Chapter 63: The Interface

Chapter 63: The Interface
For a few seconds, everything was black.

The hum of the circuits died. The nightlight’s pink glow vanished, swallowed by the dark.
All that remained was the rain tapping against the windows and the faint tremor of my own pulse.

“Sebastian?” I whispered.

“Here.” His voice was steady, but I could hear the tension in it — the way his hand brushed instinctively toward the gun at his side.

The speaker crackled again, faint at first, then clearer.

“Eve… listen to me. He’s lying to you.”

Gabriel’s voice. Calm. Familiar.
Too familiar.

I turned toward the wall where the sound was coming from.
“Gabriel? How—how are you on this frequency? You disappeared. We thought you were lost.”

“You think I wanted to leave you?” A breath, heavy with static. “You think I’d ever let him replace me?”

Sebastian moved closer to the panel, pulling a small device from his pocket. “He’s patching through a residual signal—a buried frequency in the grid. He must’ve found one of Richard’s old network nodes.”

The voice came sharper now.

“Eve, he’s not who you think he is. He’s working for Richard.”

I froze. “What?”

Sebastian’s jaw clenched. “Don’t listen to him. It’s manipulation — synthetic voice overlay. Richard’s good at this.”

But my pulse was already racing. “Then why does it sound like him?”

Sebastian hesitated — just for a heartbeat — and that was enough.

“Because he is him,” Gabriel said. “He’s part of it. They trained him to protect Richard’s work. Everything he’s done has been about keeping you close—keeping you safe enough to lead them to me.”

“That’s not true,” Sebastian said quickly, turning toward me. His voice was tight, urgent. “He’s trying to divide us, Eve. That’s what Richard does—he turns doubt into a weapon.”

“You can trust me, Eve,” Gabriel’s voice pleaded. “Not him. Remember the warehouse? The files? The way he knew where to find you every time? Ask yourself how.”

My throat went dry. I looked at Sebastian — really looked at him. His face was shadowed, unreadable.
He didn’t answer right away.

“Sebastian,” I whispered, “how did you find me that first night? At the facility?”

He exhaled slowly, the truth flickering in his eyes like a confession he hadn’t planned to make. “I had access to parts of Richard’s database. I used it to track you — to protect you. That’s all.”

“Liar,” Gabriel’s voice hissed.

Sebastian slammed the transmitter off the wall. The static stopped mid-breath, plunging the room into thick silence.

For a moment, all I could hear was the rain again — soft, relentless.

“I told you the truth,” Sebastian said finally. “Every word of it. But if you start believing the ghosts Richard sends you, he’s already won.”

I wanted to believe him.
God, I wanted to.

But Gabriel’s voice—real or not—had cut deep enough to leave a crack I couldn’t seal.

Somewhere beyond the rain, the city lights flickered, and the faintest echo of static crawled back into the line.

“You can’t save her if you can’t trust her,” Gabriel whispered.

And then he was gone.

Sebastian turned away, jaw tight. “He’s playing a long game. We shut that frequency down before he uses it to find us again.”

I nodded slowly, though my chest felt hollow. “And if that really was Gabriel?”

Sebastian met my gaze—calm, steady, but hiding something I couldn’t name. “Then we find him before Richard finishes rewriting who he is.”

Outside, lightning cracked across the skyline — thin and sharp, like the line between truth and betrayal.

And for the first time, I wasn’t sure which side any of us were standing on.

—

I didn’t sleep.

The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but the sound of it lingered in my head — that soft, rhythmic tap that always came before something broke.

Sebastian stayed downstairs, guarding what was left of the transmitter. I could hear him moving every now and then — quiet, careful. Like a man who didn’t want to wake his own ghosts.

I sat by the window in Lila’s room, watching her sleep. Her small hand clutched the edge of her blanket, her breath even and slow. Every time I looked at her, it hurt — the reminder that she had no idea how close we’d come to losing everything again.

But what haunted me wasn’t Richard. Or even Gabriel’s voice.
It was Sebastian’s silence.

He’d hesitated when I asked about that night — the first night. The hesitation was small, but it was there. And in my world, hesitation meant danger.

When the clock hit 3:12 a.m., I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Lila.

Downstairs, the room was dim—only the faint blue glow of Sebastian’s laptop lighting the space. He’d fallen asleep in the chair, one arm draped over the back, his gun still within reach. The man never truly rested.

I stood there for a moment, watching him.
The way exhaustion softened his features made him look almost gentle.
It was easier to trust him like this, when he wasn’t hiding behind control.

Then I saw it — a small red light blinking on the edge of his laptop. Recording mode.

I hesitated, then reached for the headset resting beside it.

Static hissed through the speakers, followed by fragments of a voice.

“...not supposed to interfere... protocol breach detected...”

A pause. Then another voice — deeper, distorted.

“Phase Two remains active. Cross’s priority is containment, not extraction.”

Wolfe.
Sebastian Wolfe.

The air went thin.

“He’s grown attached,” the distorted voice continued. “Emotion is a liability. Reinstate command access if he resists.”

I froze. My heart felt like it had stopped.

A chair creaked behind me.

“Eve.”

Sebastian’s voice — rough, tired — came from the doorway. He was awake now, leaning against the frame.

“How much did you hear?” he asked quietly.

I set the headset down. “Enough.”

He exhaled, ran a hand through his hair, and for a moment looked like he might lie again. But then he didn’t.

“I was supposed to monitor you,” he said finally. “After the crash — after Gabriel disappeared. Richard wanted eyes on everything. I said yes because it was the only way I could protect you from the inside.”

I wanted to believe that.
But the ache in my chest wasn’t ready to forgive so easily.

“So everything between us,” I said softly, “was just part of the job?”

He stepped closer, eyes dark and steady. “No. That’s what changed everything.”

Something in his voice — the way it cracked just slightly — made me look at him.
Really look.

He wasn’t defending himself anymore. He was confessing.

“I was supposed to keep my distance,” he said. “But then you started fighting back. Not like anyone else ever did. You didn’t just survive Richard’s games—you tore them apart. And I couldn’t stand by and let him use you again.”

I shook my head, swallowing hard. “You could’ve told me.”

“I know.” His voice was barely a whisper now. “But I was afraid that if I did, you’d never look at me again.”

The words hung between us, heavy and trembling.

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Somewhere above us, thunder rolled in the distance — soft, echoing, like the world trying to remind us that nothing ever stays still.

Sebastian stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him in the dark. “Eve,” he said quietly, “you don’t have to trust me right now. Just stay alive long enough to decide if you want to.”

And somehow, that was the first thing he’d said all night that felt true.