The vault door shut behind them with a cold hiss.
Steel. Silence. Secrets.
Lucien's private safehouse looked more like a command bunker than a room. A wall of servers hummed behind tinted glass. There was no furniture except a sleek black cot, a hidden weapons rack, and a terminal built into the far wall.
Aria hovered by the door like a caged animal. Still wet. Still shivering. Still watching him with a thousand questions she wasn't ready to ask.
Lucien peeled off his ruined suit jacket and sat down at the console. The gash on his arm had stopped bleeding, but pain shadowed his features. Still, he didn't complain. Didn't even acknowledge it.
"Who else escaped Orion 7 with you?" he asked, voice quiet.
Aria blinked. "No one."
He glanced up at her. "That's not true."
"It is," she said, defensive now. "I was the only one who got out. The others—"
Her voice cracked.
"The others didn't make it."
Lucien's fingers paused over the keys.
"Do you remember a subject named K-0X?"
Aria went still.
Lucien had never seen someone turn to stone before. Her face drained of color, her breath caught.
"How do you know that name?"
"I found it in the breach log," he said. "The program that accessed Storm Vault used K-0X as a root string."
Her hands balled into fists. "K-0X was... my partner. My twin in training. They told me he died in a shutdown fire the night I escaped."
Lucien's eyes sharpened. "What if they lied?"
The silence between them stretched, thick and dark.
Then, without warning, Aria turned and sank onto the cot, her head in her hands. She looked smaller suddenly—less like the defiant girl with the perfect posture, and more like someone cracking under weight too heavy to carry.
Lucien watched her from the console.
For the first time, he didn't see a threat.
He saw a girl alone.
"Why did you help me?" she asked quietly. "You could've turned me in."
"I might still," he said.
But his voice wasn't cold anymore.
Just tired.
She looked up at him. Their eyes met, and for a long moment, the war between them paused.
Then the emergency terminal pinged.
Incoming encrypted message. Origin: unknown.
Lucien frowned and keyed it open.
A short video played—grainy, dimly lit. A lab hallway. Two men in lab coats dragging a metal gurney. And strapped to it—
K-0X. Alive. Breathing. Eyes wide open.
A voice followed. Deep. Calm. Chilling.
"Return Subject Aria Quinn to Orion 7 within 48 hours. Or watch him die."
—Dr. Cael Stroud
Lucien stood slowly, the screen casting shadows over his face.
Aria didn't speak. She didn't cry.
But Lucien saw her hands tremble.
And suddenly, he didn't want her to go back either.