The wind up here tore through your lungs like it wanted to make you confess something.
Reign crouched behind a boulder on the southern ridge, scope to her eye, watching the back side of Cassian's desert compound. The front was for theatrics. The back—that's where the truth lived.
She'd been watching for thirty hours straight.
Cassian hadn't emerged again. But others had. Men in low-grade merc gear, too clean for scavengers, too disciplined for freelancers. Syndicate-trained. Quiet. Methodical.
And that worried her more than Cassian did.
She reached into her vest pocket and retrieved a slim device the size of a lighter. Flipped it open. The screen glowed faintly.
Two signals.
One was Liam's.
The second—so faint she'd nearly missed it—wasn't Ridgepoint at all.
It was tagged: SH-0 / Deep Layer Host.
Reign stared at the label.
There was no "zero" asset.
The program started with SH-1—Liam—and moved forward. Elena had been a rogue candidate, outside the formal index. Miri was unregistered, born into the mess.
But SH-0?
That meant someone predated Liam. Or worse—someone designed him.
Her stomach twisted.
She tapped into the signal's frequency and rerouted the trace through a Ridgepoint ghost server, one of the few she'd never burned.
The data that came back was fragmented, raw, unstable.
She read it anyway.
—Cognitive imprinting at 17%.
—Residual link detected. Target shows biometric drift.
—Rivera child remains tethered.
—Phase Two progressing. Phase Three requires consent or collapse.
Reign dropped the receiver into the dust.
Her ears rang.
Miri wasn't just a link.
She was a tether. A living anchor. And whoever SH-0 was… they were still alive. Somewhere underground, somewhere inside the black reach of Ridgepoint's deepest layer.
And if Cassian was circling now, it wasn't just to break Liam.
It was to activate something the world wasn't ready to see.
Reign stood slowly.
Time was up.
She tapped her comm and sent the only message that mattered.
"Liam, it's not just Cassian. They still have someone—SH-0. And she's reaching through your daughter."
The air inside the cabin felt heavier now.
Like something was pressing down on the walls.
Elena stood over the kitchen counter, staring at Miri's drawing again. Liam paced in the corner, burner phone pressed to his ear, waiting for a secure pingback from Reign.
Miri sat on the couch, silent. Alert.
"Is she scared?" Elena asked Liam quietly.
"No," he said. "She's bracing."
Elena closed her eyes. "She shouldn't have to know how to do that."
The phone buzzed.
One message.
Liam opened it.
He didn't speak right away.
Just read. Once. Twice.
Then his expression changed.
He handed the phone to Elena.
She read Reign's message aloud, her voice soft, almost mechanical:
"Liam, it's not just Cassian. They still have someone—SH-0. And she's reaching through your daughter."
Elena lowered the phone slowly.
"Your daughter," she said.
Liam blinked. "I didn't tell her to say that."
"You didn't need to."
They looked over at Miri—small, quiet, and watching them like she was waiting for the next bad thing.
Elena crossed the room and knelt in front of her.
"Sweetheart," she said gently. "The girl you saw in your dream… the one with the locket… did she feel like you?"
Miri didn't answer for a long time.
Then, "No. She felt… older. Like she was trying to remember being small. But she forgot how."
Elena's heart twisted.
"She's alive," Liam said, running a hand over his face. "SH-0. That's what the signal meant. Reign found her trace—deep layer Ridgepoint. Which means she's still inside the system."
"And Miri's connected," Elena whispered. "A tether."
"Which makes her valuable. And vulnerable."
Elena stood, her voice suddenly sharp. "Then we don't run. We don't hide. We get Miri out of this link and we burn whatever's left of Ridgepoint to the ground."
Liam didn't argue.
Because this time, he agreed.
He stepped forward, took Elena's hand.
"If we're doing this," he said, "we do it our way. No blind spots. No half-truths."
"No secrets," Elena said.
Liam looked at Miri.
She nodded once.
Then Elena reached for her pack and pulled out a small thumb drive. "Remember the files I found in Echo-T? I made a copy."
Liam's brow furrowed.
"I didn't know if I'd need them," she said. "But I had a feeling we weren't done."
She placed it in his palm. "We use everything. Every name. Every room. Every ghost."
He stared at the drive.
And for the first time in days, he smiled.
"A family that hacks together…"
"Wrecks the whole damn program," Elena finished.
Reign moved through the canyon like a ghost.
No sound. No light. Every step calculated. Every breath accounted for.
She reached the compound's rear wall just as the guard changed. Thirty seconds of visual blind spot, exactly like the old Ridgepoint schematics suggested. Some things never changed. Not even in the shadows.
She scaled the wall in twelve seconds.
Dropped silently into the courtyard and moved toward the maintenance entrance.
The keypad blinked red.
She tapped her wrist tablet, ran the override patch she'd stolen from a dead handler's drive two years ago.
The door clicked open.
Inside, the air was colder.
Not just temperature—sterile. Metallic. Too clean.
This was no mercenary outpost.
This was lab space.
She pulled up the floor plan and mapped her route.
Server room: lower level.
Containment: sub-basement.
Unknown signal origin: below both.
SH-0 was buried deep.
She crept past rows of locked doors, each marked only by a code. No names. No titles. Just a chill in the air and a whisper of humming machines.
Then—footsteps.
Reign pressed against the wall and watched a pair of guards pass. One wore Ridgepoint insignia—barely visible, but there.
Still alive. Still recruiting.
Still infected.
She moved faster now. Down another stairwell. Through an unmarked service tunnel. Until finally—there.
The containment wing.
She stopped outside a reinforced door. The readout beside it showed a live signal. SH-0.
She opened the panel beside it and plugged in a pulse reader.
The readings came in unstable, flickering.
Cognitive patterns: abnormal.
Heart rate: accelerated.
Neural sync: in progress.
And then—
A second signal.
Spiking. Mirroring.
Miri.
Reign's stomach dropped.
Not just a tether. A conduit.
She reached for her comm.
"Liam, Elena. I'm inside. Confirmed SH-0 is real. And active. But something's wrong."
She hesitated.
Then added, quieter:
"It's not just another child. She's not just alive. She's awake. And she's looking for Miri."