Liam
He hadn't expected the weight to settle this quickly.
Reign's warning rang in his ears as he drove back down the winding roads toward the safehouse. Her voice—cutting, clinical—had a way of sinking under his skin no matter how many years passed.
Cassian was alive.
And if he was reaching out, it wasn't just to make contact. It was to taunt. To signal that the game had begun—and Liam was already a move behind.
He gripped the steering wheel tighter as the woods blurred past.
Back at the cabin, he expected silence. Elena maybe reading. Miri sketching. Some sense of peace left untouched.
But the second he stepped inside, he felt it.
The quiet wasn't just still.
It was wrong.
The kitchen was clean. The burner phone was gone. Miri's voice drifted faintly from the sunroom, soft and unconcerned—but Elena's presence was missing like a heartbeat that had suddenly stopped.
He walked into the hallway. "Elena?"
Nothing.
He turned to Miri. "Where is she?"
Miri didn't look up. "She said she'd be back soon."
Panic hit him low and hard. He stepped toward the drawer. Open. Empty. The paper he'd scrawled the Echo-T drop site on—gone.
He closed his eyes.
"She's following me."
He knew it. Knew it the way a soldier knows the moment a mission starts to go sideways.
Liam grabbed his jacket and keys.
He didn't have time to explain. Didn't have the right words.
All he knew was this: if Elena got there first—alone—she'd see something she wasn't ready for.
And he wasn't ready to lose her.
Not like this.
Elena
The road narrowed the further she drove. Pines lined the shoulders like guards. The GPS cut out fifteen minutes ago, but she followed the hand-drawn directions without hesitation.
Echo-T wasn't a town. It was a compound.
Half-collapsed, surrounded by rusted chain-link fence and long-dead security cameras. Overgrown weeds swallowed the gravel path.
She stepped out of the car and scanned the perimeter. No signs of movement. Just the hum of something old trying to stay alive.
She slipped through a gap in the fence and walked until she reached the center.
There—an old bunker door, propped open with a cinderblock.
It was the kind of place you weren't supposed to go into alone.
But Elena had spent too long letting fear keep her out of places like this.
She stepped inside.
The light was dim—old generator bulbs overhead flickering as she moved down a narrow hallway. The walls were marked with old Black Reef insignias—unit tags, clearance codes, blood-stained corners.
It felt like a grave.
At the end of the hall, she found the room.
Empty—except for one thing:
A box.
Not locked.
Inside: photos. Files. Footage. Training logs. All marked with one identifier:
SH-1 / Asset Blackwell
She pulled a handful of photos into the light.
Liam, standing next to a man she now recognized—Cassian Voss.
They were younger. Cold-eyed. Drenched in shadow. Somewhere deep and foreign, the kind of place where orders mattered more than conscience.
She flipped the photo over.
"Remove non-compliant witnesses."
Signed: Approved by Command / Mission: THORNE.
She sank into the metal chair beside the box, pulse ragged. The words didn't just unsettle her—they confirmed what she'd felt building for weeks.
Liam had done things. Terrible things.
She had known this. But reading it, holding it—it was real now. Tangible. Irrefutable.
And she didn't know if she could hold it in her hands without dropping everything they had built.
Behind her, a footstep echoed.
She turned sharply, eyes narrowing.
Liam stood in the doorway, chest rising and falling fast, sweat along his brow, eyes wide—caught.
Liam
He froze.
Not because she'd found the files.
But because of the way she was looking at him.
Not scared.
Not angry.
Just… quiet.
As if she was sorting through pieces of him she wasn't sure she could carry.
"I didn't want you to see this," he said.
"Clearly," Elena answered, voice low. "But you kept it. You knew what was here."
"I was going to destroy it."
"But you didn't."
Silence stretched.
Liam stepped forward slowly. "I didn't know it still existed. This was one of Cassian's safe sites. He must've kept it all this time."
Elena's hand hovered over the photo. "You followed orders. You pulled triggers."
"Yes."
"Did you ever stop?"
He didn't answer.
Because there were things that didn't come with explanations. Only blood.
Finally, he said, "The day I met you… that was the first time I questioned who I was outside of all this."
"And now?" Her eyes searched his. "Who are you now, Liam?"
He walked closer. "I'm the man who lied to keep you safe. Who's afraid you'll see all of me and run. But I'm also the man who'd burn the world to protect you."
She looked down, at the files between them.
Then at him.
"Don't ask me to forget," she said softly. "But show me why I should stay."
He reached for her hand—gently, no force—and she let him take it.
His fingers trembled.
"Because I'm still trying to be worth the second chance you gave me."
She stared at him for a long moment.
And didn't pull away.