Chapter 17 Roman’s Cold Hands, Ava’s Warm Truth
Roman’s Cold Hands, Ava’s Warm Truth
The armored van shuddered like it had hit a seam of broken asphalt, then settled into a grinding hush that made Ava’s teeth ache.
Roman’s hand was already on the med bay latch when the strobe died behind them - no light, no rhythm, just the sterile smell of antiseptic and hot metal and the faint, sickly sweetness of a chemical that had been meant to keep her quiet.
Ava lay strapped into the gurney’s cradle, wrists secured but not bound hard enough to cut circulation.
The sedation still held her body in a careful, unnaturally still posture, but her eyes were awake - watching him like she’d never once believed in helplessness.
Her hair had come loose from the pin at the back of her neck, strands stuck to her cheek with sweat.
A thin line of blood had dried at her temple where she’d hit something during the seal-lock panic.
Roman kept his gun angled down, never away, while he moved with the precision that used to earn him medals and now only kept him from falling apart.
He reached for the diagnostic panel mounted beside the med berth, fingers steady until he touched the folder compartment and felt the vibration of the internal systems fighting themselves.
The flash drive was in the slim slot under the folder - his last attempt at keeping the evidence intact.
He’d shoved it there after the corruption warning, after Ava’s insistence that he not treat her like a passenger in her own case.
The van’s interior was quiet enough that he could hear Ava’s breath - slow, controlled, stubborn.
Then the panel blinked.
ERROR. INTEGRITY FAILED.
The screen didn’t just show damage. It showed a signature - an overwrite that wasn’t a simple loss of data. It had been written deliberately, like someone had put their thumb on the scales and waited for Roman to notice too late.
Roman’s jaw locked so hard his molars hurt.
He told himself it was just the drive. Just this.
He told himself he could still restore the evidence by pulling the backup the traitor had hidden in the network - But the van’s comm system chimed a single, cold tone, like a door unlocking somewhere deep inside the vehicle.
Ava’s gaze sharpened. “Don’t lie to me.”
Roman didn’t look at her. He leaned closer to the panel, as if proximity could bully the truth into obedience. “I’m not.”
Her voice was rough, the sedation still lacing it with something muted. “You’re breathing like you just decided to become a liar.”
The med bay smelled sharper now, a tang of overheated circuitry. Roman’s hands tightened around the panel edge until his knuckles went pale. He ran a command for integrity recovery - something he’d done a hundred times in the field, something he could do blindfolded.
The system returned nothing but corrupted fragments and a timestamp that didn’t match the last confirmed transfer.
He swallowed. The taste of metal filled his throat.
Ava shifted against the restraints, testing the tension like she could negotiate her way out of gravity itself. “Roman.”
He finally turned his head enough to see her face. Her eyes were too clear. Too furious.
“You said it was fine,” she went on. “You said the flash drive was intact. You told me you’d handle it.”
“I handled it.” His voice came out colder than he intended. Discipline was his default language; it kept him from breaking. “It’s compromised.”
Ava’s lips parted, and for a second she looked almost relieved - like the truth, however ugly, was at least a straight line she could stand on. Then her relief turned into anger. “How compromised?”
Roman stared at the screen until the letters blurred. “Not entirely. There’s still a path to reconstruct - ”
“No.” Ava’s gaze flicked to his hands, to the way he kept his fingers hovering just above the command keys like touching them would make something explode. “You’re hiding the worst part.”
He could have denied it. He could have given her the version that sounded manageable, the version that kept her from trying to claw at the evidence with her bare hands. He’d done that before - protected by omission, protected by control.
But Ava wasn’t a mark. She wasn’t a hostage who could be soothed with a promise.
She was his partner, and he’d agreed - out loud, in the dark, when he’d told her she mattered more than his plan.
Roman forced himself to speak like a man who could be trusted with his own blood.
“I knew something was wrong before we left the annex,” he admitted. The words tasted like ash. “I saw the first integrity warning. I thought it was partial. I - ”
Ava’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.” Roman leaned closer, lowering his voice to the level of the med bay’s hum. “If you’d seen the first overwrite alerts, you’d have tried to push for verification anyway. You always do.”
Ava’s throat worked. “You think I don’t understand why you’d want to keep me from the fire?”
“I think you understand too well.” Roman dragged a hand over his jaw, felt the stubble scrape like sandpaper against guilt. “And I think I didn’t trust you to choose safely.”
The van’s suspension groaned as it took another turn. Somewhere outside the med bay, metal clinked, a distant sound of maintenance panels being adjusted by hands Roman didn’t see. The facility had sealed them in, and the van was still moving like a lie that refused to stop.
Ava exhaled, slow. “My evidence is a slim folder with my private seal,” she said. “The ledger. The cataloged proof. The motion I drafted. You took me through chain of custody like it was scripture.”
Roman’s stomach tightened. He hadn’t told her about the ledger’s charred signature yet - he’d planned to, when he could protect her from the full weight of what it meant. He hadn’t wanted her to connect the dots in the wrong order.
Ava watched him anyway. “So don’t pretend you don’t know what compromise means.”
Roman’s eyes flicked to her bandaged temple. The blood had stopped. The pain hadn’t. He’d seen the way she’d tried to keep her body from flinching when she hit the compartment rail.
He’d been gentle with her before. He’d been lethal when he needed to be.
Now he had to be honest.
“I didn’t just see partial corruption,” Roman said. “I saw the kind of overwrite that suggests a trigger. Someone wasn’t just damaging the file. They were responding to our movement.”
Ava’s breathing caught, a small hitch that made her restraints creak. “So the traitor’s kill switch - ”
“It may be broader than data.” Roman’s voice went rough. “The drive isn’t the only thing being targeted. That’s why I didn’t want you to know.”
Ava stared at the med panel, then at the darkness beyond the glass where the strobe had died. “And you thought I’d be safer not knowing.”
Roman’s restraint nearly snapped. He wanted to press his palm to her cheek, to feel warmth under his skin, to prove to himself that she was still real. The last time he’d touched her like that, it had been in a way that felt like a promise to protect and punish all at once.
Instead he kept his hands to himself, because he wasn’t sure what kind of touch he could afford when he was already failing her.
“I thought I could fix it before it mattered,” he said.
Ava’s head tilted slightly. “Roman.”
He looked at her again.
Her face was pale under the antiseptic light, but her eyes held heat. “If you knew it was a trigger response, then you knew it would get worse when you tried to restore it.”
Roman didn’t answer fast enough.
That silence was all Ava needed. She tested the restraints again, enough to pull her upper body forward a fraction. Sedation didn’t kill her instincts. It only made them louder.
“You’re lying,” she said, voice sharper now. “You’re lying because you want to own the solution. Because if I know the truth, I can choose my own risk.”
Roman’s throat tightened. “I’m not trying to own you.”
Ava’s mouth twisted. “Yes you are. Not with your hands. With your silence.”
The van’s med bay air vent kicked on, blowing cool air across Roman’s knuckles. His skin prickled. He hadn’t realized how warm Ava’s body was under the sedation until he stood close enough for it to register - heat like a living thing, refusing to be frozen by chemicals.
Roman swallowed. “I didn’t tell you everything.”
Ava held his gaze. “Say it.”
Roman’s fingers hovered over the panel again, but he didn’t touch it. He spoke instead, each word deliberate. “When I ran the recovery command, the system flagged an internal storage mismatch. It can’t pull from the same source the drive claims to have been synced from.”
Ava’s eyes widened just a fraction. “So the backup isn’t on the drive.”
“It isn’t where we thought.” Roman’s voice dropped. “Someone mapped a different origin. That means the traitor’s primary storage is still intact - and still connected to the network they’re using to watch us.”
Ava went very still.
The sedation made her movement slow, but her mind moved fast enough to make the air feel tighter. “Where is it?” she asked.
Roman’s first instinct was to lie again. To keep her from ripping the access out of the van with her bare hands. To keep her from demanding he show her the command logs, the chain of custody, the exact error signatures.
But Ava deserved more than his instincts. She deserved the truth he’d been withholding because he was afraid of what it would do to her choices.
“It’s not accessible through the drive slot,” Roman said. “It’s in an injured compartment.”
Ava’s brows drew together. “What injured compartment?”
Roman hesitated.
Ava’s gaze dropped to the gurney restraints, to the thin band of fabric across her ribs where she’d been hit. Then she looked at his face again, like she could see the shape of his decision before he made it.
“You did something,” she said quietly. “You hid something.”
Roman’s hands flexed. He hated that the truth made him sound like the villain.