Chapter 31 Eleanor's POV
The world didn’t go bang. It vanished.
One moment, Alec was there, a dark silhouette against the red emergency light, his eyes locked on mine. Next, he was gone. Swallowed by a shimmer of white light. No explosion.Just silence.
My mind shattered.
I didn’t scream.
I couldn’t. My lungs felt too heavy in my chest.
No sound could be heard. Only that blinding white light where he’d stood.
Then a low, wet crunch, as if the mountain itself was tearing apart.
Glass shattered.
Ollie shoved me with desperate strength, sending me crashing to the icy floor as something sharp nicked my cheek.
I didn’t feel it. All I felt was emptiness where Alec used to be.
The white lights faded to red, and smoke so thick and oily was pouring from the black gash where the server hall door had been.
He was in there.
My body moved before my mind caught up. A raw, animal sound tore from my throat, half sob, half snarl, and I shoved Ollie. My shoulder screamed in protest.
“ALEC!”
Ollie grabbed my good arm, fingers digging in. “Ellie, no—”
I fought like a wild thing. I had to reach that door. He couldn’t be gone. He was Alec. He’d survived everything. He couldn’t be dust.
“He’s gone, Ellie!” Ollie shouted, voice rough with fear. “Look at me! We have to move. Now!”
Gone.
The charge.The countdown.“I love you.”
The words hit like shrapnel. My knees buckled. Ollie caught me, his grip shifting from restraint to support. “I know,” he whispered. “I know. But we have to go.”
He was right. Shouts echoed from upstairs. People were coming.
He half-dragged me outside into the freezing weather.
The blizzard stole my breath. Snow lashed sideways like knives. I couldn’t see past my own hands.
“The station!” I gasped into the wind. “The data! He gave us coordinates!”
Ollie yelled back, voice raw: “It’s a trap! We go down!”
We abandoned the path, scrambling over ice-slick rock. The “trail” was a sheer drop. Ollie went first, slipping, clawing his way down, then reaching back for me. Every move sent fire through my shoulder. The cold gnawed through my clothes, down to bone. I shivered uncontrollably.
My mind replayed it: his face in the red light. Not fear but acceptance and something else—pride. In me.
Flashlights cut through the storm behind us. Shouts grew closer.
We slid. Fell. Clung to ice. Time meant nothing, only Ollie’s grip, the next breath, the ache in my chest.
When we finally reached the tree line, I collapsed against a pine, vomiting bile into the snow. My legs wouldn’t hold me.
Ollie dropped beside me, breath ragged. He pulled out a survival blanket. “Your shoulder,” he grunted.
“Leave it,” I whispered. What did it matter?
“Like hell.” His hands were gentle as he peeled back my jacket. “Clean through. You’re lucky, stupid.” He pressed gauze to the wound. I screamed as pain shot through me.
He bandaged me tightly, face grim in the dim light. The easygoing Ollie was gone. In his place: a soldier.
“Why’d you come back?” I asked, voice small. “You had the station. You were clear.”
He didn’t look up. “Heard the countdown on comms. Saw you on the feed.” A pause. “I had the shot.”
“You saved the data,” I said.
His eyes met mine. “I took the shot.”
He didn’t say for you. He didn’t need to. The truth was obvious between us—a life traded, a debt sealed.
Footsteps crunched in the snow. Closer.
Ollie helped me up. “Can you walk?”
Barely. Every step was agony. But I kept my eyes on his back—the black jacket against white—as if losing sight of him would erase me too.
We found a river trail, then a sign for Zermatt. Hope flared—then died as a helicopter thudded overhead.
Ollie dragged me toward a dark shape by the bank—a rotting boathouse. Inside, the air reeked of mildew and old water. But it was hidden. Safe.
He wedged the door shut. In the near-dark, only the green glow of snow filtered through cracks.
The storm raged.
I sank onto a broken bench, blanket pulled tight. My teeth chattered so hard I thought they’d break.
Ollie sat across from me, head in his hands, exhausted and wounded.
“We need a plan,” I said. The words felt hollow.
“The plan,” he muttered, “is not to die tonight.” He looked up. “Tomorrow, we find a back-alley doctor. New papers. Then we disappear, Ellie. For real.”
Disappear.
Safety. Surrender.
“The data,” I whispered.
“Forget it.” His voice cracked. “His last move wasn’t about legacy. It was a life raft for you. He gave you an exit, not a war.”
Tears came then—ugly, heaving sobs that shook my broken body. He was right. Alec’s final act was to clear my path.
But walking away felt like betrayal. Like letting his sacrifice mean only my survival.
I remembered his rare smile. “You’re the diamond.”
His voice in the study: “We burn them together.”
He hadn’t just given me an escape.
He’d handed me the torch.
I wiped my face with the rough blanket. The weeping stopped. In its place was cold, hard resolve.
I looked across the dark at Ollie’s shadow.
“I can’t leave,” I said, voice low but steady. “I have to see this through.”
A long pause. Then he exhaled—a quiet surrender. “Okay.”
He shifted, a floorboard creaking. “Then we need a secure connection. Can’t use that IP from a public terminal. We need real gear.”
A name rose in my mind—old, trusted. “Geneva. A journalist my father knew. He hates the ‘Carthage’ crowd more than anyone.”
Ollie didn’t ask questions. Just nodded once in the dark. “Tomorrow, after the doctor.” He leaned back against the wall. “Try to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
Sleep was a joke. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him walking into the fire.
But in the quiet, listening to Ollie breathe, I felt something shift in the hollow of my chest. My grief was an ocean of black.
But on its surface, a new tide rose.
Not hope.
Fire.
Alexander Sterling might be ashes on a Swiss mountain.
But the flame he lit in me?
It was definitely still burning, and I would use it to burn his enemies to the ground.