CHAPTER 8: BETRAYAL WITHIN
When Raquel stepped out of that flat, she was no longer hunting a nameless criminal.
She was hunting me.
The man who had held her hand, made her laugh, kissed her beneath flickering café lights and lied through his teeth.
But this time, it wasn't personal for her.
It was war.
I watched her leave the building from my hidden perch across the street, inside a parked delivery van. She didn't look back. She didn't need to.
I'd already planted the next clue. A page from an old university newspaper, slipped beneath her windshield wiper.
The headline read: "Public Debt and Manufactured Scarcity – A New Economic Plague?"
My name was nowhere on the byline.
But she'd know.
Inside the Mint, the crew was wearing thin.
Berlin walked into the press hall and found Nairobi asleep at her post, her head buried in paperwork.
"Wake up," he snapped.
She stirred, groggy, then glared at him. "I slept for twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes where this entire operation could've gone to hell."
"I haven't slept in three days, Berlin. Neither has my team. You want me sharp? Give us two hours. Uninterrupted."
He clenched his jaw, said nothing, then stormed out.
He didn't like being told no.
Even when he was wrong.
Rio and Tokyo were tangled in a blanket on the floor of the surveillance room, the faint buzz of monitors bathing their skin in electric light.
She ran her fingers along his chest.
"Tell me something real," she whispered.
"I'm terrified."
"Of the police?"
"Of what happens when this ends. What if we get out... and I'm not enough for you?"
She kissed his shoulder.
"You're enough for me right now."
He turned toward her. "That's not an answer."
She didn't give one.
Instead, she kissed him again.
And again.
The kind of kiss you give when you don't believe in tomorrow.
At 1:20 a.m., Arturo made contact.
Using a hidden earpiece salvaged from an old security radio, he patched into an external frequency.
He kept his voice low, coded, almost mechanical.
"This is inside. I have names. Positions. You want intel, I want immunity."
Static.
Then a voice replied.
"We're listening."
He smiled.
The rat had found his cheese.
At the same time, Berlin intercepted a radio ping on a non-authorized band.
He stormed into Rio's room.
"You monitoring all signals, right?"
"Of course."
"Then explain this."
He shoved a printed waveform into Rio's chest. It was faint—but real.
Rio paled. "That's an outbound signal."
"From where?"
"Sector three."
The press wing.
Arturo.
Tokyo caught Arturo two minutes later, alone near the lavatory, earpiece tucked under his collar.
She tackled him to the floor, gun drawn, and pulled the device free.
"You want to die in here?" she spat.
He was bleeding from his mouth. But he smiled.
"You're all going to die in here. You just don't know it yet."
I watched it all unfold on screen.
Arturo's betrayal. Berlin's fury. Tokyo's control. Raquel's steps toward truth.
And I felt the walls beginning to contract.
We weren't falling apart yet.
But we were leaning.
And gravity always wins.
Later that night, Nairobi called me directly.
"Professor. We need to talk about Berlin."
"What happened?"
"He nearly beat one of the hostages today. Again. This time in front of the printing crew. Morale's dropping. I can't keep this ship moving if the captain's lighting it on fire."
"I'll talk to him."
"Don't talk. Control him. Or I'll find a way to do it myself."
She cut the line.
That wasn't a warning.
That was a challenge.
Raquel returned to the mobile HQ.
She handed the page I'd planted to Angel.
"Run every archive, every political blog, every student publication from the last twenty years. I want that article sourced. Every variation. Every comment thread."
"Why?"
"Because he wants me to. And I'm going to find out why."
Her eyes didn't blink.
She was locked in now.
For good.
Back inside the Mint, Monica approached Tokyo in the stairwell.
"I'm pregnant," she whispered.
Tokyo froze.
"What?"
"It's Arturo's. And he doesn't know. But I'm done with him. I want out. When this is over... can you protect me?"
Tokyo looked at her. Long. Hard.
Then she nodded.
"I've got your back. Until the last bullet."