Rain still pressed against the windows like it wanted in. The city outside was a smear of light—yellow, red, and the faint green of traffic signals dissolving in water. Inside, the air smelled of stale coffee and damp cotton.
I hadn't realized how quiet Jacob's apartment could get until the hum of his old desktop filled it. The glow from the monitor painted his face in cold light; he looked carved out of the night itself, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the code.
"Anything yet?" I asked, my voice barely above the sound of the rain.
He didn't answer right away. His fingers flew across the keyboard, steady, controlled. Finally, a soft beep broke the air. He leaned back, exhaled, rubbed his temples.
"That ID badge we found… it isn't just plastic," he said. "It's got a data chip."
"So like a keycard?"
"More than that. It stores internal encryption tokens—access to Nexora's secure servers. Whoever dropped it must've been high-level."
I moved closer, folding my arms, staring at the lines of symbols on the screen that looked more like a heartbeat than text. "Can you open it?"
He nodded once. "Trying to. It's risky."
Outside, thunder rumbled across the skyline. For a moment, the power flickered, plunging us into darkness. The monitor's light cut back in, catching Jacob's eyes; they looked haunted, as if the storm had crawled into him.
"What happens if they trace you?" I asked.
"They will," he said simply. "So we keep moving faster than they can."
The code cracked open like a vault. A new window filled the screen—rows of archived footage, timestamps, and internal memos buried deep in Nexora's private cloud.
Jacob leaned forward, whispering to himself. "This… this is what my brother was talking about."
I caught the shift in his voice; the calm cracked for the first time.
"What happened to him?" I asked.
He didn't answer at first. The rain outside swelled, thunder rolling like an echo from years ago. Then he spoke quietly, still staring at the screen.
"He worked in Nexora's cybersecurity division. Said he found something—a hidden network storing 'non-existent' projects. Two days later, they called it an accident. Elevator malfunction."
His fingers hovered above the keyboard. "I saw the elevator doors. They were welded shut from the outside."
I didn't know what to say. The silence filled the room until only the rain dared to move.
"I'm sorry," I said softly.
He smiled without looking at me. "Don't be. Just means I was right to keep digging."
On the screen, a folder blinked open—PROJECT EIDOLON.
Inside were hundreds of small video clips, each labeled with a name and a date. Security footage? Interviews? I leaned closer. Jacob selected one at random. The picture was grainy, but the voice was unmistakable—Damian Cross.
"…no witnesses," Cross said on the recording. "If anyone saw, clean it. Completely."
My stomach twisted. The footage was from three nights ago.
Jacob paused it immediately. "This is from the boardroom."
"That means—"
"—they recorded the murder."
He scrubbed through the file, found the moment we'd both seen in the flesh: the pleading man, Cross's calm expression, the sharp motion. Even pixelated, it felt too real.
I turned away. "Jacob, stop—"
He froze the image. "We need it. It's proof."
"I can't watch it again."
His voice softened. "Then don't. I'll handle it."
I sank onto the couch, pressing my palms to my eyes. The memory burned anyway. I could still smell the sterile cold of that hallway, still hear the muffled sound that followed.
Jacob's chair scraped the floor. He crossed to me and crouched down. "Hey."
When I looked up, his expression wasn't hard anymore. There was exhaustion there, and something gentler hiding behind it.
"We're getting out of this," he said. "I promise."
He brushed a stray lock of hair back from my face—rain-damp, messy from no sleep. His hand lingered just long enough for me to breathe again.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"Don't thank me yet."
A notification tone cut the quiet. The monitor flashed a new message: LIVE FEED CONNECTED.
Jacob blinked. "That shouldn't—"
He clicked the window. The screen shifted to a grainy, real-time image: Damian Cross in his office, pacing, phone pressed to his ear.
"…two witnesses," Cross was saying. "A man and a woman. I want them found before sunrise."
My blood ran cold.
Jacob muted the sound, staring in disbelief. "This feed isn't archived—it's streaming."
"How are we seeing it?"
He frowned. "Because the badge is still active. It's piggy-backing on a security channel."
I felt the weight of his next words before he said them.
"If we can see them… they can see us."
The lights flickered again.
The light from the monitor stuttered once, twice, then steadied into an eerie glow. Every sound in the apartment suddenly felt too loud—the hum of the old fridge, the ticking of the radiator, even the rain against the glass.
Jacob moved first, switching off the main lamp. "Don't stand near the window."
I obeyed without asking why. He unplugged the monitor but the feed didn't disappear; the image of Damian Cross kept flickering faintly across the screen, as if it had burned itself there.
"That's not possible," Jacob muttered.
He traced the wires behind the desk, following one that disappeared into the corner of the wall. It wasn't part of his setup—thin, dark, too new.
I knelt beside him. "What is it?"
"Fiber line," he said. "It's not mine."
"So someone—?"
He nodded. "Installed it. Probably weeks ago."
My pulse climbed so fast I could hear it in my ears. "They've been watching you this whole time?"
"Maybe watching for something." He reached for a pair of pliers from the drawer and sliced the cable clean. The monitor went black.
The sudden darkness was worse than the light.
For a few seconds we didn't move. The storm outside swelled, a low moan through the city's metal bones.
Then, somewhere above us, the old floorboards groaned.
Jacob's head snapped up.
"That's the apartment above," I whispered.
He shook his head. "No one's lived up there for months."
Another sound—slow, deliberate. Footsteps.
He turned off the desktop completely and motioned toward the kitchen. "Grab your phone. No lights."
I moved quietly, heart hammering. Every creak of the floor felt deafening.
In the dim light spilling from the street, I saw Jacob open a drawer and pull out a metal flashlight and something heavier—just a wrench, but it looked solid in his hand.
The footsteps stopped.
For a long minute, the only thing between us and the outside world was the sound of the rain hitting the window like static.
Jacob's breathing was steady. Mine wasn't.
He mouthed, stay behind me, and stepped toward the hallway.
The next sound was a soft click, almost polite—someone testing a door handle.
My phone vibrated in my hand. I nearly dropped it. A message flashed across the screen from an unknown number:
"I wouldn't move if I were you."
Jacob saw the glow from the screen and froze. His eyes met mine, and I knew from his expression that it wasn't just me—the same message had reached his phone too.
He killed both phones instantly, pulling the batteries out with quick precision. "They're inside the network."
The footsteps started again, slower now, descending the stairs.
We backed toward the kitchen.
"What do we do?" I whispered.
He glanced at the small back window above the sink. Rain sluiced down the glass in sheets. "There's a fire escape."
Before I could respond, the doorknob at the front of the apartment turned.
The metal squealed.
Jacob pushed me toward the kitchen. "Go."
The lock scraped.Jacob's arm was already around my shoulder, pulling me toward the narrow galley kitchen. The window frame shuddered in the wind, the rain beating against it so hard that every drop sounded like a warning.
"Up," he said quietly. "Climb first."
My palms slipped on the wet sill, but he steadied me from below, fingers firm around my wrist. The window jammed halfway; he forced it open with the wrench, the sound of splintering wood almost masking the soft creak of the front door behind us.
A shadow moved in the living room.
I swung a leg onto the fire escape and pressed myself against the cold iron railing. The rain hit my face like shards of glass. Jacob passed me a backpack—his laptop inside—and pulled himself through after me.
We froze there, crouched against the metal, breaths shallow. The city lights stretched below, blurred through sheets of water. Somewhere down on the street, a siren wailed and faded.
Inside the apartment, footsteps crossed the floor. A beam of light swept past the window—narrow, searching.
Jacob held a finger to his lips. Don't move.
The flashlight beam paused on the spot where we'd just been standing. A gloved hand appeared, pushing the curtain aside. Then, without warning, the light snapped off.
The silence that followed was worse than the noise.
Jacob leaned close, whispering against the storm. "We go down, not up. They'll expect us to climb higher."
The fire escape groaned under our weight as we descended. Every step sent a tremor through the metal. At the third floor landing, a door burst open above us.
"Go!" Jacob hissed.
We ran. Boots hit iron, rain roared, and somewhere above, a voice shouted—a man's, low and rough.
By the time we reached the alley, my legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand. Jacob landed beside me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me behind a dumpster just as the figure leaned out from the fire escape.
A flashlight beam swept over the alley, then withdrew.
For a moment we didn't breathe.
Then Jacob exhaled, long and quiet, his forehead pressing briefly against mine in the dark. The contact wasn't romantic; it was survival—steadying, grounding.
"You okay?" he whispered.
"I think so."
"Then we keep moving."
We slipped through the narrow passage toward the next street. The rain was relentless, turning the pavement into a river of reflections. My shoes squelched with every step.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"There's a storage unit a few blocks away. I keep backup drives there."
"Backup drives?"
He glanced over his shoulder. "Insurance."
Even in the half-light I could see the bruise forming along his jaw, the exhaustion in his eyes. Still, he didn't slow down until we reached an old brick building at the corner of West 13th.
He keyed in a code, and the metal door rolled up with a groan. Inside, the air smelled of dust and oil. Stacks of boxes lined the walls; in the back, a small desk with another computer waited, silent and waiting.
Jacob closed the door behind us and leaned against it, listening.
No footsteps. No engines. Only rain.
For a minute we stood there, catching our breath. Then he moved to the desk, opened the laptop, and connected the drive from his bag.
"Whatever happens next," he said quietly, "we don't get another chance. Once I send this out, there's no going back."
I stepped closer. "Then do it."
He looked at me—really looked at me. "You're not afraid anymore."
"I am," I admitted. "But I'm more afraid of doing nothing."
A faint smile touched his lips, but his eyes were still shadowed. He typed a string of commands; lines of code scrolled across the screen. The files began uploading—evidence, names, every secret Nexora had buried.
Outside, lightning split the sky. For a heartbeat, the world turned white.
When the thunder came, it shook the metal walls—and beneath it, something else: the faint growl of an approaching engine.
Jacob's smile faded. "They found us."
He slammed the laptop shut, grabbed the drive, and shoved it into his pocket. "Back door!"
We ran again, down a narrow hallway that smelled of rust and rain. The exit opened onto another alley.
The headlights appeared at the far end—a black SUV, windows tinted, engine idling low.
Jacob pulled me behind a stack of crates. "They won't shoot in the open," he whispered.
"How do you know?"
He didn't answer. He was watching the reflections of movement in the puddles—dark shapes stepping out of the vehicle.
Two of them. Maybe three.
Then one voice, clear even through the rain: "You can't hide forever, Reed."
Jacob's hand tightened around mine.
The voice called again, closer now. "You should've stayed quiet like your brother."
My stomach dropped.
Jacob looked at me, his jaw tightening. "Run on my signal."
"What about you?"
"Don't argue."
Lightning flared again, throwing everything into harsh relief—the alley, the water, the figures advancing.
Jacob grabbed a loose metal pipe from the ground and stepped into the open.
"Over here!" he shouted.
The men turned toward him. I didn't wait to see more. I ran—heart pounding, shoes slipping on wet pavement—until the world was nothing but rain and the echo of shouts behind me.
At the corner I looked back. The alley was empty except for the storm.
"Jacob!"
No answer.
Only the rain.