The transport wasn't marked.
No insignia. No government ID. Not even a tail number.
That was the point.
We'd been rogue since the day we walked out of Sentinel Solutions—when we realized the people claiming to fight the war were building the battlefield. And now we were paying for it.
Maddie sat with her back to the wall, silent, arms crossed like a closed gate. Jacob checked his weapon over and over—not because he needed to, but because it was easier than thinking. Rev hadn't said a word since we left the facility. He just watched me.
Chase sat beside me, occasionally checking the biometric readout from the containment machine.
Still glowing and still pulsing. Still her.
Aaliah.
Alive.
But we couldn't move her. Couldn't extract her. Couldn't even get close without risking collapse.
She was locked in place, fused to the core of something ancient and wrong.
And I had no idea how to save her.
"We'll find a way," Chase said quietly.
I didn't answer.
Because that wasn't a promise. It was a guess.
The safehouse wasn't much—an underground bunker tucked beneath a collapsed substation. Maddie activated the field jammer as soon as we landed. Jacob sealed the doors manually, layer by layer. Rev walked the perimeter three times before sitting down.
I stayed in the chamber.
They let me.
No one spoke for a while. Just the hum of emergency power and the low rhythm of her heartbeat, fed through the monitor.
Eventually, Maddie broke the silence.
"She knew what she was doing."
"She didn't know this," I said.
"You sure?"
I stood slowly. "She thought it was a recon op. One city, one target. Small. Contained. In and out. But that wasn't what it was."
"What was it?" Jacob asked.
I looked at him. "A setup."
Chase nodded. "They fed us conflicting orders. Kaleb was told to defend that city. Aaliah was sent to infiltrate it. And now we know the whole area was marked as a red zone."
"Which Sentinel knew," Rev added.
"And didn't tell us," Maddie finished.
"Because they wanted her trapped," I said.
"No," Chase said. "Worse."
I turned. "Worse how?"
"She's not powering the machine," he said. "She's stabilizing it. That tech isn't just Harbinger design. Some of it matches Nexus sequence patterns."
I froze.
"You're saying it's connected to me?"
"To what's inside you," Chase said. "To whatever built the Nexus before we ever mapped it."
Maddie leaned forward. "Then what the hell is it doing inside a Harbinger stronghold?"
Jacob answered, his voice cold. "Because Sentinel put it there."
It wasn't a theory.
He said it like a fact.
Like a betrayal finally confirmed.
No one argued.
No one had to.
We all remembered the quiet decisions. The failed extractions. The "classified" briefings. The orders that got people killed.
"They fed us into the machine," I said. "One at a time."
Rev looked at me, eyes narrow.
"You think they're working with the Harbingers?"
"I think they're not working against them."
Chase pulled up a projection. Surveillance data from inside the facility. Frames of Apauex. Of Aaliah in the machine. Of Harbinger scientists walking beside Sentinel operatives.
No conflict.
No urgency.
Just cooperation.
We watched the loop for a long time.
"False gods," Maddie whispered.
I turned to her. "What?"
"That's what they built," she said. "Something ancient. Something they couldn't understand. So they worshipped it. Like fools. And now they're feeding people to it."
Later that night, I stood alone in her chamber.
The others were scattered—resting, planning, spiraling.
But I couldn't sleep.
I just stared at the girl in the glass.
I placed a hand against the surface.
It pulsed—once—under my palm.
But she didn't speak.
Not like before.
She was fading, maybe.
Or maybe I was.
And deep beneath the static, something stirred.
Not her.
Not me.
Something else.
Watching.
Waiting.