“I’ve got that,” Charlotte said. I’ve got Brad. Ethan. Graham and Noah. And I’ve got Alex.
A shadow of something flickered in Elias’s expression, the edge of a smile that couldn’t quite land. “You’ll need more than love to win this.”
She held his gaze. “But I’ll start with love.”
He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years. Then he reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim silver USB drive. “This is the location and the layout. It’s air-gapped. One use. Don’t plug it into anything connected. You lose it, it’s gone.”
Charlotte took it with both hands, holding it like a fragile life. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Elias stepped back toward the shadows. “If you get in,” he said, “don’t waste time asking who deserves to be saved. Just save who you can.” Then he was gone—vanishing into the silence like he’d only ever been a myth Charlotte chose to believe in.
She stood there a long time, the USB drive burning in her palm. When she turned to go back to Alex, to the team, to the next step, her face had changed. No longer desperate. No longer broken.
It was the face of someone about to burn the world down and build something better from the ashes.
Forty-One
WAVERLY COUNTY HOSPITAL ICU CORRIDOR
Charlotte movedthrough the sterile halls like a woman on borrowed time, the officer one step behind her. Adrenaline was starting to burn through her, replacing the exhaustion. Her legs carried her to the place she needed to be—back to Alex. Back to the man who’d survived the unthinkable.
But as she rounded the corner to the ICU doors, she nearly collided with Ethan. “Charlotte, we were coming to get you.”
Ethan stood stiffly, eyes scanning the group—Charlotte, Brad, Graham, and Noah—his jaw tight. "We're out of time," he said, voice low but urgent. "I just got a stand-down order. Apparently, word of what we've been doing has spread—someone talked, or someone’s watching. Either way, it’s gone all the way to Washington."
He paused, the weight of it settling over them. "We move now and hope it gets us somewhere. Waiting isn’t an option anymore. And we’re not standing down."
Noah stepped in close. “Hopefully, the news hasn’t spread too far. We’re going to move. Quietly. We’re taking down Stokes.The med tech Pratt is already being watched. Warden Shepler and Dr. Fields are next. We're not giving them time to clean up anything.”
Charlotte nodded slowly, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out the small silver USB drive Elias had given her. “Well,” she said, forcing a shaky smile, “Alex just got a get-well gift.”
She held the drive between her fingers. “We need to open this somewhere safe, off-grid. No network, no digital trace.”
Graham’s breath caught. His eyes locked onto the device, recognition blooming like dread. “Is that what I think it is?”
Charlotte looked him in the eye. “It’s the facility. The schematics. Coordinates. Maybe more.”
Noah swore softly. “Elias found you.”
Charlotte pushed through the men who were family and pressed the call button beside the ICU door. A nurse met her with a glance. “Dr. Blackwell will be with you in a moment.” She stepped away, closing the door behind her.
She pressed the doorbell over and over, panic rising.
A moment later, Tristan appeared at the door, face pale, his stethoscope draped around his neck. Something was wrong.
She moved toward the door, but Tristan stepped in front of her. “Come with me.”
“What’s going on?” she asked immediately, alarm rising. “I need to see him.”
“Not yet,” Tristan said. “Come with me.” He gently but firmly led her down the hall to the family support room.
It was too familiar. Too quiet. Too full of old echoes.
Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat. She’d sat in this room the night she was told Chuck died. She remembered the walls. The coffee that tasted like metal. The ache of knowing she couldn’t fix something too far gone. And she sat there after almost losing her girls. She couldn’t do this.
“Tristan,” she stepped back, her hands trembling, “tell me he’s okay.”
He closed the door behind them. “We discussed the meningitis. After the implants came out… we expected inflammation. What we didn’t expect was residual extraneous electrical activity.”
