CHAPTER 16 #2
Alvarez returns. “Fire department two minutes out. Bomb tech advises no one opens 17B until they clear the heat device.”
“Drive?” Clara asks Casey.
Casey’s laptop is open on the floor, connected to the hard drive through a small write blocker he either carried or summoned from fear. “Copying directory structure. Not opening files yet. There’s a folder marked ORIGINAL_INDEX.”
Clara stands too quickly.
I do not move.
She grips the wall, recovers, then says, “Can you see timestamps?”
“Some. There are two big video files. One labeled RD17_T2_WORK. One labeled LAST_TAKE_MASTER.”
The words hit Alvarez.
Diana.
Me.
Clara most of all.
Last Take.
The title in the mouth of the file.
The original.
Or another bait copy.
“Copy everything,” Clara says.
“Already running.”
“How long?”
“Eight minutes.”
Alvarez looks at the smoking door. “We may not have eight.”
Casey’s fingers shake over the keys. “Then stop making it dramatic.”
Diana points at him. “Good. Fear has improved you.”
Another alarm starts somewhere deeper in the building. Lower tone. Building evacuation. The manager is talking fast to a firefighter near the stairs, pointing, uselessly, as if fire can be convinced by hand gestures.
My borrowed windbreaker sticks to the back of my neck.
Heat from the unit presses down the hall.
I move closer to Casey’s laptop and scan the directory without touching.
Folders scroll.
REDVALE_TRANSFER BH_PREPROD_BOARDS EDDA_MARSH NATE_WELLER_PR CV_MEDIA_PACKAGE M_REED_DEPOSITION AVERY_LORNE_RAW
My name.
Clara’s eyes catch it too.
M_REED_DEPOSITION.
She looks at me.
There is no room left to pretend anything is not connected.
Casey says, “There’s a text file in the deposition folder. Preview only, not opening full.”
“Name?” Alvarez asks.
Casey reads, “MR_FINAL_CLEAN.”
Clean.
The word makes my stomach turn.
A clean statement.
A clean story.
A clean corridor without a locked door.
Clara whispers, “They edited you too.”
I look at her.
She did not say it kindly.
That makes it worse.
“Not enough to absolve me,” I say.
“No.”
Good.
It shouldn’t.
But something changes in her face anyway. Not forgiveness. Not trust. Recognition that the machine did not only use my lie. It shaped it, sharpened it, filed off what could cut Victor.
Alvarez says, “Casey, prioritize deposition and Edda folders.”
Clara says, “No.”
Everyone looks at her.
“Prioritize Avery raw and Last Take Master.”
Alvarez’s eyebrows lift. “Evidence of old crime matters.”
“Avery is alive now.”
Silence.
She wins the room because she is right.
Alvarez nods once. “Do it.”
Casey changes priority. “Avery and master first.”
The disposable phone in Alvarez’s evidence bag buzzes again.
Everyone goes still.
Alvarez holds the bag up without opening it.
A new message lights the screen.
WRONG ORDER.
Then another:
SHE ALWAYS PICKS THE LIVING GIRL.
Clara’s jaw tightens.
“Good,” she says.
Her voice is rough but clear.
“Let them be annoyed.”
The phone buzzes again.
WATCH.
The live video returns.
Avery in front of the red door. Water now soaking her shirt, dripping from her chin. She is breathing too fast. The room behind her is small. Red light. Black floor. A piece of metal shelving visible on the left. A small white sign half out of frame.
I lean toward it.
Clara does too.
For half a second, our shoulders almost touch.
Neither of us moves away.
The sign is blurred by water and compression.
Three letters visible.
ANC.
Casey says, “ANC?”
“Annex,” Clara and I say at the same time.
The word hits the hallway.
Wardrobe annex. Old annex line. Shoebox power draw. 17B routes. Stage 14. The place where this started folding back on itself.
Avery is not at Crescent Vault.
She is back on the lot.
Or near it.
The trap moved Clara off-lot so Avery could be held on-lot while everyone chased storage.
“Alvarez,” I say.
“Already moving.”
He turns, starts issuing orders.
Clara steps toward him. “I’m coming.”
“No,” I say.
Wrong word.
Wrong timing.
Her head turns slowly.
Every lesson I’ve learned tonight lights itself on fire.
I correct before she can cut me.
“I mean—” My mouth tastes like smoke and failure. “I mean I want to say no. I am not saying it. I am saying you’re coughing, you’re injured, and if you choose to go, we plan before we move.”
The hallway pauses around us.
Diana looks at the ceiling like she’s witnessing an eclipse.
Clara’s eyes stay on mine.
“I’m going,” she says.
“I know.”
“With or without you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She studies me for another second.
Then she hands me the Edda folder.
The paper is warm from her body.
“Carry this,” she says. “Your shoulder hurts, not your hands.”
It is not tenderness.
It is worse.
Trust by task.
I take it.
“Okay.”
“And if you try to lock me in a car for my safety, I will make sure Molly writes your obituary.”
“Understood.”
“She’ll make it weird.”
“I assumed.”
The corner of Clara’s mouth moves.
One millimeter.
The alarm screams. Smoke thickens. Casey curses at the transfer percentage.
And for one second in the middle of a burning storage facility, with Avery drowning somewhere on a staged red-door set and my old lies crawling out of a hard drive, Clara almost smiles at me.
Then the disposable phone buzzes again.
The video cuts to black.
One final text appears.
TEN MINUTES UNTIL THE LAST TAKE.