QHe's inches from the glass and it feels like a lake between them, light sliding off the surface and making her face a small, trapped moon, and he can see every breath she takes, the way her chest lifts like a shutter, and he wants to smash the whole world down to get to her but there are hands and protocol and a thousand eyes ready to sell the moment for a price
"Don't," she mouthed again, louder this time, and the camera zoomed so the room could read the worry in her mouth, she held up the leather folder like a talisman and the tag REMEMBER caught the light, the bidders whooped and someone clapped as if this were theatre, as if pain were a prop and not a person, and Jace felt the air go thin and metallic
"Move him back," a slick man ordered, voice like a polished boot, and a ring of security tightened, polite and firm, blocking him with palms and body language as legal as any bar, and the auctioneer smiled at the cameras, "A dramatic moment for our patrons, let's keep it civil" and the word civil tasted like varnish
Leo's hand was at his sleeve, eyes throwing sparks, "We've got one shot, mate," he hissed, "my feed's still fighting their servers, I can overlay but only for thirty seconds if they don't drop the firewall" and Jace looked at the bank of screens and thought about confession as a blunt instrument and then as a scalpel, and something in him chose the scalpel
He swallowed and said a name, "Who purchased the lot" and the tech behind the bank tapped keys like a pianist on a bad tune, the username rolled on the ticker and for a beat it was nothing — an account number, an avatar of a coin — then a three-letter handle that lodged in his chest like a stone, E-C-O-N, Ethan's usual handle from college pranks, a grin in pixels that had aged into something meaner
"That can't be right," someone said, and a man with a headset checked a ledger, then smiled like he'd found an extra biscuit, "verified, last bid registered, buyer confirmed, payment in escrow" and Dean's voice whispering in his ear was almost fond, "You wanted to be seen, Mr Kavanagh, now you are on full display, and people pay to look"
He hated the idea of Ethan anywhere near this circus, it felt too neat, a rival with a taste for blood, and he wanted to storm the booth, to pull a namecard and throw it into the lights, but he was a man in the middle of a frame and every move would be turned into a clip and then sold, and Maya's eyes flashed sorrow like flint and she mouthed one word: remember
So he remembered the Polaroid, the blindfolded smile, the scrap of scarf, the leather folder stamped with his crest and that odd symbol that had become their shadow, he remembered the note Maya had tucked into his pocket the night in the cold store — remember, not rescue — and he felt the weight of the plan she'd left, the possibility that she had not been taken to break but to bait, to ride the auction so something else could be shown
He leaned close to Leo, voice hoarse, "Can you overlay the footage, show the world what they really bought, not the edited bait" and Leo's fingers flew and the operator cursed and someone in the booth shouted "intrusion," but for a heartbeat a second feed bled onto the stream, grainy at first then clearer, and it showed a different angle of the room where Maya sat a week before, smoking, laughing, and then a cut to a meeting — men in suits, a handshake under a table, a folder sliding like contraband, the camera caught the logo they'd seen three times and a name in the corner of the frame that made Jace's stomach turn: DEAN BRIGGS
A hush fell like a curtain dropped too quick, the bidders whooped less loudly, a few cursed, and then the auction interface blinked red with activity as people tried to make sense of a stream that suddenly carried documentary grit instead of spectacle, "We didn't sign off on that" the auctioneer barked, and for a thrilling second it looked like the scaffolding might collapse and truth could spill like coins
Then the screen stuttered, their stream went white with static, and a voice, impossibly calm and close, filled the room not from any booth but the speakers in the ceiling, "Mr Kavanagh, your friends are talented, but talent without permission is hazardous" and the ceiling lights dimmed like breath drawn away, "we will allow the feed to continue only if you comply with a very simple request" the voice said, clinical and patient
"What's the request" Jace asked, though his mouth was dry and his hands felt like paper, and the voice answered, "You can either step away now and allow us to broker a settlement in private that ensures the safety of the woman in the glass, or you continue this public interference and we auction you next, living, as a demonstration" the room gasped and a laugh like a cough rolled through, and someone shouted "That's not legal" and the voice replied, "Legality is a matter of framing, dear friends, and tonight we frame useful things"
Maya's mouth opened and closed and she shook her head slightly, tears shining at the edges of her lashes, and she mouthed frantic instructions to him, fingers like small birds tapping the glass, "Don't let them own the story, show the ledger, show Dean, show the contracts" — but the voice had set terms and the men in suits had hands on levers and the auction booth's operator had a list of compliance codes and Jace knew the game had moved from theatre to torture dressed up as protocol
He thought of the confession he'd uploaded and how it had been eaten and spat out, weaponised, he thought of the supplier who'd closed and the old man who'd died, he thought of the smell of his father's hands on blueprints and how everything he'd built had been measured in corners and compromises, and he realised the choice was cleaner than he'd hoped — he could back away and maybe buy freedom in a quiet room at the cost of silence, or he could play the public, theatrical card and risk the thing he feared most, losing her for good
"Do you have a plan" Amira asked, voice flat, and he did, a plan that felt both biblical and stupid, it required him to expose the boardroom ledger in a way that would blow the auctioners' safe space open and make them regret the night, but it also required him to step into a cage and become bait like she'd asked him not to be, it required him to trust that Maya had a role in this beyond victimhood and that the folder she clutched wasn't a prize for sale but a key
He swallowed and made a decision that tasted like iron, "We open the file live, all of it, names, dates, payments, every little ledger entry we've concealed," he said, and Leo's thumb pressed the button they had prepared, a small substream that Leo had been threading through for hours, "hook it into every feed, make the auction a broadcast of the truth, expose the patrons" and for a terrifying second it worked, the chat filled with links and the servers blinked and the bidders cursed and the bidder handle E-C-O-N went very quiet and the room felt electric with panic
Then alarms screamed, not the polite kind but a keening grown out of metal, and men in suits moved with tiny, precise violence and someone banged on the glass hard enough to make Maya flinch, "You can't do that" Dean's voice boomed from the ceiling and for a flicker Jace thought he could see the shape of the man through a crack in the control room, collar white and eyes like coins under ice
"Hold on" Leo shouted, fingers flying, but the servers began to throttle, the overlay collapsed as if some hand pressed a switch and everything they were trying to show vanished into a white noise, and then a second, deeper sound rolled through the building like a sleeper train, something that wasn't alarm exactly but a countdown in a tone, mechanical and terrible, "Ninety, eighty, seventy" and the lights in the hall dimmed until the bidders' faces were carved into shadow
Maya's eyes widened and she mouthed, not to him but to the lens, "Don't" and he read the single word wrong and right at once, because she had warned him not to open doors and now she had told him not to break the thing that kept her alive, and he didn't know whether she meant the literal latch or the metaphor of exposure and his head was full of too many syllables
A man in the front row pulled out a phone and yelled, "Is this real" and Dean's voice answered from everywhere, "Everything tonight is painfully real," and a small figure stepped forward from the shadows of the crowd, a child maybe, a teenage boy with a pressed blazer and shaking hands who looked like he shouldn't be here, he had the look of someone who'd been handed a script too early, and in his hand was a single gun that made the room stop like someone had thrown an anchor into air
"Don't move" the boy said, voice high and terrified, and his aim was not at the men in suits but at the glass box, at the woman inside it, and the kid's eyes were like a mirror cracking because he looked oddly familiar, a name bubbling up in Jace's head that felt like a bruise and then the boy's mouth opened and he said, "They told me they'd give me a job if I took a shot, if I made it look like an escape" and Jace saw the truth like a cut, this wasn't just about corporate leverage, it was recruitment of other people's children into violence
"Drop it" an officer shouted and beams of light panned but the kid's hand shook, sweat making the metal glint, Maya's lips moved and he read them as if she were praying, and the countdown ticked like a clock someone had set against their chests, "Forty, thirty, twenty" and Leo grabbed at a cable, tried a brute force bypass, and the feed flared for a second with images — not the boardroom meets but a docu-clip of Dean in an old office signing papers and then the screen went black and the countdown jumped, "TEN" and in those last breaths it was silence and noise all at once and Jace thought of the father's handshake, the ledger, the small man who'd died, and he thought of the child aiming the gun with a face that could have been his own nephew and then the boy's finger twitched and the chapter ends with a sound like a match struck in a storm and everyone holding their breath as a new light—hot and close—blooms on the glass.