Page 30 of Echos and Empires (After #3)

They moved as a unit, the thumb drive clutched tightly in Emma’s hand, which he held in his, like a beacon of hope and uncertainty. Chris’s mind was a rapid-fire reel of what-ifs, possibilities that branched like cracked ice beneath his feet. His grip on Emma never faltered.

“Think there’s anything on it?” Liam asked, words winded with the rush of their pace.

“Better be,” Chris answered, his eyes like burning coal, reflecting the enormity of all they might discover.

Alex’s voice broke in, colored with a mix of doubt and anticipation. “I can’t imagine a medical facility would have a useless thumb drive.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Bash said, each word clipped with impatience and readiness.

The men encircled Emma like an unbreakable wall, shadows elongating around them in the dying light. Their steps were swift, urgent, as if trying to outpace the fears that hunted them. The house came into view, a silhouette of safety and knowledge against the darkening sky.

Chris pulled Emma even closer, the echo of a thousand unspoken words hanging in the air between them. He was still amazed, the feeling thrumming in him like a second pulse. He couldn’t quite believe she was here, alive, with them.

They reached their house quicker than he thought possible, and Chris was already mentally sifting through plans, prioritizing the chaos of emotion and strategy into something coherent, actionable.

“First thing,” he said, breath huffing between determination and relief, “we see what’s on that drive.

If you did what you said you did, we’re safe enough for now. ”

They piled inside, urgency following like a shadow, the unknowns unraveling before them in a knotted thread of danger and possibility.

The house enveloped them in shadows and relief.

Liam’s eyes went straight to Emma, scanning her like a cautious machine for signs of damage.

“You really are okay,” he murmured, disbelief and love tinging each word with fragile wonder.

Her unbroken state seemed to surprise him, a gift unexpected.

He kissed her hand, the gesture delicate, tender, a question in the guise of an answer.

“Liam, I’m fine.” Emma’s voice was steady, wrapping around his doubt and easing it like a soothing balm.

He held her hand as if it might disappear, as if she were a mirage on the horizon of his fear. “But they had you.”

“Not for long.” Her smile was soft but firm, anchoring him back to the reality he wanted to believe in.

He shook his head, the movement disbelieving but hopeful, like a man waking from a nightmare into the safety of day. “You’re not hurt. Not even a scratch.”

“I’m right here.” Emma met his eyes, her sincerity a beacon that guided him through the fog of his anxiety. “I’m with you. All of you.”

He drew her into a gentle embrace, afraid that holding too tightly might shatter the illusion of her safety. “When Alex came back and Chris bellowed…”

“I was getting away.” She hugged him back, reassuring, her touch grounding him like gravity to a drifting balloon.

Liam released a shaky breath, his relief settling over him like a blanket. “I kept seeing it,” he confessed, his words the barest thread of a whisper. “Kept seeing you in trouble, and us not making it in time.”

“Well, you did. I got away. You found me. It worked.” She stroked his cheek, the contact electric, charging his doubt with warmth.

“You’re amazing.” Liam leaned into her touch, absorbing the sensation like a man starved of comfort. He kissed her forehead, the act anointing them both with the promise of safety.

“I think I could say the same about you,” she said, her laugh an unexpected spark in the gloom of the past hours. “Or at least try to.”

He shook his head again, but this time there was more light in the gesture. More acceptance. “Hard when we almost lost you.”

“Promise you won’t,” she replied, the words holding more weight than their brevity suggested.

Liam exhaled deeply, letting go of the last threads of panic. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, the vow binding them in the quiet, in the room, in the stillness that followed the storm.

His fingers traced the outline of her hand, memorizing its solid, real presence. Emma gave him a soft, lingering smile, one that promised many tomorrows. They stood together in the certainty of the moment, in the rarefied air of a narrow escape.

“You’re not getting rid of me,” she said again, the statement a lighthouse in the sea of what-if.

Liam believed her this time. Fully. Completely. He nodded, drinking in the sight of her, the feel of her. Everything seemed to narrow down to this.

Emma was safe. Emma was here.

He held her close, marveling at the fact of it, at the enormity of this gift. The gift of her, unbroken.

“Besides, there’s better news coming. We just need William.”

Liam’s lips curved into a smile. She didn’t know they knew about the twins. He wouldn’t steal that from her. She might kill Alex though.

“Computer room. Now.” Chris barked. “Emma, we’re going to make sure every inch of you is exactly as it was when you left. After.”

“Some things do come first,” she chuckled and Liam smiled again. She was a fucking superstar.

Liam moved, taking the stairs two at a time behind Chris until they reached the small extra room that was most certainly not big enough for all of them to cram in.

Urgency bled into the room like an open wound. The group gathered around the computer, their anticipation a living, breathing thing.

“Could be tracked,” Alex warned, his words a shot of adrenaline in the charged air.

“Only one way to find out,” Chris held his hand out to Emma who placed the small black drive in it, and turned to slide it into the basic desktop tower.

Silence closed in like a fist as they plugged in the thumb drive, each second a taut line of expectation. All eyes were on the screen. In a blink, a single file loaded within the file explorer.

“It’s a PDF,” he said, the words echoing with the promise of unknowns, the threat of possibilities.

Liam leaned forward, the white-blue light painting his face

“Just read it, man,” Bash urged, the impatience in his voice matching the tight coil of tension Liam saw out of the corner of his eyes in Bash’s shoulders.

Liam’s eyes flicked over the screen, gathering letters and meanings like a net. He breathed deeply, preparing for whatever it was they were about to haul to the surface. “Preliminary Progress Report,” he began, the title like a lit fuse waiting to spark. “Phase Two Initiation.”

“What the hell is Phase Two?” Alex’s question was a pinpoint of the fear and curiosity Liam felt, too.

“We’ll find out,” Chris replied, his voice steady but tense, like a bowstring pulled to its limit.

Liam read on, his voice weaving through the words, drawing out their patterns and dangers. “Continued success of the initial cleansing has reduced global female population to projected levels, facilitating complete dependency on centralized reproductive efforts.”

“Jesus.” Emma’s voice broke through the charged air, a crack in the dense shell of tension. “He had something to do with the bombs.”

Rage erupted with volcanic force through every cell in Liam’s body, a searing inferno that consumed him entirely.

The room dissolved into a blur, swallowed by the blistering heat of his fury, which became the sole focus of his existence.

The bombs hadn’t been a fucking accident.

Betrayal pulsed through his veins like molten lava, scorching everything in its path.

“Keep. Fucking. Reading.” Chris snarled. “Or I’ll break the god damn computer in my anger and we’ll learn nothing.”

The white-blue light continued to flicker, ghosts of words spilling out into the room like restless spirits.

Liam barely blinked, the glow hardening the lines of his concentration.

He read faster now, urgency and horror dueling in his throat.

“Additional stages may include controlled experiments in genetic diversity and social integration. Construction on test environment scheduled for completion ahead of timeline.”

“Controlled experiments?” Chris repeated, the shock ricocheting off the walls. “Test environment?”

“Keep reading,” Bash said, the gruffness unable to hide the raw edge of his anger.

Liam nodded, words tumbling out like broken promises.

“Island will remain the focal point for all Phase Two activity. Imminent relocation expected to triple population within eighteen months, increasing genetic viability. Population groups may experience unrest upon arrival, but simulations suggest minimal disruptions to primary objectives.”

Emma stood very still, her shadow quivering on the wall behind her like a trapped insect. “They’ve been planning this. All of it. the island wasn’t just already made as a survival outpost. It was already made to destroy everything.”

Liam paused, letting the enormity of the revelation settle like radioactive ash in the air. “Victor,” he said, the single word a declaration of war. “He knew from the beginning. What the toxin would do. That’s why they had the island. It was always part of the plan.”

“No one escapes this level of devastation,” Alex said, the disbelief a bitter note on his tongue. “Unless…”

“He’s fucking behind it,” Chris finished, anger crystallizing the idea into something solid and lethal.

Liam didn’t need to point out that Chris was a little behind. His leader was likely too furious to put the obvious together at the same time Liam did.

“The last sentence,” Liam said, his voice the eye of a hurricane. “End of year projections suggest initial prototype communities could begin within twelve months.”

Silence settled over them, a thick fog, hanging over them, suffocating them and impossible to navigate.

Finally, Chris broke through, his words blunt instruments aimed at the truth. “Victor set us up.”

Liam continued, his voice a scalpel cutting into the dense mass of the report. “He orchestrated the whole damn thing.”

The screen’s glow was an unforgiving spotlight, highlighting their disbelief, their anger, their dawning understanding.

Emma’s breath was uneven, her face a battleground where fear and determination warred.

Bash’s fists were clenched tight, bloodless, ready to pound answers from the nearest wall or skull.

Chris’s jaw was set, the grinding of his teeth a promise of retribution.

Alex stared at the screen, as if he might find a different truth there if he just looked hard enough.

“We have to get off this island,” Emma finally said, the words a map, a plan, a challenge.

Chris shook his head, his voice hoarse but resolved. “We make sure he never sees Phase Two.”

“Or phase anything else,” Bash added, the threat a heavy line etched deep into his expression.

Liam watched the flicker of the cursor on the monitor, reducing it to a metronome ticking off the seconds until they would explode into action. “We need to go back, or go lower in the document. What all went into the bombs. What genetics did he target, what’s the trigger?”

As the drive finished, they stared at the files with something close to reverence and fear, as if the tiny icons contained a god, or a bomb, or both.

“Fucking Victor Warrington,” Chris muttered, each syllable a round fired from the depths of his fury.

Disbelief stretched thin across the room, its fibers catching on every breath, every heartbeat.

“I’m going to keep reading,” Liam scrolled through the PDF, each line of Victor’s report a brutal wire cutting into their hope.

“Prototype community,” he read aloud, the words leaving lacerations in their understanding.

The island was never a sanctuary. The toxin was never an accident.

Emma spoke first, her voice a needle stitching urgency into the open wound of the silence.

“We have to warn everyone. We have to stop him.”

“We’ve been playing his game,” Chris said, the bitterness of the realization scalding his voice. “Since day one.”

“He knew exactly where we’d end up,” Bash added, the anger in his tone biting and sharp. “Used us to see if his little science project would work.”

Liam kept reading, his voice like a scalpel, steady and incisive. “The toxin provided the anticipated reduction in population. Over ninety-five percent fatality rate among females. All remaining women accounted for in prototype environments.”

The room was a tightrope of tension, every word, every thought threatening to throw them into the abyss.

“No wonder his men were there when we got off the plane all those years ago,” Alex said, his disbelief cracking like thin ice. “He was rounding us up like fucking cattle.”

Liam nodded, his expression a knot of emotions. “He thinks he can control everyone. Just like he did with the women he took. Just like he tried to do with us.”

The island had been meant to contain them, to break them, to test them. But the men, the woman, the love, the bond—they were more than the sum of their parts. They were a unit. They were a family. They were a rebellion waiting to happen.

Liam looked around, met each set of eyes with an intensity that fused them into something unbreakable. “We stop him,” he said, the words a binding contract, a vow sealed in the fragile hope that had kept them alive. “But I still need to know more about phase one.”

“Well, keep scrolling.”

Liam was in such a haze, he wasn’t even certain who spoke.