“We’re going to find Xavier,” I whispered, making it a statement not a question. “And we’re going to burn Oblivion to the ground.”
His arms tightened around me, a promise without words. These stolen moments had given us something they never expected—a reason to fight beyond survival. With these moments of connection, we’d reclaimed what Oblivion tried to take—our humanity, agency, ability to choose connection over isolation.
In that defiance lay the strength we’d need for what came next.
Chapter 19
Reaper
I’d spent four hours in the dark while Maeve slept. More than anything, I wished I could be beside her—like I had been when she first fell asleep. It was incredible how peaceful she was with the way she breathed. The rest of the world around us was chaos, slowly unraveling to its ultimate demise, but somehow, it was just the two of us in this room. We were the only ones that mattered—until Maeve was up, and we were back to our task. Here and there, I found threads of peace, until, at last, I was forced to get up and return to the kitchen.
She needed rest. I, on the other hand, needed to work.
The laptop screen cast a harsh blue glow across my hands. My shoulders ached from hunching over the keyboard, but I didn’t shift position. Pain was irrelevant. What mattered was finding answers while Maeve recovered.
Every few minutes, my eyes flicked to the bedroom door. Still closed. The memory of Maeve falling asleep against me kept intruding—her head heavy on my chest, her breath warming my skin. I should have pushed it away. I didn’t. Instead, I let it linger, a distraction I once considered dangerous.
My fingers executed complex bypass protocols I had no memory of learning. The disconnect unsettled me every time—my hands performing tasks while my mind watched like a stranger visiting someone else’s body. Someone else’s knowledge, embedded beneath my consciousness, operating without my permission or understanding.
I cracked another security layer on the hard drives stolen from Brock’s facility. Terabytes of encrypted data—everything we needed to understand what happened to me. To locate Maeve’s brother.
Or nothing at all.
I should have woken her. The thought surfaced, only to be immediately countered by the image of her trembling hands yesterday, how she’d tried to hide them when she caught me watching. I’d taken her when her body was still fighting Brock’s compounds—watched her come apart beneath me with a hunger that terrified me. The hunger I’d felt—still felt burning under my skin—wasn’t a justification.
I cracked my neck and dove back in, trying to unravel the encryption.
“Shit,” I muttered when the system rejected my third attempt.
I paused, hands hovering above the keyboard. Something felt wrong about this approach. I closed my eyes, surrendering to whatever phantom knowledge waited beneath conscious thought. My fingers moved without direction, executing an entirely different protocol—as though someone else controlled my hands.
An administrator login screen appeared. My hands typed a string that felt both foreign and familiar.
Access granted.
Something inside me knew things I didn’t.
The realization sent a familiar pain stabbing behind my eyes. I swallowed against the pain, focused on the scrolling data. Thousands of files appeared with only numeric designations—no names, no clear organization. It was a deliberate maze designed to hide their secrets even from those with access, but I had no intention of stopping until I found what I needed.
A soft creak from across the room froze me mid-keystroke.
Maeve stood in the bedroom doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, hair wild from sleep, wearing my black t-shirt and nothing else. The shirt swallowed her, hanging to mid-thigh, one side slipping to expose the curve of her shoulder. Something primitive tightened low in my gut at the sight of her in my clothing—a visceral satisfaction I’d never experienced before.
“You started without me,” she said, voice rough with sleep. She slept well over ninety minutes, but she needed the rest, whether she realized it or not. She’d function better once she was well-rested and her body could heal quicker and more efficiently.
Still, that sleep-roughened voice slid down my spine like a physical touch, echoing how she’d sounded against my ear hours earlier, breathless and unraveling.
“You needed rest,” I answered, turning back to the screen to break whatever spell she cast just by standing there.
“And you needed help.” She crossed to me silently, but I tracked her approach by instinct—the subtle displacement of air, the lingering scent of sleep-warmed skin, and the soap we’d shared in the shower. “What have you found?”
When I looked up, the soft vulnerability in her expression hardened. Her gaze fixed on the screen, on evidence of hours spent working without her. The sleep-softness vanished, replaced by the razor-edged focus that had first drawn my attention in República Square.
By now, I hoped I would have found something concrete to present to her—something to give her hope, but there was nothing I could offer for now. Unfortunately. I didn’t even need to say the words out loud—it was as if she could sense them without any indications on my end.
“You should have woken me,” she said, voice cooling several degrees. “This isn’t how partnerships work.”
“You needed rest.” I deliberately kept my eyes from tracking down her bare legs—the discipline it required surprised me. “The compounds in your system...”
