Chapter 613: The Prometheus Gambit
Chapter 613: The Prometheus Gambit
I read the message three times.
Then a fourth, because apparently my brain needed extra confirmation that reality had decided to take a hard left into conspiracy thriller territory while I was still naked in another woman’s bed.
Prometheus.
The word sat on my phone screen like a loaded gun pointed at my forehead. Fourteen characters that connected everything I’d been chasing since Kimiko first told me about my father’s disappearance. Fourteen characters that somebody out there knew would get me off this bed and into a dark building at midnight like the world’s most predictable horror movie protagonist.
Reyna stirred against my chest. "You got quiet."
"Thinking."
"About me?"
"Always." The lie came so naturally it scared me. Not because I was good at lying, but because Reyna deserved better and I’d just given her worse without flinching. "Go back to sleep."
"Bossy." But she nuzzled deeper into the crook of my neck, her breathing already slowing toward sleep. The warmth of her body pressed against mine. The faint electrical charge that always lingered on her skin prickled where our bodies touched. One of her legs hooked over my hip, possessive even in half-consciousness.
I waited until her breathing evened out completely. Counted to sixty. Then counted again because Reyna was a combat-trained predator who could wake from dead sleep to full lethality in under two seconds, and I needed her genuinely unconscious for what came next.
At the hundred-and-twenty mark, I carefully extracted myself from her grip.
Her body shifted, searching for the warmth I’d taken. She mumbled something in Spanish that sounded either affectionate or threatening, probably both, then curled around my pillow and went still.
I pulled on my pants in the dark. Shirt. Shoes. The pendant hung cold against my bare chest as I slipped it back under the fabric. The Dragon Witch’s Ring pulsed warm on my finger. My bat leaned against the wall by the door where I’d left it hours ago.
I grabbed it.
Old habits.
You’re not seriously considering this. Nel’s voice slithered through my consciousness like smoke under a door.
I opened the balcony door and stepped into the night air. Forty-seven stories up. Wind tore at my clothes and whipped through my hair. The city glittered below like a circuit board somebody had left running.
It’s obviously a trap, Satori. The message is unsigned, untraceable, references classified information that only a handful of people should know about, and invites you to an abandoned facility at midnight. This has ’ambush’ written on it in letters the size of this building.
"I know."
Then why are your shoes on?
"Because whoever sent this knows about Prometheus." I leaned against the railing. Cool metal against my palms. "That means they either have access to the files someone tried to steal from VHC archives, or they were involved in the original project. Either way, they have information I need."
Information you need so badly you’ll walk into an obvious trap to get it?
"Nel, my father vanished eighteen years ago. The VHC erased him. Seraphina’s people are assembling a case against me right now based on whatever he did. And in two days, I’m walking into a meeting with the President of the entire goddamn Hunter Commission. I need to know what I’m walking into."
Silence.
Then, quieter: Kaelen would call you an idiot.
"Kaelen would already be halfway there."
...Fair point.
I pulled up the message again. Old research facility. Industrial district. That narrowed it down to about fifteen locations within reasonable distance, but only three had any documented connection to VHC operations. The Nakano Research Annex in Sector 14 had been decommissioned twelve years ago. Publicly listed as a storage facility. Nobody went there.
Which made it the obvious choice.
I forwarded the message to Natalia.
Three seconds later, the pendant went from cold to thermonuclear. My sternum actually ached from the temperature differential.
My phone rang.
"Don’t."
One word. Natalia’s voice at three in the morning carried a weight that bent the laws of physics. I could hear frost forming on the phone itself.
"Nat."
"Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare walk into that building alone at midnight based on a message from an unknown sender who clearly has access to classified intelligence and wants you isolated."
"I’m not planning to go alone."
"Who, then? Your cat? Your new girlfriend?" The word ’girlfriend’ came out coated in rime. "Because from three hundred miles away, I can’t exactly provide backup, can I? And that is entirely your fault, by the way. You chose to go to the mainland. You chose to get tangled up with Cabana. You chose to do what you did tonight while I sat here and felt everything through this stupid pendant that I gave you because I loved you, you absolute, irredeemable—"
"Nat."
Heavy breathing. I could hear the ice cracking in whatever room she occupied. Probably her bedroom. Probably surrounded by frozen furniture and shattered glass.
"I’ll take Maki."
"The cat."
"She has nine lives and can level city blocks with lightning. She’s not just a cat."
"She’s a cat who licks herself."
"She’s a Platinum-tier familiar with combat capabilities that exceed most B-Rank Hunters. And she’s the only person on this side of the ocean I trust enough to bring."
More silence. The pendant oscillated between arctic and merely freezing as Natalia processed.
"You could wait. Come home. We could go together."
"The meeting with Seraphina is in two days. If I don’t know what Prometheus is before then, I walk in blind. And blind people don’t walk out of VHC conference rooms."
"You don’t know that whoever sent this message has real information."
"No. But I know that nobody outside the VHC’s classified archives should even be able to spell Prometheus, and this person used it as a signature. That’s either incredibly stupid or incredibly confident. I’m betting on confident."
Natalia’s voice dropped. Not angry anymore. Just scared, and she’d kill me for noticing. "If you die in that building, I will find a way to resurrect you. And then I will kill you again. Personally. With my bare hands."