Aria Vale
I didn't remember the drive to the safehouse.
All I remembered was the way Damian said she's alive, like he was handing me a loaded gun and daring me to pull the trigger.
My mother.
Dead. Gone. Ashes in a brass urn I still kept in the back of a drawer.
And now—suddenly—she was a ghost with a heartbeat?
No.
No.
The steel door groaned as I shoved it open, the force rattling through the frame.
Kira looked up from the workbench, calm as always, a knife in one hand and a disassembled pistol in the other.
"What the hell happened to you?" she asked, taking in my face.
"You tell me," I snapped, slamming the door shut behind me. "You've got secrets, Kira. Start talking."
Her expression barely shifted. "What secrets?"
"Don't play me right now." My voice was shaking. "Did you know my mother was alive?"
The silence that followed was deafening.
Kira's jaw tightened, just a flicker—but it was enough.
I took a step closer. "You knew."
"No." She stood, slowly, placing the knife on the table. "I suspected."
My breath caught. "You what?"
"I didn't want to believe it. There were whispers—intel buried so deep I thought it was garbage. She was seen near Monarch facilities. But no names, no confirmation. Just shadows."
"And you didn't tell me?" My voice cracked like a whip. "You let me believe she was dead—that I was chasing ghosts!"
Kira came around the table, voice steady. "Because ghosts are easier to kill than truth. And I didn't know if it was real, Aria. If it was her, or some double, or bait Monarch planted."
"She wasn't bait," I said through clenched teeth. "Damian saw her. Sector 3. She's working with them."
Kira's eyes darkened. "Then it's worse than we thought."
I turned away, breath shallow, head spinning.
My mother—alive. In bed with the same monsters who destroyed my father. Who made me into this blade I could barely hold steady anymore.
And now I had to ask the question that terrified me most.
"Do you think she knew?" I whispered. "About me? About what they did to him?"
Kira didn't answer right away.
When she did, her voice was soft. Careful.
"If she's with them… then yes. She knew."
I sank into the nearest chair, hands trembling, rage rising like bile.
She knew.
And she let me rot in the fire.
I looked up at Kira, my voice like broken glass.
"Then we find her. We find her, and we rip Monarch apart from the inside."
Kira nodded once, sharp and certain. "You lead. I follow."
No more ghosts.
No more lies.
If my mother wanted to play queen behind the curtain, fine.
I was coming for her crown.
---
We pushed through with our plan of handing over the bait file to Jasper.
It was done.
The drive left my hand with the weight of a guillotine blade, clean and sharp. Jasper took it with a smile that didn't touch his eyes, muttering something about "next steps" before vanishing into the city.
And now we waited.
Kira had the trace primed—quiet, surgical, invasive. The worm buried in the fake file would ride along like a sleeper agent, logging every IP, every relay, every fingerprint it touched. The moment it was accessed, we'd know who wanted what—and how far they were willing to go to get it.
"Anything yet?" I asked, pacing behind her at the safehouse.
She didn't glance up from the screen. "Signal's holding. No access yet. He's either being cautious... or someone else is."
"Then someone else has it," I muttered.
Kira nodded. "Could be Monarch. Could be a fence. Could be someone playing both sides."
I leaned on the back of her chair, tension bristling beneath my skin. "He'll want credit. He'll want to prove he got something valuable."
"So he won't sit on it long."
We stared at the screen in silence, watching the blinking node that represented our drive as it pulsed softly against a sea of static.
Then—movement.
Kira's fingers flew across the keys. "We've got a connection. Data handoff in Sector 3. Routed through a masked node but…" She paused. "Gotcha. Burned IP. Internal Monarch server."
My blood ran cold.
"Which wing?"
"Private access port. East side. Tied to... high-level clearance. We're talking someone near the top."
I didn't blink. "Could it be her?"
Kira's mouth tightened. "You think your mother touched it?"
"If Damian's not lying—and if she's really there—then yes."
The trace blinked again, narrowing in.
"Another packet just went out," Kira said. "They're sending it to a third-party vault. Whoever's working this isn't keeping it. They're delivering it."
"Then follow it. I want to know where it lands."
She typed faster, breath tight. "Got it. It's jumping servers—hard to pin—but I'm in the mesh now. Give me five minutes."
I nodded, eyes fixed to the screen.
It was happening.
The web was reacting. The bait had teeth.
And Jasper? Whether he knew it or not, he'd just opened a door he couldn't close.
---
The map fractured into a digital storm—nodes lighting up like matchsticks across a black sea. Kira's eyes flicked across the screen, her fingers dancing in patterns I couldn't follow but trusted with my life.
"It's not staying put," she murmured. "They're bouncing it. Cloaking each hop."
"Which means they're scared."
"Or smart," she said grimly.
I leaned closer, watching the way the trace fought to hold its signal. The worm we'd embedded was clinging on—barely—but it was doing its job. Every time the file touched a new server, it left a fingerprint. Every time someone opened it, we saw the breath they took.
Then one of the nodes blinked red.
Kira froze. "That's not supposed to happen."
"What is it?"
She didn't answer at first. Her expression went still—too still.
"Kira."
She finally exhaled. "Someone tried to scrub it. Mid-transfer. Not Monarch protocol—it's cleaner. More precise."
"Another player?"
"Looks that way. But they didn't expect our worm. It bit back."
I moved to her side. "Where did it bite?"
She expanded the trace, isolating the flashpoint. The map zoomed in. My stomach tightened.
It was a dead zone. No name. No flag. Just coordinates and a cold silence.
"What is that?"
"Private relay. Off-grid. Built for ghost networks." Kira's voice was low now. "And it's not just someone else using it—it's a signature."
She highlighted a string of code.
I knew the tag. I'd seen it once, carved into the side of an old Vale hard drive—something my father had buried before everything went to hell.
MV-07.
My throat dried. "That's a Monarch Vault number."
Kira looked up at me. "The seventh vault. One of the black sites."
"The ones they don't admit exist," I whispered.
"Exactly."
That was where the file landed.
That was where someone cracked it.
And that was where the signal went dark.
My mind raced. Monarch was splintering internally—some factions still loyal to the old order, others hungry to rise from its ashes. If Vault 07 was active again… it meant someone at the heart of that beast had taken notice.
"Do we know who has clearance for that site?" I asked.
"No one official," Kira said. "Only four names were ever tied to it. Two are dead. One vanished. And the last…"
She didn't finish.
She didn't have to.
Damian Wolfe.
I stood frozen, heart pounding.
Not just him. Whoever was behind that vault. Whoever gave the order to reactivate it. They weren't looking for truth.
They were looking for leverage.
And Jasper just handed them the perfect weapon.
"We need to move," I said.
Kira nodded. "Where?"
"To the source."
I grabbed my coat, the weight of everything collapsing in around me.