Chapter 11 #2
“I already told you they’re not technologically sophisticated enough to be Citizens, and they’re far too different to assimilate.
It’ll never work.” His words sounded practiced, as if he were repeating beliefs half to convince himself.
Yet there was something unresolved lurking behind their meaning,
Still, Audrey had to take him at his word.
He’d drawn a clean line between the two societies.
These Separatists would burn cities to force recognition, to demand power.
Emerson would regulate them into something stable enough to survive.
Two conflicting ideologies, with wildly different approaches to survival.
One wanted to keep people like her caged, while the other would use her to break the world open.
And she didn’t know which one terrified her more.
Pieces fell into place, ugly and inevitable. “My mother has done horrible things for this cause, hasn’t she?”
“Yes.” Emerson glanced toward the door, restless. “Your mother is a terrorist,” he said. “Then she hid for years, letting her own daughter take the fall for the crimes against your family.”
It echoed Alex’s fragmented warnings, but hearing it from someone else broke something open. Grief and relief rose together, choking her.
Cary. Her dad. They should still be alive.
“What do you believe should be done about it? Not just her, but all Voíríans?”
The tablet dinged again, the red numbers still ticking down.
“The Aggregate doesn’t grant freedom lightly. We need to keep evolving the system they live under to ensure they can advance safely. But if they ever chose to work against the Aggregate together, the danger to innocent people would be catastrophic.”
The thought was terrifying.
A frustrated noise escaped him. “It’s impossible to explain a thousand years of political unrest in five minutes. But there’s more you don’t know—about how deeply Ezebethian society depends on the Voíríans—and I don’t have time to get into it.”
“If they contribute, then give them freedom,” Audrey argued.
“It’s more complicated than that. Our two societies are tied together by something we can’t simply destroy—or easily change—especially with how formidable Voírían abilities are. Domination guarantees safety from something we still don’t understand.”
It was clear he didn’t advocate cruelty. No, this was about exerting more control.
Emerson shifted his gaze past her shoulder, and though his face barely changed, his aura was a mess. He reached for the screen without a care for the weapon at his throat. She let him, curiosity taking over.
A blinking dot pulsed over Tolusa. It wasn’t a passing signal.
“She’s here,” he said.
The words nestled into her mind with strange, quiet gravity. Her mother was close by, in Tolusa. Her city.
“For how long?” she asked.
“Long enough.”
Another notification slid across the screen. Emerson’s jaw hardened as he read it. “She’s not passing through,” he continued. “Her comm signature just stabilized. She’s positioning.”
In the corner of the tablet, the red countdown clock shone.
12:13:27.
Audrey zeroed in on it. “I’m going to need you to get specific about this plan of yours,” she said.
“We have intel that she’s meeting with a Silo Identification forger—and soon. He’s ensuring her escape after she carries out her plans for you.”
“What’s a Silo?”
“It’s how Citizens move from world to world,” he said. “Teleportation gates.”
She gave him another questioning look, imagining border crossings and passports, except these moved people between planets and moons.
“Silos don’t operate like your airports or borders,” he continued, intercepting her thoughts. “They’re access points tied to identity signatures.”
Audrey frowned. “Meaning?”
“If your identity isn’t recognized, the system doesn’t just deny you access,” he said. “It flags you. Tracks you. Locks onto you.”
“What about forged identities?”
“They work,” he said. “Until they don’t.”
“And my mother is about to use one of these Silos.”
“Yes.” He motioned to the countdown. “The next jump window is in less than twelve hours. After that, she’ll go into hiding again, and I’m not waiting another five years.”
“You’re telling me the only way to catch her is to force her to surface somewhere we control?”
“Yes.”
“And if she doesn’t show up at this forger’s location when we want?”
“She will. Because we’ll make it too enticing for her not to.”
Everything fit into place for Audrey. “You want to use me as bait.”
He nodded. “We force her movement to the forger at the time of our choosing by making it clear you’re there too.”
“If she thinks I’m trying to leave the planet, she’ll come as soon as possible.”
He didn’t reply, which told her she was right. The clock dropped lower.
12:10:04.
“You were going to use me without telling me,” Audrey whispered.
“I was going to confirm you were usable before I risked the operation.”
Usable. The word made her go rigid. In response, she pressed the sharp edge hard enough for the skin on his throat to split. A thin line of blood bubbled and slid downward.
“I still need answers,” she said. “About where I’m from. About Ryker. About what really happened to my family.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Then make time.”
“No,” Emerson said. The refusal landed so hard that she almost physically flinched.
“You don’t get a full briefing. You don’t get a history lesson.
You can’t sit here and process what you are while the clock runs out.
” His glare was fierce enough to sting. “You get what you need to function in the next hour.”
Audrey’s eyes flashed. “I’m not going into a trap blind.”
“You already are,” he shot back.
That stopped her.
He moved closer—slow, still not caring about the knife. “You think this is about choice?” he continued. “It isn’t. It’s about timing.”
The tablet chirped as the countdown went below twelve hours.
11:56:03.
“She’s accelerating,” Emerson said, eyes looking at the screen before returning to her. “If we don’t activate the signal and get to the forger within the hour, all my work tracking her here collapses. She won’t make the same mistake twice.”
They stared at each other.
Then Emerson pressed forward, not away from the blade, but into it, forcing it deeper into his skin. Blood smeared along the edge. “If you’re going to cut,” he said evenly, “do it.”
He inclined closer, deliberately, forcing her either to draw back or slice deeper.
She didn’t move. “I will burn half this city if that’s what it takes to bring her in.
” He stayed calm and unshaken. “If you don’t leave with me in the next five minutes, I will kill you and leave your body so destroyed that even your sister wouldn’t recognize it.
I don’t need a clean record. I need Sophia caught.
You’re helpful,” he added. “But the mission doesn’t depend on you. ”
The clock dropped to 11:54:42.
Emerson didn’t look away from her. “You want answers? Be my bait, and her mind is all yours to read.”
The tablet pinged again with another notification. Movement confirmed.
Audrey didn’t pull the blade away immediately. She held it there, feeling how little he feared dying compared to failing. Somewhere in the city, her mother was already on the move. If they didn’t get there first, they’d lose the opportunity.
Carefully, she put down her trusty weapon, feeling immediately empty-handed when she did.
Emerson didn’t waste a second. He snatched up the tablet and flicked the map wider. The warehouse district expanded across the screen.
Zones marked in changing colors appeared in green, amber, and red. He expanded the map again, then toggled something. Invisible overlays snapped into place.
Audrey bent closer despite herself. “You’ve studied her.”
He didn’t look up. “For years.”
“And you think you can predict her.”
“I think I can force her to choose between bad options,” he said. “That’s enough.”
Audrey exhaled slowly.
After ten years of confusion, of being told she was unstable and trying to reconcile memories that never quite aligned, it all converged on this moment.
She’d spent so much time reopening the same wounds that every move ahead felt dangerous, as if it might cost her what little of herself she still recognized.
But at the center of her anger and fear was one irreducible want: the whole truth about how Cary and her dad died and her mother’s choices. She needed to hear Sophia confess. She needed answers, not just to heal but to decide what came next.
A feeling of confidence, something she hadn’t had in years, lodged in between the cracks of her soul. Maybe she would finally learn what happened when her family had burned. Maybe, against everything lost, there was something left to reclaim. The past was suddenly closer than it had ever been.
“If I go into this with you,” Audrey said, “she’s mine first.”
The clock chimed.
11:52:12.
When Audrey lifted her stare from the screen, Emerson was watching her, and not as an asset anymore.
He watched her like something that had finally entered the board.