Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 31866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 159(@200wpm)___ 127(@250wpm)___ 106(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 159(@200wpm)___ 127(@250wpm)___ 106(@300wpm)
I point. My teammate takes it out clean and quiet. The light on the camera dies.
We breach.
The door gives with a controlled shove. Warm air spills out, thick with electronics and stale coffee and the faint chemical sting of disinfectant. My vision adjusts to dim interior light—screens glowing, wires snaking, equipment stacked too neatly for a place that’s supposed to be dead.
The room is split. There’s an outer space that looks like a makeshift command center, and a closed door deeper in. Voices leak through that door.
A man’s voice. It’s smooth and confident. Stanton.
Another voice. It’s lower and tighter. Hammond.
My jaw locks.
I signal my team. They fan out like silent shadows.
“On three,” I breathe.
One.
Two.
Three.
We hit the door.
It swings open hard.
For one suspended second, everything freezes—the men inside staring, their hands half-raised, their faces caught between shock and calculation.
Then everything moves.
Hammond is at a console, fingers hovering over keys like he can still fix this with a few clicks. Stanton stands near another screen, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up like he thinks he’s a soldier instead of a parasite.
And Riley—
She’s in a chair near the far wall, wrists bound, cheeks pale, hair mussed, eyes wide and furious.
Her gaze locks on mine.
Relief hits her face so fast it almost breaks me.
My chest tightens so hard it hurts. “Riley,” I breathe.
She tries to stand. The ties hold her back.
Stanton recovers first. “You’re too late—”
I don’t let him finish.
“Hands,” I snap, voice like a gunshot.
My team moves in. Weapons trained. Orders sharp.
Hammond’s eyes flick to Riley, then to me. His face twists like he wants to explain, to justify, to crawl back into the role of mentor. His hands shake.
Stanton’s expression turns cold. “This operation is sanctioned—”
“Sure,” I cut in. “By who? Your ego?”
He reaches toward a device near the console.
I move.
Fast.
I close the distance in two strides, slam his wrist down onto the table hard enough to make him grunt, and wrench his arm behind his back. He gasps, stumbling.
“Try it,” I murmur in his ear, low enough only he hears. “And I’ll make sure you never sign your name again.”
He freezes.
My team cuffs him.
Hammond lifts his hands, palms out. “Riley—wait—”
“You don’t say her name,” I snarl.
He flinches.
Because he knows what I am now—what I’m willing to do.
Chen’s voice crackles in my ear. “Hawthorne—launch sequence just went active. Two drones in the air.”
My blood goes ice-cold.
I swing toward the main screen and see it—live feed. Two drones lifting from somewhere out of sight, their cameras sweeping the night. A map overlay. A route marked toward a populated area.
A target.
Stanton smiles like he thinks he already won. “Even if you arrest us, it’s already in motion.”
Riley’s voice cuts through the room—raw, steady, and brave. “Crewe. The power.”
I look at her.
Her eyes blaze. “They’re running everything through the tower and the main inverter. Kill it. Now.”
“Copy,” I say.
I jerk my head at my team. “Cut power. Now.”
One of my guys moves toward the back panel. Hammond lurches forward. “If you cut it, you’ll crash them—”
“You mean stop them,” Riley snaps, voice sharp with fury.
Hammond’s face collapses. “It wasn’t personal—”
“It obviously was,” Riley spits. “You put your hands on me. You drugged me. You stole my work. You destroyed my lab. Don’t stand there and pretend you’re still the good guy.”
The words land like punches.
I see Hammond’s shame.
“Power!” I bark again.
My teammate rips the panel open and yanks the main feed.
The lights flicker.
The screens stutter.
The hum of the room drops to a dying whine.
Outside, through a narrow window, I see the distant tower blink… then go dark.
In my earpiece, Chen’s voice is immediate. “Signal dropped. Drones are drifting—”
Riley’s eyes lock on mine. “They’ll fail safe,” she says fast. “They’ll auto-land if they lose the control channel. They’re programmed to—”
“Because you built them right,” I murmur.
Her throat tightens. She blinks hard, like she’s fighting tears.
Chen’s voice returns, clipped and relieved. “Confirmed—both drones are descending. No impact. No casualties. Attack stopped.”
A breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding tears out of me. I turn back to Stanton. “You’re done.”
His face twists. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with—”
I lean in close. “Oh, I do.” Then I step back and nod to my team. They drag him toward the door.
Hammond stands frozen, eyes darting from Riley to me like he’s looking for a way out of the wreckage he made.
“Dr. Hammond,” Riley says, voice trembling with betrayed grief. “Why?”
He swallows hard. “They offered funding. Influence. A seat at the table. Your program… your program was going to be swallowed by bureaucracy and buried. I—”
“You sold me,” she says, quiet and deadly. “You didn’t save me.”
His shoulders slump.
And I feel nothing for him.
Not anger. Not satisfaction.
Just emptiness, because whatever he used to be in her life, he chose to become a threat.
I step toward Riley. My hands shake when I reach for the ties at her wrists—not from fear, but from the force of holding myself together. “You hurt?” I ask, voice rough.