Chapter 249
Raven
For a second—one perfect, crystalline second—the entire room went silent.
The Surgeon stopped smiling.
Nash stopped struggling.
Even the clones seemed to pause, processing.
Then Nash made a sound I'd never heard before. Something raw and animal and broken.
"Shut. The fuck. UP, RAVEN."
He tore against his restraints hard enough that I heard something crack—bones or metal, I couldn't tell. His voice was a roar that echoed off the walls, off my ribs, off every bleeding piece of my heart.
"You think I brought you here to watch you die?! You think I'm going to—to just—"
He couldn't finish. Couldn't even form the words.
"Nash," I tried again, softer. "Please. I've killed hundreds. Maybe thousands. I stopped counting somewhere around Pakistan." A laugh that hurt. "Let me save people for once. Let me be—let me be good before—"
"No." Flat. Final. The kind of no that brooked zero argument. "If you want to go to hell, fine. I'll tear it apart brick by brick and drag you back. But not now. Not like this."
The Surgeon's laughter cut through our moment like a chainsaw through sentiment.
"Oh, how touching," he crooned, actually clasping his hands together. "True love's last stand. Tell me, Mr. Wilder—do you think your devotion will matter when the world is ash? When every city, every country, every thought belongs to me?"
He stepped closer to the Asura Core, running his hand over its surface like a lover.
"But please, continue your tragic farewell. I'll wait. After all—" His smile turned cruel. "I need her blood to finish the activation anyway. The longer she bleeds, the more power I gain. So by all means, take your time. Prolong your suffering."
---
The world was getting softer around the edges.
Not in a good way. In that way that meant my body was running out of things to run on. Blood, mostly. The important stuff.
My vision kept tunneling, then snapping back, like someone was playing with the contrast settings on reality.
This is it, I thought distantly. This is how Phantom dies. Not in a blaze of glory. Not taking down an empire. Just... drained dry like a Capri Sun in a psychopath's lab.
The irony was almost funny.
Almost.
I'd spent my entire life—both lives—running from death. Killed to avoid being killed. Betrayed before I could be betrayed. Never let anyone close enough to matter because mattering meant weakness.
And now here I was, bleeding out for a man I'd known less than a year.
A man who was currently screaming my name like it was the only word left in his vocabulary.
Nash.
God, when had he become my whole world?
I tried to focus on him, but my vision kept swimming, reality sliding in and out like a broken film reel.
Nash went down. Hard. A clone's boot to the chest sent him crashing into the monitors.
He got back up.
Took two steps toward me.
Went down again.
Stay down, I thought desperately. Please just stay down—
He didn't. He never did.
Another step. Another fall. Each time slower, bloodier, more broken.
But always closer.
Just like the beginning, I realized. The day he'd moved in next door. Always there. Always orbiting. Always closing the distance between us, step by impossible step, until somehow he'd become the center of my entire world.
And now he was dying his way to my side.
Because that's what Nash did.
He collapsed three feet away, hand stretching toward mine across blood-slicked floor.
"Almost—" he rasped. "—there."
Always coming for me.
---
My mind started to drift.
Not peaceful. More like falling through snapshots of a life I'd actually lived.
Leo's ridiculous grin when I'd let him tag along to that first street race. "You're officially the coolest person I've ever met, Raven. And I know a guy who owns a yacht."
Maya shoving a homemade protection charm into my hands. "Shut up and take it. You're my best friend, okay? That means something."
Cole's voice, rough with emotion after I'd won that race for him: "You're not just my sister. You're my hero."
Katya pulling me into a bone-crushing hug after the cliff challenge. "In Russia, we have saying: 'Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.' You are family now, da?"
Ethan adjusting his glasses, that slight smile: "You know, statistically speaking, meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to my survival rate. Paradoxically."
Dad—David—looking at me like I'd hung the moon when I'd saved the family business. "I don't know what we did to deserve you, kiddo. But I'm grateful every day."
Nash. Always Nash. "I've got you."
I'd lived.
God, I'd actually lived.
Not a bad way to go out.