[WELCOME, EVA.]
[IDENTITY CONFIRMED.]
The crisp white text pulsed rhythmically on the massive screen. It didn't feel like a greeting. It felt like a surgical pin being driven through a butterfly.
Eva stood frozen in the center of the impossibly soundless warehouse. Her driver's license had a stranger's face on it. The police had erased her father. But the machine... the machine knew exactly who she was.
"They know," Eva whispered, a terrifying awe bleeding into her voice. "They see me."
She took a step toward the glass desk. She needed to know what else it would say. She needed to know who was typing.
A hand clamped around her upper arm like a vice of solid steel.
The grip was violent. It bruised instantly.
"We are leaving. Now."
Liam didn't pull her gently. He yanked her backward so hard she nearly lost her footing on the polished concrete.
"Let me go!" Eva screamed, twisting against his grip. But the sound of her own voice was swallowed by the dead air of the room. "They're talking to me, Liam! They have the answers!"
"They aren't talking to you, Eva," Liam snarled, his eyes burning with a dark, frantic urgency she had never seen before. "They are logging you. Every second you stand in this light, they are building your physical and biometric profile."
He dragged her toward the heavy steel door.
Ethan stepped into their path, his hand reaching for his backpack strap. The cynical hacker looked pale, but he held his ground.
"Let her go, Carter," Ethan warned, though his voice lacked its usual bite.
Liam stopped. He didn't let go of Eva. He looked at Ethan with an expression of absolute, terrifying superiority. He wasn't the corporate heir right now. He was the apex predator in a very small cage.
"She tripped a Level-4 physical query, Ethan," Liam said. His voice was deathly quiet, yet it carried the weight of a judge passing sentence. "The containment team is three minutes out. They don't have faces. They don't have badges."
Liam stepped closer to Ethan, the height difference suddenly overwhelmingly apparent.
"You know what happens if you stay."
The words hit Ethan like a physical blow. The color drained entirely from the hacker's face. He looked at the glowing screen, then at the soundless floor. He knew. Whatever he had tried to leave behind in his past, he knew exactly what was coming.
Ethan looked at Eva, a flash of genuine apology in his eyes.
Then, he turned and sprinted out the door, vanishing into the freezing mist of the Northport District.
Eva watched her only ally abandon her.
"Move," Liam ordered, dragging her out into the rain.
The shock of the freezing water snapped Eva out of her paralysis. The rage that had been building since Adrian Vance's office finally exploded.
She swung her free hand, slamming her fist hard into Liam's shoulder.
"You set this up!" Eva screamed over the sound of the rain. "You knew they would wipe my phone! You knew they would scrub Elias! You're one of them!"
Liam took the hit. He didn't flinch. He didn't slow down. He dragged her to the sleek, armored black SUV parked fifty yards away in the shadows.
"If I was one of them, you would have died in that laundromat!" Liam roared back, the perfectly controlled mask finally shattering.
He pinned her against the heavy, bulletproof door of the SUV. The impact knocked the breath out of her.
Liam leaned in, his face inches from hers. The rain plastered his hair to his forehead, his dark eyes wide and terrifyingly wild.
"You think finding a ghost ping makes you a player?" Liam yelled, the raw, unfiltered truth finally pouring out of him. "They own the grid, Eva! They own the police, they own the morgue, and they own the memories of your neighbors! You are trying to fight an ocean with a fucking magnifying glass!"
Eva stared at him, her chest heaving, the cold rain mixing with the hot tears of absolute betrayal.
"Where is my father, Liam?" she choked out, her voice breaking. "If you know how this works... tell me where he is."
Liam stared at her trembling lips, the devastating grief in her eyes. For a fraction of a second, the tyrant faltered. The man who loved her tried to break through the armor.
He knew about the twelve years of Swiss bank deposits. He knew her father was a willing participant in the system's architecture.
But he couldn't say it. To say it was to sign her death warrant.
The tyrant returned, colder and more ruthless than before.
He pulled the heavy door open.
"Get in," Liam ordered.
"No." Eva planted her feet on the wet asphalt. "I am not going anywhere with you. I will walk."
Liam looked down at her. The last trace of negotiation vanished from his eyes. He wasn't her partner anymore. He was her warden.
"I'm not asking you anymore."
Before Eva could react, Liam grabbed her by the waist, effortlessly lifting her off the ground, and shoved her into the passenger seat.
She scrambled to get out, but the heavy door slammed shut with a sickening, airtight thud.
The locks engaged instantly with a sharp electronic clack.
Liam walked around the hood and slid into the driver's seat. He didn't look at her. He slammed the SUV into gear.
As the massive vehicle tore away from the curb, Eva pressed her hands against the cold, tinted glass of the window, looking back at Warehouse 4.
Three unmarked, matte-black vans were pulling into the alleyway they had just vacated. They had no license plates. They drove in perfect, silent synchronization.
Eva slowly turned to look at the man sitting beside her in the dark cabin. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
He had saved her life.
And in doing so, he had taken it entirely away.