69. Sienna
Sienna
T he screams hit me first.
Not through the speakers.
Through the system.
Audio feeds buried deep beneath the compound suddenly flood the monitors all at once—
Crying.
Pounding on metal doors.
Children begging for help.
My entire body locks up.
“Oh God…”
One of the camera feeds flickers alive.
A small concrete room.
Two boys.
Maybe twelve or thirteen.
Curled together in the corner while red emergency lights flash over their terrified faces.
Another feed activates.
A girl with dark curls backing against a wall so hard she looks like she’s trying to disappear into it.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Sixteen.
Kade kept sixteen children buried beneath this facility like inventory.
Jonah steps beside me so fast his shoulder slams mine.
Not to move me.
To hold me upright.
Because he feels me breaking.
“No,” he says quietly. “Stay with me.”
I can barely breathe.
“I didn’t know…”
“I know.”
“But I should’ve—”
“Sienna.”
His voice cuts through me hard enough my eyes jerk toward him.
Calm.
Steady.
Certain.
“This is not on you.”
Gunfire erupts again outside the room.
Cal unloads another burst through the doorway.
“We’ve got company!” Ronan shouts from the hallway.
Three operatives push into the corridor at once.
Cal drops one immediately.
Vale grabs the fallen operative’s rifle and fires with terrifying precision again.
Military.
Definitely military.
Lance sees it too.
“We are SO discussing your sketchy past later!”
No response.
Vale’s attention stays locked on the hallway.
Elizabeth whimpers weakly behind us.
The red lights keep flashing.
00:13:02
Thirteen minutes.
My mind races.
Signal pathways.
Authorization trees.
Fallback architecture.
Kade always layered systems.
Always.
Which means—
My breath catches.
“No way…”
Jonah hears it instantly.
“What?”
I dive back toward the terminal.
Hands flying across the keyboard.
Code floods the screen.
Deep system layers begin unfolding.
Oracle core architecture.
Emergency command routing.
Root governance overrides.
And there—
Hidden underneath twelve encrypted partitions—
I find it.
A ghost protocol.
My protocol.
My hands start shaking.
Vale moves closer slowly.
Recognition hits his face immediately.
“You buried a failsafe.”
I barely hear him.
Because suddenly I remember.
Late nights.
Secret coding sessions.
The growing fear after I realized what Kade was becoming.
I couldn’t stop him then.
But I tried to leave myself a weapon.
A back door.
Something only I could access.
Hope slams into my chest so hard it hurts.
“Kade never found it,” I whisper.
Jonah crouches beside me.
“Can it stop this?”
My eyes fly across the code.
The answer forms slowly.
Piece by horrifying piece.
And my hope dies almost immediately.
“It can stop the synchronized detonation…”
Lance spins toward me.
“THAT’S GOOD.”
“But not the individual kill switches.”
Silence.
My throat tightens.
“If Kade manually triggers them…” My voice breaks slightly. “The children still die.”
Nobody speaks.
Because we all understand now.
Kade planned for everything.
Everything except surrender.
Then suddenly—
Elizabeth gasps sharply behind us.
I whip around instantly.
Her eyes are wide.
Terrified.
“No…” she whispers.
Vale grabs her shoulders.
“What is it?”
She looks toward the ceiling.
Listening.
Then horror floods her face.
“He’s here.”
The room stills instantly.
My pulse spikes.
“What?”
Elizabeth starts shaking violently.
“He’s coming.”
And then—
A slow clap echoes from the corridor outside.
Everybody spins toward the doorway.
One figure steps through the drifting smoke.
Black suit.
No weapon visible.
Calm smile.
Cold blue eyes.
Elias Kade.
And somehow—
That’s worse than if he’d walked in holding a gun.