Nova
Linda.
I don’t think I can forget her face. She was the only person at intake who talked to me like I was a person. She gave me her card — I still don’t know why — but I kept it where it wouldn’t fall out. And that card is the reason I’m standing here instead of still in that chair.
Or worse.
Minerva clears the room with one look. Zoe squeezes my arm on her way past. Then it’s just us — me, my guys, Minerva, Brent, Linda.
The guys move in around me without discussing it. Not between me and Linda. Just — there.
She’s not the same woman I remember from intake. She looks tired, a little frazzled, her eyes brighter now.
She’s looking at me like I have answers.
I do not.
“I’m not Nightmare Order,” she says. “I never was.”
Lena said that. Over and over, looping, holding onto it through everything they did to her. Linda’s not Order. I believed it. I just didn’t know what it meant.
“Then what are you?” I say.
She takes a breath.
“I’m from the Fourth,” she says. “I’ve been embedded inside Nightmare for twenty-five years. Looking for you.”
Rane moves closer.
“For me?”
“For you.” Her voice is steady. “We knew you existed. We knew the system would eventually surface an anomaly without a mark — it was only a matter of when and where. I needed to be there when it happened.”
I shift where I stand.
“So not really me. Just someone without a mark?”
Linda leans forward slightly.
“You know how rare it is, Nova. You lived it.”
“I did. So why?”
“Because you’re an anchor,” she says. “It’s an old word — older than everything you’ve ever known.” Her eyes stay on mine. “You don’t hold things together by force. You’re the reason they hold together at all. The bonds. The people around you.”
I stare at her.
“The healing,” Rane says quietly. From somewhere behind me.
“Yes,” Linda says. “And the shifts coming back. Your bonds stabilizing, possibly from a distance. The marks changing.” She looks around at my guys and back to me. “Things that shouldn’t be possible started happening the moment you found each other. That’s not coincidence. That’s you.”
That’s you.
I don’t know what to do with that.
“Why didn’t you take me?” The words come out before I’ve finished deciding to say them. “At intake. If you’d been looking for twenty-five years. Why did you give me a card and walk away.”
Something in her face shifts. Not guilt exactly. Closer to grief.
“I couldn’t,” she says. “Not then. Extracting you before the path was clear would have burned everything — twenty-five years of cover, both our lives, any chance of this.” Her voice is careful.
“I had to wait. To be sure. Especially since you were assigned to a cluster. If that was real…” She stops, looks at them.
“I had to give you a chance at that. At your bonds.”
I get it. I’m just not sure if it makes it better or worse.
“There are people in the Fourth’s territory,” Linda says, quieter now. “Who have been waiting.” She gives me a small smile. “I want you to come back with me. You and your bonds.”
The Hollow is on the other side of that wall.
First real home I’ve ever had. Twenty minutes ago I said that out loud to a room full of raised hands.
Linda is offering me another one.
I don’t answer. I can’t answer.
How can I give that up?
But more than that, how can I give up the chance at finding my parents? Not Celeste and Hunter, the ones Laith assigned. My real parents.
My chest aches and I don’t know how to deal with it right now.
“The facility…” Beckett says from near the window.
Linda looks at him.
“That wasn’t you alone.”
Of course he needs to know. For some reasons that eases the ache just a little.
“No,” Linda says. “It wasn’t.”
Beckett nods once.
The room goes quiet.
“I’ll need to leave, soon.”
We don’t have much time.