The silence that followed Maya’s voice was heavier than the fog outside. Adrian stood frozen, the syringe in his hand glinting under the recessed lights of the bunker. His face was a mask of fractured logic—disbelief battling a hope so old it should have been ash.
"Adrian?" I whispered, the blue light in my wrist flickering with a frantic, jagged rhythm. My heart felt like it was trying to leap out of my chest, not just from fear, but from a strange, magnetic pull toward the source of that voice.
140 bpm.
The intercom crackled again. "You always were a sentimental fool, Adrian. Burning the mansion didn't hide the data. It just forced me out of the basement."
Adrian’s grip on the syringe tightened until his knuckles turned white. He walked to the console, his fingers trembling as he tra
