Chapter 55
Seraphina
Smoke curled in tendrils along the ceiling, the acrid sting of burning plastic and scorched metal clinging to the back of my throat. The control room was chaos—screens flickering, wires sparking, and sirens screaming like banshees. I should have been afraid.
I was.
But more than fear, I felt fury.
I slammed my fingers against the keys, bypassing firewalls faster than my mind could register.
Sweat dripped from my temple, stinging my eyes, but I blinked through it.
I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t. The countdown had begun—not to some cinematic explosion, but something far more insidious: a data wipe, a communications collapse, a full-blown digital implosion.
They were going to bury it all. The evidence. The research. The lives ruined.
No. Not on my watch.
The room shook—a distant blast? Callum?
My fingers hesitated. My chest ached.
"Focus," I whispered to myself.
The system fought me every step of the way. Layers of encryption, auto-scramblers, failsafe scripts triggering redundancies. But I knew how Facility E thought now. How they tried to control everything and everyone.
A flash of memory hit me like a punch to the ribs. Dominic’s voice, cold and calculated, dictating my future. The needles. The white rooms. The way they reduced me to nothing more than a file in a locked cabinet.
I gritted my teeth, jaw clenched tight as I typed harder. This was where I took that power back.
Through the chaos, a blinking icon caught my eye—a kernel system trigger. I clicked into it, and what I found made my blood run cold and electric at the same time.
It was a soft reset. A complete purge of their centralized systems. Not physical destruction, but digital paralysis.
It would strip them bare—no doors, no access control, no surveillance.
Everything would fall into entropy. They’d have to rebuild from scratch.
And it would make escape for our team—for Callum—actually possible.
I hesitated.
Once I hit execute, they’d know it was me. Not a virus. Not a breach. Me.
I pressed the button.
The screens went black.
And then—
I ran.
The halls were lit by emergency lights, red and angry, casting everything in warzone hues. I bolted through corridors, smoke biting at my lungs, but my legs didn’t stop. I had to find him. I had to make it to Callum.
Every step, every turn, I thought about what he would do. I remembered the weight of his dog tag in my bra, his kiss behind my ear, the look in his eyes when he called me mo fhíorghra . His love didn’t make me weak. It made me fight harder.
Gunfire rang out ahead. I ducked, pressed myself to a wall, and peeked around the corner.
Bodies.
Three guards down. One still gasping.
And Callum… bleeding.
He was half-kneeling, his shoulder soaked in crimson, but he was still fighting. Still trying to reach a doorway. I sprinted forward.
He looked up just in time to see me barrel into his arms. I took his weight, slinging his good arm over my shoulder.
We didn’t speak. There wasn’t time. I pulled him down the corridor, leading us toward the breach point I’d opened through the system override. Doors were stuck open. Cameras were offline. I’d bought us time.
But as we neared the escape tunnel, I glanced back.
And I saw him.
Crest.
He stood behind a wall of glass, untouched. Calm. Watching .
I shoved the door shut behind us and keyed the manual seal. He couldn’t follow, not right away. But the chill in my spine told me he didn’t need to.
He let us go.
The bastard wanted us to live.
We stumbled into the cool night air, the last safehouse destroyed, Facility E collapsing in on itself from the inside. Quinn was limping, Basen had Emerson’s arm thrown over his shoulders, and Callum was bleeding into my shirt.
We were alive.
But this wasn’t over.
Facility E was wounded—crippled, even. But the head of the snake was still out there. Watching. Planning. Waiting.
I sank to the ground beside Callum, holding his hand.
We’d burned their house down. Now they’d rebuild.
So would we.
But I wasn’t the same woman I was when this started.
This wasn’t the end.
It was war.