Page 133 of Whispers in the Dark
Brad moved in close, jaw tight. “No,” he said. “We’re ending you.” He moved to cuff her, patting down one arm, then the other.
That was when she moved. A flash of metal—a syringe, drawn from a hidden seam in her coat. She lunged for Brad’s neck.
Charlotte didn’t hesitate.
One shot.
Sharp. Clean. Center mass.
Monroe staggered backward, syringe dropping from her hand. She collapsed against the edge of the case, blood blooming across her chest, her breath already shortening.
Brad stumbled back, eyes wide with shock but unharmed. Charlotte stepped forward, her gun still raised, her eyes locked on Monroe’s fading ones.
Monroe looked up at her, mouth twitching into a bitter smile even through the pain. “You’re… her,” she rasped. “The anchor—with no clue what it’s worth.”
Charlotte didn’t blink. “No. I’m the woman who watched you try to rewrite someone I love. And you failed.”
Monroe coughed, blood on her lips. “You think love will save him? That man is fractured down to the marrow.”
Charlotte knelt beside her. “Maybe. But you underestimated him. And you never understood me at all.”
Monroe’s eyes fluttered. Her last breath caught in her throat.
“I always thought control was power,” Charlotte said softly. “But it’s not. Letting go is. And you couldn’t do it, not even when the world was burning down around you.”
Monroe’s smirk slipped, her body sagging. She was gone.
Charlotte stood slowly, lowering her weapon as Brad exhaled behind her. Blood pooled beneath Monroe’s body, her legacy bleeding out with her.
Charlotte didn’t look away. She didn’t need to.
There were no more threats in this room. Just consequences.
Extraction Point, 06:18 a.m.
The sun was just beginning to rise over the trees as the facility’s hidden elevator doors were pried open. Stretcher after stretcher were carried into the April darkness. A total of forty-two found in observation rooms. And one unnamed young woman was found curled in a sealed sensory tank, pulse faint but present.
Charlotte stood with Graham and Sybil Vance, staring at the entrance to the complex. “They’ll want to keep it,” Sybil murmured. “Use it. Justify it.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Not this time.”
Noah walked up with a detonator. “Charges placed. Ready on your word.”
Charlotte looked toward the tree line, where paramedics worked furiously over the rescued. Then she turned back. “Light it up.”
The earth rumbled. Flames burst skyward, swallowing the black site in a fiery roar.
Data recovered. Survivors rescued. One dead and the other ones responsible in custody. It wasn’t just a raid. It was justice.
The black site was gone.
The detonation ripped through the earth like a final breath from hell—fire belching upward from beneath the trees, a controlled fury that chewed through steel and concrete and the ghosts of every name they'd tried to erase. Charlotte stood in the ash-filled light, wind lifting strands of her hair as the last echoes of the explosion faded into silence.
It was done. She didn’t flinch.
Tent, Perimeter Zone
Charlotte stepped between the gurneys lined up beneath the floodlights. Blankets draped over trembling shoulders. IV lines snaked into veins. Most of the rescued victims couldn’t speak. Some stared at nothing. Some cried quietly. But they were alive.
