Page 109 of Whispers in the Dark
Bailey stayed beside her, calm. Grounded. She didn’t know if that comforted or terrified her more.
Elias stepped closer, his gaze scanning the recorder in her lap. “You’ve been waiting for me. You can press record.”
Charlotte nodded.
He stayed standing, still and quiet. “My father created something he thought he could control…”
Charlotte swallowed hard, her hands trembling around the recorder. She clenched it tighter and whispered the lie she used to believe: Don’t beg. Don’t break. But she already had. She broke the second she saw him. The moment her voice cracked, and she said it:
“Please… I need to find him.”
“My father believed in reclamation,” he said. “That you could pull someone back from the edge. Undo the trauma. Make them whole again.”
She looked up at him. “And Monroe?”
“Stripped out the humanity,” he said. “Kept the framework. Turned it into programming. Rewriting minds. Not for healing—for control.”
“Why doesn’t Vance stop it?”
“She thinks she’s protecting what’s left of the program. But Monroe keeps her penned in—feeds her guilt, half-truths. Keeps her just blind enough.”
Charlotte held the recorder tighter. “So she’s a prisoner too.”
“She doesn’t know it,” Elias said softly.
Silence stretched again. Then, more quietly, Elias added, “My father told me, if it all collapsed… to find the ones who still fight for people. He told me I could trust you.”
Charlotte blinked hard. The recorder felt heavy now, too warm in her hands. “He trusted me?”
Elias nodded. “He saw it in you.”
Her voice cracked. “Do you?”
He studied her—this time with something closer to pain than suspicion. “I want to.”
Charlotte’s breath hitched. “What about Mara?”
His expression shifted. A flicker. Something fragile under all that control. “I saved her,” he said. “She didn’t scream. She saw me. And I felt something.” He paused. “That’s how I knew I wasn’t gone.”
Charlotte leaned forward slightly, the recorder still clutched in her lap like it might anchor her to the moment. “You’re not.” She took a breath. “Elias, where is the site?”
He didn’t answer. He left as fast as he arrived.
Charlotte wiped a shaking hand down her face. Her skin was cold. She felt hollow. Raw.
The things Elias said about Mara haunted her—how he felt something. That he saved her. That he hadn’t been turned into the monster they all feared.
He was still in there. And maybe Alex was too. Unless Monroe got to him first. But the one question, the one that needed the answer—where was the black site?—remained unanswered.
Charlotte rose abruptly, the blanket falling from her shoulders like dead weight. She snatched her phone, the recorder, Bailey’s leash. Every movement was sharp now. Focused. She didn’t wear a uniform anymore. No badge. No title to protect her.
Her only oath was to truth—to her daughters, to the man she loved, and she did love him—to the people those monsters thought they could erase. This wasn’t a manhunt anymore. This was a war for identity. For conscience. For souls.
And Elias Ward, the ghost who walked through walls, was her only way in. She pulled out her phone and typed with shaking fingers:
I had contact with Elias. I recorded it. We have leads for Gideon Ward’s program. But the location of the black site still remains a mystery.
Send to: Graham. Ethan. Brad. Noah.
