30. Sloane
SLOANE
M y heart nearly stops when Logan's eyes meet mine, a silent command passing between us.
We need to get back to The Forge. Now.
"Keep searching," he barks into his comm unit, already moving. "We're heading back to decrypt Granger's... gift."
The last word comes out like poison.
I follow him through the snow-laden forest, branches whipping past as we run.
My thigh wound screams with each step, but I push through it. The cold air burns in my lungs, and I can taste blood at the back of my throat from breathing too hard.
Logan moves like a ghost through the trees—fluid, precise, barely disturbing the snow beneath his boots.
I try to match his pace, but the terrain is brutal. Roots hidden under white powder threaten to trip me. Low branches catch at my jacket.
My mind races faster than my feet.
Why would Granger tag a file with my name? What game is he playing?
The Forge comes into view—stark and imposing against the winter sky. Logan doesn't slow down. He shoulders through the main entrance, and I follow him down familiar hallways until we reach the control room.
The space hits me like a wall of tech—dozens of monitors casting blue-white light across dark walls, each screen alive with data streams and surveillance feeds.
And at the center of it all sits Asa, his wire-rimmed glasses reflecting scrolling code as his fingers fly across multiple keyboards.
I double over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. Even Logan's breathing hard, though he maintains that iron control that seems to define everything about him.
"Show me," he demands without preamble.
Asa doesn't look up, just pulls up a screen with practiced efficiency. I force myself upright and move closer, ignoring the protest in my leg.
The monitor displays a complex matrix of code, but there—right at the top—my name pulses like a beacon.
Or a target.
"It's encrypted with passwords," Asa explains, his voice clipped and professional. "Based on the architecture, they appear to be phrases or words specific to Sloane's knowledge base."
A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the winter air still clinging to my clothes.
The implications hit like body blows: Granger's been studying me. Learning me. Building a digital trap with my own history as the key.
My fingers hover over Asa's keyboard, my heart pounding so loud I'm certain the others can hear it.
Logan stands behind me, a solid wall of silence and strength, but I can feel the tension radiating off him.
The man who let me into his world, into his bed, into parts of himself I suspect no one else has seen... and now I wonder if he's questioning that choice.
The encrypted file pulses on screen, waiting. Taunting.
Asa leans closer, his reflection ghosting across the monitor.
"This wasn't just addressed to you. It was built for you. The cipher pattern matches your press archive—like someone fed your digital signature into a military-grade lock."
"That's not possible," I whisper, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know they're hollow.
"Granger made it possible," Asa counters. "This is personalized bait."
A cold breath slips down my spine as I process this. I start typing, each keystroke deliberate and careful.
The room seems to contract around me as I work, the air growing thicker with each passing second.
Logan's presence behind me feels like gravity itself—not comforting, not threatening, just... there .
An immovable force waiting to see which way I'll fall.
I try combinations first—phrases from old articles, passwords I've used to protect sensitive files. Each attempt feels like picking a lock in the dark, never knowing if the next twist will spring the trap or open the door.
The screen blinks.
Decryption complete.
A video file populates, and my throat goes dry.
No date. No timestamp. Just a single word that feels like an accusation:
CHOOSE.
My finger trembles slightly as I click play.
The image resolves into a nightmare.
Lucia Calderón stares back at me, her young face a mask of terror. She's tied to a chair in what appears to be some kind of storage room—all concrete and shadows, metal shelving looming behind her like prison bars.
Granger's voice slides through the speakers, smooth as oil on water:
"Funny thing about journalists. They never know when to stop digging."
Every muscle in my body freezes. That voice. I've never heard it before, but somehow it sounds exactly like I imagined in my darkest thoughts—calm, controlled, utterly devoid of empathy.
"I wanted silence. You want the story," he continues. "But now... we're both going to get what we deserve."
The camera pans, revealing a digital countdown timer mounted on the wall behind Lucia.
00:17:12
My heart stops as I watch the seconds tick away.
"I call this segment: What Will the Truth Cost You?"
Bile rises in my throat. The casual way he turns torture into entertainment makes me want to scream.
But I force myself to stay focused, to catalog every detail, every shadow, every potential clue in the frame.
"Decrypt this message, and you get her location," Granger explains. "Upload it? I trigger the failsafe."
Failsafe.
The word hangs in the air like smoke. I've covered enough military operations to know that a "failsafe" is never about safety—it's about ensuring complete and total destruction if things go wrong.
"And if you try to trace the signal," he adds, "you'll lose her. Choose wisely, Miss Carter."
The screen goes black, then fills with another encrypted data packet. The location key is scrambled with what looks like military-grade compression code—the kind designed to self-destruct if tampered with incorrectly.
"I can crack this," Asa says, leaning forward. "But it'll take time."
"We don't have time," Logan's voice cuts through the room like a blade.
"There's a bomb," I say quietly, the realization settling into my bones. "Or something worse."
Asa's hands move across the keyboard with practiced precision, his eyes scanning the matrix of code. "He wants you to decode it yourself. I can assist—but he left this for you."
I exhale slowly, trying to center myself.
Sixteen minutes.
That's all we have. Every second feels like a hammer in my skull, but I force my hands to stay steady as I begin typing.
The encryption is like nothing I've ever seen—layers upon layers of interlocking codes, each one referencing something from my past.
Article headlines. Source codenames. Even fragments of interviews I thought were lost to time.
Logan doesn't move from my side as I work.
Not once. His presence anchors me, keeps me from spinning out into panic. Because that's what Granger wants—for fear to make me sloppy, to force a mistake.
At twelve minutes, the first layer finally breaks.
A GPS tag appears: thirty miles north. A derelict firewatch station, decommissioned after the 2014 wildfires. It's perfect—off the main grid, abandoned, forgotten by everyone except those who need somewhere to disappear.
My hands shake slightly as I feed the coordinates to Asa.
"Scramble the uplink," Logan commands. "Isolate it from our network. If he's watching, I don't want him knowing we've found it."
"You think he isn't watching now?" Asa's voice carries a hint of dark humor.
"I'm counting on it," Logan replies, and something in his tone makes me look up.
At thirteen minutes, the final firewall shatters.
A live feed flashes onto the screen—Lucia, still breathing, still tied, the timer now down to 3:58 and counting relentlessly backward.
Logan speaks into his comm unit, his voice carrying the weight of command: "We found her. Coordinates sent."
The response is immediate and unanimous. Every member of the Forge team acknowledges in perfect sync.
No debate. No questions. Just absolute trust and readiness.
I stand, already reaching for my coat, but Logan's hand catches my arm. The touch is gentle but firm.
"I know you want to come," he says softly, "but look at you."
I pause, suddenly aware of my body's betrayal.
My breath comes in ragged gasps. The wound in my thigh throbs with every heartbeat. Sweat plasters my shirt to my skin despite the room's chill.
"You've done the most important work," he continues. "Finding Lucia. Let us handle the rest."
I look at him—really look at him. These aren't the eyes of someone walking away. These are the eyes of someone asking me to trust him the way his team trusts him.
Without question. Without doubt.
Something breaks and mends inside me simultaneously. I step forward and wrap my arms around him, breathing in his scent of pine and gunmetal.
"Go," I whisper against his chest. "Bring her back."
He kisses me—hard and fast, like he's trying to pour everything he can't say into that single moment of contact. Then he's gone, leaving nothing but the ghost of his warmth and the echo of boots on metal stairs.
I don't sit.
I can't.
Instead, I pace the war room like a caged animal, the comm unit in my ear picking up nothing but tactical silence.
Asa's pulled satellite drone feeds onto the split screens, giving us a bird's eye view of the operation, but watching without being able to help is its own kind of torture.
My mind won't stop spinning.
Lucia is just a child. An innocent child.
She's in that chair because of me—because I couldn't let go of the story, couldn't stop digging even when the ground started giving way beneath my feet.
Is the truth worth this? Worth putting a twelve-year-old girl in the crosshairs of a man who treats human lives like chess pieces?
I grip the edge of Asa's desk so hard my fingers go white, trying to ground myself in something solid. The metal is cool against my palms, real in a way that nothing else feels right now.
Then Asa's voice cracks the silence like glass.
"We've got a breach point. Entry in five." He pauses, and something in his tone makes my skin crawl. "And Sloane?—"
"What?" The word comes out sharper than I intend.
He turns the monitor toward me, and my blood runs cold.
"Granger left something else behind. A second file."