Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Zadie tossed the last ammo bag into the back of the SxS and cinched the cargo net tight. Her ribs protested the stretch, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek until the ache dulled to something manageable.
The garage sat at the far end of the bunker—a concrete bay with a roll-up door that opened into a camouflaged access tunnel carved into the hillside. Three SxS vehicles sat lined up, side by side, packed with enough gear and supplies for a thirty-hour operation.
Neve stood at the hood of the lead SxS, checking the route map against a topo sheet she'd spread across the engine cover. Coulter loaded water and rations into the rear compartment of their vehicle. Every once in a while, he glanced in Scout’s direction but said nothing.
Scout leaned against the third vehicle and stared at the large garage door. She’d been quiet since she and Coulter had returned from their recon mission about twenty minutes ago.
Neve held up the topo sheet. "Scout, what's our fallback if the northwest approach is blocked?"
"There’s a fire service road. It adds forty minutes and comes in from the north." Scout continued to stare at the door.
"Does it give us cover the whole way, or are there exposed stretches?"
"Two exposed stretches. One at the river crossing, about two hundred meters.
The other where the fire road meets the highway.
Maybe three hundred meters of open ground before the tree line picks up again.
" Scout turned, snagged the last of the magazines and loaded them into the storage pouches, securing them.
"I timed them as best I could without actually running them myself. "
"We can do this in our SxSs?"
"Coulter and I have been near there before. We’ve walked that terrain more than once. No problem for the vehicles."
"What about sight lines? If someone's sitting on the highway?"
"I can’t be one hundred percent," Scout said. "I need to grab the backup comms kit." She turned and walked toward the bunker door. Her boots struck the concrete in even, deliberate steps. She gently tugged the door closed behind her, which was somehow worse than slamming it.
"Did something happen out there?" Zadie asked.
Coulter set the water jug down and leaned against the SxS. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at the closed door. "During our recon check this morning, we had to pull off and hide from a local RCMP unit making a pass along the forestry road."
"That's not unusual out here," Neve said.
"It wouldn't be." Coulter crossed his arms. "Except Scout recognized him."
"Shit." Zadie's gut dove to her feet. "Quinn."
Coulter nodded. "He drove right past us. Scout didn't say a word the entire time he was in sight. And she hasn't said much since."
Well, that explained a lot. Quinton Taylor had been Scout’s boyfriend in high school. They’d lost touch, like so many people did. But they'd reconnected just before the ambush, which was the kind of timing the universe seemed to specialize in when it wanted to be cruel.
As far as he knows, she’s dead. And Scout had no idea what Quinn thought about that—whether he'd mourned, moved on, or was still out there driving forestry roads looking for answers he'd never find.
Zadie knew what that felt like. Not the specifics, but the shape of it. The weight of wanting someone you couldn't have because the world had drawn a line between you and the life you used to live.
But that had all changed the second she found out Gideon was MacGyver.
"That had to have been hard," Neve said.
"She’s hurting," Coulter agreed. "But she’ll push through it. She always does."
Zadie turned back to the cargo net and checked the tension for the third time. She didn't need to. Her hands just needed something to do while her brain rearranged priorities.
She'd been planning to tell everyone about Wynn sneaking into Darwin's room.
Not maliciously—she wasn't built that way—but because the idea of the entire team piling onto Wynn and Darwin the way they'd piled onto her and Gideon had a certain poetic justice to it.
Wynn had walked in on them twice. Wynn had made the ORACLE joke.
Wynn had asked about her hair looking different.
The woman had earned every ounce of teasing that was coming her way.
But not today. And maybe not anytime soon.
Because Scout was standing somewhere in that bunker with the image of Quinn's patrol vehicle burned into her memory, and the last thing she needed was to watch two more people in her world find each other while the one person she wanted was driving past her hiding spot without knowing she was alive.
Quinn had a sister. A career. A life in the real world that didn't involve bunkers and enhanced soldiers and sealed NDAs. The chances of him ending up down here with them were about as good as the chances of Finch turning himself in.
The only way Scout ever saw Quinn again was if they dismantled everything Finch had built. Proved he was behind the ambush. Proved he'd weaponized Darwin's compounds and Gideon's telemetry system and cleared Darwin's name.
And all of that started with getting inside ORACLE.
That was the mission. That was what today was about.
Not just data and dual-keys and credential burns.
It was about Scout being able to stand in front of Quinn and tell him she was alive.
It was about Kane getting the treatment he needed without putting a target on someone's back.
It was about Darwin walking through the world without a murder charge following him.
It was about Neve and Coulter having a future that existed above ground.
Zadie yanked the cargo strap one more time and locked it down.
The garage door leading to the bunker opened and Gideon walked in carrying a mug and a bottle of diet soda.
"I just passed Scout, and she damn near knocked me over. Is she okay?" he asked.
"She will be," Zadie said.
Gideon didn’t push. He was good about that kind of stuff. For a geek, he knew how to read certain situations. "I need to go finish packing my gear."
"You came out here just to bring me this?" She held up the soda.
"You’re mean when you go without caffeine."
"That’s an understatement." Coulter laughed.
"Speak for yourself." She twisted the cap and lifted the bottle to her lips. The bubbles fizzed going down, and it was just what she needed. She wiped her lips on the back of her sleeve. "Thanks."
"Anytime." Gideon turned and headed through the bunker door, passing Scout on the way back in.
She nodded, but that was about it. She moved straight to her SxS and continued packing.
"I didn’t mean to give you a hard time," Neve said. "I’m just feeling this mission."
"We’re good." Scout set the comms kit in the back of the SxS. "We’re all on edge with this one. We’ve got a narrow window to get inside a server and even then, we’re still stuck out here, hoping we can find the smoking gun."
"We’ll find it," Zadie said. They had to.
Zadie held her soda and watched Scout as she moved to the final SxS.
The woman who couldn't think sitting down was on her feet, armed, and ready to walk into a fight forty minutes from the people who'd tried to kill her—all while the man she cared about drove roads he didn't know she could see.
Zadie would keep Wynn's secret. Some things weren't hers to share. And some fights were bigger than a good joke.
This was both.
Gideon leaned against the edge of Zadie's desk, pinched the bridge of his nose, and stared at his boots.
The comms room was quiet. Screens dark except for the one displaying SYN-7's location on the network map.
A single blinking point in a valley forty minutes from Hyperion.
The portable drive sat on the desk beside his laptop case, loaded with the credential shell Zadie had pre-built.
Eighty percent of the work, ready to deploy.
The remaining twenty percent—the live encryption keys and permission tokens—couldn't exist until they were inside ORACLE's core, pulling data in real time.
That was the part keeping his lungs from working at full capacity.
He'd packed everything. Cables. Adapters.
The laptop. A backup drive in case the primary failed.
He'd triple-checked the credential shell against his architecture notes and walked Zadie through the core's permission structure until she could navigate it with her eyes closed.
They'd timed the burn cycle from the traffic logs and calculated the sweep window down to the second.
They'd done everything right. And he still couldn't breathe.
"You're going to wear a hole in your lip if you keep chewing on it."
Gideon looked up. Darwin stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and his glasses sitting crookedly on his nose, like always.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough." Darwin stepped inside. "You okay?"
Gideon pushed off the desk and started pacing. "Zadie and I have done everything we can. But AEGIS is a problem I can't solve from here."
"This isn’t news."
Gideon kept talking because he needed to work through it again.
"What Isaac did to AGS-2 isn't just degraded.
It's unstable. The authentication cycling is inconsistent.
Some of the verification checkpoints are running clean, and others are patched with code that doesn't match anything I've seen before.
" Gideon ran his hand through his hair. "Isaac isn't stupid.
He knows he built a cheap imitation. Which means he also knows where the cracks are.
And if he knows where the cracks are, he knows someone else could find them. "
"Do you believe he did that on purpose."