2026-10-01 18:43:28
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Chapter 37 Part 3
Silence filled the storage room. Riley stood in the doorway with her mouth open. Bianca appeared behind her, her dark eyes locked on the shaft with an intensity that could have cut steel. Hailey pressed both hands over her mouth. Scarlett stood at the back of the group, her golden eyes moving from the shaft to Kyle's face with the cold, focused calculation of someone who had just watched every suspicion she ever held about their neighbor click into place like tumblers in a lock.And Vivian stood in the center of the hallway, soaking wet, dripping rainwater onto the floor she had just mopped, staring at the dark hole in the wall with amber eyes that held something Kyle had never seen in them before. Not anger. Not hatred. Not the cold, murderous patience she usually wore like armor.Shock. Real, genuine, unguarded shock. The look of a woman who had blamed the wrong man for the worst thing that ever happened to her and was watching the truth crawl out of a hole in the wall.Kyle stood u
Chapter 37 Part 2
"Blake Sterling." Kyle stood up from the chair so fast it scraped backward across the floor. "He did this. He controlled me. He walked me out of this house like a remote controlled toy, took me to the black market, used my hands to complete the trade that set up Vivian's sale, and brought me back before any of you noticed I was gone.""That's a very large accusation." Vivian's amber eyes burned from across the room, her wet clothes still dripping on the floor. "You're telling me the golden boy next door, the kind, gentle, basket carrying saint of the settlement, mind controlled you into selling me to an underground fighting ring?""He's not a saint!" Kyle's voice cracked louder. "He has a hidden room in his house. A locked office behind a door with no handle. A terminal running on a network that doesn't connect to anything in the settlement. I saw it in the memories, Hailey. Not my memories. The ghost layer underneath. The real memories that whoever controlled me tried to bury.""What
Chapter 37 Part 1
The golden light behind Kyle's eyelids pulsed warm and steady as Hailey's voice guided him deeper into the trance. The memories of seven days ago began to surface like photographs floating up from the bottom of a dark pool."Tell me where you are," Hailey whispered, her palms warm against his temples. "Seven days ago. Morning. What do you see?""The house." Kyle's voice came out distant and hollow, his lips barely moving. "I'm in the kitchen. Eating breakfast. Alone. The others are out on perimeter patrol. Riley left first. Bianca went after.""What time?" Hailey pressed gently."Six thirty. Maybe seven. The clock on the wall is broken so I'm guessing." Kyle's brow creased. "I finish eating. I wash the plate. I sit on the couch and pull up the terminal.""Then what?""Nothing." Kyle's face went blank. "I'm on the couch. Then I'm in bed. It's dark outside. I don't remember anything between."Riley stepped forward from the stairwell. "That's wrong. He was home all day. I saw him at lunc
Chapter 36 Part 3
"I know what it gives you." Vivian's amber eyes held his without flinching. "If I'm going to ask you to open your mind to me, then I'll put my life in your hands first. Fair exchange. You trust me with your memories. I trust you with my existence."Riley stepped forward from the table. "Vivian, you can't be serious. He could kill you with one tap.""Then he'd better not tap." Vivian looked at Kyle with those cold, steady amber eyes. "Accept it. Or admit you don't trust me either."Kyle looked at the notification. His thumb hovered over the accept button. Every survival instinct he had was screaming that this was a trap, a test, a manipulation. But the woman standing in front of him, soaking wet, trembling slightly from cold she would never acknowledge, had just handed him a weapon that could end her life, and done it in front of witnesses.He pressed accept.The terminal confirmed the transfer with a quiet chime. Vivian's shoulders loosened by a fraction that nobody would have noticed
Chapter 36 Part 2
His arms wrapped around Scarlett's waist from behind and locked there, his face pressed into the back of her jacket, his fingers gripping the fabric so hard his knuckles turned white."Don't go." Kyle's voice cracked against her spine, muffled and shaking. "Don't go out there. Please. Scarlett, please don't go out there."Scarlett went still. Her hand stayed on the door handle, the storm roaring through the opening, rain splattering across the hallway floor and soaking both of them from the knees down."If you fight her in the rain, one of you gets hurt." Kyle's voice was raw, stripped of every performance he had ever given, carrying nothing but the honest, ugly fear of a man who could not survive losing either of them. "If she gets hurt, I lose a wife and the burial law says we all die. If you get hurt, I lose the only person in this house who makes me feel like I might actually survive this world. Either way I lose. So please. Please don't walk through that door."Scarlett's fingers
Chapter 36 Part 1
Vivian set the photograph on the table and placed both hands flat beside it. Her amber eyes locked on Kyle with the focus of a surgeon preparing to cut."I need to see your memories." Vivian's voice left no room for negotiation. "Seven days ago. Every minute, every face, every word. If you didn't make that transfer, then someone planted the code using your terminal pattern. Either way, the proof is in your head.""You want to reach into my brain?" Kyle took a step backward. "The same way you reached into a dying man's skull? Absolutely not. I saw what was left of Scarface after you read him, Vivian. A pile of bones and a bad smell.""Memory extraction doesn't kill you." Vivian's lip curled. "It requires physical contact with the temple and a cooperative subject. The target has to stop resisting. I'm asking you to open your mind, not offering you a funeral.""You're asking me to let the woman who scores negative seventy nine on my trust board crawl around inside my head like a tourist.
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