25. Jonah
Jonah
A live.
The word hangs in the bunker like smoke after gunfire.
Nobody moves for a second.
Nobody breathes right either.
Across from me, Sienna stares at the concrete floor like she regrets letting the truth out loud.
Like now that the word exists in the room, she can’t shove it back down where she’s kept it buried for four years.
Alive.
Not closure.
Not relief.
A target.
A weakness HELIOS can still use against her.
I watch Sienna’s breathing turn uneven beside the table.
Small change.
Barely visible.
Still enough for me to notice.
“How sure are you?” I ask quietly.
Her fingers tighten hard around the laptop case before she answers.
“It wasn’t guessing.”
Fear flickers briefly across her face after the words leave her mouth.
Not fear for herself.
For Elizabeth.
That’s enough for me.
Ronan drags a hand across the back of his neck and mutters, “Then they’ll use her.”
Sienna’s eyes close briefly.
“They already are.”
The exhaustion in her voice hits harder than I expect.
Not physical exhaustion.
The kind people carry after surviving too long with impossible choices.
I step toward her slowly.
Not crowding.
Not forcing.
Just close enough she knows I’m there.
“Look at me.”
She doesn’t.
Her gaze stays locked on the floor.
Like if she looks at me, whatever control she’s holding together finally breaks apart completely.
I wait.
Eventually, her eyes lift.
God.
The pain in them nearly guts me.
“She’s not your weakness,” I say quietly.
Something cracks across her expression instantly.
Sharp enough I almost reach for her before stopping myself.
“She’s the reason I stayed,” she whispers.
Her voice shakes once.
“The reason I let them turn me into this.”
“You’re not—”
“The reason I kept building their system while telling myself it would save her.”
Her breathing fractures harder now.
“And I still don’t know if any of it mattered.”
I move closer anyway.
Careful.
Steady.
“Sienna.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
The words snap out sharper this time.
Raw.
“You don’t know what it’s like to trade pieces of yourself away one by one for someone else and still wake up every day wondering if it wasn’t enough.”
Silence settles heavily between us.
Ronan looks away quietly, giving us space without leaving.
I hold Sienna’s gaze.
Every instinct I have tells me she’s waiting for judgment.
For pity.
For someone to finally tell her she crossed too many lines to come back from.
Instead, I step closer.
Close enough her breathing catches slightly.
“Then we make it enough.”
The words hit her hard.
I see it instantly.
Confusion.
Hope.
Fear of hope.
“How?” she whispers.
Simple answer.
Impossible mission.
Same thing.
“We find her.”
Ronan lets out a low breath behind me. “Well.”
A pause.
“That just became the mission, didn’t it?”
I don’t take my eyes off Sienna when I answer.
“It was always the mission.”
Because somewhere along the way, this stopped being about ORACLE.
Or HELIOS.
Or survival.
It became about her.
About the girl who traded herself for her sister and still somehow thinks that makes her broken instead of brave.
I reach up slowly and brush a loose strand of hair back from her face.
Gentle.
Grounding.
“Now,” I say quietly, “we just say it out loud.”
Sienna stares at me like she doesn’t know what to do with someone believing her worth saving this much.
Then her breath leaves shakily.
Not panic this time.
Relief.
Small.
Fragile.
Real.
And for the first time since I found her—
Hope enters the room with us.