The air was colder in the new city. Not winter-cold. Just... emptier. Like the buildings held their breath and the streets didn't trust anyone anymore.
Alexander and Lila sat in the back of a rusted taxi, ducked low. Their eyes flicked across every corner. Every stranger.
"Do you feel it?" Lila asked without looking at him.
He nodded. "Yeah. Like something's watching even when nothing moves."
They got out two blocks early. Walked the rest. Boots hitting concrete in sync.
They didn't talk much anymore. Words were for people who still had something to explain. They just moved. Together. Like instinct
The apartment was another burner—booked under a name no one cared to trace. It had peeling wallpaper, one working faucet, and a broken heater. But it had no cameras. No whispers.
And no ghosts.
They laid low. Moved like fog. Let the world believe they were finished.
But Alexander never stopped digging.
He stayed up late with cracked screens and half-burned keyboards. Lila brought him food he forgot to eat. Their lives became smoke. Fumes.
Until the name came up.
The Black Veil.
Not a person. Not a group. A system. Older than the Kingsleys. Richer. Deeper. The kind of people who didn't just own politicians. They erased them. Rewrote them.
And the Kingsleys? Just pawns.
Alexander stared at the screen, the letters glowing like a curse.
"This is bigger," he whispered.
Lila leaned in. Her breath hitched.
"Then we go bigger."
They found their first contact in a basement bar, lit only by red bulbs and regret.
Her name was Junie. Pierced lips, purple dreads, and an eye that didn't blink right. She smoked like the world owed her something and smiled like she was always two steps ahead.
"You the ones who nuked the Kingsley pipeline?" she asked, half-laughing.
Alexander didn't answer. Just slid the drive across the sticky table.
Junie plugged it into her tablet. Clicked. Browsed. Paused.
"Damn."
Then she looked up.
"Okay. You got my attention."
Junie brought them to a place called The Locker.
No signs. No keys. Just a freight elevator at the back of a laundromat that only opened if you knocked six-four-two.
Inside? Another world.
Coders. Hackers. Ghosts. People with names like GhostNail and Brickface and Little Silence.
Junie introduced them as "The Revolution."
"They don't want money," she said. "They want rot. Truth. Same as you."
Alexander looked around. These weren't soldiers. They were misfits. Fragments. But they had screens. Skills. Fire.
He saw it in their eyes.
"You all trust her?" he asked the room.
One man with half a beard grunted. "We don't trust anyone. But she hasn't gotten us killed yet."
That was enough.
They built a plan.
The Black Veil didn't work in the open. They funneled power through subsidiaries. Fake companies. Offshore banks wrapped in good causes.
Junie pointed at one.
"Phoenix Holdings. Real estate, tech, medical research. Looks clean. But it's not."
Alexander leaned in. "What's behind it?"
Junie's smile cracked. "Human tracking. Not just data. Actual bodies."
Lila stiffened. "Trafficking?"
Junie nodded. "And if we're right—they're trying to erase the last people who know."
They tracked an address. Not a corporate building. A house.
Middle of nowhere. Too quiet. Too clean.
Alexander, Lila, and Milo—one of the Locker's trackers—drove up just after dusk. The kind of dusk that didn't trust the dark.
Milo was young. Jittery. But fast with a drone and carried two knives like they were pens.
"Inside's got motion detectors," he whispered. "But there's a blind spot in the east window."
They slipped in like shadows.
Found a study.
Files. Photos. Names. Faces of women. Children. Dates. Movements.
Lila whispered, "They're cataloging them."
Alexander's chest tightened. Not just because of the names but because one of them was Barrett
They took the files. Ran.
But someone had been watching.
By morning, their burner phones buzzed in unison. A video link.
They clicked.
Barrett. Alive. Bloody. Chained.
And a voice behind the camera.
"You should have stayed dead."
Lila looked like she might break the screen. Alexander's hands curled into fists.
Then came the message:
If you want him alive, bring everything you stole. Alone.
Alexander stood. "I'm going."
"No." Lila stepped in front. "We both are."
Junie blocked the door. "You walk in like that, they bury you next."
Alexander's eyes burned. "Then give us a better plan."
Junie hesitated. Then nodded.
"We don't save him by trading data."
"We save him," she said, "by exposing everything before they can silence us all."
They uploaded the files. In pieces. Across hundreds of outlets. Timed. Synced. Impossible to stop.
Within hours, Phoenix Holdings trended. Not in stocks. In screams.
Whistleblowers. Survivors. Anonymous testimonies.
Barrett's image was everywhere.
The public couldn't look away.
And that's when the Black Veil blinked.
They released Barrett.
Dumped in a hospital parking lot. Broken, but alive.
He couldn't speak yet. But his eyes—those tired, sharp eyes—told Alexander everything.
"You lit a fuse," Junie whispered.
Alexander looked at Lila. Took her hand.
"We're not done."
"No," she said. "But we're louder now."
They moved again. Not because they were scared.
Because they were needed.
A message appeared on their cracked laptop one morning.
From a new name.
Red.
"I have more," it read. "But I won't survive long. They're on to me."
Coordinates followed.
Alexander shut the laptop.
"Let's go."
Lila pulled on her jacket. "Let's burn it all."
Because truth doesn't whisper anymore.
It screams and fire spreads