Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
The residential wing was exactly where Grace said it would be.
Magnus moved down the second-floor corridor with his rifle tight to his shoulder and the schematics she’d fed them burning in his memory like something carved there. Right at the stairwell. Left at the junction. Eighteen meters to the east-side rooms.
The hallway was too bright. White walls.
White tile. Recessed lighting reflected cleanly off the polished floor, interrupted only by the body near the stairwell where Gunnar had dropped one of Lars’s men less than a minute earlier.
The smell of cordite still hung in the air beneath the sharper scent of industrial cleaner.
Gunnar stayed behind him, covering rear angles while Magnus checked each door as they moved. Empty. Empty. Storage. Another empty room with untouched sheets folded military-tight across the bed.
Not here.
The thought came harder each time.
He checked the next room. Empty again.
The terrible arithmetic of the split-team decision kept trying to force itself into his head while he moved.
Tiikaan and Davis had gone to the holding areas.
Astryde and Bj?rn were suppressing what remained of compound security.
Magnus had chosen the residential wing because Grace’s schematics had marked it clearly as the most likely to house Oliver.
But every empty room widened the space where doubt could live.
What if Lars had moved him?
What if the information was old?
What if Lars had anticipated this part, too?
Magnus kept moving.
Door handles. Corners. Angles. Distances. His body stayed operational while his mind tried not to imagine Oliver somewhere else in the compound listening to gunfire and waiting for people who might already be too late.
Halfway down the corridor, Gunnar touched Magnus’s shoulder once and pointed.
Camera.
Magnus saw it tucked into the upper corner near the ceiling. The lens tracked toward them with a smooth mechanical pivot.
Lars was watching.
Good.
Magnus lifted his rifle slightly and shot the camera out without slowing. Glass burst across the tile. Somewhere overhead, an alarm shifted pitch.
Three more doors.
The first opened into another immaculate guest suite. Empty.
Magnus’s chest had started feeling too tight inside his vest by the time they reached the final stretch of hallway. He could feel his pulse in his jaw now. In his hands. In the backs of his knees.
Wrong building.
The thought landed ugly and immediate.
He should have taken the other location. Lars used leverage. Cages. Isolation. Maybe Oliver wasn’t in the residential wing at all. Maybe Magnus had wasted—
Magnus reached the final door on the east side and tested the handle. His pulse hit hard once against the inside of his throat as he pushed the door inward with the barrel of his rifle.
The room beyond glowed softly in the jungle-filtered daylight spilling through wide windows overlooking the water. A small bed sat against the far wall beneath the glass. Books were stacked unevenly beside it. A child-sized sweatshirt hung over the arm of a chair near the corner.
Crayons littered the rug in loose, disorganized clusters around a drawing spread open on the floor. Dinosaur. Green body. Purple spikes.
Oliver stood near the windows, pressed up on his knees against the cushion beneath the glass, trying to see past the trees toward whatever noise had been echoing through the compound.
He turned at the sound of the door opening.
Magnus stopped moving.
Oliver’s eyes widened instantly with the terrible uncertainty of a child afraid to believe what he wanted most was actually standing in front of him.
“Dad?”
The word broke something open inside Magnus so fast it almost hurt.
Oliver sprang to his feet. “Dad!”
Magnus crossed the distance in three strides.
His rifle dropped to the sling as he scooped Oliver off the floor and into his arms, and Oliver came without hesitation, arms locking around Magnus’s neck hard enough to bruise.
Magnus caught the back of his head automatically, one broad hand cradling him against the front of his vest while Oliver buried his face where Magnus’s shoulder met his collarbone.
He was shaking.
Not violently. Small, fast tremors that Magnus could feel through the thin cotton of his clothes.
“I’ve got you,” Magnus said, but his voice came out rough enough that he barely recognized it. He tightened his hold instinctively, pressing his mouth briefly against Oliver’s hair. “I’ve got you, buddy. You’re okay.”
Oliver nodded hard against his neck, and then the shaking turned into sobbing.
The sound tore through Magnus cleanly.
Oliver had cried before. Scraped knees. Nightmares. When Grace first left. Magnus knew all the different textures of those tears by now.
This was fear finally breaking loose after being held in too long.
Magnus turned sideways automatically, shielding Oliver with his body while Gunnar secured the room behind them.
The suite looked untouched. A child-sized backpack beside the bed.
Clothes folded neatly over a chair. Rocket lamp glowing orange beside a stack of books someone had probably bought in a hurry to make the room look normal.
Normal.
Magnus held Oliver tighter.
His own eyes had started burning before he realized it. He blinked once, hard, but a couple of tears escaped anyway and disappeared into Oliver’s hair. He didn’t bother hiding them.
Oliver pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was blotchy now, lower lip trembling despite how hard he was trying to control it.
“You came.”
The words nearly finished Magnus.
“Of course I came.” He brushed messy hair back from Oliver’s forehead with shaking fingers. “There was no universe where I wasn’t coming for you.”
Oliver grabbed the front of Magnus’s vest again like he was afraid letting go might make him disappear. “I knew you would.”
Magnus laughed once through the tightness in his throat. It came out wrecked.
Behind him, Gunnar turned away slightly, giving them privacy that didn’t really exist in the middle of an active assault.
Oliver’s breathing had started evening out when he suddenly stiffened.
“Where’s Mom?”
Magnus closed his eyes briefly.
“She’s here,” Magnus said carefully. “She came to get you.”
“Where is she?”
Magnus didn’t answer immediately because he didn’t know how to answer without lying.
Comms crackled in his ear before he could try.
Rafe sounded half out of his mind.
“Guys,” he said, words colliding over each other, “you are never going to believe this.”
Magnus shifted Oliver higher against his chest and keyed his mic. “Rafe, status.”
“I don’t even know what I’m looking at yet.” Keyboard clatter hammered through the comms. “Government pings are going insane. DHS, CIA, FBI, Treasury. Somebody at Interpol just hit one of the mirrored servers, and now the dark web’s exploding too. This is—I don’t even—”
Another burst of typing.
“Okay. Okay, no, this is bad. Or good. Maybe both. I don’t know yet.” Rafe exhaled sharply. “Grace dumped everything. Financials, black sites, shell companies, operators, politicians, contractors. I’ve got darknet forums posting raw archive fragments and—hold on—”
Silence for half a second.
“Why is this on TikTok?”
Even Gunnar looked over at that.
Rafe sounded genuinely offended by reality. “I don’t know! Somebody clipped a senator’s offshore account chain to synth-pop music. I don’t understand the internet anymore.”
Despite everything, despite the alarms and blood and gunfire still echoing somewhere below them, Magnus almost laughed.
Almost.
Then Rafe’s voice changed.
“Oh, crap.”
Magnus felt his body tighten instantly. “What?”
“She gave me access to Lars’s internal security feed.” More typing. Faster now. “He’s moving southbound through the compound. Heading for the dock.”
Magnus already knew before Rafe finished.
“He has Grace.”
Magnus looked down at the boy in his arms. Oliver was watching his face now with frightened concentration, trying to read truths Magnus didn’t know how to soften.
“Is Mom okay?”
Magnus stared at him for one terrible second.
Then he looked at Gunnar.
Everything that had fractured between them since this all began seemed to pass silently through that glance. Gunnar’s anger. The vault. The helicopter. The realization that Grace had walked back into hell, knowing exactly what it would cost her if this failed.
And beneath all of it, family.
Gunnar stepped closer and held out his arms.
“I’ve got him,” he said quietly.
Oliver’s grip tightened immediately. “Where are you going?”
Magnus brushed his thumb across Oliver’s cheek, wiping away the damp tracks left behind by tears.
“To get your mom.”
Oliver searched his face like he was checking whether adults could still promise things honestly in a world like this.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Bring her home.”
Magnus bent and kissed the top of his head once. He breathed him in one more time — shampoo, sweat, salt, the familiar little-boy smell that belonged in kitchens and school pickups and tangled blankets on movie nights instead of a private island owned by a monster.
Then he transferred Oliver carefully into Gunnar’s arms.
Gunnar took him securely against his chest without hesitation. The movement looked practiced. Natural. Another Rebel holding another Rebel child while the world came apart around them.
“I’ll keep him safe,” Gunnar said.
Magnus nodded once.
That was all either of them needed.
Then Magnus turned, picked up his rifle, and ran for the dock.