Page 118 of The Final Cut

I pull up the exterior sensor grid and start shutting down anything that might give a second pass better data. “They also learned we are not leaving in panic.”

Reva studies me. “Are we leaving?”

The room goes quiet.

I look at Deacon first because he already knows. Then Shiloh, because he hates it. Then Delia, because she is the reason and the proof.

Finally, Reva.

Her face changes as she reads mine.

The cabin was a good hole. Hidden, armed, hard to reach, harder to breach. It bought us time after the hospital, gave Reva walls, gave Delia a place to land.

But now Isabel has seen the walls. Walls are only useful until the enemy learns their shape.

“Not right this second,” I say.

Reva’s jaw tightens.

“But yes,” I add. “We can’t stay here.”

DELIA

AGE 22

Tonight I saw a ghost.

She walked into Noir with dark hair, murder in her eyes, and my face sharpened into something I did not recognize.

Reva.

Alive.

No one told me.

Mother knew. I could see it when I asked her about it later.

Deacon knew.

The whole world had been carrying the secret of my sister while I mourned her under Isabel’s roof.

I should have felt joy first. I didn’t.

God forgive me, I felt betrayed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

REVA

For a while after Ever says we can’t stay, nobody moves.

The living room is still full of the sound the drones left behind. Not actual sound, because the bullets have stopped and the marsh has gone back to rain and wind and water slapping gently against the dock. But the echo remains in my nerves, in the small white marks sprayed across the glass, in the pieces of broken drone smoking on the wet boards outside. The cabin was supposed to be a safe haven. A space Isabel couldn’t touch.

A place made of concrete and steel, with cameras and reinforced glass, built by men with guns and plans and the kind of money to buy doors strong enough to make fear feel foolish.

Now the windows are bruised with the proof that she found us anyway.

I stand in the middle of the living room with Homer clutched against my chest, his claws dug into my shirt and his whole orange body vibrating with outrage. Delia stands beside the sofa, one hand resting lightly on the back cushion to take weight off her knees. Shiloh is near the hall, jaw tight, phone in one hand like he’s still expecting another hospital update to come through and gut us from a second direction. Deacon is by the window, careful to stay out of the direct sightline, his bandaged side hidden under his shirt and his gun still in his hand.