Chapter 11 Ava Reads the Code Like Fate #2
Roman’s vision narrowed. He could still hear the warehouse’s distant engine hum, the metallic clatter of machinery somewhere beyond the walls. He could also hear something else now - a faint, wrong sound underneath it. Like a radio trying to find a frequency.
Ava angled her chin toward the terminal. “You see it?”
Roman nodded once.
The status indicator on the terminal blinked in a rhythm that didn’t match internal processes. It matched an external handshake.
They weren’t just logging. They were being queried.
Ava’s voice tightened. “They’re asking for the phrase. They know we pulled Lantern Protocol.”
Roman moved to cut the connection with a swipe of his palm, but Ava caught his wrist - light touch, fierce grip. Her fingers were warm, her nails short and practical. Human contact in a room full of traps.
“Don’t,” she said. “If you cut it now, the system won’t confirm the key phrase, and they’ll come in harder to make sure they get it.”
Roman’s breath hitched. “They’ll come in anyway.”
Ava’s eyes met his, and there was the vulnerability he’d been avoiding - fear braided with resolve. “Then let me choose how we go down.”
He stared at her hand on his wrist, at the steadiness she forced into her face. His protective instincts roared, but he couldn’t ignore what she was offering: not recklessness, not martyrdom - control.
She wanted to steer the outcome, not just survive it.
Roman forced himself to loosen his grip on the glass panel. “Tell me what you need.”
Ava turned back to the terminal, her fingers moving with surgical precision. She didn’t type more keys. She selected a highlighted string - one that looked like nonsense until she touched it, and then the terminal rendered it into a short phrase, clean and readable.
LANTERN PROTOCOL: DROP AT THE LAMP POST.
Roman’s gut clenched at the specificity. Lamp post. Not a warehouse. Not a dock. A public marker - something visible, something that could be used to coordinate movements without relying on private locations.
Ava lifted her gaze. “Now I can locate the feed tied to Lamp Post schedules.”
Roman’s voice lowered. “And if you share it…”
Ava’s expression hardened. “If I don’t, they’ll still know. They already queried the handshake. This is the cost of being honest in a war built on lies.”
Roman stepped closer, too close, and the heat between them flared like a warning. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t have time for that kind of comfort. He pressed his forehead lightly against hers instead - an impact that said: I’m here. I’m not letting you disappear.
“Say it,” he demanded, like he could force the world to behave.
Ava’s breathing stuttered. “The phrase is Lantern Protocol: Drop at the Lamp Post.”
Roman’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t - ”
Ava started to speak again, but the room answered for her.
A sharp crack snapped through the comms room, followed by another - gunfire punching holes into the moving warehouse’s steel skin.
The sound ricocheted, loud enough to rattle the terminal casing.
Alarms didn’t blare immediately; instead, there was a harsh, electronic chirp as the system flagged a breach attempt.
Roman’s body moved before his mind caught up. He shoved Ava back behind the terminal bank, using his shoulder to shield her from the glass wall. His gun came up in one clean motion.
“Down,” he ordered.
Ava went low, eyes wide but unbroken. “They heard me.”
“They were listening,” Roman said, jaw tight. He angled his gun toward the comms room’s only service window - thin, high, and designed for maintenance, not escape. Bullet impacts struck the metal frame a second later, sparks showering across the floor like angry fireflies.
Ava’s voice sliced through the chaos. “Roman - if the traitor is tracking the handshake, they’ll know the phrase is out.”
Roman didn’t lower his aim. “They already know.”
Another burst of gunfire hammered the door behind them. The comms room shuddered. The terminal’s screen flickered - then went blank, as if someone had cut the power through the same system they’d just used.
Roman felt the loss like a physical yank.
Ava’s hand darted to his sleeve, fingers gripping, urgent. “We can’t stay.”
Roman’s gaze cut to the ceiling vent. A narrow access hatch sat above the terminal bank, bolted from the inside. It wasn’t a tunnel. It was a route to a maintenance crawl - enough to move, not enough to breathe.
He could hear footsteps outside the door now, boots on metal, coordinated. Not random guards. Not syndicate thugs.
Shadows.
Someone wearing authority like a mask.
Roman grabbed Ava’s wrist and hauled her toward the vent before the next volley could knock the room apart. “Move.”
Ava scrambled after him, breath quick, her eyes locked on the hatch. “If it’s your command - if it’s one of yours - ”
“It’s the person who knows how I move,” Roman said. The words tasted like iron. “And they know how you read code.”
He hooked a hand under the hatch latch, forcing it open as gunfire struck again below. The vent’s metal was cold and slick under his glove. When he pulled, the hatch scraped with a sound too loud in a room that was already dying.
Ava shoved herself up into the narrow space, shoulders tight, tablet case pressed to her chest. Roman followed, gun trailing, knees scraping the inside walls.
As soon as the hatch cleared, a new sound rose - radio static, close enough to be inside the warehouse’s bones. A voice cut through it, calm and controlled, speaking over a channel Roman recognized too well.
“Lantern Protocol confirmed. Locate the attorney.”
Roman froze in the crawlspace with Ava’s body beside his, her breath brushing his wrist. The voice wasn’t a stranger.
It was someone who’d been in his ear before.
And then Ava shifted, her gaze snapping to the vent opening as if she’d felt the world tilt. “Roman…”
“What?” His throat tightened.
She swallowed hard. “They didn’t just find us.”
A muffled click echoed above them - another lock engaging, another seal shutting.
Outside the vent, the warehouse door thudded closed like a verdict.
Roman’s blood cooled. “We’re being contained.”
Ava’s eyes met his in the dark, her fear finally surfacing under the steel. “And they’re going to make sure I never decode another protocol again.”
Roman tightened his grip on his gun, feeling the weight of the evidence folder missing somewhere in the chaos - feeling the cost of the truth they’d just spoken.
The crawlspace vibrated with movement overhead. Someone was climbing down.
And Roman realized, with a sick certainty, that the next Lantern Protocol wasn’t a drop location.
It was a hunt.
END OF CURRENT OUTPUT READY FOR CONTINUE