68. Jonah
Jonah
“ Y ou can’t save everyone.”
The speakers cut out.
Silence crashes through the room.
Then—
“No.”
Sienna says it quietly.
But every person in the room hears it.
She rises slowly from the terminal.
Blood streaked across her sleeve.
Hair falling loose around her face.
Eyes burning cold enough to freeze hell itself.
“No,” she says again. “I’m done letting him decide who lives.”
God.
The fury inside her is terrifying.
And beautiful.
Cal fires another burst through the doorway before ducking back behind cover.
“We are rapidly running out of inspirational speech time!”
Bullets hammer the corridor outside.
Somebody screams.
Hostiles shouting over comms.
The entire facility is collapsing into war.
But Sienna doesn’t even flinch.
She turns back toward the screen.
Thinking.
Calculating.
Then suddenly—
Her eyes narrow.
“What?” I ask immediately.
She points at the countdown.
“Kade made a mistake.”
Vale looks up sharply.
“Kade doesn’t make mistakes.”
“He does when his ego gets involved.”
Her fingers move across the keyboard again.
Fast.
Purposeful.
The timer enlarges on-screen.
00:17:08
“There,” she whispers.
I stare at the code.
Don’t understand a damn thing.
But Sienna does.
“The synchronization protocol is piggybacking off the facility’s internal relay network.” Her breathing sharpens. “That means the signal has to pass through a central transmitter.”
Hope flickers again.
Tiny.
Dangerous.
Cal catches on first.
“You shut down the transmitter…”
“The kill switches lose synchronization.”
Lance frowns.
“But individual triggers still stay active?”
“Yes.”
“So we save some. Not all.”
Sienna goes still.
Then slowly shakes her head.
“No.”
Everybody looks at her.
And suddenly I know that expression.
She’s about to do something insane.
“Sienna…”
Her eyes meet mine.
“We don’t stop the signal.”
My stomach tightens.
“We take control of it.”
Even Vale stares at her now.
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” she says quietly. “It’s difficult.”
Jesus Christ.
Gunfire erupts again.
Closer.
A hostile rounds the doorway—
Cal drops him instantly.
The body slams hard into the floor.
“We need movement NOW!”
Sienna ignores the chaos completely.
Already deep inside the system again.
“The trigger signal needs authorization from the root administrator.”
Vale’s face changes immediately.
“No.”
Sienna looks at him sharply.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “And Kade would never leave that vulnerable.”
“What?” Lance snaps impatiently.
Vale hesitates.
That hesitation tells me everything.
I step toward him slowly.
“What aren’t you saying?”
Vale looks between all of us.
Then finally says—
“Kade built Oracle around biometric hierarchy.”
Sienna’s fingers stop moving.
No.
She already knows.
I see it hit her.
Hard.
“The original authorization architecture…” Vale says carefully. “Was designed around one person.”
Sienna whispers the answer before he can.
“Me.”
The room stills again.
My pulse pounds once.
Heavy.
Vale nods slowly.
“You didn’t just build Oracle, Sienna.”
Her face drains of color.
“You were the master key.”
Outside—
An explosion rocks the compound hard enough dust rains from the ceiling.
Elizabeth cries out weakly behind us.
The timer drops lower.
00:15:31
Sienna stares at the screen.
At the system she helped create.
At the nightmare wearing her fingerprints.
And I can actually see the guilt trying to crush her alive.
“No,” I say immediately.
Her eyes lift toward me.
“This is not your fault.”
“I built this.”
“You built something to help people. Kade twisted it.”
Her jaw tightens hard.
“But it still came from me.”
I move closer.
Close enough my forehead nearly touches hers.
Gunfire.
Chaos.
Countdown clocks.
None of it matters for one second.
“Listen to me,” I say quietly. “You are not him.”
Emotion flickers across her face.
Sharp.
Painful.
Dangerously human.
Then—
The overhead lights suddenly shift red.
Every monitor in the room flashes.
WARNING: EXECUTION SEQUENCE ARMED
And somewhere deep below us—
Children start screaming.