Chapter 46
Callum
We slipped the bait out on a Sunday—quiet day, no eyes on the wire. Felt like the kind of day you could set a trap and the world’d keep lookin’ the other way.
A false report, neat as you like. Emerson stitched it up like a tailor, every thread whisperin’ about a breach—money shuffled wrong, whistleblower maybe ready to chirp. It looked real. Felt it too. We dropped it in just the right inbox. Let it breathe.
Didn’t take long at all.
By Tuesday, Langston’s name was ghosted off the board of Crest’s pet nonprofit. Gone, like he’d never been. Emerson showed us the cached page with a shake of his head.
"Officially?” Reaper muttered. “He’s taking time off to focus on his health.”
Aye, right.
I let out a quiet breath. “We’ve rattled the cage, then.”
And sure enough, the beast inside came crawlin’ out, polished teeth and all.
Crest himself stepped up that same day—press stage, lights, cameras, bloody crocodile tears. All smiles and sincerity, standin’ shoulder to shoulder with people he’d rather see in cages.
Talked a big game about fightin’ human traffickin’. Promised a new fund to fight “exploitation.” Handed out hugs like sweets at a christenin’.
It was rot. All of it.
And still—they clapped.
I watched Seraphina across the room as the broadcast played. Arms crossed, face carved in stone, eyes burnin’ holes straight through the screen. She didn’t speak. Didn’t twitch. But the air around her? It was charged. Like lightning about to strike.
Wasn’t just hatred in her. No. It was older than that. Deeper. The kind that seeps into your bones and makes vows you never say aloud.
Later, it was just the two of us in the safehouse’s server room. Rest of the crew were off catchin’ what sleep they could, or combin’ through comms.
Emerson had cracked one of the backups we’d scraped from the clinic. Looked like garbage at first glance—old temp file, mislabeled.
Wasn’t garbage.
It was a feed. Surveillance. Facility E.
Grainy, warped with static, the time stamps barely holdin’. But real.
I watched the screen as it played—kids, mostly. Teens, younger even. One woman strapped to a chair with her hands bound like she was a flight risk .
No sound. Just cold black-and-white. Movements too still. Eyes too empty.
One camera caught a lad wheeled down a corridor on a gurney. Didn’t move. Couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or… well. Didn’t bear thinkin’.
Seraphina sat beside me, not breathin’. Hands clenched white on the edge of the desk. Eyes locked.
Didn’t say a word.
I didn’t either. Let the footage roll. Gave her the silence.
The reel ended. Restarted. Same ten minutes, loopin’. We watched again.
She spoke then, voice so soft I near missed it.
“We’re not just finding monsters.”
Didn’t look at me. Just kept starin’ ahead.
“We’re finding what they did to people.”
My hand went to hers before I thought it through. Meant to comfort, not crowd. Light touch, nothing more.
But she gripped back. Tight.
So I stayed. Fingers curled round hers, steady as I could.
“And we’ll make them remember every one of their names,” I told her, voice low.
She didn’t cry. She’s not the cryin’ type. But she leaned ever so slightly into me, and I knew—that was trust. That was steel reforgin’ itself .
That was her lettin’ me carry a piece of it with her.
The footage blinked off a minute later. Just static left. We sat there in the hum of the machines, not speakin’.
Then Emerson crackled in through the comms, half asleep.
“I think I found something in the metadata,” he said. “There’s a subfolder buried under a temp label—might be more surveillance. Gimme twenty.”
Seraphina gave a nod, quiet. Her eyes still on the dark screen.
Thunder rumbled outside, low and distant.
And I knew right then—we weren’t just tearin’ down a facade. We were about to set fire to what was beneath it.
They thought they could smile for the cameras and bury the truth.
But we’d seen what they did.
And now—we were comin’ for them.