Chapter 207:


    A cold knot of something he refused to name tightened in his gut.


    She was floating.


    She was in a dark ocean, and the waves were crashing over her head. But the water wasn’t cold. It was warm.


    “Isolde.”


    A voice. Gentle. Solid.


    She opened her eyes.


    She was lying on a leather sofa, a soft wool nket tucked around her. The room was dim, lit only by the glow ofputer monitors disying orbital trajectories.


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    And was sitting on the floor beside her, a cool cloth in his hand. He dabbed her forehead.


    “You’re awake,” he said softly.


    She tried to sit up. Her head spun, but the nausea had passed. “Effie —”


    “She’s here,” And said, nodding toward the corner.


    Through the ss wall of an adjoining office, Harper sat in an armchair reading aloud from a book. Effie was asleep on a cot, curled up like a kitten — safe and sound.


    “I picked her up from the hotel as soon as your driver called,” Harper said through the open door, her voice a low murmur. “She’s safe.”


    Isolde looked at her daughter. Safe. Away from that house. Away from that poison.


    “I got them,” she whispered to And, gesturing to the leather-bound sketchbooks on the coffee table.


    And’s eyes widened. “The originals?”


    She nodded. “The source code. The proof.”


    “You could have died getting these,” And said, his jaw tightening. “When you stumbled in here — Isolde, your fever was 104.”


    “I had to,” she said. “It’s not just about the engine anymore. It’s about her.” She looked at Effie. “It’s about showing her that we don’t let people steal our stars.”


    Effie stirred. She opened her eyes, found her mother, and scrambled off the cot.


    “Mommy!”


    Isolde pulled Effie under the nket, holding her tight against her chest despite the pain in her arms. Effie smelled of strawberry shampoo and innocence.


    “I had a bad dream,” Effie whispered. “I dreamt the house was eating us.”


    “The house can’t eat us anymore,” Isolde said, pressing a kiss to the top of Effie’s head. “We aren’t going back there.”


    “Where will we live?”


    “Anywhere we want,” Isolde said. “Just us. We build our own house now.”


    Effie looked up at her with serious eyes. “Okay. A round one. With a telescope on the roof.”


    The fever broke around 3 AM, but the fire inside her hadn’t burned out — it had only just begun to consume the weakness in her blood.


    Isolde sat at the multi-screen workstation in And’s privateb, wrapped tightly in a thick wool nket. Her face was pale, beads of cold sweat still clinging to her hairline, but her eyes were terrifyingly bright — lucid, sharp, burning with a manic focus.


    She reached into her pocket and pulled out the encrypted hard drive she had salvaged. With a steady hand, she plugged it into the main server tower.


    “ess granted,” the system chimed softly.


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