CHAPTER 62
Hope is a dangerous thing.
It makes you move faster, speak louder, trust easier. And when it breaks, it doesn’t just fall apart. It shatters. Explodes. Leaves pieces in your lungs so every breath hurts.
I felt it growing in my chest like fire.
The transmission hadn’t even fully faded when Lana looked at me across the room, eyes wide, the empty coffee mug in her hand forgotten.
“She’s alive,” I whispered.
Lana didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. She just sat down, slow, like her legs couldn’t hold the weight anymore. The pirate signal had crackled through our walls for three full seconds before dying out. But that was enough.
Enough to shift everything.
I replayed the sentence in my mind again and again.
“Same facilitator. Same customs bribe.”
Ekun, in his own voice. Not distorte
