Chapter 15 Ava’s Offer to Burn Bridges #2
She was demanding it as agency.
Roman exhaled slowly. “You want to weaponize the evidence publicly.”
“I want to tell the truth in a way that forces them to react,” Ava corrected. “There’s a difference.”
He didn’t like how right she sounded. “If we do it wrong, they purge the ledger trail and your testimony becomes fire with no oxygen.”
Ava leaned closer. Her eyes were too bright, too alive for the sedation that had touched her earlier.
“Then we choose the moment when the purge is too late to erase everything. We seed copies. We use your encrypted contacts and my legal chain. You don’t have to love the plan - just survive long enough to execute it. ”
Roman’s pulse kicked again. He could hear the facility hum now, louder, threaded with a rising tone like a warning system warming up.
He made his decision.
“Fine,” he said. The word was a blade, not a comfort. “Controlled disclosure. You file under my verified custody chain. I handle the timing and the intercepts. You don’t go alone. Not even for a breath.”
Ava’s lips parted as if she’d expected refusal. When she spoke, her voice was softer, stripped of fight for the first time. “And if the traitor - ”
“ - purges anyway,” Roman finished. “Then we run.”
Ava held his gaze. “You’re finally saying it out loud.”
Roman didn’t answer. He couldn’t, because the tunnel light went out.
For a single, stunned second, darkness swallowed them - thick, suffocating, the kind that made every instinct surge. Then emergency strobes flared, red and harsh, painting Ava’s face in violent color.
The hum became a roar.
From somewhere above, a voice cut through the darkness - calm, genderless, the tone of a facility that didn’t need to justify itself. “Lantern Protocol activation. Medical transfer confirmed.”
Roman’s stomach dropped. That wasn’t a continuation of earlier activation. That was a second phase. A purge warning disguised as procedure.
Ava’s breath hitched. “No,” she whispered, and the word held grief and rage together. “They’re moving again.”
Roman shoved the gun into a ready position without thinking. His free hand grabbed Ava’s wrist - firm, protective, consented by urgency rather than comfort. Her skin was warm and real under his grip, and he hated that he’d been forced into touching her like a restraint.
“Keep your eyes on me,” Roman said.
Ava’s gaze snapped up. “Don’t - don’t talk to me like I’m still sedated.”
Roman tightened his grip just enough to steady her without pinning her. “I’m not. I’m warning you. The purge is facility-wide. That means the ledger trail and the chain of custody they can reach will be overwritten, burned, or deleted.”
Ava’s jaw clenched. “Then the flash drive - ”
“It’s already copied where I can keep it,” Roman said, lying only in the way survival required. He didn’t tell her he’d left one copy within a system he couldn’t fully trust. He didn’t tell her that the traitor might already be inside that system.
Ava’s eyes narrowed, reading what she couldn’t confirm. “You’re hiding something.”
He didn’t deny it. Denial would be another lie. “Run when I say.”
“What if I can’t?” she challenged, and there was fear under the defiance now. “What if my family - ”
Roman’s voice turned colder. “They’re not the question. The question is whether you’re willing to stay alive long enough to be the person who tells the truth.”
Ava’s throat worked. Then she nodded once, sharp and decisive, like she was signing a clause. “Then tell me where.”
Roman moved them toward the side passage that led to the tunnel’s maintenance exit - he’d mapped it earlier in case the chapel’s locks failed. Now the walls shook with mechanical release sounds, as if the building itself was shedding restraints.
He pushed through a metal hatch. It scraped, loud in the strobe-lit air. The smell of oil and heated dust burst into their lungs.
Ava followed, but she didn’t stumble. She kept her shoulders squared, her eyes scanning corners like she could make law out of chaos. Roman could almost see the attorney in her trying to draft arguments even as the world tried to erase evidence.
Behind them, the corridor lights blinked in sequence. Doors clicked shut one after another, sealing the tunnel like a throat tightening.
Then - footsteps. Not one set. Multiple.
Roman cursed under his breath. “Not just purge. They’re herding.”
Ava’s voice came out thin. “To where?”
Roman didn’t have the luxury of guessing.
He swung the gun toward the sound and stepped into the maintenance exit corridor, drawing Ava with him.
The tunnel narrowed, then widened into a service bay with a single door at the far end - painted over so many times it looked like scar tissue.
The strobe light hit it and made the metal gleam.
Someone had chalked a small symbol on the floor near the door. A simple mark, almost childish, but Roman recognized it from internal training - a designation for staged security breaches. It wasn’t meant for law enforcement. It was meant for people who knew how to fake safety.
Ava’s gaze dropped to it. “That’s not Lantern Protocol,” she said, voice tight.
Roman’s grip on her wrist tightened again. “It’s worse. It’s the traitor’s choreography.”
The door at the far end hissed as pressure equalized, then began to swing inward - slow, deliberate, like a predator testing whether the prey was still breathing.
Ava leaned toward Roman, her breath hot against his jaw. “Roman,” she said, urgent now, stripped of armor. “If this is the moment they take everything - if the purge hits - then you can’t decide for me again.”
Roman’s throat tightened. He wanted to tell her she was safe. He wanted to tell her he’d already planned for this, already built routes and contingencies.
But the building’s roar told him plans were just paper until they survived contact.
“I won’t,” he said, and meant it. “Not anymore.”
The door swung wider.
Red strobe light spilled onto the metal floor - revealing not an exit, but a staging area: cables coiled like veins, a portable fire unit positioned too neatly, and a handheld device mounted on a tripod aimed directly at the tunnel mouth.
An indicator on the device blinked with a steady, patient rhythm.
Ava’s eyes locked onto it. “That’s a live purge controller,” she breathed.
Roman’s blood went cold.
Because the kill switch wasn’t just reaching deeper than data anymore.
It was aiming at the moment they’d chosen to go public.
And the facility voice returned - calm as a judge - as the device chirped and the purge timer began counting down. “Network purge initiated. Evidence preservation unavailable.”
Ava stared at Roman, her fear sharpening into something harder. “You said controlled disclosure,” she whispered. “So what’s the cost of your control now?”
Roman tightened his hold on her wrist, dragging her back half a step as the timer hit ten.
Then the corridor behind them detonated into motion - guards spilling into the tunnel in a coordinated surge, weapons up, faces calm with practiced obedience.
Roman had one second to decide whether to keep Ava close and die with her, or trust her to move ahead of him into the only opening the traitor hadn’t fully sealed.
He chose the opening. Ava lunged with him.
As the maintenance door slammed shut on their backs, the purge controller’s screen flashed - one last message, crisp and final - locking the tunnel into a burn cycle.
Roman yanked Ava into the dark beyond the door - - and the strobe light died completely.