Chapter 45
Seraphina
It always starts with the innocents.
That’s the part no one prepares you for. The children’s names buried in spreadsheets. The redacted birthdays that still show up on hospital intake forms. The word “unidentified” stamped over and over like a curse.
We hit the transport hub just after midnight.
The place was dressed like a relief site—rows of mobile units wrapped in humanitarian banners, the smell of antiseptic and diesel hanging thick in the air.
Aid workers moved like ghosts between trailers, heads down, hands busy, pretending the world hadn’t stopped spinning.
If you didn’t know what lived beneath the surface, you might almost believe it was real.
It wasn’t.
Callum and Kieran were already inside the central trailer posing as security auditors, badges forged from the same system Blackdawn used to launder contracts. Reaper and I stayed back, cloaked in the shadows of the outer zone, antennas out, screens glowing faintly beneath blackout fabric.
Emerson had rerouted one of their uplinks to a receiver unit we rigged into the comm van. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to intercept their backup archives in real time. My fingers danced across the keys like I’d trained for this moment my whole life. Maybe I had.
“Signal’s clean,” Reaper murmured beside me, watching our feed stabilize. “One wrong blip and we’re flagged. You’re threading a needle here.”
I nodded, eyes glued to the code unfolding like an ugly secret. “It’s not the needle I’m worried about. It’s what’s waiting on the other side.”
A folder unzipped.
PATIENT_INTAKE//SECURE
I hesitated.
“Three minutes,” Reaper said.
I clicked into the file and braced myself.
Name after name, date after date. Codes, locations, facility designations. Many were just numbers. But some—some weren’t. I scanned line by line, bile rising in my throat.
JAMAL REYES. DOB: 10/12/2011. HANNAH LI. DOB: 03/08/2010. UNKNOWN FEMALE. EST. AGE 14. FOUND: SECTOR 5 BORDER.
Kids.
Some of them I recognized from the missing persons database I monitor in Blackdawn—when I still believed watching was enough. When I thought knowledge alone made a difference.
My hand clenched the edge of the table.
This wasn’t just evidence. This was every worst fear made manifest, tucked into a digital box and filed under humanitarian logistics .
“Seraphina,” Reaper said, more alert now. “One minute to exfil.”
“I’m not done.”
I dug deeper, fast and precise. Beneath the patient files was a secondary archive: SUPPLIER//CONTACTS
I cracked it. Inside was a web of donation logs, corporate partners, and classified communication threads—all masked behind shell orgs with glossy branding and vague mission statements. One name kept recurring. Not hidden, not encrypted, not even subtle.
Langston Initiative.
I blinked.
Michael Langston. CEO. Public philanthropist. Political donor. Former military advisor. Friend of Senator Crest.
My stomach turned.
Reaper saw it too. “He’s clean on paper.”
“So was Crest,” I muttered.
Langston’s nonprofit supplied aid—food, meds, temporary shelter. But the logs said otherwise. He wasn’t providing help. He was facilitating capture. Every container his group delivered to Blackdawn was coded with a tracking beacon. But not for the supplies. For the people.
“They’ve been farming them,” I whispered. “Using disasters and migration as cover.”
“Time’s up,” Reaper said sharply. “They’ll notice the signal bounce in thirty seconds.”
I yanked the drive, shoved everything into my pack, and pulled my hood up. “Let’s go.”
We slipped out of the van and melted into the night, just as Callum’s voice came through our comms. “Target secured. Meet at exfil in five.”
They’d gotten the plant—an inside handler with transport clearance. He’d be useful. Maybe. If he lived long enough to talk.
When we regrouped outside city lines, the van was quiet.
Kieran stripped his gloves off, jaw tight. Callum was already on the comm with Emerson. Reaper sat across from me, arms folded, watching. Waiting.
I stared at the names again, the list now burned into my memory.
“How many?” Callum asked me softly.
I looked up. “Too many. Some are already gone. Some might still be in transport. And some… some were never even registered. Just taken.”
A silence fell over the van like fog. Heavy. Wet. Inescapable.
“We can’t save them all,” Kieran said after a beat, not unkind. Just real.
“No,” I said. “But we sure as hell can stop the people feeding the machine.”
Callum leaned back in his seat, eyes dark. “Then Langston’s next.”
I nodded, fingers twitching. “He’s not just connected to Crest. He’s tied directly to Facility E’s operational funding. ”
Reaper sat forward. “We pull him apart publicly, and Crest bleeds with him.”
It wasn’t justice.
Not yet.
But it was a start.
Because every name on that list was a match. And every match was a spark.
We were going to burn them down.
Every last one.