CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE — THE FINAL GAMBIT: SEA & SAVING.
ZARA — ON THE WAKE, DAWN.
The horizon was a blade of grey metal. Dawn hadn't bothered to be beautiful; it came cold and flat, which is what you want when you're chasing something that could steal your sister's brain.
Kai drove the pursuit boat like he'd been born with a throttle in his palms — island hands, steady and reckless all at once. Leo crouched by the stern with a scoped rifle, every inch of him focused and taut. I stood at the bow, jacket buttoned, teeth clenching against salt spray. The ledger photocopies in my vest felt like permission and threat at the same time.
"Target on AIS," Leo said, voice clipped. He checked the feed: a private freighter had peeled off the main shipping lane and slowed, hull low in the water, cranes humming. Modified containers. That's our mobile lab.
"Aria rode the lab all the way," Kai muttered. "Smart, dangerous move. Men like a moving lab — harder to find, easier to hide."
"Harder to catch," I corrected.
The freighter was a gray tooth in the water. A helipad, stacked containers, a black convoy of speedboats cradled against the side. Movement along the rail. Figures. Headlights. Aria's silhouette probably somewhere planning the part where she smiled and we lost everything.
Kai peeled the wheel. "We cut two clicks and come up on her starboard. Engine to full when I give the mark. If they push speed, we split and flank. If they board — we board."
"Board?" Leo's voice tightened. "Boarding a moving freighter with an armed lab, in international waters? That's insane, even for us."
"Insane has been our brand," I said. "Give me the line."
We closed fast. The sea was glass until it wasn't — chop, and then the freighter's wake hit us and the boat bled into a rhythm of spray and engine roar. No smoke, no whistles — just businesslike men in black on the deck like they expected company.
"Now!" Kai shouted.
We launched. Kai's boat hit the waves like it had animal sense. Leo fired a warning across the bow — a clean crack that made men freeze and heads snap. A ladder was thrown, a grapnel. Hands reached. The deck was a scrawl of activity.
I took the ladder, muscle memory and training, climbed, rolled over the rail, and hit the paint. The deck smelled like hydraulic oil and secrets. Men spun, rifles up. I moved — quick, low — elbows and knees and the sort of violence that makes you ashamed and proud.
A flash of red hair under a cap — Aria? Maybe. Someone tried to flank me; I twisted, blade in my hand, and felt the world sharpen until there were only breaths and the sound of boots. Leo landed beside me, powerful and precise. He broke a rifle butt across a man's shoulder the way you break a twig.
"Find the lab," Rina's comm hissed in my ear. "We need a container manifest. The firmware, the reverse compound — anything we can reverse-engineer."
We fought toward the container stacks. Guys in lab coats moved like puppets with orders; a man in executive black clutched a briefcase, eyes wide. Then a shout: "Incoming skiff!" A small, fast boat cut to the freighter's lee and men scrambled with a parcel. Noor's courier — or a decoy — wrestled a crate onto his skiff.
"Noor got a runner," Kai cursed over comms. "They're getting a package off the back — going to the skiff."
Adrenaline boiled. We chased. I crashed onto the aft rail, grabbed a rope, and slid down to a lower platform. The skiff was pulling away with its prize. A man shoved at me; I shoved back. The crate hit the water, bobbed. Someone shoved a boat hook and the crate dipped, then sank with a thunk. Metal and foam disappeared into dark water.
"No!" I screamed and dove after it.
Cold slapped my lungs like a lit fuse. The ocean took me and then gave me the bitter, churning breath of salt and the knowledge that whatever we wanted had just vanished under thirty feet of Gulf.
I surfaced, lungs screaming, and saw the freighter cutting away fast. Aria's laugh — the sound of cousin to a bell — floated back at me like a promise. We'd failed to secure the main package. But Leo's hand found my arm and pulled me into the boat with a ground of teeth and water.
Kai's leg had taken a blast. Not from the freighter; a boarding fight last minute scraped shrapnel into his calf. He was pale, pissed, and very much alive.
"We got a partial manifest," Leo said, breathless. "The tablet — we copied manifest pages before it sank. It's something. Enough to trace micro-batches. Enough to find the courier chain. But the main lab — gone. At sea."
The truth sat like a fist in my stomach. Mobile labs move. They hide in the blue. The crate that sank might have been bait. Or a decoy. Or Selina's only hope. We had less than before. We had more resolve.
<<<<<
LEO — SAFEHOUSE, HOURS LATER — THE PLAN.
We limped back to a safehouse with salt still under our nails and blood under our skin. Kai sat on a folding cot, leg wrapped and he was making jokes that turned into curses the moment Rina pressed gauze to the wound. She worked fast, hands steady — an angel with a surgical kit and no illusions.
"We have manifest fragments," Rina said. "Micro-batch numbers, courier endpoints. Even a UID hash for a firmware transfer. The mobile lab's distribution model is modular — they move firmware in small encrypted packets across multiple platforms. If we can intercept one packet, we can recreate the source key. That's our reverse compound key."
"Which means?" Kai asked through grit.
"It means we can get Selina back if we perform the reconsolidation reversal," Rina said. "But we need a secure medical site, the reverse compound, a team, and time."
We looked at each other like people assembling a coffin for a plan that might work.
"You need a place," I said. "A clinic off the grid. We have contact with a neurologist who owes Leo a favor — Dr. Hassan — he can perform the micro-surgery and start reconsolidation under sedation. But we'll be operating with experimental protocols. This is dirtier than it sounds."
Kai tried to smile. "I can hold a flashlight. I can fetch coffee. I can not faint."
"You'll be kept away from the lab," Rina said. "If you bleed out because you tried to play a medic, I will come for you personally."
Kai huffed. "Worth it."
Rina looked at us all, exhaustion carved into her face. "We also need to prepare for a jailbreak."
"A what?" Kai choked.
"A jailbreak," she said. "If Selina's in a secure facility or moving with a mobile lab, we'll need to extract her. That means a diversion, a stakeout, and delicate hands to pull her free. It also means someone may not come back with us."
Silence fell like wet cloth.
"You didn't have to ask," Leo said softly. "We do this. We go after the next courier. We trace the packets. We build the compound. We pull Selina."
"I'm in," I said.
Kai squeezed my hand. "Me too."
Rina tapped a small tablet and a list scrolled: supplies, sedatives, instruments, links to Dr. Hassan, known safehouses, crew contacts. It was a handful of things held together with desperate hope.
"We do this clean," Rina said. "Or as clean as someone with a ledger and no morals can."
Leo's eyes found mine. "No more secrets," he said. I remembered Marrakesh and the way omission had nearly burned us alive. "No more secrets."
"No more secrets," I echoed. The promise felt like a starting pistol.
We made the list. Kai swore not to flirt with any nurse in the next seven days. I bit back a smile. We joked to keep the fear from eating the edges of us. The humor was thin, but it held.
Outside, the sea still breathed where we'd lost the crate. Aria had moved the lab; she'd shown us her teeth and retreated. We had manifest fragments, a plan, a neurologist in the wings, and a team patched with bandages and stubborn love.
Someone might not survive the coming days. We said it out loud, as if speaking possible loss could make us braver. Then we prepped for the next move. We were tired. We were dangerous. We were utterly alive. And Selina was somewhere in the dark between machines and memories. We were going to get her back — or burn the place to ash trying.