Chapter Eighty-Five
Raine
I’ve counted the ridges in Asher’s challenge coin twenty-eight times. Once for every hour he’s been gone. Counting is useful. It keeps all the various threads from unraveling at once.
Voss hasn’t called yet. GSD released two more AI videos of me, along with my “official” personnel file. It showed more than two dozen reports of unstable behavior, HR complaints, and reprimands going back more than ten years.
I’ve gone over everything. The fabrications are competent. Better than the last ones. Under different circumstances, against a different target, they might have worked.
They won’t work on me. Or the Public Integrity Project. They’ll see right through GSD’s feeble attempts to cover their asses. Too much of the truth has already come out.
I carry the coin with me into the bedroom and set it on the dresser. It feels wrong to leave it there. But when Voss contacts me—and he will, soon—I can’t take the coin with me.
It’s Asher’s, and I need to know it’s safe with him. That if the worst happens, Voss won’t destroy it like he’ll destroy me.
I’ve been putting this next part off for hours. I keep thinking I need to be steadier. But the truth is, I’m not going to get steadier than this. So I open the closet door, and crouch down.
The safe is hidden under a piece of carpet. The panel sits flush with the floor.
I punch in the code Asher gave me, and it unlocks with a quiet beep.
Gear first. A Beretta with two spare magazines. Emergency cash in several foreign currencies. A small medical kit. Three separate passports with Asher’s photo, different names, different countries of origin. Things a person keeps close when they’ve had to run more than once.
Then a folded piece of paper with my name on the outside.
In Asher’s handwriting.
I don’t move for a moment. He wrote this the same way he does everything that matters. Quietly.
I turn it over in my hands. Feel the weight of it. The thick paper. The slight wrinkle in one corner. I set it down exactly where I found it.
Because he’s coming back.
I’m about to close the safe when a flash of maroon catches my eye. I slide the passport from under the box of ammunition. Why wasn’t this with his others?
I open it, and my face looks back at me. A new name, but the right birthday—he knew better than to change that—and a country of origin that isn’t the United States.
I came out of Coherent Path with nothing. No ID. No history. Nothing that proves Raine Calder exists outside of a GSD file calling her unstable and a handful of photos showing just how little of her was left.
Asher built me a life in case he didn’t come back. In case I needed to keep going without him.
I sit with that for a moment I don’t entirely have.
Then I return the passport to the safe and close the door.
He’s coming back.