Page 69 of The Monster's Daughter
Instead, I check the tracker again.
Nothing but void.
So…We go underground.
Bella makes the call. Her voice is hoarse but steady as she leans into the encrypted comm system, speaking names I’ve only heard whispered. Old allies. Enemies turned favors. Smugglers. Black-market war medics. She cashes in everything. Doesn’t blink.
I do the same.
I reach out to the old resistance networks. Codewords. Back channels. Faces I’d sworn I’d never see again.
“Cyberoids,” I growl into the dark. “I want everything.”
We meet in sewers. In derelict cantinas. On dying moons. Names pass like poison between hands. Files. Records. Horrors.
The Collective isn’t hiding.
They’re recruiting.
Worse—they’re preaching.
The intel is worse than we imagined.
Natalie isn’t just a target. She’s a fucking prophecy.
“A hybrid messiah,” one of the contacts says, his voice shaking. “They call her the Interface. A bridge between flesh and machine. They think she can transcend the gap. Make the hivefeel.”
Bella turns away.
My claws dig into the table until the metal screams.
“They don’t want to hurt her,” the man adds quickly. “They want touploadher. Fuse her consciousness to the Nexus. Let her guide their god.”
“They want to erase her,” I growl.
“No,” Bella whispers. “They want toworshipher.”
That night, I find her curled up in the cargo hold. She’s got a bottle of something foul and strong half-drained beside her, and her shoulders shake like she’s trying to sob without making noise.
I sit down behind her.
Don’t speak.
Just pull her back against me.
“I was supposed to protect her,” she says. Her voice is cracked, like her throat’s sandpaper. “I was supposed to keep her safe.”
I tighten my arms around her. Feel her fists press against my ribs.
“She’s my whole damn world, Kage.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I kept her hidden, if I stayed quiet—” Her voice breaks. “But they still found her. Through me. Because of me.”
“You didn’t give her to them.”
“I might as well have.”
