Chapter Thirty-Two
Evelyn’s words follow us up the stairs. If what you feel is inevitable or engineered.
Kiera’s breathing is short and sharp, each inhale a controlled stab.
I can feel the tremor in her muscles where my hand wraps around her waist like she’s holding a bomb inside her and refusing to let it go off where anyone can see.
The safe house feels smaller than it did when we went downstairs.
Same cheap walls, same threadbare couch, same kids lined up like corpses on the bedroom floor, sedatives still dragging their limbs heavily.
The ceiling feels lower now, the air thinner.
Cam looks up from his laptop when we step through the doorway. His eyes go straight to Kiera’s face, then to my hand on her, then to the tension in her shoulders. His jaw tightens. “Well?” he asks.
“She knew everything,” Kiera answers before I can. Her voice sounds brittle. “Names. Rooms. The bond reports. She made my life into a fucking science experiment.”
Cam’s gaze flicks to me, asking a silent question. I shake my head once. Not yet. Too many landmines that can go off. “Sit,” he motions to the chair. “You’re pale.”
“For the millionth fucking time, I’m fine,” she snaps.
She isn’t. There’s a sheen of sweat on her hairline, and the bruising low on her abdomen has darkened in the thirty minutes we were downstairs.
But she crosses to the table anyway, dropping into the chair like she’s taking a throne instead of almost collapsing.
I take the one beside her, close enough that our knees brush. If she wants distance, she can move.
“What’d she say?”
“Cicada files are a transfer,” Kiera says. “Of ownership. Wade wanted me to be domesticated before he sold me. The program was supposed to make it easier to hand me off to someone.”
Cam exhales through his teeth. “Who were they going to give you to?”
“Asher was one of them,” she says flatly. “Apparently, I killed a prospective buyer tonight.”
The muscle in my jaw jumps. “Past tense: Asher doesn’t get to own anything now. He’s a memory with a hole through his head.”
Her mouth twitches for less than a second, then stops. “She admitted she was there the whole time,” Kiera continues. “I was one of the originals, so they wanted to see what I was like and keep tabs.”
Cam’s eyes flick to me again. He knows exactly where that’s heading. I cut in before Kiera can keep spiraling down that particular tunnel.
“And tonight was a test,” I add. “Apparently, Cicada benefactors needed a final data point. See if, under pressure, we’d still pick each other.”
The room goes quiet. The only sound is the hum of the generator, and one of the kids is snoring softly behind the half-closed bedroom door.
Cam leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like it might have the answers written in the water stains.
“So they know now,” he says. “Who you are to each other. What you’ll do. ”
“They already knew. They just wanted the footage.”
I watch her as she says it. The set of her mouth. The way she presses one hand flat against the table, like she needs something solid to hold onto. She looks like she’s braced for impact.
“What they know doesn’t change what I am,” I say. “Or what I’ll do next.”
She doesn’t look at me, but her fingers curl, a tiny motion. “And what’s that?”
“Find the fucking rest of them,” I say. “Whoever she’s been reporting to. Whoever is still out there with copies of those files and a grudge. Then we decide which order we burn them in.”
Cam turns the laptop toward us. “I’ve got a start.
” The screen is filled with lines of code and email headers.
“Her login bounces through three different systems before it hits the facility servers. I can try to follow the chain back from the facility to whoever was reading her reports. But I need time…I need her.”
Kiera’s head snaps up. “You’re not talking to her alone.”
“I need her alive. For now. That’s all I’m saying.” Cam says dryly. The last two words hang there. For now.
Kiera’s eyes slide to me. She’s not asking my permission; that’s not who she is. She’s checking if I’m going to try to rein her in. “You’re the one who said we needed corroboration,” I remind her, keeping my tone even. “We temporarily need Reyes and Evelyn to see who’s lying.”
“Reyes first,” Kiera says abruptly. “I’m done listening to Evelyn's version of the truth for tonight.” Kiera flinches at her mom’s name. The more she learns about her mom, the further she distances herself from her, calling her Evelyn more and more.
Pushing up from the table, I ignore the way my shoulder protests. “I’ll wake her.”
Cam’s up beside me in the next second. “I’ll get the files ready. We go in with specifics, not open-ended questions. Make it hard for Reyes to dodge.”
Kiera stays where she is, seated with her eyes on the scratched tabletop. Her hand drifts unconsciously back to her lower abdomen, palm pressing just above the waistband of her jeans. She catches me looking and snatches it away. “Don’t,” she warns.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it loud enough.” Her eyes roll, clearly not amused.
Kiera’s not wrong. The image of her doubled over in the safe house earlier, the way she almost buckled on the stairs, it’s burned into my vision like afterimages from a flashbang.
“Reyes, then you rest.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and for a second, the exhaustion cracks, something rawer showing through.
Fear, maybe—of what the answers might mean, what else the program could have buried in her body without her consent?
“Fine,” she agrees. “But I want to be there when Reyes talks. I want to look her in the eye when she tells me what she did with us.”
Us. The word hits harder than it should. I nod. “You will.”
Cam disappears down the basement stairs toward the room where Dr. Reyes is sleeping off the concussion I gave her.
I stay where I am, watching Kiera. The lamplight throws shadows under her eyes, turning the grey almost black.
She looks like hell. Beautiful. Dangerous. Mine. “You okay?” I ask quietly.
She huffs a laugh with no humor in it. “You really want the answer to that?”
“Yes,” I say. It comes out harder than I meant it to. “I do.”
Her mouth twists. “Then no,” she says. “I’m not okay. I found out my mother didn’t die for me; she filed reports on me. I found out every choice I made was being watched, measured, and turned into data points. And I’m…” She breaks off, pressing her lips together.
“And you’re still here,” I finished. “Still breathing. Still capable of putting a bullet between someone’s eyes when they need it.”
She looks at me for a long time. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re the one she called a question,” she says softly. “The variable. Does it bother you that maybe they wired you into me on purpose?”
My mind drifts to the files—of me, of the boys before me, of the hands dragging me down the basement stairs, and a voice saying be quiet if you want my love.
“No. I know something they don’t.” Her brows lift.
“I know I chose you,” I say simply. “Again and again. Before I knew who you were. Before I knew what they wanted from us. I walked into your life because I wanted to. They can’t program that. ”
“And if they did?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “If Reyes or Evelyn stands in front of us and says this was all a design?”
“Then fuck them,” I say. “Because they tried to play god and still underestimated us.” Something in her eases.
The basement door creaks open as Cam appears with Reyes in tow, her hands still bound, eyes clear but wary now. He plants her in the chair. “Round two,” he says. “Let’s see how her version stacks up.”
Kiera’s spine straightens, the mask sliding back into place. Whatever Reyes is about to say, whatever new hell she’s going to open up about, one thing is already decided—the program might have made us question who we are, but we’re the only ones who hold the final answer.
Reyes sits rigidly in the chair, like there is a battery wired to it—back straight, hands zip-tied in front of her now instead of behind, ankles bound.
The bruise on her jaw stands out white against her skin.
Her eyes find me first. Assessing and calculating odds.
“Dr. Reyes,” Kiera speaks first; her voice is calm and sharp.
“You’ve met Cam. I’m sure you remember Sterling and me. ”
Reyes’s gaze slides to her. Something shifts in her eyes, guilt, maybe. Recognition, for sure. “Subject 001-A,” she says before she can stop herself.
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. “My name,” Kiera corrects, “is Kiera Hawthorne.”
Reyes swallows, the tendons in her throat working. “Kiera,” she echoes. “Right. Kiera.”
“Good, we can skip the dehumanization phase.”
Cam opens his laptop, fingers hovering over the keys. “We’re going to ask specific questions. You’re going to give specific answers. If you lie, we’ll know. If you stall, we’ll assume you’re wasting time for someone else to find this place.”
“No one’s coming,” Reyes says quietly. “The Nesting House is gone.”
“Buildings burn,” I say. “Programs move.” Her eyes shift slightly. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Kiera leans forward, forearms on her thighs, every inch of her screaming predator. “We just came from a talk with Evelyn,” she says. “She told us her version. Now we want yours.”
Reyes goes still. “Evelyn talked,” she says, talking more to herself than to us. “Of course she has.” Silence stretches, then Reyes exhales. “What do you want to know?”
“Start simple,” Cam says. “The Cicada program. In your own words.”
Reyes closes her eyes for a second, like she’s choosing which nightmare to pull first. Her eyes are steady when she opens them. “Cicada was never just a boarding school with a hospital. It was a behavioral conditioning project. The goal was to engineer obedience.”
My hands curl into fists. “And the kids, they kept underground?”