Fragile as fuck.
Also, the only way they could access a quantum environment powerful enough, and just dangerous enough, to combine their codes into the weapon they needed to destroy Dominion.
Beside him, Becca yawned. “Why don’t you go lie down?” he said, reaching over to tuck a loose curl behind her ear. “It’ll be a few hours before we know for sure if we’ve got the sequence right. I promise, I’ll wake you when the results come back.”
She shook her head, ripped the scrunchie from her hair, and regathered her strands into an even messier bun. “I want to see it work with my own eyes.”
He didn’t argue. No point. She wouldn’t rest. Not until they had the kill switch in hand.
“Come here.” He pulled her from her seat and settled her in his lap. She sighed and snuggled closer, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arm around his middle. God, she felt fragile. Broken despite her insistence she was fine.
And yet, she remained the strongest person he’d ever known.
Steel wrapped in a soft shell, she’d survived the very worst life had thrown her way. More than survived. She’d become the warrior the world needed. Humanity’s answer to the evil lurking in the hearts of men who’d enslave them all.
“Look,” she whispered, and he lifted his eyes to the screen. A recursive lattice of qubit alignment pulsed in the centre of the display as the black rose integrated itself into the lock and key, one petal of logic at a time. “It’s gonna work.”
Her confidence boosted his, and he squeezed her tight as he watched the data fields oscillate and amalgamate. “Yeah, it’s gonna work. Every time one of the variables misaligns, the system resets the loop. See?”
She nodded, a single dip of her chin that spoke to her level of bone-deep exhaustion, saving the lives of billions, exacting its toll. He kissed the top of her head. She turned her face up to his. Their eyes locked, their gazes saying everything and nothing all at once.
Then she kissed him.
A soft press of her lips to his.
His heart double thumped, aching, breaking, and stitching itself back together with her safely wrapped inside. He’d almost lost her a second time, and if it hadn’t been for Nikolai Volkov…well, he owed the man a debt he’d never be able to repay.
Clinging to her like she might vanish if he didn’t hold on, Jay took solace in her lips. No rush, no fire, no heat to their kiss—just a deep, soul-fueling connection that filled their wells with the promise of each other.
Everything they hadn’t yet said, everything they’d lived through declared—I’m still here and I’ll never let you go and God, I missed you all at once.
Always and forever.
That was their story.
Their past. Their present. Their future.
Tragic. Imperfect. The ending still unknown. But theirs all the same.
“It’s happening!” Shirtless and for some reason wet at three-twenty-two in the morning, Cody barged into the library agitated and out of breath.
“What the fuck, dude? Why are you wet and half-naked?” Jay demanded, unable to leave a puzzle unsolved, but taking his time to plant a we’ll resume this conversation later peck to Becca’s cheek despite his curiosity.
“I took a shortcut.” Cody waved to the rain-coated window as if it were the only explanation necessary, but really, his cryptic response led to a whole other line of questions.
“Why—”
“Turn the TV on!” Zander arrived in the same excited manner as Cody, fully dressed and armed with an MP7 submachine gun, which meant he’d been on watch until now. He scanned the surroundings and snagged the remote control off a corner table, and with a couple of quick jabs of his thumb, he had the TV on, and the channel flipped to the BBC World News.
“…where a massive cyberattack is crippling infrastructure across Portugal. Government officials have declared a state of emergency as technicians scramble to contain what is being described as one of the most aggressive and sophisticated malware outbreaks in recent history. The virus, whose origin remains unknown, appears to be targeting critical systems, including energy grids, banking networks, and transportation operations with unprecedented precision.”
“It’s started,” Becca said, jumping to her feet. “Dominion’s been released.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“…Five hundred and sixty-one people are confirmed dead following the mid-air collision near the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. As the crisis continues to escalate, similar near-miss incidents have been reported in Spain, Switzerland and Northern Italy, including Genoa, where the virus has shut down the country’s main shipping hub after causing the release of an estimated fifty thousand barrels of crude oil into the Ligurian Sea.
The seemingly coordinated failures have sparked fears that the malware is spreading through interconnected European networks. In response, governments across the EU are mobilizing cybersecurity units, urging businesses to remain closed, and advising the public to stay home while limiting digital communications where possible…”
