Tina's POV...
I moved Waller out of the holding cell and straight into my personal safehouse.
The entire drive, his gaze never left me—unblinking, unnerving, like he was holding himself together by force of will alone.
"Are you okay, Waller?" I asked the moment we stepped inside.
I turned to face him. He didn't answer immediately.
"You said the cameras never caught you breaking me out," he finally said. "I'm just wondering how you're still walking free after everything that went down today."
The words hit closer than he knew.
"My fa—" I stopped myself, swallowed hard. "Jim Coleman has to take the fall, Waller."
The name slipped out like a loaded weapon.
My hand jerked, involuntarily, and the lock snapped open with a sharp crack. The sound echoed through the room, too loud, too final. I stood there, frozen, my mind spiraling—full of gaps, contradictions, and memories I'd spent years trying to bury. For a split second, the weight of it all pressed so hard on my chest I could barely breathe.
I felt hollow. Dangerous. Broken enough to scare myself.
Waller stepped closer.
"Tina… that didn't sound like a plan. That sounded like a confession."
I laughed weakly, dragging a hand down my face. "You think I don't know that? Every road we're walking leads back to him. The Eclipse, the cover-ups, the people who vanished—none of it works unless Jim Coleman is protected."
"So you're ready to burn your own blood to the ground?" he asked quietly.
I met his eyes then, really met them. "I've been burning since the day I found out who he really was."
Silence settled between us, thick and heavy.
"There's something you don't know," I continued. "The reason the cameras didn't catch us… the reason I can still move freely—it's because someone on the inside wiped the feed before we even stepped into the corridor."
Waller's jaw tightened. "Someone high up."
"Yes," I said. "And whoever it is, they don't want Jim exposed yet. They want him used."
"By the Eclipse," he said.
I nodded. "And by the time they're done with him, there won't be anything left for me to save—even if I wanted to."
Waller exhaled slowly. "Then this isn't just about taking him down anymore."
"No," I replied. "It's about surviving what comes after."
Somewhere beneath the floorboards, the safehouse generator hummed—and for the first time, I realized it wasn't the Eclipse I was most afraid of.
It was the part of me that was ready to pull the trigger when the moment finally came.
The silence between us wasn't empty—it was charged. Heavy with everything we hadn't said, everything we'd survived in the last twenty-four hours.
Waller didn't look away this time.
Neither did I.
I don't remember who moved first. I only remember how close he suddenly was, how the air between us seemed to thin, how my pulse betrayed me long before my voice ever could. His presence grounded me in a way nothing else had—not the safehouse, not the weapons hidden in the walls, not the lies I'd built my life around.
"You shouldn't be here," I whispered, though my body leaned toward him.
"Neither should you," he replied, just as quietly.
That was the truth of us—two people standing in the ruins of other people's decisions, choosing each other anyway.
When his hand found mine, it wasn't desperate. It was careful. Like he was asking permission without words. I tightened my grip, answering him, and something inside me finally loosened—the constant vigilance, the anger, the ache of carrying my father's sins like they were my own.
I rested my forehead against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Steady. Real. Human. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to feel safe.
"Just for tonight," I murmured. "Let me forget who I'm supposed to be."
His arms came around me, warm and certain. "Just for tonight," he echoed.
The world narrowed to the quiet of the room, the soft hum beneath the floor, the closeness we'd both been pretending we didn't need. Whatever happened next wasn't about escape—it was about connection. About choosing something honest in the middle of deception.
As the door closed behind us, I knew one thing with painful clarity:
Tomorrow, the war would still be there.
But tonight, I wasn't alone—and for the first time since Jim Coleman's shadow fell over my life, that felt like rebellion enough.
The safehouse never truly slept.
Even in the quiet, it breathed—pipes ticking inside the walls, distant power cycling through old generators, the faint electrical hum that made it impossible to forget we were still connected to the world I claimed to be hiding from.
Waller lay a few feet away, eyes open, staring at the ceiling like he was mapping invisible escape routes.
Neither of us had slept.
"You ever notice," he said softly, "how places like this always feel temporary?"
I didn't answer right away. I was watching the security feed—static blooming across one corner of the screen like a spreading infection.
"This place was built to disappear," I finally said. "That's the point."
He turned his head toward me. "That's not what I meant."
I knew.
I stood and crossed the room, barefoot against cold concrete.
On the far wall, hidden behind a false panel, was something I'd avoided opening since we arrived. My hand hovered there longer than necessary.
"Waller," I said, "if I show you what's behind this… you don't get to pretend you didn't see it."
"Neither do you," he replied.
The panel slid aside.
Files. Physical ones. Old-fashioned. My name appeared more times than I was ready for.
Psychological assessments. Mission evaluations. Behavioral predictions written in my father's precise handwriting.
Not my father.
Jim Coleman.
Waller exhaled slowly. "Tina…"
"They didn't recruit me," I whispered. "They raised me."
The room felt smaller after that. Like the walls had leaned in to listen.
Somewhere deep in the system, an alert chimed once—soft, almost polite.
The safehouse had been pinged.
"They found us," Waller said.
"No," I replied, staring at my own name stamped across a classified folder.
"They remembered me."
I closed the panel and turned back to him, every decision I'd ever made rearranging itself in my head.
Whatever this was going to end as—
Justice. Survival. Or something darker—
I knew one thing with absolute clarity:
The Eclipse wasn't chasing me.
It was waiting to see which version of me would show up.
___Waller didn't touch the files again.
That was how I knew the damage was worse than anger.
He sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped like he was afraid of what they might do if he let them move freely.
His breathing was controlled—too controlled. The kind you learn after surviving too many rooms you weren't meant to leave alive.
"You knew," he said at last.
It wasn't a question.
"I knew pieces," I replied. The words tasted thin even to me. "Not the shape of it. Not like this."
He stood and walked past me, slow, deliberate, like he was testing whether the floor would give way beneath his feet. He stopped at the far wall, resting his palm against it, feeling the vibration of the generator.
"They didn't recruit you," he said quietly. "They designed you."
I flinched.
"That doesn't mean I chose it."
Waller turned then.
His eyes weren't angry—they were searching. That was worse.
"How many times," he asked, "did you make a call because it felt right… because you knew how things would play out?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
He nodded once, like that was answer enough. "You see the problem."
"I'm still here," I said. "I broke you out. I'm trying to end this."
"Or finish it," he replied.
The words cut deeper than any accusation.
I crossed the space between us before I realized I was moving.
"You think I want this? You think I want to wake up and realize my father—Jim Coleman—mapped my life like a contingency plan?"
Waller didn't step back. But he didn't step closer either.
"I think," he said carefully, "that you're standing at the same crossroads he stood at. And you're telling yourself the same story."
That I was different.
That I was necessary.
That there was no other way.
The silence stretched until it felt like something alive, coiling between us.
"If I walk away," he continued, "what happens next?"
The question wasn't about escape.
It was about me.
"They'll come for you," I said. "Whether you stay or not."
"And if I stay?"
I hesitated.
That was all it took.
Waller's expression hardened—not with rage, but with clarity.
"Trust doesn't break when someone lies," he said. "It breaks when the truth arrives late."
He reached for his jacket, checking the weight of the weapon inside like muscle memory, not threat.
"I don't know yet," he added, "whether you're the one fighting the Eclipse… or the one they've been waiting for."
He moved toward the door, then paused.
"For what it's worth," he said without turning around, "I believe you want to do the right thing."
The door slid shut behind him.
I stood alone in the safehouse, surrounded by ghosts, realizing something far more terrifying than the Eclipse had finally taken shape.
Waller didn't trust me anymore.
And worse—
I wasn't sure I deserved him to.