We were trapped in that collapsed grain silo for six hours before Knox's team found us.
Six hours of darkness, pain, and Albert's broken confessions bleeding into the silence between us.
"It started three years ago," he said when the pain medication from my emergency kit began loosening his tongue. "Before I met you. Before the alliance. X approached me with a video."
"What kind of video?"
"My sister. My real sister. Not Derek—I had a younger sister named Emma. She disappeared when she was sixteen. Twenty years ago. Everyone assumed she was dead. Runaway. Trafficking. The usual horrors." Albert's voice cracked. "X showed me footage of her. Recent footage. Emma, alive, in some facility. Drugged. Imprisoned. Looking at the camera and begging someone to find her."
My breath caught. "X ha
