Page 105 of Reckless: Chaos

His smile widens. “Finally catching up? And here I thought you had his strategic mind.”

One more swing. One more calculated risk.

“Oh, I do.” I meet his eyes—mom’s eyes on Sterling’s face. “But I also had better teachers.”

I release the pipe, dropping into what looks like empty space. His shot cracks out, precise and perfect.

And catches nothing but emerald wool as my beanie finally tears free.

Let him think the blood on it is from a kill shot.

Let him think I fell into the maintenance shaft below.

Let him think anything except that I just used his own herding tactics to get exactly where I needed to be.

The server room door clicks shut behind me, locked from the inside, as Alexander’s rage echoes through the tunnels.

Time to make mom proud.

By burning his whole fucking empire down.

The server room hums with the sound of expensive secrets. Racks of computers stretch into shadows, each one a piece of Sterling’s digital empire. The same empire that took my mother from me. That’s killing betas with calculated precision.

Blood drips from my temple where the beanie tore free. I press my sleeve against it, scanning the room. No cameras—can’t risk recording whatever happens in here. Just biometric locks and...

I freeze.

There, in the center of it all, sits a quantum processor. Sleek, beautiful, obviously experimental. The kind of tech that shouldn’t exist outside of theoretical papers.

“Oh, you fucking beautiful nightmare.” My fingers itch to touch it, to understand it. Sterling’s greatest achievement—the heart of his tracking program.

My legacy, if I’d been the daughter he wanted.

Footsteps and shouts echo from the tunnel—they’ll figure out my trick soon. Time to work.

The drive feels heavy as I pull it from my pocket. Two months without tech has left me hungry for the familiar dance of hack and counter-hack. But this isn’t about showing off. This is about survival.

“Alright, daddy dearest.” I slide the drive home. “Let’s see what other family secrets you’re hiding.”

The screen blooms to life, code scrolling faster than normal eyes can track. But I see it. See the patterns, the elegant brutality of his work.

See my own coding style staring back at me.

The first files decrypt and my breath catches. Medical records. Test subjects. Pages and pages of failed experiments.

Mom’s face stares from the first entry. Patient Zero.

My fingers fly across keys, copying, sending, making sure this truth can’t be buried again. Ginger’s secure email pings confirmation just as the next set of files unlock.

The beta virus. Its true purpose. The body count that makes the public numbers look like rounding errors.

Channel 6 gets that data. Can’t risk sending everything to one source.

More files decrypt. More horror unfolds. The tracking program that breeds with every system it touches. The way it’s been hunting betas through their own defensive hacks.

Another news outlet. Another piece of the puzzle scattered where Sterling can’t contain it.

And then...

---