CHAPTER 14
Freedom did not feel the way Kade had imagined it would.
There was no rush.
No release.
No clean line between inside and out.
There was just cold air — sharp, almost painful — cutting into lungs that had forgotten what distance felt like. There was the sound of insects. Wind in dry grass. Somewhere far away, a road. Real. Ordinary. Indifferent.
Elias stopped walking after exactly twelve steps.
Not because he was tired.
Because his body didn't know what to do without walls telling it where to stop.
Kade noticed immediately.
He always did.
"Hey," Kade said quietly, turning back. "Look at me."
Elias's eyes flicked, unfocused, scanning shadows that weren't threats.
"I can hear everything," Elias said. "Too much of it."
"That'll pass."
"When?"
Kade didn't lie.
"It won't," he said. "But you'll learn which sounds matter."
Elias let out a shaky breath that almost turned into laughter.
"God, you always say things like that."
Kade smiled faintly. "And you always survive them."
Behind them, Blackridge loomed — not burning, not collapsing, not screaming. Just standing there, lit wrong, doors open in places that had never been open, like a man who'd realized too late he'd been naked the whole time.
Sera stood with her arms folded tight, watching the prison like she expected it to lunge.
"They're not coming," Dorian said.
His voice still surprised Kade.
It was quieter now. Rougher around the edges. Human in a way it hadn't been before.
"Not yet," Sera replied. "They'll argue first. Assign blame. Rewrite reports."
"Good," Kade said. "That buys us time."
Arden stood a few paces away, apart from them. She hadn't followed at first. Had stayed just inside the threshold, staring out like the night might accuse her of something.
"You're not coming," Kade said, not a question.
She laughed — short, hollow.
"No," she said. "I'm not."
"Citadel won't forgive you," Sera said flatly.
Arden nodded. "Citadel doesn't forgive anyone."
She looked at Kade then. Really looked.
"You didn't destroy Blackridge," she said. "You exposed it."
Kade shrugged. "Same thing, eventually."
Her lips twitched. "You're going to be hunted."
"Yes."
"And they won't stop."
"No."
She hesitated. Then: "If I stay… I can slow them. Just a little."
Kade considered her.
Not as an enemy.
Not as an ally.
As a variable.
"Then do it," he said.
Arden nodded once.
As they turned away, she spoke again.
"Kade."
He stopped.
"You were right," she said. "About one thing."
He waited.
"The system didn't fail," Arden said quietly. "It did exactly what it was designed to do."
Kade didn't respond.
Some truths didn't need company.
They walked until Blackridge disappeared behind terrain and darkness swallowed its shape.
Only then did Kade let himself stop.
He crouched. Pressed his hand to the ground. Felt it.
Solid.
Honest.
Not listening.
Elias sat heavily on a rock, head in his hands.
"I don't know who I am without them in my head," Elias said.
Kade didn't rush to answer.
He remembered another night.
He was seventeen. Their mother hadn't come home. Again. The house felt wrong without her — too quiet, too loud, both at once. Elias had asked, voice cracking, "What if she doesn't come back?"
Kade had sat on the floor, back against the fridge, and said, "Then we learn how to listen to the silence."
He hadn't known then how cruel that sounded.
He did now.
"You're not empty," Kade said finally. "You're… unlayered."
Elias looked up. "That's not comforting."
Kade smiled, tired and real.
"It's honest."
Sera crouched beside Elias, handing him water. "You don't have to know everything tonight," she said. "Just enough to keep going."
Dorian leaned against a tree, watching the dark like it might answer him back.
"I keep expecting to hear something," he said. "Like… instructions."
"And?" Kade asked.
"And there's nothing."
Kade nodded. "That's what quiet feels like when it's real."
Dorian laughed under his breath. "I don't trust it."
"You shouldn't," Sera said. "Not yet."
They moved again before dawn.
Not because they were being chased.
Because standing still was dangerous now.
They followed a service road until it became a dirt path, then left it entirely. Kade avoided clear routes instinctively. Old habits. Useful ones.
As the sky lightened, something else settled in.
The weight.
Escape didn't erase what you brought with you.
It sharpened it.
Elias flinched at sudden sounds.
Dorian paused too long at intersections, reading possibilities that no longer existed.
Sera kept touching her neck, like she expected something to be there.
And Kade—
Kade kept counting.
Steps.
Breaths.
Angles of sunlight.
He hated that most of all.
They reached an abandoned roadside rest stop just as the sun crested the horizon.
Concrete tables. Rusted signs. A vending machine long since gutted.
Safe enough.
For now.
They sat.
A car passed on the distant road.
No sirens.
No helicopters.
Just a man on his way to work, unaware that something fundamental had shifted overnight.
Elias watched the car disappear.
"They'll tell people it was a riot," he said. "Or a power failure."
"They'll tell them nothing," Sera replied. "Silence is easier."
Dorian tilted his head. "No. They'll tell a story."
They all looked at him.
"People don't like holes," he said. "They fill them."
Kade felt it then.
The pressure.
Not fear.
Attention.
Somewhere, someone had noticed the gap Blackridge left behind.
And someone was curious.
The first sign came as a vibration in Kade's pocket.
He froze.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out the object he'd forgotten he still had.
A small, cracked device.
The shard.
Inactive. Dark.
Dead, he'd thought.
It hummed faintly.
Once.
Then again.
Sera's eyes widened. "That's not possible."
Kade stared at it, heart sinking.
"It shouldn't be doing that," he said.
Dorian straightened. "Someone's pinging it."
"Who?" Elias asked.
Kade didn't answer immediately.
He didn't need to.
The shard warmed in his palm.
Not hot.
Familiar.
Like something recognizing a pulse it had been waiting for.
Then a voice — not from the shard, but from everywhere else.
Calm. Measured. Almost amused.
"You always were bad at leaving things unfinished."
Kade closed his eyes.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
He'd heard that voice once before.
Years ago.
In a room that didn't exist on any map.
"You're late," the voice continued. "But then again… you always are."
Sera stood slowly, scanning the trees. "Kade?"
The voice spoke again.
"I'm impressed," it said. "Truly. You broke a prison without blowing it up."
Kade opened his eyes.
"Show yourself," he said.
Laughter — soft, controlled.
"Oh, I'm not there," the voice replied. "Not yet."
A pause.
"But I will be."
The shard vibrated sharply, then went dead.
Silence rushed back in.
Elias whispered, "Who was that?"
Kade stared at the empty road.
Someone who knew his mind.
Someone who understood systems.
Someone who hadn't been in Blackridge —
—but had been watching it.
"Someone who doesn't want us dead," Kade said slowly.
Sera frowned. "That's supposed to be good news?"
"No," Kade replied. "It's worse."
Dorian's jaw tightened. "Because?"
Kade slipped the shard back into his pocket.
"Because hunters who want answers don't rush," he said. "They wait."
He stood.
"We move. Now."
As they disappeared into the trees, the sun climbed higher, warming a world that had no idea what had slipped through its fingers in the dark.
And far away — very far away — a man closed a file marked BLACKRIDGE, smiled to himself, and opened a new one.
VANCE, K.