Chapter 96 96

Chapter 96 Part 2-Chapter 13
We didn’t talk for the first ten minutes after we left the warehouse. Raines drove with both hands locked on the wheel, her posture rigid, eyes fixed on the road like she could will the city to behave if she stared hard enough. The girl sat in the back seat, knees pulled to her chest, staring out the window without really seeing anything. I rode shotgun, the pendant heavy against my sternum, cooling now but far from quiet.

Sirens passed somewhere behind us, then faded. The city swallowed the sound and moved on.

I broke the silence because if I didn’t, it would start breaking things on its own. “She needs somewhere safe,” I said, keeping my voice even.

Raines nodded once, sharp. “I know.”

“Not a holding room,” I added, glancing back at the girl. “Not tonight.”

Raines's jaw tightened. “I said I know.”

I let it drop. Pressure only worked when it was applied in the right direction.

We pulled into a quiet side street instead of heading straight back to the office. Raines parked under a flickering streetlight, engine still running, like she hadn’t decided whether stopping counted as rest or surrender.

The girl shifted in the back seat. “I didn’t mean to make things worse,” she said suddenly, her voice thin but steady enough to hold together.

Raines looked at her in the rearview mirror. “That wasn’t you,” she replied, the words clipped but not unkind.

I turned in my seat, resting my arm along the backrest so I could see her properly. “What’s your name,” I asked gently.

The girl hesitated, then shook her head. “They told me not to use it anymore.”

Raines’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

“That wasn’t their call,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to give it to us if you’re not ready, but it’s still yours.”

She nodded once, absorbing that, then went quiet again.

Raines finally cut the engine. The sudden silence was loud. She exhaled slowly, one hand lifting to rub at the back of her neck like she was trying to unknot something lodged there.

“So, this is how it starts,” she said, not looking at either of us.

I waited for her to continue.

“First it’s curiosity,” she continued, her voice low. “Then it’s recruitment. Then it’s containment.” Her laugh was short, humorless. “And by the time anyone notices someone’s missing, they’ve already been rewritten into a problem instead of a person.”

The word missing landed hard. I didn’t look away. “Your sister,” I said quietly.

Raines stilled. The girl’s head lifted in the back seat, attention snapping into place.

Raines stared straight ahead for a long moment, eyes glassy but unblinking. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Mara. I tried to beleive she just skipped town,” Raines continued, her voice steady in the way people get when they’ve rehearsed the story too many times. “You know...new life...yada, yada.” She swallowed. “But no matter how I wanted to beleive, I knew better. Mara couldn’t even leave a party without saying goodbye. She's been gone three months now, and now, finding out she's mixed up in this shit, I feel like I'll never get to bring her home.”

The girl shifted again. “They say that...that if you chose it, it’s easier.”

Raines turned then, fully, twisting in her seat to look at her. “Who says that?” she asked, the edge in her voice carefully controlled.

“The handlers,” the girl replied, shrinking slightly but holding eye contact. “They say people like us are volatile. That disappearing is inevitable.”

Something dark and furious crossed Raines’s face. I reached out and rested my hand lightly on her forearm. Not to stop her. To anchor her. “We'll find her,” I said.

Raines's shoulders lifted, then dropped. “Alive or dead. Either way, I just need to know...because not knowing is a killer in itself.”

The pendant pulsed once against my chest, faint but insistent.

“She was taken through the corridor,” the girl said suddenly, certainty threading her voice.

Raines froze. “What?”

The girl hugged her knees tighter. “I’ve seen it,” she said. “Not her exactly. But others. Same markers. Same process.” She hesitated. “They don’t always move people right away. Sometimes they wait until the right pressure hits.”

Raines’s breath hitched. “You’re saying she could still be alive?”

“I’m saying disappearance doesn’t mean termination,” the girl replied carefully.

The car felt too small suddenly. Too full of things that had been left unsaid.

I leaned back, eyes closing briefly as pieces shifted into alignment. “That fucking corridor. God how I hate that thing.”

Raines looked at me, something like hope and terror warring behind her eyes. “Yes.”

The girl piped up from the backseat. “They like families. Especially when they refuse to stop looking.”

Raines laughed then, the sound breaking and raw. “That figures.”

I turned in my seat, meeting Raines’s gaze fully. “We won’t leave her behind,” I said. “Her, or anyone else they've decided to erase.”

Her jaw set. “Then we stop treating this like an investigation,” she said.

“And start treating it like a retrieval,” I finished.

She nodded once, fierce. “Exactly.”

The girl watched us, something like fragile hope flickering across her face. “You’re not afraid?” she asked.

I thought of Cyne, of silence sharpened into intent, of consequence rippling outward. “No,” I replied honestly. “We’re angry.”

Raines reached back and squeezed the girl’s hand. “We’re going to find them,” she said. “All of them.”

The pendant warmed slightly, and I could feel that somewhere beneath the city, something old shifted, adjusting to the fact that it was no longer being hunted by one person. It was being hunted by a network. And this time, it wasn’t just about survival. It was about what had been stolen, and what was coming for it.