Residue Of Shadow
Chapter 24 – Residue of Shadows
Ava Carter’s POV
The silence after fire is always the loudest.
We had made it out of the underground auction. Barely. The chaos had covered our escape like a smoke screen, but the taste of danger lingered, bitter and metallic in my mouth.
Back at the safehouse, dawn filtered through the fractured window slats, smearing pale gold across peeling walls. The heater coughed with effort. My father’s breaths had deepened—more rhythmic now, less haunted. That alone felt like a victory.
But victories were expensive. And temporary.
I stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug that had once read #1 Dad—now scratched down to #1 D. Fitting, somehow. Damon leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, eyes on me.
“You haven’t slept,” he said.
“Didn’t want to.”
He moved closer, took the mug from my hands, and set it on the counter. “You keep running like this, Ava, something’s going to catch you.”
I met his gaze. “Something already has.”
His jaw clenched at that, the ghost of a thousand unspoken words between us. He didn’t say them. I didn’t ask him to.
Instead, we heard the creak of floorboards. Jackson entered, jacket half-zipped, eyes sharp despite the bruises blooming down his neck.
“She’s gone dark,” he said, no preamble. “Solace wiped every trace of her aliases—S. Rayne, Valen Cross, even that Zurich front. Nothing left but scorched code.”
“And the buyers?” I asked.
He gave a grim smile. “Half of them are being questioned by authorities. The other half disappeared before sunrise. Someone tipped them off.”
“Solace?”
“Or someone else.”
A thread of unease pulled through my ribs.
“What about the freed subjects?” Damon asked.
Jackson exhaled slowly. “Some didn’t make it. But a few… well, they’re not exactly ordinary.”
He handed me a tablet. The footage showed a man from the auction—the one labeled Subject K-47. He was sitting in a makeshift recovery room, eyes tracking the camera with uncanny precision. Heart rate: stable. Blood pressure: controlled. Emotion: unreadable.
“He’s not speaking,” Jackson said. “But he’s listening. Every word.”
I watched the video for a long moment. “What does he want?”
“No idea,” Jackson said. “But he keeps drawing this.”
He handed me a slip of paper. A symbol. A triangle inside a circle, with a split line running down the center.
Damon frowned. “I’ve seen that before. On Vanmoor files. And on the syringe Solace used on your father.”
I nodded slowly. “It's a signature. A seal. Maybe even a name.”
Jackson rubbed his jaw. “Whatever it is, K-47's obsessed with it. Won’t let go of the paper. Refuses food. But clutches that symbol like it’s a lifeline.”
Suddenly, my father stirred again. His voice rasped, low but urgent: “Not a symbol… a location.”
We froze.
I rushed to his side. “Dad?”
His eyes opened. Still hazy, but no longer vacant.
“That mark… is the gateway logo. A place they called Threshold.”
Jackson leaned in. “Where is it?”
“Remote. Arctic Circle. Hidden underground. Vanmoor’s first success… and worst mistake.”
My skin went cold.
“They built it to house the next generation of neural interface experiments,” he whispered. “But something… broke.”
He clutched my wrist, his grip surprisingly strong.
“She’s going back. To finish what they started.”
I exchanged a look with Damon. “Solace is returning to Threshold.”
Jackson straightened. “Then so are we.”
\---
Later That Day – War Room
The safehouse had no proper war room. But with enough wires, stolen servers, and duct-taped monitors, Jackson made one.
He pulled up satellite footage. A northern sector near the Arctic Circle—desolate, white, silent. But beneath the ice, shapes moved. The faint heat signature of a power core. A facility alive.
“I pinged the coordinates from the symbol using old Vanmoor files,” he explained. “This isn’t just a lab. It’s a fortress.”
Damon scanned the screen. “Entry points?”
“Only one. Reinforced elevator shaft hidden under a faux glacier cap. Anything else, we’re punching through arctic concrete.”
I looked at the heat blips. “And she’s already inside?”
Jackson nodded grimly. “Or she will be soon.”
I turned away, heart pounding. Every part of me screamed not to go back into the storm. But then I remembered the look in Solace’s eyes. Not hatred. Not pain.
Purpose.
And that terrified me more.
“We go at nightfall,” I said. “Load light. Infiltration gear only.”
Damon raised a brow. “You leading this?”
I nodded. “I have to.”
At midnight,
I stood outside, watching snowflakes tumble under a pale moon. Damon came up behind me, silent as ever.
“You ready?” he asked.
“No. But I will be.”
He studied me, something unreadable in his eyes. “You’re not the same girl I met outside Vanmoor’s lab.”
I didn’t look at him. “That girl’s dead.”
“She’s not,” he said quietly. “She’s just… forged.”
I turned to him. “You think I’m becoming like her.”
He hesitated. “No. But I think you’re starting to understand her.”
I wanted to deny it. But he wasn’t wrong.
Before I could speak, Jackson’s voice crackled over the comms.
“We’ve got a problem.”
\---
Safehouse – War Room Again
We rushed in.
Jackson pointed at the screen. “Satellite feed just went dark. Not jammed. Destroyed. Someone took out the low-orbit drone.”
“Solace?” Damon asked.
“No,” Jackson said slowly. “Too fast. Too clean. Military precision.”
My stomach dropped. “She’s not alone.”
He nodded. “And someone else doesn’t want us finding Threshold.”
The monitor flickered—an emergency ping from an old contact of Jackson’s. An image came through. Grainy, but clear enough.
A man in a suit, standing in front of the Vanmoor sigil.
Under it, a name: Elias Crane.
I narrowed my eyes. “Who is that?”
Jackson’s voice dropped. “The man who funded the first lab that made Solace. The real architect behind the project. I thought he was dead.”
Damon's hands curled into fists. “Looks like we’ve got a new enemy.”
And suddenly, Solace wasn’t the biggest threat anymore.
Elias Crane was.
Alarms blared through the safehouse.
We hit the floor, weapons drawn. Red lights flashed.
Jackson shouted, “Someone’s breached our encryption! They know where we are!”
Gunshots echoed through the stairwell.
Damon grabbed my hand. “Go! Through the back exit!”
But before we moved, a voice spoke through the hacked comms.
Calm. Icy.
“You should’ve let her burn, Ava.”
Solace.
She’d found us.
And this time—she wasn’t alone.