Chapter 874
Back at the base, Lucian was waiting. He looked pale, holding a tablet with trembling hands.
“I ran a trace on the encrypted signal Caleb used to send that text,” Lucian said. “It bounced off a server in the old clock tower district. But I found something else. A medical file. A trauma surgery log from a black-market clinic.”
“Whose?” Skye asked.
Lucian turned the tablet around. It showed a series of photographs documenting extensive skin grafts and reconstructive charts.
“Celeste,” Lucian choked out. “She wasn’t vaporized. The blast wave cooked her, Skye. Someone peeled her off the pavement and spent millions keeping her alive. She’s not a ghost. She’s a patchwork doll.”
The room seemed to tilt. Skye gripped the edge of the desk.
“She’s alive,” Skye breathed. “Celeste is alive.”
Sleep was a stranger that night. Skye lay in the narrow bed of the safehouse, staring at the industrial ceiling fan cutting through the stagnant air. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the red marks on her wrist and felt the phantom pressure of Caleb’s grip.
Celeste was alive.
The woman who had tormented her, who had stolen her life once, was back from the dead. It felt like the ground had opened up beneath her feet.
A knock at the door shattered the silence.
𝘉𝖾 t𝗵𝘦 𝘧𝗂𝘳𝗌t 𝘁𝗈 reа𝘥 𝘰𝗇 ga𝗹𝗻ove𝘭𝘴.𝗰𝗈m
“Skye.” Alistair’s voice was urgent.
She was up and opening the door in seconds. Alistair stood there holding a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.
“A courier just dropped this off at the perimeter,” he said. “It’s addressed to you.”
Skye took the box. It was light. She set it on the table, Julian and Lucian gathering around as Julian ran a scanner over it.
“No explosives,” Julian said. “Just organic material.”
Skye cut the twine and lifted the lid.
Inside sat a silver locket — tarnished, its chain broken. Skye recognized it immediately.
“It’s Victoria’s,” Skye whispered, her hand going to her mouth. “She never takes this off. It has a picture of her mother inside.”
“There’s a note,” Felix said, pointing with a gloved hand.
Skye picked up the card with tweezers.
Tonight. The Docks. Warehouse 13. Come alone, or the locket won’t be the only thing returned empty.
“It’s a trap,” Alistair said immediately. “We are not doing this.”
“We have to,” Skye said, her voice trembling but firm. “If they have Victoria — if Celeste is really there —”
“We go on my terms,” Alistair said. “You wear Kevlar. We wire the place for sound and vision. And I will be in the rafters before you step foot inside.”
The docks smelled of rotting fish and diesel. Rain lashed down in sheets, turning the world into a blur of grey and black.
Skye walked toward Warehouse 13, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She felt the weight of the vest beneath her coat, the earpiece humming with static.
“I have visual,” Lucian’s voice came through in her ear. “Heat signatures inside. Two of them.”
Skye pushed open the rusted metal door. It groaned like a dying animal.
.