DEATH PLAYBACK

Chapter 11: Alliance

They drove for two hours before Cross finally pulled off the highway into a truck stop. The gray sedan was parked between two eighteen-wheelers, invisible in the predawn darkness. Marcus was unconscious in the back seat, his breathing steady but shallow, his skin still pale as paper.

Cross killed the engine and turned to Jaxon. "We need to talk about what happens next. Because right now, we're carrying a wanted fugitive and a brainwashed cop, and every law enforcement agency in the state is looking for us."

【She has a point. Also, her coffee is terrible. I can taste it through your shared air.】

Jaxon ignored the system. "How long until Marcus wakes up?"

"Hard to say. Whatever they were pumping into him, it's going to take time to clear his system. Could be hours. Could be days."

"We don't have days."

"Then we make the time." Cross got out of the car and stretched. "Come on. There's a diner. We eat, we plan, we figure out how the hell we're going to take down a three-hundred-year-old woman with a god complex and a serial killer on her payroll."

The diner was half-empty, staffed by a tired-looking woman who didn't blink at their disheveled appearance. Jaxon ordered coffee and eggs he didn't want. Cross ordered everything on the menu, literally.

"Victoria Hale," Cross said, once the waitress was out of earshot. "Tell me everything."

Jaxon told her. The system. The twelve originals. Victoria's plan to collect them all and become something more than human. Carter as her weapon. Marcus as her puppet. All of it.

Cross listened without interrupting. When he finished, she sat back and folded her arms.

"That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

【And yet you're sitting in a diner at four in the morning with a man who can see dead people's memories. Perspective.】

"Does it matter if it's crazy?" Jaxon asked. "The evidence is real. The church, the extraction tools, the bodies. You've seen the same things I have."

Cross chewed her lip. "I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying that if I take this to my superiors, they'll have me committed. A three-hundred-year-old woman collecting magical systems? That's not a case file. That's a Netflix series."

"Then we don't go to your superiors. We handle this ourselves."

"With what? I have a service weapon and a Bureau badge that's about to be revoked. You have nothing."

【Technically, he has me. Which is worth approximately... everything.】

"I have the system," Jaxon said. "And I have you."

Cross stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed—short, sharp, and completely without humor. "You know what? Fine. I've already committed career suicide by breaking you out of custody. Might as well go all the way."

She pulled out her phone and scrolled through contacts. "I know someone. Works outside the Bureau. Former intelligence, current private contractor. She handles situations that official channels can't touch."

"Can you trust her?"

"I trust her more than I trust anyone currently wearing a badge." Cross dialed. The phone rang twice before someone answered.

"It's Cross. I need the team. All of them. And I need them in the city by tomorrow night." A pause. "Yes, it's that kind of situation. The kind where the laws of physics might be optional."

She hung up and turned back to Jaxon. "Give me twenty-four hours. I'll have people, resources, and a plan. In the meantime, we need to get Marcus somewhere secure and start waking him up."

"What about Carter?"

"Carter is going to come to us. You took his prized puppet. You broke into his operation. He's not going to let that slide. Which means we need to be ready when he shows up."

【She's right. Carter is predictable. He'll come hard and fast, trying to recover Marcus before Victoria finds out. That gives us maybe forty-eight hours before the real threat arrives.】

"And Victoria?"

Cross's expression hardened. "Victoria Hale is a problem for later. First, we survive Carter. Then we figure out how to kill a god."

They went back to the car. Marcus was still unconscious, but his color had improved slightly—the pale gray of his skin giving way to something almost human. Jaxon checked his pulse. Steady. Stronger than before.

The system pulsed in the back of his mind, warm and restless.

【Hey. I know this is a lot. And I know you're running on fumes and rage right now. But I need you to understand something. Victoria Hale has been doing this for three hundred years. She's killed people more powerful than you, more prepared than you, more supported than you. Every single one of them is dead.】

"Are you trying to scare me?"

【I'm trying to keep you alive. There's a difference. And the difference is that scared people make mistakes. I don't want you scared. I want you careful. There's a way to win this, but it's not by charging in like an action hero. It's by being smarter than she expects you to be.】

Jaxon looked at Marcus's sleeping face. Three years. Three years of being a prisoner in his own body, forced to kill and hurt and obey. And through all of it, the only thing keeping him sane was a single repeated thought: "Tell Jaxon."

"I'll be careful," Jaxon said. "But I won't be slow. Victoria's collecting systems. She's got eight of twelve. That means four more people out there are targets. Including us."

【Including us. So let's make sure we're the ones she can't catch.】

"Alright," he said. "Let's build this team."

Jaxon looked out the window at the truck stop parking lot. A couple of long-haul truckers were fueling up, going about their ordinary lives with no idea that a three-hundred-year-old woman was collecting supernatural systems to become a god.

"We're not alone. We're just not official." Cross leaned forward. "Which might actually be an advantage. No oversight, no paperwork, no political considerations. We can move faster without permission slips."

"So we're alone."

【She's not exaggerating. I've been monitoring police frequencies and internal communications since we escaped. Carter's fingerprints are all over the department's personnel files. This isn't opportunistic—it's a long game.】

"Anyone I trust is already compromised or under investigation." Cross shook her head. "Carter's been smart. He's been planting evidence for months, laying groundwork to discredit anyone who might question the narrative."

"What about the Bureau?" Jaxon asked. "Can't we at least get someone on the inside to—"

The diner coffee was terrible, but Jaxon drank it anyway. The caffeine was a placebo at this point—his body was running on adrenaline and spite—but the ritual of it helped. Cup in hand, something to do with his fingers while his mind raced through scenarios that all ended badly.