Page 63 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The server is hidden behind a children’s charity. Of course it is.

The ghost node doesn’t ping under its true host. It piggybacks through a humanitarian donation platform registered in Geneva.

On the surface, it distributes school tablets to underserved girls in refugee camps. In reality, it reroutes cryptocurrency through six laundering tunnels and houses some of the worst archived data I’ve ever seen.

No warning. No firewall resistance.

Because the node isn’t active.

It’s resting but still wired to the root network.

I stand in the data vault with three men and no light.

Only the glow of rotating code on wall-mounted screens.

Lines of red text snake down like bleeding static.

One feed pulses with encrypted bid history.

Another tracks user location swaps through anonymized server packets.

The silence is surgical. The air smells like heat and copper.

Rourke speaks first. “This one’s cleaner than the last.”

I nod. “Because they’re not using it. Just storing.”

He taps the screen nearest to me. “Ledger confirms this is a holding tank. Last active node: Rome. Archived twelve years ago.”

Twelve years ago.

My chest feels tight.

“Pull up legacy data,” I say.

“What are you looking for?”

I don’t answer because I already know.

The files unfurl in layers.

Auction tokens. Identity surrogates. Metadata fields.

No names. Just dates of birth. Origin regions. Health markers. Language flags. Skills.

And photographs.

Some blurry. Some staged. Some taken when the children clearly didn’t know they were being watched.

I stare as rows unfurl.

One field flickers.

Dead entry.

Node: RM-0457X | STATUS: DEFUNCT Asset ID: #1093-VOID Date of Birth: December 14, 2002 Origin: Unverified—Transferred from 4A route Tag: Unclaimed Asset—Recovered from Fire Photo: attached (corrupted)

I click.

The image stutters once. Then clears just enough to show the shape of a child—barefoot, standing in front of a burned structure, arms by her sides. Face blurred by artifact loss.

But I know the posture.

I know the slope of that shoulder. The way she holds tension in her knees. The pattern of faint scars trailing one wrist.

Vera.

I don’t breathe.

Not right away.

I close the file. Then reopen it. Same entry. Same metadata. Same ID.

#1093-VOID.

The number on the back of that photo in Marseille. The same red ink. The same file signature.

This isn’t just about her being watched.

This isn’t just about her being caught in the system.

She’s entered.

Not sold. Not claimed. But catalogued. Tagged. Labeled unclaimed.

Like they’re waiting.

Like she’s meant for someone later.

My hands don’t shake. I don’t let them.

But inside, something breaks in a way I cannot touch.

She was a child. A child. And they archived her.

Burned her image into a system that still exists.

And now?

She’s mine.

We scrub the entry from the active database. Wipe it clean. Replace it with a decoy entry flagged for deletion.

But I keep a local copy.

Because I need proof.

Not for the courts. Not for the press.

For me.

To remember that this—this war—isn’t about taking down a system anymore.

It is about her.

And someone, somewhere, may still want her back.

The Crown doesn’t just forget.

They mark.

They wait.

And when it’s quiet, they come back for what they catalogued.

Not again.

Not this time.

I’ll salt the earth before I let them near her.

***

She’s sitting in bed when I get home.

Wearing one of my shirts. Curled beneath the duvet, a book open in her lap.

She looks up when she hears the door, and for a moment—just a moment—she smiles.

Soft. Familiar. Like I’m still the man she values. Like I haven’t spent the last forty-eight hours erasing the digital footprint of her childhood from a server used to sell children to men who shook hands with presidents.

Like I’m not a monster wearing a man’s name.

I stand in the doorway.

She tilts her head. “You’re home.”

My throat burns.

You would dislike me if you knew.

If you knew what I have found. If you saw the list. The metadata. The number burned into the back of your file like an inventory label.

If you saw what I have done in your name.

You would leave me.

You would look at me like every other man who’s ever tried to own you.

And I cannot tolerate that.

So I cross the room in silence.

Not because I don’t know what to say—

But because words would shatter the last thing I haven’t broken yet.

Her trust.

***

Later, when the sweat has dried and her legs are tangled in mine, she speaks into the dark—her voice a hush against the pillow.

“Why do you look like you’ve already lost me?”

I don’t lie.

I don’t hide.

I press my lips against her hair and whisper the truth I never meant to say.

“Because I’m starting to believe I never truly had you.”

***

I watch her sleep.

Afterward. After her body stops trembling and mine stops devouring. After her whispers fade into breathing. After I press a kiss into her hair and she doesn’t ask what I mean by what I’d said.

Because she doesn’t know yet. About what I’ve found, destroyed, and become. But I do and it’s rotting me from inside out

***

Her file is real.

The auction archive is coded in layers—deeper than anything my tech team has cracked before.

Even the AI I have installed to run decryption stalls halfway through, choking on cross-encrypted chains tied to Vatican proxies and European child welfare organizations. But I get through.

She’s there.

Ten years old. Listed as “Unclaimed Asset.” No confirmed bidders. No delivery authorization.

But she’s been catalogued.

My Vera.

Blurry photo. She’s standing in front of a charred staircase. One shoe missing. Her lip is bloodied. A toy bunny dangles from her fingers like it hasn’t yet understood they aren’t going home.

Label: Recovered from Fire. High-value due to lineage. Hold for further instruction.

No other identifiers. No next of kin.

Just a line beneath the image that makes my heart stop:

“Subject Crown-7: Awaiting Confirmation”

I don’t know what it means. Not yet.

But I know it is real.

And I know, then, with ice in my spine—

That someone out there still wants her.

***

I should tell her. I should show her the file. Let her see it. Let her decide what to do. Let her remember what she needs to remember.

But the moment I look into her eyes tonight—see her smile up at me from my bed, in my shirt, with her trust wide open and her defenses down—

I cannot.

I just cannot.

Because this is still hers.

This sliver of softness.

This hour between horror and truth.

This breath between the cage and the fire.

And I cannot take that from her.

Not yet.

So I take something else instead.

***

Now she sleeps.

Her face peaceful, body warm, breath slow and even. She is turned slightly toward me in sleep, as if some part of her still believes I am a man she can rely on.

And I sit beside her.

A ghost in the home I built.

I take lives. Break governments. Erase men from history. I burn entire digital black markets to ash—and none of it feels like this.

None of it feels like guilt.

Not until now.