Page 202 of Mine Again
The rag turns gray almost immediately, heavy with dust. Needing to shake it out, I crack the balcony door open just enough to peek through, angling my ear for any sound.
All is quiet.
I scan the view through the gap, spotting nothing unusual. Just the slope of the cliff wall, streaked with reddish dirt and scattered with dry, wiry plants clinging to cracks in the rock.
So I push the doors fully open, letting the warm sunlight spill over my skin as I step outside, the dirt on the tiles crunching beneath my shoes.
I lean on the railing and shake out the cloth, sending clouds of dust drifting into the air, where they catch the sunlight like tiny motes of gold.
A bird shrieks somewhere to my right, sharp against the quiet, and I turn my head toward the sound.
Then something sharp pricks the side of my neck.
My hand flies up, fingers pressing the spot, expecting the hot swell of a bee sting.
Instead, my fingertips brush something foreign. Thin. Hard. Wrong.
I pull it free and stare at the small dart in my hand.
“What—”
Heat surges through my veins, thick and syrupy, spreading too fast. My thoughts scatter. My legs go soft beneath me, as if my bones have dissolved.
No. No. No.
Luca.
I need to warn him. But my throat won’t work.
I grip the railing hard, fighting to stay upright, but the metal slips under my hands like it’s coated in oil. The dart clatters to the tiles, the sound far away, muffled.
The edges of my vision darken, shrinking the world to a narrow tunnel. My breathing turns shallow. My heartbeat drums loud in my ears, then dulls, like someone is turning the volume down.
Luca, please.
I try to shout, but my mouth won’t form the words. My knees buckle, and the balcony tilts violently before the darkness swallows everything… my last thought clinging to the man I love.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Luca
The cellar is cool, the air vibrating with the hum of machines. Fans whir in steady rotation, hard drives tick and purr.
It’s the sound of power. Contained, controlled, always working.
The glow from numerous monitors washes pale light over the concrete walls, stark against the shadows. Each screen reflects back a hollowed version of me. Hair disheveled. Jaw locked. Eyes too focused to blink.
Beneath my fingers, the old mechanical keyboard clacks like distant gunfire, each strike cutting through the monotony of the hum. Familiar. Steady. My pulse is not.
I haven’t moved in hours, my body stiff from sitting so long, joints aching from disuse. My mind, though, is working overtime.
The node is wired into the backup power. Offline, untraceable. I buried it here a year ago for exactly an eventuality like this.
No one knows about this node, because it contains everything.
Old test builds. Half-broken decryption tools. Obsolete backdoors I never dared use again.
Scraps of code from my darkest jobs, preserved like fossils. And now, also one encrypted bank of logs from Brazil I brought with me,the only uncensored record of that month-long descent into pride and paranoia.
