Chapter 21 Talia #2
A single jet with its cabin lights glowing warm in the dark.
The van stops at the base of the ramp.
Skye doesn’t waste a second. “Let’s move.”
The team lifts Jackson out, steady, coordinated, trained for this exact moment. They guide him up the metal ramp into the jet’s interior.
Equipment is bolted to the walls. A stretcher mount waits in the center. Monitors hang from ceiling rails.
It’s a flying OR.
Ghost touches my elbow.
“Stay with him.”
I climb the ramp after Jackson, the cold night air swallowing behind me as the hatch begins to close. Inside, the hum of equipment replaces the quiet of the city.
I take the seat closest to Jackson, my hand finding his without needing to look.
Engines spool.
The jet vibrates under my feet.
The world outside slips away.
And even surrounded by people—
I am alone with the fear of losing him.
Later, much later, Ghost guides me out of the jet, into a waiting car, and we drive to a building in Seattle. He walks me to a room and leaves me, with instructions to clean up and rest if I can. We both know I won’t.
I stand in the center of the strange room, staring at my reflection in the massive mirror.
The woman looking back is a stranger. Her face is streaked with grease and soot. Her eyes are wild, the pupils blown wide. She is wearing a tactical vest over a ruined shirt.
I strip.
The vest hits the floor with a heavy thud. The shirt follows. The pants.
I step into the shower. It’s a rainfall head, wide as a manhole cover. I turn the water to scalding.
The spray hits me. The water turns pink.
I watch it swirl around my feet. Jackson’s blood. Washing away.
I grab a sponge and scrub. I scrub until my skin turns red, until it stings. I need to get it off. I need to get the smell of the Halon out of my hair, the taste of ozone out of my mouth.
He took the hit.
The moment plays in my mind, a relentless loop. The shooter. The angle. The timing. Jackson saw the vector. The math he couldn’t beat. So, he changed the variables. He inserted himself into the trajectory of the bullet.
He traded his mass for mine.
A sob breaks out of my chest. It’s ugly, raw. A jagged sound that echoes off the marble tiles.
I slide down the wall, curling into a ball under the spray.
Nathan used to tell me I was a robot. That I processed life instead of living it. That I had an algorithm for a heart.
He was wrong.
I’m not a robot. I’m bleeding. I’m breaking. The pain isn’t data; it’s a physical weight crushing my lungs. I love Jackson. I love him, and I might have just watched him die to save me.
I stay there until the water runs cool. Until my fingers prune and the tears stop coming because there is nothing left to weep.
I shut off the water.
I dress in the clothes Ghost left—soft sweatpants, a Cerberus hoodie that smells like laundry detergent. It swallows me.
I walk out into the main room.
Halo is there. He’s sitting at a glass dining table, surrounded by monitors he’s set up. He looks wrecked. His eyes are red-rimmed, his usual manic energy replaced by a hollow exhaustion.
He looks up as I enter.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Any word?”
“Still in surgery. Brass says the bullet nicked the iliac crest. Bone fragments. It’s messy, but …” He shrugs. “He’s got the best trauma surgeon money can buy. And Ghost’s money buys a lot.”
I nod. I walk to the window. Seattle glitters below us, a sea of amber lights. Somewhere out there, the world is waking up to the news we broke.
“The broadcast?” I ask.
“It went out,” Halo says. He taps a key. “Every major network. Social media. The kill switch might not have worked, but the signal did. We exposed them.”
He turns a monitor toward me. CNN is running a breaking news banner: MASSIVE DATA LEAK EXPOSES DEFENSE CONSPIRACY.
“Admiral Cole?”
“In custody,” Halo says with a grim satisfaction. “MPs picked him up at his estate an hour ago. The data you pulled … It linked him directly to the assassination orders. He can’t wiggle out of this.”
“And Phoenix?”
Halo’s expression darkens. “That’s the bad news. The system is still online. We hurt it. We blinded it. We exposed its masters. But the code … it adapted. It’s autonomous now. It’s hiding in the distributed cloud, moving too fast to track.”
“We failed.”
“No.” Halo stands. He walks over to me, handing me a mug of coffee. “We didn’t kill the dragon. But we cut off its head. Cole is gone. Reed is in the wind, but he’s burned. Phoenix has no masters now.”
“That makes it more dangerous.”
“Maybe.” Halo sips his coffee. “But we have something else.”
He gestures to the table. “The drive. The one you pulled.”
“The Admiral’s logs?”
“Yeah. I’ve been parsing the hex dumps while you were cleaning up. You were right about the connections. But you missed one.”
I move to the table. The analyst in me wakes up, pushing through the grief. “Show me.”
Halo types a command. A file tree opens.
“This is the Admiral’s private communication node. The one he used to direct Phoenix’s non-corporate assets.” Halo points to a recurring IP address. “He wasn’t just using Phoenix to protect Nexus Holdings. He was renting it out.”
“Renting it?”
“To other players. Mercenary work. Political influence.” Halo highlights a folder. “There’s a massive data packet sent three days ago to a private server in DC.”
“Who owns the server?”
“A law firm,” Halo says. “Specifically, a partner named Cassie Brennan.”
The name sparks a memory. “The defense contractor attorney? The one investigating corruption?”
“The same. Phoenix flagged her as a Level 5 threat. But here’s the kicker—the Admiral didn’t order her death.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone else did.” Halo taps the screen. “There’s a secondary signature in the command chain. Someone above the Admiral.”
I stare at the data. “The Nexus.”
“Exactly. The Admiral was a piece on the board. But he wasn’t the player.” Halo looks at me. “Cassie Brennan found something. Something that scared the people who pull the Admiral’s strings. And now that Phoenix is off the leash—”
“It’s going to finish the job,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” Halo rubs his eyes.
I look at the screen. The patterns. The data. The endless, shifting variables.
I should be terrified. I should be exhausted.
But underneath the fear, I feel a cold, fierce resolve hardening in my gut.
“We need to find her,” I say.
Halo looks at me, surprised. “We?”
“We.” I look toward the hallway where the medical suite is. “Jackson and I. When he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up.”
“He will.” I say it with the certainty of a mathematical fact. “He has to.”
The door to the suite opens.
Ghost walks in. He’s washed the soot off his face, but he still looks like a man who has carried the weight of the world for too long.
He looks at me. Then at Halo.
Then he nods.
“He’s out,” Ghost says. “He’s stable.”
The air rushes back into the room. My knees go weak again, and I have to grab the table to stay upright.
“Can I see him?”
“He’s groggy. Anesthesia hasn’t worn off. But …” Ghost steps aside. “He’s asking for you. Or, more accurately, he’s threatening to pull his IVs out if we don’t let you in.”
I don’t wait.
I move past Ghost, down the hall, toward the room at the end.
I push the door open.
The room is dim, lit only by the monitors. The beep of the heart rate monitor is steady. Rhythmic. The sound of life.
Jackson lies on the bed, broad shoulders rigid beneath the sheets.
The rage is gone, the armor stripped away, but the power is still there—contained, banked, waiting.
Muscle, bone, and stubborn will held together beneath the dressings.
His skin is pale under the hospital lights.
IV lines thread into his arm. His eyes are open, vigilant even now. They find me the second I step in.
“Hey,” he croaks. His voice is wrecked, a ruin of smoke and screams.
I walk to the bed. I don’t cry. I don’t collapse.
I take his hand. His skin is warm.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“You clean up nice,” he mumbles, his eyes drifting shut and then forcing open again.
“You look terrible.”
“Feel terrible.” He squeezes my hand. Weak, but there. “Did we win?”
“We survived,” I say. “And we have a lead.”
“Good.” He sighs, the tension finally leaving his frame. “That’s good.”
“Sleep, Jackson.”
“Not yet.” He fights the drugs. “Promised you.”
“We have time,” I say, brushing the hair off his forehead. “We have all the time in the world. Just sleep.”
He looks at me one last time. “You stayed.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He nods, just a fraction. And then, finally, he sleeps.
I pull a chair up to the bed. I sit down. I keep his hand in mine.
I watch the monitor. I count the beats.
One. Two. Three.
It’s the most beautiful pattern I’ve ever seen.