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The drive weighs nothing. Feels like it should weigh more.
Ella turns it over in her hand, the casing cracked down one side, a smear of something dark dried into the plastic. Blood, maybe. She doesn't want to think about whose. Cain's still standing by the window, shoulders tight, like he's waiting for her to say something or bolt or both.
"Mia hid this," Ella says. Not a question.
"Evidence locker. Sub-level three. She logged it two days before she disappeared." His voice is flat. No emotion, no tells. "No one's touched it since."
Ella closes her fist around the drive. "Why didn't you check it?"
"I did."
She looks up.
"It's encrypted," Cain says. "Bureau-grade. I can't crack it without flagging the system, and if I flag the system, Horne knows."
"So you're giving it to me."
"You're not in the system yet. You've got seventy-two hours before you are." He finally turns, and his eyes are colder than she's ever seen them. "Use them."
She wants to throw the drive at his face. Wants to scream that he's the investigator, he's the one with the badge and the clearance and the ability to do something that isn't handing off a bomb to an eighteen-year-old who doesn't even know how to decrypt a text message. But she doesn't. Because he's right. She's got seventy-two hours, and Mia's name is sitting under hers on a list that might as well be a kill sheet.
"What's on it?" she asks.
"If I knew, I wouldn't need you to open it."
"Guess."
Cain's jaw works. He looks like he's chewing on glass. "Locations. Routes. Maybe names. Mia was good at her job before she went missing. If she hid something, it's because she found something worth dying for."
The words land wrong. Ella's stomach twists.
"She's not dead."
"Ella—"
"She's not."
He doesn't argue. Just looks at her with that same flat, unreadable expression, and somehow that's worse.
She shoves the drive into her jacket pocket. "You said tunnels. Last chapter. You said there were tunnels under the city."
"I said a lot of things."
"Where are they?"
"You're not going down there."
"Where."
Cain steps closer. Not threatening, just close enough that she has to tilt her head back to keep eye contact. He smells like coffee and something sharper, metallic. Blood, maybe. Or gun oil. "You go down there alone, you don't come back up. That's not me being dramatic. That's math."
"Then come with me."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I disappear, Horne will know. And if he knows, the whole thing collapses, and you, Mia, and every other name on that list ends up in a hole no one's ever going to find."
Ella's chest is tight. Her pulse is hammering in her ears, and the wolf under her skin is pacing, agitated, hungry. She wants to shift. Wants to run. Wants to do anything except stand here and feel helpless.
"You're asking me to trust you," she says.
"I'm asking you to stay alive."
"Same thing."
"No," Cain says quietly. "It's really not."
For a second, neither of them moves. Then Ella's phone buzzes in her pocket, and the moment snaps.
She pulls it out. Unknown number. The message is short.
*Still breathing?*
Her throat closes.
"What is it?" Cain's voice sharpens.
Ella doesn't answer. Just stares at the screen. The text sits there, blinking, and then another one comes through.
*Good. Don't stop.*
She shows him the phone.
Cain's expression doesn't change, but something flickers behind his eyes. He takes the phone, swipes through the messages, checks the number. "Burner. Routing through three proxies. Whoever sent this doesn't want to be traced."
"Mia?"
"Maybe."
"Who else would—"
"Anyone who knows you're digging." He hands the phone back. "Could be her. Could be bait."
Ella's hand shakes. She hates that it shakes. "I have to know."
"Then decrypt the drive first. If it's her, she'll contact you again. If it's bait, you'll know what you're walking into."
She wants to argue. Wants to grab her jacket and run, follow the thread, do something. But Cain's right, and she hates that too.
"How do I decrypt it?" she asks.
"You know anyone good with computers?"
She thinks. Her mind skips through names, faces, people she used to know before the registry, before everything got complicated. Then it lands.
"Yeah," she says. "Maybe."
"Then go. Now. Before someone notices you were here."
Ella turns toward the door, but Cain's voice stops her.
"Ella."
She looks back.
"Don't trust anyone," he says. "Not even me."
She almost laughs. "Little late for that."
His mouth doesn't move, but something in his eyes softens. Just for a second. "Yeah. I know."
—
The subway smells like piss and rust, and Ella keeps her hood up, her hands in her pockets, the drive pressed against her ribs like a second heartbeat. She gets off at Fletcher Street, climbs the stairs two at a time, and doesn't look back.
The address she's looking for is three blocks east, a converted warehouse with blackout windows and a door that doesn't have a sign. She knocks twice, waits, knocks again.
The door cracks open. A girl with bleached hair and smudged eyeliner squints out at her.
"Ella?"
"Hey, Ren."
Ren's eyes widen. "Holy shit. You look like death."
"Can I come in?"
Ren glances over her shoulder, then steps aside. "Yeah. Yeah, come on."
Inside, the place is a mess of servers, monitors, cable tangles, and empty energy drink cans. It smells like solder and stale pizza. Ren kicks a chair toward her.
"What do you need?" Ren asks, already pulling up a keyboard.
Ella pulls out the drive. Sets it on the desk.
Ren picks it up, turning it over, her expression shifting. "Where'd you get this?"
"Does it matter?"
"Kinda. This is Bureau hardware."
"Can you crack it?"
Ren's quiet for a beat. Then she plugs it into her rig, fingers flying over the keys. Lines of code scroll across three different screens. "Encrypted six ways to Sunday. Whoever locked this didn't want it opened."
"Can you do it or not?"
Ren grins. It's sharp and a little manic. "Yeah. Give me twenty minutes."
Ella sits. Watches the screens. Her phone's still in her hand, and she keeps checking it, waiting for another message. Nothing comes.
Twelve minutes in, Ren swears.
"What?"
"This isn't just encrypted. It's layered. Like, someone put a decoy shell over the real data. If I crack the first lock wrong, the whole thing wipes."
"Can you crack it right?"
"I can try."
Ella's chest tightens. "Try hard."
Ren doesn't answer. Just keeps typing, her face lit blue by the monitors. Ella's pulse is loud in her ears. The wolf under her skin is clawing, restless, and the room feels too small.
Then Ren leans back.
"Got it."
The screen flickers. A file tree appears, folders nested inside folders, timestamps going back months. Ren clicks one open.
It's a map.
Not a street map. A schematic. Tunnels, labeled with codes Ella doesn't recognize, branching under the city like veins. Red dots mark locations. Some are crossed out. Some are still live.
"What the hell is this?" Ren whispers.
Ella leans closer. There's a label on one of the red dots. *Intake 7: Fletcher Depot.*
"That's here," Ella says.
Ren's face goes pale. "No. No, that's two blocks from here."
Ella's about to answer when her phone buzzes.
She looks down.
*Ella.*
Just her name. No punctuation. No context.
Then, audio file. Three seconds long.
Her hand shakes so hard she almost drops the phone. She taps play.
Static. Breathing. Then a voice, thin and cracked and so familiar it makes her chest cave in.
"Ella."
Mia.
Then a sound like metal scraping metal, and the file cuts out.
Ren's staring at her. "Who was that?"
Ella doesn't answer. She's already pulling up the map again, tracing the tunnels, the red dots, the routes. One of them leads straight to the Bureau. Sub-level three.
Where Cain said the evidence locker was.
Where Mia logged the drive.
Her phone buzzes again. Same number.
*Don't come.*
Then another.
*They're waiting.*
Ella's heart stops.
Ren's talking, something about getting out, calling someone, but Ella's not listening. She's looking at the map, at the last red dot, the one that's still blinking.
It's not crossed out.
It's live.
And it's under the Bureau.
—
She's halfway out the door when Ren grabs her arm.
"You can't go there."
"Let go."
"Ella, I'm serious. If that's a trap—"
"Then it's a trap." Ella pulls free. "But she's down there."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
Ren's face twists. "Then take someone with you. Call someone. Don't just—"
But Ella's already gone.
The night air hits her like cold water. She runs.
Her phone buzzes one more time.
She doesn't look.
She knows what it says.