Alexander Kane
The rooftop was a graveyard of fire and silence, the helipad’s explosion still echoing in my ears like a death knell. Shrapnel smoked on the gravel, the air thick with burning plastic and the metallic tang of blood. Elena knelt beside Sofia, her hands slick with her mother’s blood, pressing a torn strip of her hoodie to the wound on Sofia’s side; a graze from the blast, but deep enough to steal color from her face. Marco huddled over his laptop, its screen cracked but glowing, his fingers trembling as he fought Victor’s final virus, the one that had survived the micro-drive’s neutralization, a ghost in the machine waiting to resurrect every secret we’d buried.
Victor lay cuffed ten feet away, his body charred, his tux shredded, but his eyes, God, those eyes burned with a h
