The night roared outside the safehouse like it knew what had happened inside.
Ava lay out cold, bound and broken, in the room she once stormed through like a hurricane. Her blood painted the floor like warpaint. Sam sat beside Lilly on the cot—wrapping her fingers in bandages, even as her heart frayed at the edges.
Lilly hadn't spoken since the fight. Just stared at her knuckles. At the blood. At nothing.
Until now.
"I almost killed her."
Sam's hands stilled.
"I wanted to kill her."
"Lilly—"
"No." Her voice was low, like a match ready to strike. "You were right. This isn't who I am. But it's who she made me. And now I have to finish it before she finishes us."
Sam met her eyes, a thousand emotions flickering behind her lashes. "Then we finish it together."
Lilly's gaze burned. "There's one more name on that breaker panel. Alyx was right. It's real. I found it."
Sam's breath hitched.
"We go in," Lilly continued, standing. "We expose it. We burn it down. No more hiding. No more ghosts."
Sam stood too. "And if it kills us?"
Lilly smirked, bruised and beautiful. "Then we make damn sure we take them with us."
BOOM.
The entire shelter rocked with the explosion. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Ava groaned from the other room, half-conscious. "They found us…" she slurred. "It's him. He's here."
Lilly and Sam froze.
A shadow moved in the smoke at the doorway. Tall. Cruel. Familiar.
"Hello, darling," a man's voice purred from the smoke. "Miss me?"
The one name neither of them dared say aloud. The one who made Ava run. The one Alyx died trying to uncover.
Lilly's blood went cold.
Sam grabbed a gun, handed another to Lilly.
No more running.
It was time to end this.