Chapter 25
Taryn was quiet while Audrey cared for her that evening.
It was as if her mind had retreated, wounded and hiding. Despite what the orderlies had said, Audrey hadn’t yet been taken below—where true interrogations happened, where screams were buried, and prisoners might not return. Maybe Taryn had bought Audrey time—or Ryker was still appraising her value.
What happened below these rooms wasn’t punishment. Audrey sensed a pattern. Prisoners were questioned, broken, measured, and disappeared into the compound. She didn’t know what would come of that process, but she knew she was being moved toward it.
They were hitting Taryn harder now, and the damage showed. Her previously fiery thoughts waned to embers. Jagged images flared behind Audrey’s eyes, some so raw she had to flee, grip the sink, breathe away nausea.
But she couldn’t escape them entirely. Taryn’s memories followed her everywhere.
In one of Audrey’s mind-intruding visions, drawn from Taryn’s memories, Taryn was tied to a bed, wrists bound so tight the skin had split.
She writhed, screaming, as Nikos leaned over her with the relaxed cruelty of a man slapping bugs.
The end of his cigarette burned bright before he pressed it to her exposed neck.
Nikos laughed. Taryn bucked, throat tearing open on a sound Audrey felt in her own bones.
“Feel like talking now? This is nothing. Tell us what we want, or you’ll pray for pain this small.”
Taryn answered in broken Aggregate Standard, voice subdued with fury. “I know nothing about this man.”
“But you know which Field they’d keep him in,” Nikos said. “Tell us which one.”
“Get away,” she growled. “I’ll talk. In Ezebethian.”
Nikos stepped back, waiting.
The door opened. A woman entered—short dark hair, a green tattoo twisting around her neck like a breathing vine. She spoke in Ezebethian, voice syrup-slow and cold. “Tell us what you know.”
Taryn spoke. The woman translated.
“They will take him to the largest Field near Jalnor. The Prime Field. Field One.”
Nikos’s eyes narrowed. “And where inside it?”
Taryn hesitated. “I cannot say.”
“Cannot or will not?” he barked, striking her hard enough that Audrey felt the sting across her own cheek.
“Both,” Taryn whispered.
Nikos glared at the woman. “We’re done with her. Find him wherever he’s hiding. Drag him out.”
The woman nodded once. “Agreed.”
The vision faded.
Surely they wouldn’t bring Ryker out for one Ezebethian officer without involving Audrey? At night, Audrey wondered if he was close enough for her to smell his smoke—but she knew he wouldn’t be here for long. Her inevitable interrogation process might be her only chance.
In the last few days, Audrey learned one thing clearly: nothing was random. Prisoners dragged through—burned, screaming, silent—weren’t just casualties. They were pieces in a larger system, sorted into usefulness or extinction.
Audrey tried with Taryn again, voice subdued so as not to disturb the rare, fragile veil of calm shrouding Taryn that day. “Why are they doing this to you?”
A humorless laugh broke free from Taryn’s cracked lips. “I’m Aggregate security. I work in the Fields. I know things. I am…the enemy.”
War had laws only for the people strong enough to enforce them. Audrey didn’t know why she was still surprised.
“And why do I keep hearing Ryker in your head? Did they bring him in for you?” Audrey’s voice hesitated in spite of her best efforts.
Taryn swallowed, eyes beaming with fresh terror. “I wouldn’t talk. A man is missing—a very important one—and they brought in Number One to find if I knew where.”
Mihail, then. It had to be. Even half hidden in someone else’s pain, Audrey knew that much.
Taryn pushed herself up, meeting Audrey head-on despite the shiver in her wrists.
“I know you read minds. You’re like him.” The fear in her eyes was unmistakable—still, beneath it, her courage held steady.
Audrey knelt so their faces were level. “I’d never take something from you on purpose,” she said gently. “But I’m going to try to kill him. Like I killed Nassar. Like I tried with Basir.”
Taryn could hardly get her next words out. “Good. You’re…different from him. You’re kind.”
Audrey almost argued. Instead, she let the lie sit between them, warm and unbearable. “Can I see what he’s done? Can I hear what he wants?”
Taryn snapped back as though struck, trembling so violently the bed frame creaked. Tears wet her eyes. “I can’t,” she sobbed. “You don’t want to see. He’s a monster.”
“Please, Taryn,” Audrey begged, voice constricted. “I need to know. Anything could help.”
Taryn grasped her hair in both hands, rocking.
“I’ll tell you—but stay out of my head. No more. I cannot take any more.”
“I won’t,” Audrey whispered. “I promise.”
Taryn gasped for air. “He knows almost everything except how to get into Field One. If the Hunters learn that I told him, they’ll kill my family. Even if I die, they’ll punish them. I can’t tell him. I can’t!” She came apart.
Resisting Ryker must have been like trying to hold back a tsunami with bare hands. Audrey stroked her arms. “You did enough. Hear me? Enough. Maybe they’ll take me tomorrow.”
Taryn lifted her mangled face, something like hope—desperate and thin—winking in her eyes. “And then you’ll kill him?”
Audrey didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
For one fragile second, Taryn’s expression eased—like the promise itself might keep her alive until morning.
It made Audrey believe she’d gotten there in time.
The next evening, Taryn had come back glassy-eyed, mumbling. The day after that, even the words were gone. She screamed through the night and fought things that weren’t there.
Taryn was losing her mind by inches. Whatever Ryker was doing had gone beyond burns and cuts. But Audrey stayed out of Taryn’s mind. A promise was a promise.
One night, Audrey woke to Taryn crawling on the floor, moaning, as if she’d fallen out of bed and couldn’t return. Audrey tried to help, but Taryn’s eyes twitched as her body went limp.
Audrey carefully lay her down and checked her pulse. It was barely there.
A minute later, Taryn stopped breathing.
Panic ripped through Audrey. She shook her head. “Taryn. Taryn, wake up.” She didn’t care who heard. She performed chest compressions. Counted. Breathed for her. Counted again. Nothing.
Taryn stayed still. Still and finally beyond pain.
She covered her mouth with both hands. “No,” she whispered. Then louder, “No.”
Taryn was dead.
Ryker had done this slowly and methodically. To a woman trapped between systems and loyalties. Taryn had never once stood a real chance. He worked like a man dismantling a machine.
And Audrey had not stopped it.
Audrey rested her forehead on Taryn’s bed as a feeling rooted into place. Not relief, not peace—something colder.
Ryker was going to die.
Audrey didn’t know when—just that she would be the one to do it. And it wouldn’t be for sport. Not even for vengeance alone. Because this room, this war, this broken body—everything led back to him.
His pursuit of Sophia.
The fire.
Her father’s death.
Now Taryn.
For the first time since arriving on Nepra, Audrey wasn’t thinking about escaping. Not because Cary mattered less, but because killing Ryker had started to look like the fastest way back to her.
Escape would come. But proximity was the immediate plan now.
Now Audrey understood what Sophia had meant by calling her “dangerous.” Not because of what she could do—but because of what she was willing to become.
She didn’t care.
She would exact retribution on Taryn’s behalf, but what she needed went beyond vengeance and survival.
If she could endure—if she could change even one part of this broken world, then there might still be a future waiting for her and Cary.
Maybe she could not only protect her sister from this place but find her and live as they should have—together.
The last seconds she had with her dad came to her.
How he’d hurled himself in front of her.
Now, knowing the floating kitchen knife had been for Audrey’s throat, but she’d stabbed her dad with it anyway, she sobbed.
Her dad’s last act was trying to save Audrey’s life.
She hadn’t protected him in return, though.
And now Taryn, too. Another person devoured by a war that Audrey had been born into but was never allowed to understand.
She let herself cry on the floor next to the body for a long time—over the first friend she had made since Skyler.
Then she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and went quiet. Tears would not change the body on the floor. It would not bring her father back. It would not keep Cary safe.
Only death would do anything now.
Audrey shut Taryn’s eyes, then grabbed the dirty sheet from the bed and covered her friend’s body.
If Ryker was the center of this machine, then killing him meant getting close enough to matter.
Audrey had spent ten years surviving monsters.
One more would not be different.
After a day at Taryn’s side, Audrey felt her mind’s seams loosening.
The body had soured the air, rot crawling into each breath.
As she sat alone in the stark fluorescent light, Audrey thought of Cary.
The memory of her sister’s laugh reached her through the fog of loss.
Taryn was gone, but someone still remained to fight for.
Knowing that helped ease the heaviness of grief just enough for her to breathe, to remember that hope would still exist, if only in the smallest corner of her mind.
When two men finally came to remove Taryn’s body, they treated the dead woman with more clinical interest than human respect—photographing her wounds, documenting the damage, speaking over her as if she were evidence instead of a person.
Audrey couldn’t imagine why they had waited so long, and she hated herself for wondering whether the delay had been intentional.
After they dragged Taryn away, a pair of new clothes was shoved into Audrey’s hands. She showered and sat on the bed, waiting.