Chapter 28
Ember
The cursor blinks at me like a pulse on a flatline. No more messages, still nothing more from Phoenix.
I refresh the feed three times even though I know it won’t change anything. His username is still there, but the green dot beside it has gone gray. Offline. Maybe worse.
Luke’s fingers fly across his keyboard, tracing logs, IPs, and other backdoors. His jaw is locked. “He’s gone.”
My throat tightens. “Gone how?”
The only answer is the clatter of his keys and the faint hum of the heater.
Finally, he says, “Not just logged off. Wiped. Like someone scrubbed him out mid-thought.”
I look at the last line again.
The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.
It’s the cryptic tone, the stage imagery. But there’s something colder in it now, like a line from someone else’s script.
“Could he be warning us?” I ask.
Luke’s eyes flick to mine. “Or he’s compromised.”
A terrifying thought strikes me. Phoenix—the one who first reached out, who sent the files, who cracked open the new information we have about the entire network—what if he’s been folded back into the program?
The laptop screen reflects my face, pale and wide-eyed. I think of Fenna, sleeping soundly with her stuffed rabbit under one arm. I think of the kids still in the basement, of Kenzi, and of the one-eyed teddy bear.
“We can still trace him,” Luke says, like he’s trying to convince both of us. “There’s a trail… there’s always a trail.”
I shake my head. “Not if they want him invisible.”
He stops typing. “Ember, we can’t think the worst.”
“What else do we have?” I shove my chair back. “If they’ve got him, it means they’re inside the network. Watching us. Maybe even in here.”
I’m suddenly all too aware of the mansion’s hidden passageways, all of its secrets. Every flicker of shadow on the walls looks like movement, which could point to more.
Luke rises. “Then we go dark for a while. Encrypt everything, reset our channels.”
I hug my arms around myself. “And leave the others without Phoenix? Without us?”
“They were a group long before we came around.”
“Not without Phoenix.”
His silence is answer enough.
The last message burns on the screen like a ghost light after a show. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.
I swallow hard. “If he’s warning us, what’s next?”
Luke’s face is grim. “The ultimate act.”
His words echo through me. He’s right—we’re getting close to something. I’m not sure what yet, but it’s going to be big. I can feel it in my bones.
The cursor keeps blinking, but no new message comes.
I force myself to read it again. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.
“Wings,” I murmur. “Stage wings… but also…”
Luke’s already ahead of me. He pulls up an encrypted archive Phoenix gave us and starts running a search. “Wings, theater, performance.”
His fingers blur across the keys. Nothing at first. Then, buried in a file labeled Therapy Grant Disbursements 1995-2006, a spreadsheet opens. Names of facilities, coded programs. Beside two of them—ones we’d barely skimmed in the initial dump—is a note in brackets: [Wing B].
Luke’s eyes narrow. “That’s not stage language. It’s their internal code.”
I lean closer. “What are the facilities?”
He scrolls. The first, North Ridge Behavioral Wing B, is a private psychiatric unit attached to a children’s hospital in Oregon. The second, Willow Glen Research Institute Wing B in Idaho. Both with “grant therapy” money funneled from the same Radley shell company.
My stomach twists in tight knots. “Phoenix must’ve left this for us to find. Watch the wings. Look at the facilities we knew so little about.”
Luke clicks deeper into North Ridge’s file. Hidden in the metadata of a scanned memo is a date for next week and the words live rehearsal. He clicks on the other facility. Same date, same wording.
“They’re synchronizing programs.” His voice is low, almost a growl. “Same day, two facilities. It’s not just here.”
My pulse races. “They’re expanding… or finishing something.”
A cold thought slices through me. Or they’re moving survivors before we can get to them.
Luke backs up the files to three drives, shoving one into my hand. “If Phoenix is compromised, this could be bait.”
“Or a warning.” My voice is barely a whisper. “Either way, we can’t ignore it.”
We both glance at the message one last time. The performance isn’t over. Watch the wings.
Luke straightens, his decision clear. “Then we start with North Ridge. Quietly. We see if we can hack into their video systems, and we look for Phoenix or whoever’s pulling his strings. And we get the kids out before the curtain rises.”
I nod, my whole body trembling, but my voice steady. “For Phoenix, for Kenzi, and everyone else the Radleys have hurt. And for Fenna, so they can never get to her.”
Luke scrolls deeper through the archives, opening file after file.
It’s enough to make my eyes go blurry, and that’s saying something.
Each file is worse than the last, with fragments of performance schedules, lists of medications cross-referenced with children’s initials, invoices buried under “grant funds.”
The more we find, the colder I feel.
“Ember.” Luke’s voice is tight. “Look at this.”
On the North Ridge log, beneath a line of numbers, is the message:
Stage manager: confirmed.
No name, just an ID number.
My stomach drops. “Stage manager.” Another theater role, another position in their script.
Before I can respond, Luke’s screen glitches. A new window pops open, uninvited. Black background. White letters.
L00kCl0ser:
Mr. Stark. You have a promising new career at Jefferson. Walk away now, and it stays intact.
I grab his wrist. “Who is that?”
Luke doesn’t answer. He just stares as more text appears.
L00kCl0ser:
Choose your future. Your job… or answers you don’t want. Forget you ever heard about Wing B or any of this.
My pulse spikes. “They know who you are. That you work at Jefferson Elementary.”
Luke shuts his eyes for a second, jaw clenched. I can see the war inside him—working hard to graduate homeschool early to get his education certifications at eighteen, and now everything he’s risked by working with me, colliding with the reality on the screen.
I can’t ask him to risk it, but I don’t see how we can win this without him.
He’s the one who taught me much of what I know about cybersecurity, and his knowledge is so much vaster than mine.
While I’m definitely leaps and bounds ahead of the average person, I don’t touch his knowledge.
Starting in the third grade, he would finish his homeschooling days early to learn this stuff.
It’s as much part of the way he thinks as is the English language.
“You have to walk away.” My voice cracks. “Luke, you can’t risk everything you’ve built. We’ll figure something else out. Maybe Billa’s having luck with her mom at Radley.”
His hands hover above the keyboard, trembling. “I can’t walk away from you, Ember. You’re in too deep.”
“Luke.” I force him to look at me. “I’ll keep going, but I won’t be alone. I’ve got the other survivors, plus Billa and everyone she’s found. You’ve already helped so much more than you could know.”
He just shakes his head.
“I can’t lose another person!” I blurt out, my voice trembling. “It would kill me if anything happened to you. You have to walk away.”
Before he can respond, another line blinks onto the screen.
L00kCl0ser:
Last chance. Decide before the curtain rises. Blood will spill.
Luke exhales through his nose, sharp and ragged. His voice is steady, though his eyes are anything but. “Then I guess I just lost my job.”
Terror grips me. “No! Don’t do this. You can’t risk it. What about the kids you work with? What if they go after them?”
Color drains from his face. “They only threatened my job.”
“You think they’d stop there? Not these people.”
We stare at each other, wordless.
Another chat window pops open on the screen.
L00kCl0ser:
Did you make the right choice? Time’s ticking…
I throw Luke a pleading glance. “Give him what he wants! You can still help in the background, but don’t put your students at risk. What if they decide to go after your family? This has gotten too dangerous.”
He looks defeated, and finally he nods. “But I’m not giving up on you. I’ll protect you until the day I die.”
Then he responds to the message, saying that he’s out.
Relief and terror crash over me at once. Because if they can threaten his job, it means they’re closer than we thought.