m not going to like the answer before he even speaks.
“That’s the problem.”
A pause.
Then quietly—
“We think it is.”
Silence drops hard across the room.
Because if HELIOS really still has Elizabeth alive after all this time—
Then Sienna was never paranoid.
Never unstable.
Never chasing ghosts.
She was right.
And now HELIOS just proved it.
I glance toward the medical wing automatically.
Toward the room where Jonah nearly died keeping Sienna alive.
Yeah.
This timing?
Not accidental.
“They’re escalating,” I say quietly.
Cal nods once.
“They’re not just targeting Sienna anymore.”
“No.”
Lance’s gaze hardens toward the screen.
“They’re targeting everyone connected to her.”