My dad texted me at 2 am and shattered everything I thought I knew: “Grab your sister and run. Don’t trust your mother.” So I did — and what we found outside that window... still haunts me.

Blake didn't drop the drive. He didn't draw his weapon either—he knew the two contractors flanking Eleanor had clear lines of sight through the bookstacks. Instead, he stepped half an inch to the left, angling his body to shield Ivy and me behind his bulk.

"You're out of moves, Eleanor," Blake said calmly. "The Boston Field Office has your offshore wire records. Even if you wipe this drive, the financial trail is established."

Eleanor let out a delicate, musical laugh that made my stomach heave. "Agent Blake, please. Your Field Office doesn't even know which of their supervisors are on my retainer. By noon today, you will be listed as a rogue agent who abducted two teenage girls and perished in an unfortunate warehouse explosion. Adrian will be collateral. And I will be on a private Gulfstream descending into Dubai."

She shifted her gaze to me. Her blue eyes—the same blue eyes I saw in the bathroom mirror every morning—were cold, empty glass.

"Lyra," she said softly. "Give me the key. You've always been the sensible one. You know how the world works. Adrian is a sentimental fool who lives in a fantasy of moral rules. The world doesn't run on rules, honey. It runs on capital."

"He loved you," I choked out, tears of white-hot rage burning my eyes. "He spent fifteen years loving you, and you treated him like an appliance!"

"I gave him a magnificent life," Eleanor replied without a flicker of remorse. "Private schools, European holidays, a house on the ridge. All he had to do was balance the spreadsheets and look away. But his precious conscience got in the way. And now look where it brought you."

She nodded slightly to the contractor on her right. "Take the drive. If Blake twitches, shoot him in the shoulder. Keep the girls intact."

The armed man took one step forward.

"Ivy," I whispered under my breath. "The emergency release."

Behind my back, Ivy’s small hand reached into the fire control niche set into the historical library's masonry—a detail Dad had shown us during our architectural tour years ago. The antique Halon fire suppression system for rare manuscripts.

Ivy pulled the brass emergency lever with all her weight.

A shrill, deafening horn shattered the silence of the library. Above us, high-pressure nozzles violently discharged thick, blinding clouds of white chemical retardant and deafening compressed air.

"Down!" Blake roared.

Gunshots cracked through the white fog, rounds splintering the mahogany bookshelves and sending paper raining down like confetti. Blake lunged forward, tackling the first contractor into a display case, their weapons clattering across the marble.

"Run! Dartmouth exit!" Blake bellowed through the blinding haze.

I grabbed Ivy’s jacket and dragged her through the fog, running blind down the side stack toward the emergency fire stairs. Behind us, Eleanor’s voice shrieked with unvarnished rage: "Kill them! Get the drive!"

We burst through the heavy fire door into the stairwell, our boots hammering down the concrete steps. Blake caught up to us three flights down, his face covered in white chemical dust, the titanium drive still clutched firmly in his left hand.

"Are you hit?" he demanded, scanning us both.

"No! We're okay!" I gasped.

We spilled out into the Dartmouth Street alley. Rain had begun to fall, a freezing autumn drizzle slicking the asphalt. We sprinted around the block, ducking into the subway entrance at Copley Station just as two black enterprise SUVs tore around the corner, sirens wailing in the distance.

We jumped through the turnstiles, blending into the morning rush-hour crowd descending onto the Green Line platform. A train was just pulling in, screeching on the steel rails. We shoved our way into the center car among umbrellas and wet raincoats as the pneumatic doors slid shut.

Through the glass windows of the moving train, I saw Eleanor standing on the platform stairs.

She didn't run after us. She didn't shout. She simply pulled out her phone, raised it to her ear, and stared directly into my eyes through the train window as we accelerated into the dark tunnel.

Blake looked at his tablet screen. The countdown timer was relentless:

**REMAINING TIME: 02:14:05**

"She isn't chasing us anymore," I said, my chest heaving. "She’s heading straight to the harbor."

"Because she knows we have no choice," Blake said grimly. "She knows Adrian is the only biometric key that stops the drive from wiping. If we don't bring the drive to Warehouse 14 before noon, Dad dies, the evidence dies, and she walks."

Ivy looked up at me, her face pale beneath the harsh subway lights, her small fingers wrapping around mine. "Lyra... we're going to save him, right?"