Chapter 52
Lance
Sleep always ends for me in stages: first the ache in my lower back, then the heat of another body, then the snap into alertness. Only this time, the heat is gone, replaced by a void so sharp it punches through the last remnants of dream.
I reach across the bed for Diana. Fingers land on cold sheet, nothing else. I pause, hand splayed. The spot where she should be is just an indentation, memory pressed into fabric, already vanishing.
My eyes open. No haze, no grogginess, just the immediate, stinging awareness that something is wrong.
“Dee?” My voice catches, rough as sand. I try again, louder: “Diana?”
Nothing. Just the hum of the air exchangers and the persistent drip of condensation from the ceiling.
Every instinct kicks in at once... The bed is still warm. The door is unlatched.
On the shelf by the bed, a piece of paper is propped against a chipped mug. I see it right away, but the color beside it is what stops my breath—a single, electric-blue flower, petals as thin as skin. I know the name, but not the science: forget-me-not. Myosotis, Dee told me, in the old tongue.
I cross to the shelf. The paper is folded twice... My hands aren’t steady, but I open the note anyway.
The flower falls. It lands on the back of my wrist, almost weightless.
I stare at it, waiting for the meaning to snap into place. It doesn’t. Not at first.
I focus on the words. Five, written in blocky, uneven print: I will always love you.
My fist closes around the note, crumpling the edges. The Authority mask... cracks, just a little. I taste bile at the back of my throat.
No. You won’t. The thought hits with the force of a hammer. She found it. The thing I saw six months ago and buried deeper than any Authority secret, because I never knew if the files were genuine or just another layer of programmed paranoia. This is her apology for the mess she thinks she made.
I will always love you means I’m gone, and you should forget me.
But how can I forget? Even with the monthly dose of memory suppressant the Authority pushed into my veins until the day I first saw her in the market, she was etched into my soul.
Whether it was wiring or heart, I don’t care. She belongs here. With me.
I drop the flower onto the sheet and pace the room in a tight arc... The old training never accounted for Dee—or for the realization that my life, my love, was built on a pile of Authority’s calculated lies.
I rub my left hand with my right... The gesture is supposed to calm me, but it only reminds me that something is missing.
I stare at the note again... She thinks she’s saving us all. That’s what this is.
I let out a sound, half-laugh, half-curse. “Fuck’s sake, Dee. You don’t get to decide what I remember.”
The thought of her walking into the node alone, taking on Authority black ops with nothing but her own stubbornness, is almost enough to make me break everything in this fucking room. Instead, I reach for my jacket, pull it on with a violence that splits the seam at the wrist...
I grab the boots off the floor, jam them on. No time for socks, no time for anything.
I pocket the crumpled note—my proof, my last chance—and slip into the hallway, shutting the door behind me.
The adrenaline does its job. I move fast, letting muscle memory take over...
I turn the next corner and nearly run into Rosie...
She sees my face and the half-tucked shirt and laughs. “Rough night, Captain?”
“Where’s Maven?” I don’t wait for an answer. I already know. I push past her...
Rosie follows, not even pretending to be subtle. “What’s the rush?”
“Dee’s gone,” I say, over my shoulder. “She left a note.”
Rosie’s cup lowers by an inch. “She was supposed to wait for all of us, stick to the plan we laid out,” I say, my voice tight.
Rosie shrugs. “You know Doc. She’s never met a protocol she wouldn’t break, but she always knows what she’s doing. Im sure she’ll be fine.”
This isn’t about protocol. This is about guilt. I slam my fist on the concrete wall, hard enough to sting and draw blood. She thinks she played a role in the experiments. She thinks she has to pay the price so I don’t have to. Well she’s fucking wrong.
Maven’s planning room is at the end of the hall. I don’t bother knocking. The door isn’t even closed. Inside, Maven is hunched over a table littered with printouts and loose circuits...
“She did it, didn’t she?” Maven says, reading my face in an instant, their eyes already glittering with fury. “The Sphere just kicked an error log. Someone broke protocol and accessed the core directory. Tell me that wasn’t Diana.”
I toss the note onto the table. “It was.”
Maven studies the crumpled paper, then nods and gestures for me to sit.
I don’t. My hands are already finding and checking my sidearm.
Maven turns to Rosie, who’s already leaning against the frame. “Get the others. Council wants a full meet, we do it in ten. No delays.”
Rosie nods, gone in a flash.
“Ten minutes is ten minutes too long,” I snarl, already halfway to the armory. “Tell them to make it fucking quicker. I’ll go on my own if they lag. I don’t give a shit about the team; I just want to find Diana.”
Maven waits until the footsteps fade, then leans in. “What’s your plan, Captain? And make it honest.”
My moral calculus is brutally simple: The Zone can burn, but she can’t die.
“She is the mission, Maven. The Sphere was cracked. She wouldn’t have risked leaving unless she had the solution in her pocket.
It’s an assumption, but a safe one: she has the virus.
I will break any rule, I will sacrifice any team, I will start a fucking war right here in the Sanctuary if it means I get her back before she sacrifices herself. ”
Maven’s lips curl, almost a smile. “Sure. It’s just the mission, right?”
I don’t answer. The rage is hot enough to burn, but underneath it is something cold. The old fear, the one that says you’re never enough.
“We’ll need every asset,” I say, voice steady. “Every runner, every patch of network we control. I need a clean path to the Node, and I need a team that will put her safety over the mission parameters.”
Maven nods. “Already in play. She’s smarter than us,” they say, almost gentle.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “She’s alone. And she thinks she deserves to be.”
Maven reaches for the intercom. “Full alert,” they say. “All nodes and all runners. Priority intercept on Diana — Authority will try to lock the node and seal the tunnels if they smell sabotage.”They pause, then add: “Secondary: prep the East tunnel. We may need to move.”
I leave the room before I can say something I’ll regret.
In the armory, Rosie is already laying out hardware...
She looks at me, then at the mess of gear. “You want me to go non-lethal?”
“Lethal, non-lethal—I don’t care,” I snap, loading the sidearm. “My primary goal is Diana. Anyone or anything that gets in the way is collateral. You focus on the Authority. I’ll focus on the one person who matters. Clear?”
I brief the team in thirty seconds. “Diana left Sanctuary sometime before dawn. Best guess, she’s heading to the node. We follow, keep eyes out for Authority, and do not engage her. She is our primary objective.”
One of the runners—name’s Markus, or maybe Markov—raises a hand. “What’s the plan if we intercept her?”
“We bring her home,” I say. “Alive, and with whatever she’s carrying.”
Rosie snorts, but doesn’t argue.
I finish with: “If Authority’s already there, we go in. No half measures.”
We gear up and head to the East tunnel, pace brutal. Every step, I replay last night...
At the first junction, Markus freezes, holds up a fist. The signal is clear: movement ahead. Rosie kills the lantern, and we drop into a crouch.
I hear it, too—footsteps, but not Authority. Too light, too fast.
A shadow darts across the corridor, ducking into a side passage. I gesture for Rosie to stay, then take Markus and follow.
The runner is good—fast, unpredictable... At the end of the line, I find her: not Dee, but a Sanctuary courier, wild-eyed and sweating.
She sees the shotgun, goes white. “I’m just relaying,” she says, holding up both hands.
I lower the gun, motion her forward. “Report. Now.”
She swallows, hard. “Message for Maven. The node is hot. Authority sent a full squad this morning—drones, dogs, the whole thing.”
Rosie curses behind me. I do the math—Dee might be ahead, or caught in between.
The panic that had been simmering finally boiled over, fueled by the Authority’s presence.
A raw, choked sound of fury tore from my throat.
Markus flinched. The world tilted, the mission, the virus, the Sanctuary—all dissolving into the sole, burning fact that Diana was now running straight into the waiting jaws of the thing that created us.
I jammed the shotgun barrel toward the floor.
“We move, now! Every fucking second counts!”