Chapter 14 The Name on the Charred Page #2
I kept my face blank as I watched the tech plug the drive into a port hidden behind stonework. The tech’s fingers moved with practiced efficiency. The system accepted the drive with a quiet chime.
The chapel lights flickered once.
Then the air filled with the low, faint hiss of speakers - an announcement system powering up. A voice crackled through, too clean for the room.
“Meeting authenticated. Lantern Protocol stage confirmed.”
My stomach tightened. Lantern Protocol.
They were using the same language that had swallowed Ava earlier - only now it wasn’t a transfer or a medical transfer. It was stage confirmation. They were running a process.
The man on the dais leaned forward as if savoring my tension. “You thought you could chase a name and keep your own rules. But you’re only as useful as your obedience.”
Ava made a sound - half laugh, half choke. “You don’t even understand what you’re threatening.”
His eyes cut to her. “Oh, I understand. We’re not threatening you, attorney. We’re threatening the network you believe you can unravel.”
Ava’s voice steadied, even with restraint. “You’re not threatening me. You’re trying to control the story.”
The man’s smile widened. “Yes.”
He lifted a hand, and two guards stepped closer to Ava, closer than before. Their bodies angled to block her from me. It wasn’t just intimidation. It was positioning - staging.
I moved instantly, gun still down but ready to rise. “Back.”
The guards didn’t flinch. They looked at the man for permission.
He didn’t give it.
He didn’t need to. His men already had their own orders.
Ava’s eyes flashed toward the side again, toward the benches. Her legal mind wasn’t just calculating; it was mapping escape routes through sightlines and guard spacing. She mouthed something I couldn’t hear, but I caught the shape of the words: “Trap.”
Then the voice returned through the speakers, crisp and emotionless.
“Remote kill switch armed.”
The words landed like a hammer.
My pulse spiked - because I knew what a kill switch meant in this context. Not death as a promise. Death as a consequence. A device that would erase evidence, burn servers, and - if they were cruel enough - target people connected to the data.
Ava jerked against her restraints. “Roman.”
I surged forward, but the man on the dais lifted his hand again, and the room’s security shifted with him. Guards between me and Ava tightened their stance like a living barrier.
The man’s voice dropped into something almost gentle. “You stole the truth.”
I stared at him, and the cold discipline cracked at the edges. “You didn’t want the truth.”
“I wanted to see what you’d do when the truth was in your hands.” His eyes flicked to the tech near the stained glass. “And now we see what you can’t stop.”
The chapel lights dimmed, then brightened in a harsh pulse. A low, electronic tone threaded through the stone. The floor vibrated harder, and the hum beneath the candles became a scream held at the edge of hearing.
Ava’s face went pale, and her fear sharpened into clarity. She understood the trap’s mechanics now - not in theory. In function.
“This isn’t just about the drive,” she whispered, voice strained. “It’s about what the network inside it triggers.”
I could hear my own breathing. I could smell the wax burning too fast. I could taste metal on my tongue as the room’s systems decided to act.
The tech pulled the drive out with shaking hands, too late - like the data had already been sent. Like the kill switch had already been pressed somewhere beyond the chapel’s stone walls.
The man on the dais turned his head slightly, addressing someone I couldn’t see. “Do it.”
Ava’s body went rigid. Her eyes locked on mine, and in them I saw the thing she’d never let herself want - not openly, not fully.
Safety.
Not for the mission. For me.
For us.
“I can’t lose you,” she said, and the words weren’t law or logic. They were pure need.
My heart hit hard. Need was dangerous. Need made men reckless.
I refused to be reckless.
I raised my gun - not at Ava, not at the man, but at the tech’s knee joint as he stumbled back from the stained-glass port. The shot wasn’t meant to kill. It was meant to stop the system from doing what it was already committed to doing.
The tech screamed. Sparks spat from the hidden port, and the chapel’s speakers popped with a burst of static.
For half a second, the kill switch tone cut out.
For half a second, the room held still - as if even the stone wanted to listen.
Then the speakers snapped back, louder, and the voice returned with brutal calm.
“Kill switch executed. Data corruption confirmed.”
Ava’s restrained hands jerked as if her body tried to flee without permission. “No - ”
The man on the dais didn’t look satisfied. He looked relieved, like he’d just watched a judge deliver a sentence.
“Now,” he said, voice smooth again, “we see how long you can live without what you came for.”
He gestured, and the guards moved.
They were taking Ava away from me - not to extract more information from her, but to sever the last thread tying me to the truth.
I lunged, but my disguise failed me for an instant. A guard’s fist slammed into my shoulder hard enough to steal my breath, and I hit the aisle stone with a dull crack that traveled up my bones.
Pain flared - bright and immediate.
But I didn’t care about the pain.
I cared about Ava.
I twisted, gun coming up, eyes locking onto her as two guards dragged her toward a side corridor.
Ava fought them, but the sedation hadn’t left her entirely; it made resistance messy, made her breath ragged.
Her gaze kept snapping back to me, pleading and furious at once, like she was trying to decide whether to save herself or save me.
The man called after her, almost warmly. “Attorney Collins, you’ll be comfortable. We’ll handle the rest.”
Ava’s mouth opened on a word she didn’t get to finish.
Because a panel in the corridor wall slid open with a hiss, and a cloud of cold mist rolled out - chemical, fast, designed to make panic taste like sleep.
I surged to my feet, gun aimed, but the corridor swallowed Ava’s shape in a blink.
The chapel doors at the far end sealed with a heavy thud that shook dust from the stained glass.
The man stayed on the dais, watching the corridor like he’d already won.
And in my ear, beneath the hum that never fully died, I heard a new sound - small, precise, unmistakable.
A remote device activating again.
Not in the chapel.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere I couldn’t see.
My comms unit on my wrist crackled once, then went silent, like it had been muted by a hand I couldn’t trace.
The countdown returned - faster this time.
And with Ava gone into that sealed corridor, I understood the real setback, the real “no” that made everything worse:
We’d stolen the flash drive.
But the traitor had armed a kill switch for the network itself - one that would reach deeper than data.
And I had no idea what, exactly, it would sacrifice next.