Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pine branches whip across my face, slicing thin lines of blood I don’t bother to wipe away.
My lungs feel like shattered glass—every breath is a fresh punishment.
Behind me, the older eleven children move like ghosts.
Silent. Terrified. Their bare feet make no sound on the forest floor because they’ve been trained, beaten, and conditioned not to make noise.
Sterling is ahead, half-carrying the boy who can’t walk, his gown hanging in tatters at the shoulder where the rusted metal tore him open.
Dark blood runs down his spine in a slow, glistening river, but he doesn’t falter.
“Left,” Sterling breathes, the word barely audible over the wind and our ragged breathing.
I veer left, dragging the girl with me. She’s twelve, maybe thirteen, her fingers locked around mine like talons.
She hasn’t let go since the tunnel. Behind us, mercenary flashlights carve through the trees.
Too close. One beam passes inches from my face, lighting up the thick smoke still belching from the mountain’s throat.
The Nesting House burns behind us, its secrets collapsing into ash and molten stone. Good. Let it burn.
My mom moves ahead of us, her lavender dress sticking out among the pines—torn, soot-stained, fluttering like a ghost that refuses to die.
She carries a baby in each arm like they’re groceries, not living things.
Their tiny heads bob against her shoulders with every step.
Her pearls catch the moonlight. My pearls.
I hate how perfectly we match. “Three hundred yards.” Cam’s voice breaks through the static in my ear.
“Abandoned ranger station. East bearing. Lila’s ten minutes out with the truck.
Keep moving.” Ten minutes. An eternity when you’re bleeding, lungs burning, and the woods are crawling with men who have night vision and orders to sanitize every last trace of us.
A child stumbles. He goes down hard, knees crack against rock, and a whimper rips from his throat.
Too loud. I drop beside him, clamping my hand over his mouth.
His eyes are wild, the whites flashing in the dark like a cornered animal’s.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, my voice fracturing.
“I’ve got you.” But I don’t. Not really.
My body shakes so violently that my teeth click together.
A sharp, twisting cramp rips through my abdomen, stealing my breath in a gasp.
I slam my free hand against the nearest tree trunk, bark gouging into my palm as I fight to stay upright.
Sterling appears beside me. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay.
He sees it in the shake of my hands, the way I’m folded against the tree.
Without a word, he simply lifts the boy, settling him on his hip with the effortless strength of a man who’s carried far heavier burdens his entire life.
He extends his other hand to me. I take it.
His palm is shredded from the climb—slick with blood and sap, but his grip is iron.
Unbreakable. Mine. We move again, faster now, urgency snapping at our heels.
The ranger station materializes out of the dark—a rotting cabin with boarded windows and a collapsed chimney.
It reeks of mildew and old smoke. Sterling kicks the door open, weapon up, sweeping every corner before he nods.
“In. Now.” We spill inside. Seventeen children, filthy and shivering.
Dr. Reyes limps in behind my mother, stiff, half-conscious, and stumbling.
I collapse against the wall, absently checking my hand for splinters.
The door slams shut. Sterling wedges a chair under the handle, then another.
Silence falls. Not safety. Just silence.
The children huddle together in the center of the room, a knot of bruised limbs and matted hair.
I slide down the wall until my ass hits the dirty floor, legs giving out completely.
My mom stands by the boarded window, peering through a crack.
Moonlight cuts across her face, turning her into a living photograph I’ve memorized a thousand times.
Same sharp cheekbones. Same hairline. Same slight tilt of her head, like she's listening to a song only she can hear. But there’s a coldness in her now.
Something sharp and metallic that wasn’t there before.
“Who were you texting?” I ask, my voice edged with caution.
“That’s not…” My mom’s voice cuts off mid-sentence.
“In the tunnel. Before the blast. You checked your phone.
“ I lever myself up the wall, legs trembling, refusing to give out. “Who were you reporting to?” Sterling looks up from the boy he’s tending, his hands pausing mid-motion.
His gaze snaps between us—sharp, lethal, already calculating the silent threat.
Mom turns slowly. Her expression is serene, maddeningly calm, like she’s discussing the weather instead of the mountain we just set on fire. “No one. I told you I was waiting for you. For both of you. To activate the failsafe.”
“Fucking bullshit.” I take a step toward her, and my knees buckle.
Sterling catches me before I hit the floor, his arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me against his chest. For one heartbeat, his body tenses, hard and protective, ready to put himself between me and whatever fresh lie is coming.
He sets me carefully back on my feet, never once taking his eyes off my mom.
“You were logged in,” I continue, voice low and filled with venom, leaning into the solid wall of Sterling at my back.
“Ward C. You could have left anytime. But you stayed for years. You weren’t hiding. ”
Mom shifts, watching us with the cool detachment of a scientist observing a petri dish. “I was ensuring the subjects were safe and viable,” she says simply. “Including you. Especially you.” The words land like a slap. Viable. Like we’re experiments.
Sterling steps between us, his weapon sliding into his hand like it was born there.
Not pointed at her. Not yet. Just present—a silent, steel wall between the woman who used to sing me to sleep and me.
“You’re going to start talking,” he says, voice low and dangerous, the kind of rumble that makes the air feel heavier.
“About the facility. About the seventeen kids. About who the fuck you’ve been reporting to all these years.
And you’re going to do it fast…Before I decide that keeping you alive is no longer in our best interest.”
Mom’s smiles. It’s my smile, but sharpened into something cruel and precise.
“I’ll tell you everything,” she says softly.
“But first, you need to understand—you didn’t rescue these children tonight, Sterling.
You signed their death warrants. And yours.
” Her gaze slides to me. “Because the people I work for? They don’t lose assets.
They reclaim them. And they’ve been waiting sixteen years to see if the original pairing would stabilize. ”
My blood runs cold. “What pairing?” But I already know. I know before the words leave her mouth. I feel it in the sharp twist low in my belly, in the way Sterling’s arm tightens around my waist. Like he can physically hold back the truth.
“The one they engineered,” Mom says softly. “Before you were even born. Before Wade knew what he had. Before I knew what they’d taken from me.”
Outside, distant but closing fast, the low thump of helicopter rotors slices through the mountain air. Mom’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She doesn’t glance at it. “They’re almost here,” she says, calm as still water.
Headlights explode through the cracks in the boarded windows—blinding white, violent.
Tires scream across gravel as the truck slams into the porch with a splintering crash that shakes dust from rafters.
The door explodes inward. Lila stands silhouetted against the glare, shotgun raised, hair a wild halo around her face.
“Move your fucking asses!” she bellows. “We’ve got twenty seconds before that bird is overhead!
” She doesn’t wait. She’s already grabbing children, hauling the nearest girl up by her arm, shoving her toward the open back of the black Chevy visible through the shattered doorway.
“Truck’s open! Sterling, drive! I’ll cover! ”
Sterling moves like lightning, scooping up two of the smallest kids, one under each arm.
The room erupts into controlled chaos. Seventeen small bodies surge toward the exit like water through a broken dam.
I grab two more of the babies and hand them to Lila.
My mom stands frozen by the window, her hand creeping toward her pocket like a snake.
“No,” I snarl. I lunge, ripping the phone from her dress with enough force to tear fabric.
The phone screen cracks under my grip, but not before I see that last text bubble sent—three little pulsing dots that vanish into a read receipt.
Whoever she’s reporting to now knows where we are.
“Move!” Sterling roars. He doesn’t wait for me to process the betrayal.
His hand wraps around my upper arm, hauling me toward the shattered doorway where the truck’s engine screams. The children flow past us in a silent river of small bodies, guided by Lila’s frantic gestures.
She stands braced in the glare of the headlights, a shotgun against her hip, face pale but jaw locked with feral determination.
Mom doesn’t struggle when I drag her toward the truck.
She simply lets herself be pulled, that serene, maddening smile still curving her lips, making me want to put a bullet through her teeth.
“You can’t escape them, Sunshine,” she says softly.
“They’ve been tracking you since you breached the facility. ”