"DANTE!"
My scream was a raw, tearing sound. It burst from deep within me, swallowed by the roar of gunfire. It was the last thing I shouted before Nyx clamped her hand over my mouth, her grip strong and unyielding.
"Be quiet or you'll get us all killed!" she hissed, her voice a terrified whisper in the dark shaft. "He's gone. Move!"
She didn't just say it. She acted. She grabbed the collar of my robe and pulled, dragging me backward into the metal tube. I resisted, a wild, cornered animal, my nails clawing at the metal, desperate to go back, to see... to do something. But it was useless. The darkness of the vent felt like a coffin, and the sounds of the firefight, the sound of his sacrifice, were already fading, muffled by distance and thick steel.
He wasn't just hit. He was consumed. I had seen him jolt, seen the crimson spray. I had seen him stand tall, a defiant king, armed with nothing but a piece of scrap metal, and I had watched him fall under a barrage of bullets.
The truth pierced my heart like a shard of ice. He was gone.
A sob, a terrible sound of pure agony, tore from my chest. It was a noise I didn't recognize. But there was no time for grief. The hissing of the Halon gas was behind us, but the shaft ahead was a new, unknown terror.
"Bella... help me..." Aria's voice was a frail, panicked whimper in the dark. She was ahead of me, trembling, hyperventilating from the gas and sheer terror. "I can't... I can't breathe... I'm stuck..."
"I'm here," Nyx said from the front, her voice a steady anchor. "It's not gas, it's a panic attack. Breathe. We have to crawl. Now."
The shaft was narrow, rectangular, and slick with a fine layer of industrial dust that coated my hands and knees. It sloped steeply upward. My robe tangled around my legs, useless. The pistol Dante had given me hung like a dead weight in my pocket. The ledger, tucked inside my robe, pressed against my ribs like a hard, rectangular block. It was no longer a secret; it felt like a tombstone, the final price of his life.
He threw me in here. The thought repeated painfully in my mind. He had looked at me, eyes blazing, and made a choice. He had chosen me, his sister, our escape, over his own life.
"Isabella! Push! Don't stop!" Nyx commanded from the darkness ahead.
I placed my hands on the cold metal and forced myself to move. I crawled. Every movement felt like betrayal. Every inch I crawled away from him, away from the war room, seemed to take a piece of my soul with it, leaving it to die with him.
Tears streamed down my face, mixing with sweat and grime, turning the dust on my skin into mud. I was blind, broken, but I kept moving. I put my head on Aria's feet, pushing her, forcing her to climb.
"He's dead," Aria sobbed, her words echoing my own thoughts. "They killed him. They killed my brother."
"Shut up!" Nyx snapped, her voice strained with her own grief. "He sacrificed himself so we could get this," she tapped her pocket, where I assumed she had a drive or a copy, "and this," she must have gestured to me, "to safety. His sacrifice means nothing if we die in this vent. So you will climb. You will be quiet. And you will move. We are taking this ledger to the world. We will burn them all down. That is how we honor him. Not by crying like children in a tube."
Her words were harsh and cold. They cut through the fog of my grief.
Burn them to the ground.
A new feeling settled in my chest, cold and dark, heavier than grief. It was poison, but it was also fuel. It was rage. A pure, undiluted hatred that burned away the tears.
He had given me his blood, his name, and his secrets. Then, he had given me his last, impossible gift: his life.
The debt was no longer paid. It was infinite. I would spend the rest of my life, however long that might be, making them pay it.
I stopped crying. I stopped shaking. I pressed my hands to the metal floor of the shaft, the ledger a heavy, righteous weight against my heart.
"Move, Aria," I said. The voice that came out was not my own. It was cold and steady, the voice of a woman who had pushed a statue from a terrace. It was the voice of a queen who had just watched her king slaughtered. "Nyx is right. We're getting out. And then... we are going to end them all."
I began to climb, no longer a victim but a weapon. The hunt was over. The vendetta had just begun.