Chapter 79 Ethan
Ethan
By the time we get downstairs, the whole team is already in the war room.
Ronan stands at the head of the long table, calm and unreadable as ever.
Cal is leaning against the far wall with a mug in hand.
Aaron is in one of the chairs, kicked back like this is a normal morning and not the aftermath of a cliffside execution and a buried lab explosion.
Jonah is at the main screen with three laptops open and enough cables around him to strangle a horse.
He looks up when Ava and I walk in.
His face shifts in a way that tells me two things immediately.
One, he found something real.
Two, he wishes he hadn’t.
Ava feels it too. I can tell by the way her spine goes straighter beside me.
Ronan nods toward the seats. “Sit.”
We do.
I take the one beside Ava without thinking.
She doesn’t comment on it.
Also doesn’t move away.
Jonah taps a key and the main screen lights up.
Rows of files.
Names.
Shipment logs.
Medical coding.
Encrypted payment trails.
At the center of it all is one folder label in red.
HELIOS.
Ava goes completely still.
I look at her. “You know it.”
Her voice is flat. “I heard it once.”
The room sharpens.
Ronan folds his arms. “Explain.”
Ava keeps her eyes on the screen. “Not much to explain. Just a name. Hayes was in one of the lower labs talking to someone through glass. I was drugged. In and out. But I remember him saying, ‘Helios stays compartmentalized. Even if this site burns.’”
Jonah nods grimly. “That matches what I found.”
He expands the file tree.
“It’s not a single site,” he says. “It’s a network model. Distributed. Layered cells. Research, logistics, acquisitions, handler teams, political shielding, private security contracts, shell medical programs. Hayes ran one arm of it.”
Aaron’s expression darkens. “How many arms?”
Jonah hesitates.
That’s never good.
“At least six we can see. Maybe more.”
Cal mutters a curse.
Ava says nothing.
She just sits there staring at the screen like she wants to burn it down through sheer force of will.
I slide my hand under the table until it finds hers.
Her fingers lock around mine instantly.
Jonah clicks into another file.
“This is where it gets worse. Helios wasn’t just building operational control assets.” He swallows. “They were building redundancy.”
Ronan’s eyes narrow. “Meaning?”
Jonah pulls up a list.
Codenames.
Status markers.
Locations.
Some marked terminated.
Some inactive.
Some missing.
And four marked unknown.
The room goes dead silent.
Ava’s face drains of color.
Because the codenames aren’t random.
I can see that too.
Female.
Ages near hers.
Acquisition dates.
My stomach turns to stone.
“No,” she whispers.
Jonah looks sick. “Ava…”
She shakes her head hard. “No.”
Her chair scrapes back as she stands.
I’m up immediately.
“Ava.”
She points at the screen with a shaking hand. “He wasn’t done.”
No one answers.
No one can.
Because she’s right.
Hayes is dead, but the machine he fed is still moving somewhere in the dark.
“These aren’t just files,” Jonah says carefully. “Some of these status reports are recent. Not yesterday recent, but recent enough to matter.”
“How recent?” Ronan asks.
Jonah brings up the timestamp metadata. “Within the last six weeks.”
Aaron sits forward now, all humor gone. “So while we were hunting Hayes, Helios was still active somewhere else.”
“Looks that way.”
Ava presses a hand to her mouth.
I move in front of her without thinking, blocking the screen.
Her eyes jump to mine.
Furious.
Shattered.
Not at me.
At all of it.
At the fact that one death doesn’t erase an entire buried world.
“He said there were others,” she whispers.
I nod once. “I know.”
Her gaze searches mine like she’s looking for permission to break, and that about kills me.
“Sit down,” I say softly.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
Her laugh is brittle and wrong. “You really do think saying things like that makes them true.”
I step closer. “No. I think I know when you’re about to push until you crack.”
The room is silent behind us.
Watching.
Waiting.
Ava closes her eyes for a second.
Then opens them and exhales shakily. “I don’t know what to do with this.”
“Nothing right now,” Ronan says.
She looks over at him.
He hasn’t moved from the head of the table.
His voice stays level. “Right now, you breathe. Jonah keeps digging. We verify what’s real, what’s old, and what’s active. Then we move.”
She swallows. “You’re just going to say it like that.”
“Yes.”
“Like it’s manageable.”
Ronan’s expression doesn’t change. “It is.”
It’s not softness.
It’s steadiness.
Sometimes that’s better.
Ava studies him for a long second, then slowly sits again.
I sit with her.
Jonah changes the screen.
A map appears.
Dots spread across several countries.
Most gray.
Two blacked out.
One red.
“What’s the red one?” I ask.
Jonah’s face tightens. “A live relay.”
The whole room goes still again.
Ronan’s voice drops. “Location?”
Jonah zooms in.
The red marker settles over a private medical research facility in southern Portugal.
Aaron stares. “That can’t be real.”
“I thought the same thing,” Jonah says. “So I cross-checked it three times. Corporate ownership is fake. Staff rosters are layered through shell entities. Shipping records include medical hardware that doesn’t match the declared specialties.
And...” He brings up one final file. “The relay handshake is using the same buried protocol Hayes’s site used. ”
Ava looks at it like it physically hurts. “They’re still running.”
“Yes,” Jonah says quietly.
I feel her hand tremble in mine.
Then stop.
Not because she’s calm.
Because something else is settling in.
Resolve.
I know the feel of it.
I’ve lived on it for years.
Ronan sees it too. “No.”
Ava’s gaze lifts. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do.”
Aaron huffs a dark little laugh. “This team has a communication problem.”
Ronan ignores him. “You are not jumping on the next bird to Portugal.”
Ava’s jaw sets. “You need me.”
“We need you whole.”
“You won’t get whole by leaving people in cages.”
That lands hard enough no one breathes for a second.
Because there it is.
The thing none of us can argue with.
The human center of it.
Not justice.
Not even revenge.
People.
Still trapped.
Still buried.
Still living the echo of what she survived.
Jonah breaks the silence carefully. “We don’t even know if that site is one of the active acquisition arms or just a relay archive.”
Ava turns to him. “And if it’s not?”
He has no answer.
Of course he doesn’t.
Because if it isn’t, that only means somewhere else is worse.
I look at Ronan. “What’s the timeline?”
Ronan glances at Jonah. “How fast can you get us something actionable?”
Jonah runs a hand through his hair. “On the relay? A few hours for deeper trace work. On the facility? Longer. I can build a better profile by tonight if no one pulls my internet privileges.”
Cal takes a sip of coffee. “Tempting.”
Jonah glares at him.
Aaron leans forward. “Then we don’t move blind. We build it right. If Helios is bigger than Hayes, rushing gets people killed.”
Ava doesn’t argue with that.
That worries me more.
Because it means she agrees.
And if she agrees, she’s already mentally in the next fight.
Ronan makes the call. “No movement today. Jonah digs. Cal and Aaron run external checks through quiet channels. Cross, you stay with Ava.”
Ava opens her mouth.
Ronan cuts her off with one look. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Her eyes narrow. “I am not a hostage.”
“No,” he says evenly. “You’re the only person in this room who has seen this system from the inside and lived. That makes you valuable. It also makes you a target.”
The truth of that settles over the room like cold rain.
I hate it.
Because it’s true.
Because Hayes's death does not magically make Ava safe if other people in Helios decide she knows too much.
Ava’s shoulders pull back a fraction. “I’m tired of being handled.”
Ronan nods once. “Good. Stay angry. Just stay alive while you do it.”
Aaron mutters, “That’s weirdly inspirational.”
Cal says, “For Ronan, that was practically poetry.”
Even Ava’s mouth twitches at that.
Tiny.
But there.
And I’d kill to keep seeing that.
Jonah taps another key. “There is one more thing.”
No one likes that sentence.
He pulls up a final document fragment.
Heavily corrupted.
Mostly unreadable.
Except for one line in a transfer memo.
SUBJECT A. WINSLOW REMAINS PRIORITY-LEVEL RECOVERABLE IF CONTACT REESTABLISHED.
The room goes dead.
My whole body ices over.
Ava reads it once.
Twice.
Then very calmly says, “Delete that.”
Jonah blinks. “What?”
“Delete it.”
Her voice doesn’t rise.
Doesn’t shake.
That’s worse.
Jonah looks at Ronan.
Ronan looks at me.
I’m already staring at the screen like I can kill words.
Ava stands.
This time slower.
More controlled.
“There is no universe,” she says quietly, “where I spend one more second letting them define me as recoverable.”
No one interrupts.
No one moves.
She points at the line again. “Delete it.”
Jonah swallows. “I can wipe the onscreen cache, but the extracted file stays in secure evidence.”
“Fine,” she says. “Then change how we talk about it.” Her eyes sweep the room, landing on each of us in turn. “I was never theirs to recover.”
Something fierce and aching punches straight through my chest.
Aaron is the first to nod.
“Fair,” he says.
Cal nods too. “Fair.”
Ronan’s voice is quiet. “Understood.”
Jonah clears the line from the main display.
Ava exhales.
Not relief.
But maybe a fraction of power reclaimed.
I move to her side. “Come on.”
She looks up at me.
There’s too much in her face.
Too much rage, too much pain, too much strength being held together by threads that haven’t had time to weave into anything permanent yet.
“Where?”
“Outside,” I say. “Before I break Jonah’s computers.”
Jonah looks offended. “In fairness, the computers didn’t write the human trafficking memo.”
Aaron says, “That’s the most Jonah sentence ever spoken.”
For reasons I don’t fully understand, Ava laughs.
Just one breath of it.
Still rough.
Still thin.
But real.
And I hold onto that sound like it matters.
Because it does.