Chapter 71 Shared Enemies, Shared Future
Eli’s POV
I was still tasting gunpowder in the back of my throat when she said, “We’re not done,” and slid Harper’s message across the bed like it was a verdict.
Contract decision delayed. Classified security concern about associations. Using you two as pretext now.
I stared at the screen until the words stopped looking like English and started looking like another kind of weapon. Not bullets. Not knives. Policy. Paper. The kind that cut slower but deeper.
Sloane sat upright against the headboard, sheet pulled to her chest, hair a mess, eyes clear in that terrifying way she got right after surviving something.
“They’re making us the excuse,” she said. “Again.”
I rubbed a hand over my face, still damp from the shower I’d taken because I couldn’t stand the smell of the street on my skin. “They were always going to,” I said. “Now they have a cleaner talking point.”
She watched me for a beat, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and started pulling on clothes with sharp, efficient movements.
“What are you doing,” I asked.
“Stopping the world from deciding my future while I’m lying in a hotel bed,” she said. “We go home.”
My chest tightened. Part relief, part dread. Home meant New York, boards, cameras, and the kind of meetings that smiled while they sharpened knives.
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “After last night, you don’t just walk back into the city and pretend the Lattice won’t follow.”
She looked up, eyes hard. “They followed us here. Separation didn’t stop anything. Silence didn’t stop anything. Good behavior didn’t stop anything.” She yanked a sweater over her head like it offended her. “So we stop touring the world like fugitives and pivot.”
I leaned my shoulder against the wall, watching her. The bruise on her shoulder from hitting the van last night was already darkening. She moved like she didn’t feel it. That scared me almost as much as the motorcycle.
“Okay,” I said. “We pivot. But we do it smart.”
Ash knocked and stepped in without waiting for permission, as if the sound of his own politeness annoyed him.
“Transport is arranged,” he said. “Different airport. Different route. No public schedule. You two are not walking through a lobby again like a pair of tragic celebrities.”
Sloane’s mouth twitched. “Spoilsport.”
Ash’s eyes slid to me. “One more stop,” he said. “Before New York.”
I frowned. “We don’t have time.”
“We don’t have time not to,” he replied. “A discreet sit down with an EU data commissioner in Brussels. One of the few who hasn’t been bought or terrified into silence. If you want anyone official to move, you need to give them something they can’t ignore.”
Sloane’s gaze sharpened. “You can get us in.”
Ash nodded. “Quiet entrance. No press. No summit badges. Then you fly home.”
War wasn’t going to wait for us to catch our breath. That was the truth underneath everything. We could keep bouncing from city to city, gathering proof like souvenirs, and still lose if we didn’t put it into hands that could swing a bigger hammer.
Sloane looked at me. “Brussels,” she said. Not a question.
I exhaled. “Brussels,” I agreed.
The flight the next morning was short, private, and tense in that way that made every sound feel louder. Seatbelt click. Coffee cup against tray. Paper rustle. I kept watching the aisle even though there was no one in it.
Sloane sat across from me with a folder of sanitized evidence on her lap, hair pulled back, face set. Every time she blinked, I saw a flash of the street last night. The way she’d clung to my jacket while shots shattered glass.
In Brussels, the commissioner’s office smelled like old books and clean fear. The man himself was gray haired, careful, eyes scanning the door too often for someone who pretended he wasn’t worried.
Sloane spoke like a blade. No drama, no pleading. Just facts. Council overlaps. Private playbooks. The way “ethical oversight” became a pipeline for control. The way lives were modeled as acceptable losses.
I watched the commissioner’s hands tighten on his pen.
“This is very serious,” he said.
“It’s been serious for years,” Sloane replied. “It’s just finally inconvenient for the right people.”
He promised cautious review. Quiet inquiries. Bureaucratic words. But his eyes had shifted. He looked like a man who had just realized the floor beneath his office might be wired to something worse.
Back on the plane, leaving Europe behind, the tension finally loosened enough for something else to breathe.
Sloane stared out the window for a long time, watching clouds roll under us like waves. Then she spoke without looking at me.
“When this ends,” she said, “what do you want.”
The question landed in my chest like a hand. Not because I didn’t have answers. Because I hadn’t let myself want them.
“I want to stop living like every day is a rescue,” I said. “I want a stretch of time. Normal time.”
She turned her head slightly. “Define normal.”
I huffed a laugh. “Boring. A job where I teach people instead of bleeding for them. A place where you build because you want to, not because someone is threatening your throat.”
She watched me. “And Ward,” she asked quietly.
I swallowed. “If we walk away from Ward, from Mercer, could you be happy building something smaller. Quieter.”
Her gaze dropped to her hands, fingers laced tight. “I don’t know how to be small,” she admitted. “But I could learn to be less visible, with the right person.”
My pulse kicked.
We didn’t say marriage. We didn’t say forever. But the shape of it rose between us anyway.
“A joint security lab,” I said, letting myself picture it. “A training school. A place where kids like teenage you and young me can learn without being weaponized by men with contracts.”
She breathed out, and for a second she looked almost young. “A place with rules we write,” she said. “And people who get to say no.”
For the first time in years, I wanted something that wasn’t just survival. I wanted time with her that didn’t end at a door or a gunshot.
Her hand slid across the space between seats and found mine. Not desperate. Not panicked. Just sure.
Then the plane began to descend, the cabin pressure shifting, the city below sharpening into view.
My phone buzzed as networks reconnected.
Mila.
Mariah’s firm just had a sudden data loss incident. Someone is erasing Council evidence on their side. We need to get home before they wipe the board and before Mariah disappears too.
I showed it to Sloane.
Hope didn’t even get a full hour in the air.
The war found us again right as we touched down.