DARIAN P.O.V (point of view)
The door rattled against the frame as we forced it open and for one awful second, time stretched and the world narrowed down to the slam and the smell of wet concrete. Then we were through, sliding into a narrow, half lit corridor that smelled like old oil and metal. The roof above spattered rain through rust holes; the lights flickered, It should have felt empty but It didn't.
Boots pounded behind us, close, sharp, a machine's rhythm. I kept Adanna pressed to my side, my arm tight around her waist. Her breath was fast against my chest but steady. She kept her eyes on mine.
"Don't let go," she mouthed.
I didn't, not for a second.
The corridor bent left, then split. I shoved her toward a service door on the right, the kind that crunched when it closed. I thumbed the lock, It snagged and for a second, I thought we were stuck. Then it gave and we slipped through into a vertical shaft..... a maintenance duct lined with ladders and brittle pipes.
"Up," I hissed. "We go up."
She wrapped her fingers around a rung like she knew what she was doing. She climbed with the look of someone who refused to be scared into paralysis. Above us, the men shouted and cursed and their torches swung, searching. A drone hummed somewhere far off and then closer, the thin, hungry whine of things that track heat and movement.
I hauled myself after her, one arm aching, shoulder burning where I'd taken hits earlier, the duct was tight. The ladder scraped my palms raw and somewhere behind us, the voice of the operative from the rooftop barked orders. They were tight and coordinated. This wasn't just a hunting party, this was a sweep.
We pushed through a hatch that spilled onto a maintenance platform atop a lower roof. Lightning lit the city in white knives, for a second, the storm swallowed us and the world became only rain and the press of her back against my chest.
"Keep moving," I told her. My voice sounded small in the open air. "We head toward the river, Fewer lights. Fewer cameras."
She didn't answer with words. Her head turned, and I watched her lips move in a small prayer I couldn't hear. Her eyes were wide, fierce as she kept stepping.
We moved fast, using gutters and fire escapes, ducking under billboards and clutching rusted pipe rails. The Syndicate men had split into teams, and the radio chatter told me the pattern: block exits, take the east stair, sweep toward the docks. Someone wanted to sweep the city clean of us. Someone wanted me alive enough to bring Adanna to them and that thought tasted like iron and bile.
"Who on the inside would want you alive?" she asked while we pushed through a gate.
I thought of faces I shouldn't, the Board, Azaan's name flickering in my head like a wound that wouldn't close. "Someone building their power," I said. "Someone who needs me in the middle of their plan."
She didn't need more. She tightened her shoulders, pulling closer as if to make herself smaller, braver. I wanted to hold her and tell her what I had hidden these months. The words were ready.... dangerous and raw, but we had no quiet to weave them in.
A car screeched near the quay and flashlights carved the rain into thin knives. Figures moved like oil across the wet asphalt.... the chase was closing.
"Quick down the alley," I said, pulling her hand. "There's a crate stack, we go inside and through the hold."
She followed..... her feet were sure, her breath in time with mine. I felt every scar, every punishment I'd given my body this last year, but her grip steadied me. Her presence made me move smarter, faster.
We burst through a cargo door and into the yawning belly of a small freighter beached for repairs. Inside smelled of diesel and old rope and the tang of fish. Forklifts lay silent, tarp fluttering, and crates rose like small buildings.
I ducked behind one, pulling Adanna down beside me. She flattened her back against the wood, breathing like someone trying to be invisible. My hand found the small chip tucked in my jacket, the one I had been carrying for months, the pass that led deeper than I wanted to admit. I repressed the urge to throw it away. Eden Lock, the name of a thing that would end everything if hands turned it the wrong way.
"We can't stay," she whispered.
"No," I said. "We move when the footsteps pass this side. Wait for my voice."
Silence pooled around us, thick and dangerous. The freighter shuddered as it rolled on the tide and the rain drummed a steady beat on the metal roof. The radio in the operative's hand pinged.....coordinating, closing. I counted breaths, five....ten. I listened for the long, thin footsteps that meant human boots. They came, cautious as a predator. Two voices near our crates, then three.
I slid my hand around hers and felt the tremor there. She was holding me through the fear I had brought into her life. My chest clenched, the old guilt rearing its head. I wanted to tell her everything, the Project Eden, my role in the Syndicate, the promise to her father, but none of that mattered if they took this breath.
A flashlight swept the crates a yard to the left. It passed our shadow. A man muttered, "Clear left hold," and pushed forward. The sound of his footsteps receded. For now.
I leaned down and whispered for the first time in full: "When I lied, it was to keep you breathing. When I stayed away, it was to protect the thing they want so they couldn't use you to get to me."
She blinked. Tears threatened at the edges of her lashes but didn't fall. "You kept me in the dark," she said, soft as wet paper. "You let me walk into a marriage built on lies."
"I know," I rasped. "I'm sorry. I can't take back what I did. I can only do better now."
Her fingers tightened on mine. "Then tell me the truth when it's safe."
"I will," I promised. "I swear."
There was something in her voice, not forgiveness yet, but not fury either. It was cautious hope.... Dangerous hope. I swallowed.
Footsteps returned, louder. They weren't satisfied yet. The men were methodical, they were closing in on the hold's heart, and the frequency on their radio switched to the code I'd heard before..... a string only used by units running high-priority sweeps. That meant reinforcements, better-trained men. They weren't looking for a simple escapee. They were looking for a prize.
"Darian," she breathed, the name like a question and a prayer. "If they catch you...."
"They won't," I said. The lie left my mouth with the old steadiness of a man trained to say what needed saying to keep someone calm.
I crawled along the crate's shadow, moving my lips so she couldn't hear. "Listen! there is a service door to the engine room. Two men, low profile. Wait for my signal, when they pass the south stack, we run past the left hold and use the service lift. You follow me, don't stop. Do not try to hide in any container.... they'll scan."
"What's in the engine room?"
"A short cut to the dock's underpass, from there we can get to an old pier. I cached a boat once and if we can get to it, we move up river with less cameras, fewer eyes."
She nodded like a soldier. The movement flattered and terrified me, she was in deeper than ever.
A large shadow fell across the hull as the searchlight rounded. Boots sounded ready, right on the other side, Adrenaline kicked. My time fold snapped to quick as I moved.
"Go," I whispered, tucking my palm into her lower back. She twisted and pushed, keeping low. We slid between crates as two men passed only a foot away. They held their weapons snug, voices quiet, hands like instruments. They had the calm of trained men. They smelled of cigarettes and old oil.
When the second man passed, a wire grazed my shoulder, it was a trigger wire .... a primitive trip alarm. It would sound if a crate shifted wrong and I froze. The air hummed..... and a bead of sweat left its track down my spine. If that wire sang, the whole hold would be on us.
I glanced at Adanna,her jaw set as she read the moment faster than me and without hesitation, she dove, sliding under the hanging wire with the grace of someone who moved without fear. The metal scraped a whisper across her shoulder but didn't trip. Her small head popped up..... a soldier's grin hardened by everything she'd lost.
I exhaled slow. We were through the wire, and a surge of relief and shame hit in one hit... shame because she had once again risked herself for me.
The service door at the end of the hold creaked soft as we shoved through. The engine room smelled of hot metal and oil and the hum of mechanics, an old lift sat to the side, its control panel dull.
"Darian," she said, breathless. "What's the lift code?"
I pulled a small folded paper from my pocket, a scrap burned at the edges where I'd used it in better times. I typed the numbers into the panel. For a heartbeat, nothing, the panel blinked and then it accepted. The lift jerked, groaned, and down we went.
The lift dropped us into a narrow underpass wet with the tide,pipes dripped and the world hummed. The underpass led to a small maintenance pier that smelled of algae and old tarmac. My cached boat sat there like a patient animal..... small, battered, perfect.
"We have to run now," I whispered. "They'll figure the hold in minutes."
She climbed on my back without waiting, no pride, no hesitation and I carried her. The old motor coughed to life, then answered with a roar. Rain beat on the hood as we pushed us into the river and the city moved past in a smear of glass and neon. Behind us, the freighter's lights lit then dimmed, and a search drone whined overhead and then swung wide.
I cheated glances at her as the river swallowed the distance between us and the quay. Her face was pale but energized, she tucked hair behind her ear and dripped saltwater in a way that made me want to pull her close and never let go, but there was no room for softness yet.
"Tell me about the tracker," she said suddenly.
I hesitated, her eyes were steady on me, hungry but raw. She wanted facts now, not promises.
"The tracker type?" I said. "It's an industrial beacon..... cheap, easy to clone, but the frequencies were set to a Syndicate sig. The kind only a few on the inside can use. Whoever planted it wanted everyone to converge, whoever wanted me alive also wanted a spectacle.... bring me out, make me the bargaining chip."
Her fingers found mine and squeezed. "So they're choosing sides inside their own... board politics?"
I grimaced. "It's worse, they're not just fighting for power. They're buying players. Men in the Syndicate are splitting. Some want to rebuild, some want to burn the old board clean and rise on a new order. If they bring me back, they get leverage. If they take you, they get me and control the one person who can open Eden Lock."
She swallowed. The name landed like a stone. "Eden Lock," she echoed, the old words turning in her mouth. "It's why my father's files never died."
I nodded. "They think Eden Lock is a tool. They think it's a weapon. They don't understand the code your father wrote. They only see the keys. They want the keys."
Her gaze drifted to the horizon where low clouds hid the sun. "So they want you because you knew them?"
"And because they think I can open a door they want behind it." I let her feel the shame. "I walked into their world, and I left with their secrets. They didn't like that."
She laid her head against my shoulder. "Then we'll keep walking," she said. "One step at a time."
I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath because she had the stubbornness of a woman who refused to be erased and that had always been the part of her that made me fall and then fall again.
We pushed the motor harder. The river narrowed and streetlight halos moved and In the distance, a plume of wake from another boat.... a tail that wasn't ours. Men in black leaned over the bow, watching. Our hunt was far from over.
But for a sliver of a minute, the boat hummed and the river was only a ribbon below us and she was against me and the weight of the world lifted just enough for me to press my forehead to hers and tell her, quietly, without vows or speeches, "I'm sorry. I love you."
She turned up, and her eyes were wet and fierce. "I know," she said. "And I love you too, but not the lies."
"Not the lies," I agreed. "Only us..... The real us."
Her fingers combed my hair back, crude and intimate and more honest than anything we had before. We held each other and watched the city blur like a painting, knowing that the Syndicate would not rest, that traitors would push the hunt further, that Azaan's name haunted our next breath.
Night thickened as the pier behind us sank into the rain-slice of memory. We drove into the shadows, into a stretch of black river where cameras glanced and the sky opened into something large and dangerous.
The tracker signal pulsed in my jacket against the metal box where I'd hidden the Eden chip. It hummed faint.... still alive, someone inside was feeding it life.
I clutched the wheel and felt Adanna's hands find mine again. She didn't ask what would come next, but only tightened her hold.
Whatever the Syndicate planned.... for me, for her, for Eden lock?..... we would meet it together. If they wanted a spectacle, they'd get one. If they wanted leverage, they'd get a fight.
The river swallowed the city's noise, but not the danger ahead of us, the night opened and the chase kept its shape like teeth. We would not stop running. We would not stop fighting, but somewhere ahead, in a vault, a room, a code.... lay the truth that made men kill.
And we had to get to it before anyone else did.
To be continued....