<h4>Chapter 855: Chapter 857</h4>


    Tamir’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t argue. He just nodded.


    Jude left before sunrise. The path was jagged, overgrown, and slick with moss, but he moved through it like part of thend. By mid-afternoon, he reached the ridge that overlooked the signal’s origin point. What he saw wasn’t a camp or a shelter. It was a crash site.


    A ck stealth chopper, partially buried in the trees, its tail twisted and snapped. Smoke had long faded, but the impact was fresh. Jude descended cautiously. No guards. No movement. He reached the hull and slipped inside. The bodies were still warm. Four security personnel, two unarmed pilots. All had been executed post-crash. Shot clean in the head.


    Jude found Mina in the cockpit, slumped over but alive. He checked her pulse, weak but steady. He carried her out, set up camp, started a fire, and waited until she woke.


    When she did, she didn’t scream. She sat up slowly, grimacing as pain spread through her ribs. She met his eyes and managed a weak smile.


    "You found the signal."


    "You sent it."


    "Didn’t think anyone would still be listening."


    "I never stopped."


    Sheughed softly, then coughed, blood flecking her lip.


    "They knew we were onto them," she whispered. "Ascendia isn’t just a front. It’s a joint operation. Military and biotech. They’re not just trafficking children, they’re using them to test cognitive control tech. Neural bonding, memory mapping, total behavioral override."


    Jude’s jaw clenched. He’d suspected something like that, but hearing it spoken aloud made it feel worse. "What were you doing in the chopper?"


    "Stealing the prototype. They were moving it to a secure vault in Talserra. I got inside. Wiped their logs. Took this." She reached into her jacket and pulled out a small drive, ck and smooth, sealed with a biometric lock. "This is everything. Names. Files. Experiment logs. Locations."


    Jude took it and pocketed it. "We’ll use it. Once you’re strong enough."


    "I won’t be. I’m noting with you."


    Jude stared at her.


    "You already know I’m not making it out. Broken ribs. Internal bleeding. Maybe more. I just didn’t want them to have it." She closed her eyes briefly. "You’ve got Tamir. And Rhea. They’ll listen to you."


    "They’re kids."


    "So were we."


    That night, she died quietly in her sleep. Jude buried her near the ridge, beneath a twisted oak, using thest of his strength to carve her name into the bark. No ceremony. No words. Just silence. The same way she lived.


    He returned to the cabin three dayster, bruised, limping, and hollowed out. Tamir ran to him, grabbed his arm, but said nothing. Rhea stood silently in the doorway.


    "We’re moving," Jude said.


    "Where?"


    "To burn the rest of them down."


    The drive contained more than Jude expected. It detailed every facility, every transport schedule, and worst of all, a list of sessful candidates, children who’d been altered, reprogrammed, repurposed. Some had already been deployed into society as test cases. A girl in central Libertia who now served as a government intern. A boy stationed in a council security unit. Their memories rewritten. Their obedience coded into them. Sleeper agents in in sight.


    Tamir read the files with Jude, jaw tightening with every name. "We can’t just take this to the media."


    "They won’t believe it. Or worse, they’ll suppress it."


    "Then we bring it all down ourselves."


    And so they did. One facility at a time. Hit-and-run strikes. Data thefts. Power disruptions. Smuggling the children out before reinforcements arrived. Jude trained Tamir in everything, stealth, sabotage,munication. And Tamir adapted fast. By the third raid, he was leading the second team. By the fifth, he stopped needing direction at all.


    Rhea remained their quietpass. She mapped exits, memorized routes, decrypted logs faster than any of them. She never said more than a sentence at a time. But every word mattered.


    Thework grew. Other former allies heard the movement and returned, faces from old missions, presumed dead, now stepping out of hiding. They didn’t ask questions. They followed Jude, and more importantly, they followed Tamir, whose name had begun to spread in the shadows like a match waiting for fuel.


    Then came the operation in Sector Twelve. The main hub. Thest known location of the coreb where they began the memory override process. Jude led the charge. It was supposed to be clean. Simple. Get in, get the kids, blow the servers.


    They didn’t expect a trap.


    Half the squad was wiped in the first minute. Automated drones. Gas dispersal systems. Tamir pulled three of them out by force. Jude held the line at the north wing, bleeding from a cut on his head, vision blurring.


    They reached the main server room toote. The drives were already being purged.


    Rhea stopped them. She connected to the system manually, overriding the protocol. Her body shook. Blood poured from her nose. She copsed before they could pull her free, but she did it. The data was saved.


    They carried her out through a tunnel barely wide enough for one man, Jude holding her hand the whole way. When they reached the forest again, she woke.


    "Did it work?" she whispered.


    "You saved everything," Jude said.


    She smiled faintly. "Then I can sleep now."


    And she did.


    Not a death. Not yet. Just rest.


    That night, Jude stood before a fire with Tamir and the others. The drive was encrypted again, locked until they were ready.


    But the war wasn’t quiet anymore.


    And Jude wasn’t hiding.


    The fire crackled against the silence of the camp, small but persistent, casting flickers of orange across the faces of those who remained. They had buried two more that day, one from a sniper’s bullet, the other from injuries sustained during extraction. The grief was no longer a sharp wound. It had be a dull echo, a constant presence, the price they hade to expect for every step forward. Jude stood just beyond the light’s reach, staring into the shadows like he was waiting for something to emerge.