Chapter 13
Used needles glittered in the gutter. The smell was pungent—urine and a chemical tang raked across her sinuses.
This part of the city made the rot visible. Here, everything decayed.
Before Erik supplied her, she’d hunted here alone, chasing anything to stop the noise in her head.
But she’d never come this far south. Too many stories about people not coming back.
Emerson kept looking over his shoulder, tense. “Do you hear anyone following us? I reached, but I want to be sure,” he whispered, his breath brushing her ear.
For him to ask for help, he must have been nervous.
Audrey didn’t mind. She lifted her chin, cracked open her mental floodgates. Voices murmured: hunger, deals, wasted plans—not Ryker’s melodic nightmares or Emerson’s guttered consonants. Voírían and whatever Emerson thought were silent. She saw no interference, no static in the lights.
They’d taken a circuitous route, and her mind had been oddly clear since leaving the club. She hadn’t had any drug cravings, nor had she felt that strange presence biting into the back of her thoughts. With Emerson by her side, she’d also lost the sense of a stare lingering over her shoulder.
As they neared, their surroundings became quieter. Audrey felt an emptiness, as if someone had already decided what stayed. “I don’t hear him, or anyone at all,” she said. “We should be alone.”
“We’re not. My contact’s here, but his shields are impressive.”
Their boots stepped across broken glass and filth. Audrey kept her thoughts in French, her habitual shield, looking sideways as she moved to match Emerson’s long strides.
He led her down an abandoned block. A massive warehouse loomed, blank windows like black eyes. The wind was heavier.
What am I doing? she thought as she forced herself to keep following a near-stranger into unfamiliar, poorly lit streets, making her heightening discomfort clear through her hesitant steps.
She shouldn’t trust Emerson—not after so many betrayals.
But something steady marked his patience; he didn’t flinch or demand more.
It wasn’t enough to ease her doubts, but it was more than anyone else had offered.
She needed answers. If she failed, she’d lose her last shot at redemption.
Without clearing her name, surviving her mess seemed impossible.
Each step reminded her how close she’d come to losing herself entirely.
She couldn’t stop until she knew if any misery could be undone.
A derelict office stood on their left, a window spiderwebbed with cracks. Emerson angled toward it.
“Jaxon works out of here,” he said. “He’s a friend.” He rapped on the door with three precise knocks. It creaked open a sliver. Two red eyes beamed in the slice of darkness, raking over them.
“Who’s the straggler?” Jaxon rasped.
“She’s safe,” Emerson said.
“You can vouch for her?”
Emerson’s jaw flexed. “I don’t think I need to remind you, Jaxon, how many favors you owe me.”
A long, annoyed sigh came from the forger. Then, the door opened wider.
Inside, incense barely masked old smoke and dust. The place was neater than it looked with tidy piles of hardware, coiled cables, and a battered desk with three ancient monitors. Still, Jaxon’s presence felt slick and evasive.
Emerson said his shields were impressive, and they were, but something about his aura was off, too.
He knows how to hide, she thought, unease blooming.
Emerson paused just inside the doorway.
Jaxon was slight, with lank dark-blond hair and red eyes that absorbed light. He dropped into a chair, pointed to the seats across from him, and lit a cigarette, not offering one.
“How can I help you, Hunter?” he asked.
Emerson and Audrey sat. Emerson didn’t waste time. “Has Sophia Simas contacted you lately? Don’t lie, Jaxon. You know I’ll know.”
Jaxon’s eyes narrowed. “How did you find out about that?”
He was lying already. She could taste it.
“You know why—I’m a Hunter. I hunt,” Emerson said.
Jaxon breathed out smoke. "Yeah, she reached out. Needs a Si-ID to get off this shithole." Audrey realized Jaxon’s work was critical. Silo IDs weren’t just fake papers—they were a key to getting past serious checkpoints, a way to disappear. Without one, you couldn’t leave Earth alive.
“You don’t just make Si-IDs for anyone,” Emerson said. “Did you agree?”
“I don’t say no to that kind of money. Criminal or not, I don’t discriminate. They pay, I don’t ask questions.”
Liar, liar, Audrey’s mind whispered.
“Oh, I’m aware of how you run a business,” Emerson said. He paused, his shoulders stiffening slightly. Something about the room changed. His eyes looked once toward the back door before he added, “When is she coming back for the ID?”
“In a few hours. Needs to make the next jump,” Jaxon said—then hesitated. “Unless Mihail decides to move sooner.”
A click sounded. Audrey’s head turned to see light pouring from a door she’d missed. A man stepped through, two guns already leveled.
She hadn’t heard the hinges or felt another mind enter. She’d been too wrapped in Jaxon’s words, too busy cataloging hope and worry.
“We’ll take it from here, Jaxon,” the man said. “He doesn’t like people interfering with his business.”
“Fuck,” Audrey breathed.
The gunman was bald and inked from scalp to throat, tattoos swirling under his skin. His eyes were dark as oil, not Ryker’s black, but close enough to churn her stomach.
“Hands up,” he ordered.
They obeyed. Fury flowed from Emerson, making the air suffocating.
“Stand,” the tattooed man growled.
They rose. Audrey’s heart throbbed.
“What did you do, Jaxon?” Emerson asked, his voice edged with something lethal. “Think carefully before you answer.”
Jaxon shrugged, smoke drifting around his head like a lazy halo. “I owe him more favors than you,” he said. “This was a setup. Sorry to disappoint.”
“I said stand up,” the man snapped. Audrey’s skin crawled. She hadn’t felt Jaxon’s aura at all—he’d masked his mind the moment they arrived. A pro, then. Someone who moved around telepaths. She’d never seen concealment like that—except maybe Ryker, but even he sometimes let her sense him.
Emerson rolled his shoulders, slow and loose, and got to his feet. His face looked bored. His aura was not.
Audrey carefully rose from her chair, mirroring Emerson’s movements with restrained caution, her body tense and ready to respond if needed.
“Nikos, you promised not to kill them,” Jaxon said.
“I personally won’t kill them,” Nikos said. “Now. Outside.” He jerked his head toward the door behind him, wherever it led. They moved in single file, Emerson first, then Audrey, Nikos behind them with both guns tracking their backs.
As she passed, she looked closer. Nikos was huge, broad-shouldered, with muscle and ink. He looked like someone who broke bones, not talked. Jaxon was right. It was a trap, but it didn’t feel like Sophia’s work.
Either way, they’d fallen for it.
Disappointment descended heavily. Sophia might be their only chance to clear Audrey’s name.
Besides Ryker, her mother alone witnessed the real events of the night Audrey was accused; her confession could prove Audrey's innocence.
Emerson risked everything to find Sophia and make her pay.
They had to escape. The stakes stood higher than ever.
Nikos motioned for them to speed up with an angry gesture and a glare. Audrey quickened her steps, aware that any delay risked escalation. Nikos announced, “He’ll want to speak with you personally,” unmistakably referencing the person in charge.
When she reached out to Nikos, his mind was sealed tight.
Still, she sensed obedience twisted with fear.
Whoever Nikos answered to was powerful, someone people dreaded.
All thought had been edged out by terror.
She caught a flash: a big male hand, a tattoo—a raven outlined by a black sleeve.
The face was hidden, but the recognizable dread jolted her.
The vision evaporated, severed abruptly.
Audrey shivered, unsettled, but stayed vigilant.
She and Emerson marched in silence with only their footsteps sounding in the hallway. Water dripped somewhere in the gloom. At the far end, a metal door shone dimly orange around the edges from a lamppost outside.
Emerson moved first. It happened so fast, Audrey thought she’d imagined it. One second, Nikos was behind them, guns steady. The next, Emerson spun and attacked like a serpent.
A gun dropped to the floor. Emerson jerked Nikos’s other arm up, the barrel pointing uselessly toward the ceiling, then jammed his forearm across Nikos’s throat.
He went down hard. Nikos hit the ground with a crack, and Audrey’s breath stuck. It looked like his neck had snapped, but the slight rise and fall of his chest proved otherwise.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she asked, grabbing the second gun from the floor. Her hands vibrated, and that made her angrier.
Emerson kept the remaining weapon trained on the dark end of the corridor, scanning the shadows for movement. “I’m going to question him later,” he said. “After I get us out of this mess.”
“It was your contact who sent us here,” Audrey muttered.
“I know,” he hissed. “I trusted the wrong parasite.”
Emerson kicked the hallway door open, keeping the gun steady while the day’s overcast air rushed in.
They came out into a narrow, damp lane, then moved quickly toward the opening at the end.
Beyond it, an abandoned lot sprawled out, all broken pavement and wild weeds.
The city’s sky was still overcast, bordering on dark, and the lot opened into a circle of pale light under a single streetlamp. It blinked once.
Someone was already standing beneath it, perfectly still. Waiting for them.
Emerson slowed.
Audrey felt it a moment later—a trace of thoughts in Voírían. He was male, and her throat sealed. “That isn’t my mother,” she whispered.
Emerson didn’t reply.
The man smiled. “You’re late,” he said.