Chapter Twenty-One #2
I look up. Asher leans casually against the railing, like a man waiting for a bus.
He’s not alone. Three armed men flank him, rifles trained down on us.
His gaze flicks from Kiera to me, then lingers on Lila, huddling behind us.
“And you’ve reunited the whole family,” he says, voice smooth and mocking.
“How nauseatingly sweet; it makes me want to gag.”
My phone buzzes against my hip, the vibration sharp and insistent.
I risk a glance down. The shattered screen still shows the notification: Signal lost. The jammer.
It’s blocking everything, but the phone is still trying to connect, still sending out desperate pings.
An idea cuts through the pain fogging my skull.
“The jammer,” I whisper to Sterling, lips barely moving.
“It’s directional. If I can get to the panel on the west wall, I can loop the feedback. Blind them for thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds isn’t enough,” Sterling mutters back, voice barely a breath against my ear.
“It is if you’re as pissed off as I am,” Kiera says. She doesn’t look at us, eyes staying locked on Asher, but her hand finds Sterling’s and squeezes once. A silent promise. “Do it, Cam.”
“I need cover,” I rasp, voice rough from inhaling dust.
Lila lifts her head. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but her jaw is set. “I’ll cover you.”
“You don’t have a gun,” I hiss, heart slamming against my ribs. “Stay with them.”
Lila bends down, snatches a fallen two-by-four from the debris, and hefts it like a baseball bat. “I don’t need one.”
Asher laughs from the catwalk above us, the sound echoing off the metal walls. “Are you finished saying goodbye, Ki? Because I’m getting bored.”
Kiera steps forward into the open, voice ringing clear and cold through the warehouse. “Let them go, Asher. This is between you and me.”
Asher’s smile dims. He pushes off the railing and leans forward, studying her like a specimen under glass.
“You still don’t understand why she died, do you?
” His voice drips with mock sympathy. “She was supposed to sign when you were eight. Just a signature on the Cicada files, and you would have been owned. Instead, she chose to die…and left you to grow up so beautifully vulnerable.”
Kiera’s weapon dips, just a fraction, her voice cracking. “What?”
“It was never about what the files contained, sunshine,” Asher says, almost gently. “It was about consent. A legal guardian’s signature is required to…let’s say, activate certain protections. Or override them.”
Kiera goes very still. The memory crashes into her like icy water flooding her lungs. Her father hadn’t just been asking for a random signature that night. He’d been demanding her mother sign away rights to Kiera herself—trading her own daughter like a piece of property.”
“You’re lying,” Kiera seethes, the words slicing through the air like a blade.
“Am I?” Asher spreads his hands, almost benevolent.
“Then ask your father why he’s kept you so close all these years.
Why he never let you out of his sight until you turned eighteen.
Why he gave you to me.” His smile sharpens.
“He’s been waiting for you to come of age so you could sign them yourself.
Retroactively validate the transfer your mother refused. ”
Kiera’s grip tightens on her weapon, but her expression flickers—confusion, sharp and real, bleeding through the rage. She’s spent sixteen years searching for the truth about those files. And Asher is twisting the knife with information she never had.
“I don’t care what they are,” Kiera says, her voice steady even as her hands tremble. “I won’t sign them. Not for Wade. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
Asher’s expression hardens. “Then you’ll end up just like Evelyn.” His voice is cold, dangling her mom’s name like a toy. “Obsolete.”
“Cam,” Sterling says, low and urgent. “Now.”
I run. My ribs are on fire, vision tunneling, but I sprint for the west wall where the conduit runs up from the floor.
Behind me, Kiera and Sterling open fire.
Controlled, suppressing bursts that force Asher’s men back from the railing.
Lila runs with me, bare feet silent on the concrete, that plank of wood clutched over her shoulder like a bat.
A man steps from behind a support column, pistol already raised.
I don’t have time to aim. I just point and pull the trigger.
The Glock kicks hard. The man ducks. The shot goes wide, but it’s enough.
Lila swings the two-by-four with a scream that’s half fury, half terror.
It connects with his wrist. Bone crunches.
The gun clatters across the concrete. “Go!” she screams at me.
I slam into the panel, prying it open with bloody fingers.
Dozens of wires stare back at me. The jammer’s schematic flashes in my memory: the half-second glance I stole from Asher’s laptop before he closed it.
Bypass the oscillator. Bridge the feedback loop.
My hands work faster than my fear, stripping wires, twisting them together with shaking, blood-slick fingers.