The night was too still.
Mia stood at the edge of the firelight, the list clutched in her hand. Her name. Emily's. Marla's. Others from the network—all marked with red stars in Alex's careful, deliberate handwriting.
The page fluttered in the wind like a warning.
Marla said nothing. She didn't need to.
Mia's chest felt like it was caving in. "When did you find this?"
"Back at the library," Marla said quietly. "Before they torched it. It was buried in a sealed folder labeled *Emergency Chain*. I didn't understand what it meant—until I saw it matched the people who started disappearing."
"But Alex—he's one of us."
Marla gave her a tired, bitter look. "That's what makes it work."
The fire popped behind them. Emily still slept, unaware of the storm about to break.
Mia forced herself to think clearly. If Alex was a traitor, then every plan they'd made, every route they'd taken, every contact they'd trusted—was compromised.
And yet… there was a part of her that hesitated. A part of her that remembered Alex pushing her out of the records office as bullets flew. The nights he'd gone without sleep, rebuilding their signal boost from scraps. The way his hands had trembled after they aired the broadcast.
Was it all a lie?
Or had something changed?
A branch cracked behind them.
Mia spun, eyes narrowing—ready for anything.
Alex stepped into the circle of firelight, holding a flask and a battered compass. His face was drawn, pale, eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
"Signal's clean," he said. "No tracking on the fallback frequency. We've got about five hours before they start sweeping the northern perimeter."
His eyes flicked between them. He noticed the silence.
And then he noticed the paper in Mia's hand.
Everything changed in an instant.
He stopped cold.
Mia's voice was like ice. "Tell me what this is."
Alex didn't answer. Not immediately. He looked at the page. Then at Marla. Then back at Mia.
Finally, he sighed. "I was hoping you wouldn't find that. Not like this."
"That's not an answer."
Alex stepped forward, slow and deliberate, until he stood just at the edge of the light. "It's a failsafe. Not a kill list."
"You marked our names."
"I marked *trusted nodes*. People who were close enough to the core of the movement that, if things went wrong, the chain of evidence wouldn't collapse."
"You wrote this in *your* handwriting."
"Yes. Because I created it." He paused. "Because Halvorsen asked me to."
The words hit harder than a punch.
Mia staggered back. Marla flinched.
Emily stirred behind them, but didn't wake.
"You were *working for him*?" Mia's voice cracked with disbelief. "This entire time?"
Alex's face twisted—pain, guilt, anger. "No. I was embedded. I was one of his 'loyal men,' yes—but only so I could bring him down from inside."
"Then why hide this?"
"Because it's not that simple." He stepped closer. "Halvorsen has something on me. On all of us. The people on that list—they're leverage. If I didn't feed him enough to keep his eyes away from you, he'd move in and *wipe* you out."
"So you gave him just enough to stay useful?" Marla spat.
"I stalled him. I slowed his moves. Every delay you had—every surveillance blind spot, every missing patrol—that was me. I protected you. But I had to do it *his* way."
Mia's hand trembled. "So when we trusted you with our lives, you calculated risk."
Alex's voice dropped. "I calculated *survival*."
Silence fell over them.
Then Emily's voice, soft behind them: "Is he telling the truth?"
Mia turned. Emily stood there, arms crossed, eyes wide with hurt.
"I want to believe he is," she added. "But I don't know if we can afford belief anymore."
Alex looked at her. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
Mia stepped between them. "Not for much longer."
---
They tied Alex's hands—loose enough for him to walk, tight enough that he couldn't reach a radio. He didn't fight it.
"We're taking the depot," Mia said. "We know Halvorsen was there. That's where the next move happens."
"And you think you'll just walk in?" Alex asked, voice low.
"No. I think we'll crawl in."
Marla unrolled a faded blueprint of the waterfront. "Sewer access. There's a maintenance hatch behind the shipping yard. It connects to a water filtration tunnel that runs under the depot."
Alex glanced at the map. "That tunnel's sealed with a steel grate."
"I know," Marla said. "That's why we brought someone who can break it."
They moved fast.
By nightfall, the four of them were crouched in the brush behind the shipping yard. The depot loomed ahead—gray, boxy, surrounded by fencing and guards with rifles. Security cameras pivoted like vultures, scanning the lot.
But the hatch was unguarded.
Alex knelt beside it, then looked at Mia. "You don't have to trust me. Just let me get us through."
Mia said nothing.
He took that as permission.
The grate was old, rusted, half-fused with dried mud and concrete. Alex worked silently, fingers steady. After twenty minutes, it shifted with a groan—and then, they were in.
The tunnel was damp, cold, and pitch-black.
They moved single file—Alex first, then Mia, Emily, and Marla. The space narrowed the deeper they went, water slicking the stone beneath their feet. Somewhere above, machinery rumbled like distant thunder.
After an hour of crawling, the tunnel opened into a low chamber with ladder access. Above them: the depot's floor.
"We go quiet," Mia whispered. "Take only what we can carry. Film everything. No confrontation."
Emily nodded.
Alex lingered near the ladder. "Once we're up there… we won't get a second chance."
"I know," Mia said. "We don't need one."
They climbed.
The depot was a cavern of metal and shadow. Crates stacked high, trucks lined up with engines idling. And at the far end Halvorsen.
He stood beneath a floodlight, surrounded by aides and guards, overseeing the loading of something massive—a machine wrapped in tarps, humming faintly.
Mia raised her phone, filming.
Emily took photos. Marla tapped into the signal feed using her portable transmitter.
Then a voice echoed across the warehouse.
"Well. I didn't expect all four of you."
Halvorsen turned toward them, smiling.
And behind him, flanked by guards—
Deputy Mayor Langford.
Holding a pistol.
Aimed at Alex.