Chapter Sixty-Eight
Raine
My gaze keeps straying to the clock at the bottom of the computer screen. I should have sent the first packet already. I’ve read it over three times since I called Inara. But if there’s even a single mistake, my credibility collapses, and the leverage I’m counting on disappears with it.
The founding memo creating the Operational Standards Intensive sits at the top of the directory, followed by the directive turning OSI into Coherent Path.
Redacting Julian Voss’s name feels wrong.
I don’t believe for a second that his hands are clean, but if I accuse him of signing off on disposals without proof, my credibility is shot, and I’ll be no better than whoever sent me to Coherent Path in the first place.
Once I get proof though…Voss is going to regret ever hearing my name.
The list of the agents missing from GSD rosters after their time inside Coherent Path is next.
Names. Dates. Departments. All the information we could find about why they were escalated.
It’s not enough. I can’t confirm these agents are dead.
I can’t rule out retirement, relocation, or resignation for reasons entirely unrelated to Coherent Path.
What I have is absence. The Public Integrity Project has the investigative reach to determine whether that absence means something.
I freeze with the cursor hovering over the last file in the list—the Operational Standards Adherence Manual. For a moment, the letters stop making sense, nothing but shapes on a blurry screen.
The room comes back into focus on a blink. But the first thing I see is the empty chair next to me. The one Asher sat in this morning.
A glance back at the screen brings me back to the reality of what I’m facing.
That Coherent Path deems anyone who doesn’t believe their false narrative a failure.
I run my thumb over the challenge coin. It’s been clutched in my palm almost nonstop since he left this morning.
The pressure of the rough edges against my skin is useful.
Something I control. If I thought I could stand anything around my wrist, I’d get his watch off the dresser just to have something else of his touching me.
I should go over everything one last time. Asher’s freedom—his life—depends on it. And on the Public Integrity Project’s willingness to investigate and go up against a government agency the size of GSD.
The first packet has to be readable to someone who isn’t me. I can’t write this like an internal memo and expect a civilian organization to translate it. I need it to be plain without being soft, specific without sounding like jargon. Impactful on its surface and its intentions.
I write the cover letter the way I used to draft op briefings for junior agents.
These are the documents included. This is what they authorize. This is how they were implemented. This is what happened to the people routed through the program.
I keep the sentences tight and human. No acronyms without a translation. No assumptions presented as conclusions.
A whistleblower organization doesn’t need my feelings.
They need evidence and a reason to believe more is on the way.
Their job isn’t to be outraged on my behalf.
Their job is to verify, protect the source, and move documentation into the public view in a way that’s hard to bury once it’s out.
They’re the buffer between someone who can’t safely walk into a newsroom and the world that needs to see the paper trail.
When I’m ready, I open PIP’s SecureDrop portal. The interface is plain and clinical. Upload files. Add a note. Receive a confirmation code. No theatrics. No custom tools. Just a secure funnel into someone else’s hands.
I encrypt the directory and send it, along with the cover letter. My name doesn’t appear anywhere. Not yet. I list myself—identified only as a former GSD agent—as the primary source, promise additional drops and my name on a fixed schedule, and hit Send.
The upload moves in uneven jumps that my breathing tries to mirror without permission. I don’t let it. When the confirmation code comes back, I copy it onto a flash drive. Then I close everything down.
I don’t want to take the next step alone. But I don’t have a choice. In a few minutes, I have to start going through the photos Asher took of my injuries. The notes. The memories.
I sit for a moment with the coin clutched in my hand, as if pressure can keep the edges of the day from cutting deeper.
The clock at the bottom of the screen ticks forward, and my heart rate skyrockets. It’s 12:54 p.m.
In exactly six minutes, I’m supposed to turn myself over to GSD. Time to tell them I have no intention of showing.
Asher gave me access to Mason Locke’s email account, and I connect to a VPN, then open the message they sent us yesterday.
My fingers hover over the screen briefly, because the right words will keep him safer, and the wrong ones will do the opposite.
You tried to force my hand. You failed. Release Mason Locke or any chance you had at keeping this quiet disappears. —Raine Calder
Exactly two minutes later, my phone vibrates on the table.
Every muscle braces in an instant. The threat is all around me. Darkness presses in at the edges of my vision.
The sound doesn’t repeat, and I fumble for the phone. I expect to see a video. A countdown. Some sort of demand.
Instead, there are only two words on the screen.
Eat something.
Asher scheduled a reminder from his phone. Probably hours ago, when he still had the freedom to plan for where I’d fail if left to my own devices.
He thought about me while preparing to be swallowed by the very organization I’m trying to destroy. That sudden, brutal fact makes my throat tighten until swallowing hurts. Tears blur the screen, and one hits the table, proving I’m still here enough to break.
“You’re insufferable,” I whisper to an empty room that doesn’t answer, and my voice cracks anyway.
Then I head for the kitchen, because he’d expect me to. Because I can’t afford to let my body become a weakness. Because the work still has to get done even if my hands shake while I do it.
I’m nowhere near finished.