Chapter Fifteen Jace
The flight back feels like it takes far too long.
I spend them going back over the plan. Variables, contingencies, failure points. Every scenario mapped and remapped until the patterns blur together into a single, repeating truth: this will either work perfectly, or Elliot dies.
There is no middle ground.
The plane touches down at a private airstrip outside the city, a facility owned by a shell company three layers removed from House Harrington. Briar arranged it. One of many resources he's been quietly accumulating during his months of supposed exile. Guess family ties run strong in his House.
Jagger is waiting on the tarmac, shoulders hunched against the wind. He looks older than the last time I saw him, the lines around his eyes deeper, the set of his mouth harder. The pressure is wearing on him too.
Jinx stands beside him, coiled and restless, bouncing on the balls of his feet the way he does when violence is imminent. My youngest brother has always preferred action to planning. Tonight, he'll get both.
"Status?" I ask as I approach.
"Facility location confirmed," Jagger says. "Briar's contact came through. Sub-basement of the Morrison Building, financial district. Three levels below ground."
"Security?"
"Heavy but predictable. Webb likes his routines." Jinx cracks his knuckles. "We've been monitoring shift changes for the past eighteen hours. There's a window."
"How wide?"
"Twenty-three minutes. Long enough if we don't fuck around."
I nod. Twenty-three minutes to infiltrate a secure facility, neutralize Webb, disable the collar, extract Elliot, and escape before reinforcements arrive.
Tight. But possible.
"The distraction?"
"Ready to deploy on your signal." Jagger falls into step beside me as we head toward the hangar. "Landon's been seeding false alerts across the Ministry network—security breaches, data intrusions, asset escapes. Webb's been fielding calls for hours. He's stretched thin and getting thinner."
"Good. Keep the pressure on until we're clear."
Inside the hangar, a makeshift command center has been assembled. Monitors display security feeds, building schematics, communication intercepts. Landon goes and sits at the central console, fingers flying across three keyboards simultaneously, his face illuminated by the glow of scrolling data.
Briar stands behind him, arms crossed, watching the screens. He looks up when I enter.
"Six hours," he says. "That's our window. After that, Webb will figure out the diversions are fake and lock everything down."
"Then we move in five."
"The sedative?" Briar asks.
I pull the vial from my pocket. Clear liquid, pharmaceutical grade, designed to slow vital signs to near-death levels for approximately ninety minutes. Developed by Ministry of Design for deep cover operations. Stolen by me three years ago and kept for exactly this kind of situation.
Only I always thought I’d be using it on myself.
"One injection, and you'll register as clinically dead to any standard scan," I say. "Heart rate below twenty. Respiration almost undetectable. Body temperature drop of four degrees."
"And the antidote?"
"Administered within ninety minutes, or the simulation becomes reality."
Briar nods, unfazed. "I've died before. Metaphorically speaking."
Landon makes a strangled sound from his console. "This is insane. This whole plan is insane. You're going to inject yourself with something that stops your heart, get carried into a secure facility by a man who was sent to kill you, and hope you wake up in time to help fight your way out?"
"That's the general idea, yes."
"And if it goes wrong?"
"Then Jace completes the mission without me, and you get the cottage to yourself."
"That's not funny."
"It wasn't meant to be." Briar crosses to Landon, cups his face in both hands. "This is what I trained for my entire life. What I've been waiting for. A chance to actually change something instead of just watching from the shadows."
"I just got you," Landon whispers. "I'm not ready to lose you."
"You won't." Briar presses his forehead to Landon's. "I'll come back. I promise."
I look away. The intimacy feels too raw to witness, too close to something I recognize in myself.
I promise.
How many promises have I made to Elliot? How many am I about to break or keep in the next six hours?
Jinx appears at my side, voice low. "You good?"
"I'm focused."
"That's not what I asked."
I turn to face him. My youngest brother, the one who survived the pits, the one who channeled his trauma into a capacity for violence that even the Foundry found impressive. He's watching me with something that might be concern.
"Elliot matters to you," Jinx says. Not a question.
"Yes."
"More than the mission?"
"The mission is getting him out. So yes."
Jinx nods slowly. "I've never seen you like this. Fifteen years, and you've never once deviated from protocol. Never once put anything above the objective." He pauses. "It's strange. Watching you become human."
"I'm not becoming human. I'm becoming something else."
"Something better?"
I consider the question. The honest answer is: I don't know. The tactical answer is: it doesn't matter. The only answer that means anything is the one I give.
"Something worth destroying to become more."
Jinx's mouth curves. Not quite a smile, but close.
"Then let's go fight for it."
"The facility," I say, pulling up the schematics on the main screen after the SUV stops just beyond the camera sensors and idles quietly. "Walk me through the layout again."
From the outside, it's unremarkable: twelve floors of corporate anonymity, the kind of place where accountants and middle managers shuffle through fluorescent-lit days without ever suspecting what happens beneath their feet.
Below ground, it's something else entirely.
"Three levels," Landon explains, highlighting sections of the blueprint.
"Level one is processing: intake, medical screening, initial assessment.
Level two is holding: individual cells, interrogation rooms, the neural extraction suite.
" His voice tightens on those last words. "Level three is disposal."
"Elliot is on level two," Briar adds. "Room 7-C, according to my contact. Webb's been keeping him isolated from the other assets."
"Security?"
"Twelve guards on rotating eight-hour shifts.
Biometric access at every checkpoint. Cameras in every corridor except the interrogation rooms." Landon pulls up another screen.
"But here's the vulnerability… the shift change at 0200 creates a twenty-three minute gap in coverage.
Half the guards are leaving, half are arriving, and the overlap means everyone assumes someone else is watching the monitors. "
"That's our window."
"It's also when Webb typically does his late-night sessions." Briar's jaw tightens. "He likes to work when there's minimal oversight. Fewer questions about his methods."
I absorb this. File it. Add it to the growing list of things I will make Webb answer for when this is over.
"The collar," I say. "We need to get it from him. What are the mechanics?”
Landon brings up another schematic, this one showing the internal mechanics of the compliance device. "It operates on a specific frequency band, controlled by a handheld transmitter. Range is approximately fifty meters."
"Webb carries the transmitter personally."
"Which means we need to take it from him before we can safely remove the collar." Briar straightens, rolling his shoulders. "That's where I come in. You deliver my body as proof of completion. Webb will want to verify personally. He'll get close. And when he does—"
"I inject you with the adrenaline. You waking up creates a distraction and I take the transmitter."
"Exactly."
It's a good plan. Clean, simple, minimal variables. It’s solid, but if we are off by a few seconds, it could mean death. For all of us.
"What if I don’t get the needle into you fast enough?" I ask.
"Then you improvise." Briar meets my gaze, steady and unflinching. "You're the Reaper. Improvisation is what you do."
"I improvise death. Not rescue."
"Then learn something new." He claps a hand on my shoulder. "You've already learned how to feel. How hard can the rest of it be?"
Jagger pulls me aside while the others finalize equipment checks.
We stand in the corner of the hangar, voices low, the hum of machinery providing cover for our conversation.
"There's something you should know," he says. "About Protocol Omega."
My attention sharpens. "You found something?"
"Fragments. Enough to piece together a partial picture." He pulls out a tablet, swipes to a document filled with redacted text and partial records. "It dates back twenty-three years. A joint operation between House Harrison, House Webb, and two others—Sterling and Holloway."
"What kind of operation?"
"That's where it gets murky. The official records call it a 'population management initiative.
' But the financial traces tell a different story.
" He scrolls to a spreadsheet. "Massive fund transfers to medical facilities.
Contracts with genetic research labs. Procurement orders for equipment that doesn't match standard Ministry protocol. "
I study the numbers, the names, the dates. Something cold settles in my stomach.
"They were experimenting."
"On what, I don't know. The records are too fragmented. It has a lot to do with Westpoint and if my information is solid, that academy was a breeding program. One they intend to resurrect in the near future. The building is already being rebuilt. It’s not the whole picture, but…
" Jagger pockets the tablet, "whatever it was, Moore was involved.
Deeply involved. And so was our father."
Our father. Dead for fifteen years, killed in what was officially recorded as a training accident at the Foundry.
I was eight years old. Jagger was twelve. Jinx was six.