Chapter 49
Seraphina
I didn’t leave a note.
I didn’t have time to craft an excuse that sounded enough like the truth to pass muster, and more than that—I didn’t want to. If I gave Callum even a sliver of a reason to follow me, he would. And this? This I had to do alone.
No team meeting. No late-night strategizing around Emerson’s whiteboards. Just coordinates. A name. And a ghost who might still breathe.
The address brought me to a quiet stretch of suburbia masquerading as comfort. A rusting iron gate. An unkempt lawn. The house sat hunched like it had given up, blinds shut tight like eyelids that hadn’t opened in days. This was where the old world came to rot.
I buzzed the intercom once. No answer. So I climbed the gate.
Inside, the board member—Margot Lively—was older now, frail in a way that left bones protruding where pride used to sit. She recognized me the second I stepped into the kitchen, and not because we’d met before.
“You’re Elara’s daughter,” she murmured. “You have her eyes.”
I didn’t flinch. Not outside. Inside, though—something cracked.
“She worked with you?” I asked .
“She was smarter than all of us.” Margot leaned forward like it hurt her to say it. “She knew what Crest was doing before any of us wanted to believe it. Langston played errand boy. Crest gave orders. But the science... that came from Halbrook.”
I swallowed. “Dr. Vance Halbrook? From Facility E?”
She nodded, and her eyes darted to the living room window, like someone might be listening. “Halbrook was the architect. Crest built the empire, but Halbrook designed the mechanisms.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“They said he was. It was convenient.”
Margot handed me a file folder wrapped in a weathered band of elastic. Her hands shook. “Your mother tried to bring this to light. She tried to warn people. Langston shut it down. Crest buried it.”
Inside the folder were old lab records, routing manifests, digital archives printed out to look like they belonged to another century. One name stood out among the rubble: Elara Moreau .
My chest tightened. “Why is she in this?”
“She got too close. She always did.”
Footsteps.
The front door slammed open like a bomb. I spun, heart pounding, already knowing who it was before the voice followed.
“Jesus Christ, Seraphina!” Callum’s voice thundered through the house. “Are you tryin’ to get yourself killed?!”
I closed the folder slowly, my hands steady even if my pulse wasn’t. “How’d you find me?”
He didn’t answer at first. Just stalked toward me, jaw clenched so hard I thought he might break a tooth. Kieran must’ve hacked my GPS. Or maybe Emerson figured it out.
“Doesn’t matter,” he growled. “What matters is you ghosted us. Again.”
I glanced at Margot. “We’re done here.”
She nodded like she’d been waiting for this part.
Callum waited until we were outside before he exploded again. “Do you understand what you’ve done? If someone else got to her first—if this was a trap—you’d be a goddamn body in a ditch, and we wouldn’t even know where to look.”
“I had to go alone.”
“No. You chose to.”
I turned to him, the night pressing in like it wanted to listen. “I didn’t want you to stop me.”
His breath hitched. Not loud. Just enough that I heard it.
He shook his head once, sharply. “You didn’t give me the chance.”
The silence between us expanded, filled with things neither of us said. I could see the questions in his eyes—how long had I been planning this? How many steps ahead was I, even from him?
But deeper than the anger was the hurt. Callum didn’t trust easily, and I’d cracked something that might not set right again.
“I got a name,” I said quietly, almost like an offering. “Halbrook. He’s not dead.”
Callum’s jaw tightened again, but he didn’t interrupt.
“And my mother... she was in his archive. Her name was listed next to patient IDs. Dates. Lab shipments.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’re you sayin’, Seraphina?”
“I’m saying this stopped being strategy a long time ago.”
He didn’t argue. Maybe because he agreed. Maybe because he knew he couldn’t change my mind.
We didn’t speak on the drive back. The folder sat in my lap, heavier than any weapon.
In the rearview, I saw it—that distance. The space that opened up when someone starts wondering if you’re ever going to let them in again.
I stared out the window, heart aching but resolved. Because this wasn’t about trust anymore. It was about finishing what she started.