Chapter 23 · Put the Truth on the Wire

The voice in the walls wore Eve’s childhood like a stolen coat.

“Eve,” it whispered through the observation room speakers. “You can make them safe.”

The words came in her own seven-year-old cadence—soft, breathless, trusting. The sound crawled beneath her skin. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the control dais until the metal cut into her palm.

Across the room, warning lights pulsed red against the glass. Behind it, the old research district stretched into darkness: empty laboratories, overturned gurneys, rows of sealed doors. Acid rain hissed somewhere beyond the buried ceiling, filtering through layers of concrete and rust.

Five minutes had become four.

Cain stood between Eve and the interface, one hand pressed to the blood soaking his side. His coat was torn open beneath the ribs. Every breath dragged a little harder than the last, but his pistol remained steady in his other hand.

“Don’t listen to it,” he said.

The speakers answered before Eve could.

“He abandoned you once. He will abandon you again.”

Cain’s jaw tightened. The muzzle of his pistol dipped by half an inch.

Eve saw it. Saw the old boy behind the scarred man—