Chapter 8: Breaking Point
295 Words
Chapter 8: Breaking Point
Selene paced the narrow hallway outside the tech wing, her fists clenched, breath shallow. The confrontation had been building for days — whispers of sabotage, data leaks, and most damning of all… Elias's name surfacing in an encrypted file.
When she stormed into the comms lab, Elias was alone, fingers dancing over a keyboard. He didn’t flinch when she entered.
“You gave him access,” she said quietly.
Elias looked up. Calm. Too calm. “I didn’t know it would reach him.”
Selene’s voice rose. “You passed Simon’s frequencies through a dead channel. And that ‘dead’ channel was traced straight to Voss’s Lisbon archive.”
His silence was confirmation enough.
“Why?” she demanded.
He stood, shoulders squared. “Because I didn’t trust you. Because everything changed the moment Adrian came back.”
There it was — the jealousy, the bitterness, not just of war but of emotion, tangled and unresolved.
“You betrayed all of us for jealousy?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“No,” Elias said. “I did it because you stopped seeing anyone but him.”
Her heart felt like it fractured clean down the middle.
“You had no right.”
“And yet I did it,” he said flatly.
Selene stepped back, cold washing over her. “You're off the mission. You're done.”
Elias didn’t fight it. He just sat down, typing again, eyes hollow.
Outside, Adrian waited. One look at Selene’s face and he knew.
“What did he do?” he asked.
Selene couldn’t answer. Not yet.
But something between her and Elias had shattered — and in its place, something darker had been born.
Trust was breaking. And war had just gotten personal.
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