Page 35 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

THIRTY-ONE

The Trojan Betrayal

ALLY

The explosion replays behind my eyelids every time I blink. White-hot light consuming the helicopter.

Gone. They’re gone. They’re gone.

Guards drag me from my cell, but my legs won’t support my weight.

I stumble, catch myself against the concrete wall, and leave bloody fingerprints on gray stone.

The collar chafes against raw skin, metal edges digging into wounds that never heal before new ones form, but physical pain barely registers through the emotional devastation hollowing me from within.

“Move.” The lead guard’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater, distant and distorted.

I try to walk. My feet shuffle forward, but each step feels like betrayal. How can I keep breathing when they can’t? How can my heart keep beating when theirs have stopped forever?

The corridor stretches endlessly ahead. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting shadows that shift and dance like the burning wreckage I watched sink into the ocean.

Every sound echoes—boot steps, breathing, the mechanical hum of ventilation systems—but underneath it all, I hear the flatline tone that will haunt me forever.

They died trying to save me.

The thought cuts deeper each time it surfaces. Our love, laughter, and shared dreams ended in a streak of light across night-vision screens. Hank and Gabe came for me, and Malfor murdered them for it.

The lab door hisses open, releasing a blast of frigid air that raises immediate goosebumps across my skin. The sudden temperature change triggers a violent shiver that has nothing to do with cold and everything to do with trauma my body can’t process.

Dr. Julian Elkin stands at the primary workstation, shoulders hunched beneath his lab coat. He turns as we enter, and something flickers across his expression when he sees me—recognition of damage that goes beyond physical injuries.

“Jesus,” he breathes, barely audible. “What did he do to you?”

The guards shove me toward him, and I stumble again, catching myself against the edge of a workstation. My hands shake so violently that I can barely grip the metal surface. Everything feels unreal, disconnected, like I’m watching someone else’s life through thick glass.

“I’ll take it from here.” Elkin’s voice carries careful neutrality, but his eyes never leave my face.

The guards position themselves at the door—far enough to create an illusion of privacy, close enough to intervene if necessary. Their collar remotes hang from belts, a constant threat without words.

Elkin approaches slowly, like I’m a wounded animal that might bolt. When he reaches for my restraints, I flinch violently, the movement involuntary and immediate.

“Easy.” His voice is gentle. “I’m just removing the cuffs.”

Blood rushes painfully back into my hands as the restraints fall away. I stare at the angry red circles around my wrists, evidence of captivity that seems insignificant compared to the gaping wound where my heart used to be.

“I watched them die.” The words escape without permission, raw and broken. “He made me watch.”

Elkin freezes, his face going pale. “Who?”

“Gabe. Hank. Charlie team.” My voice sounds hollow to my own ears. “Helicopters. Missiles. Gone.”

Something crosses his expression—guilt, perhaps, or recognition of Malfor’s particular brand of cruelty. He doesn’t offer comfort or platitudes. Instead, he gestures toward the terminal.

“He wants the quantum network operational by dawn,” Elkin says quietly. “Communication scaffold. Entangled frequencies.”

I stare at the screens without processing the information. Code fragments pulse like electronic heartbeats, but they might as well be hieroglyphics. My brain refuses to engage with anything that isn’t grief.

“I can’t.” The admission costs everything. “I can’t focus. Can’t think. Every time I close my eyes, I see?—”

“You have to.” His interruption is gentle but firm. “Because if you don’t, he’ll kill the others too.”

The threat penetrates the fog of trauma, sharp and immediate. Jenna. Malia. Rebel. Stitch. Mia. They’re alive. Still breathing. Still depending on me to function when functioning feels impossible.

I force myself to the terminal, every movement deliberate and effortful. The chair feels wrong beneath me—too hard, too cold, anchoring me to this reality when part of me still orbits the moment those helicopters fell.

“Start with the base protocol structure,” Elkin instructs, pulling up schematics on the main display. “The foundation has to be solid before we can build the communication layers.”

My fingers hover over the keyboard, trembling. The first keystroke feels like sacrilege—working for the man who murdered the people I loved most. But the alternative is watching my sisters die, and I can’t survive more loss.

The code begins to flow beneath my fingertips, muscle memory taking over when conscious thought fails. Numbers and symbols form patterns that my brain understands despite the trauma fracturing my concentration.

They died trying to save me. I’ll make sure their deaths meant something.

The thought crystallizes with sudden, blazing clarity. Every line of code becomes an opportunity—not just to comply, but to ensure Malfor pays for what he’s done. My quantum expertise turned against its master.

“What are you doing?” Elkin notices the pause in my typing, the way my hands have stilled mid-keystroke.

I look up, meeting his eyes directly for the first time. “Building what he asked for.”

But that’s not entirely true. Hidden within legitimate code structures, I begin nesting subroutines that don’t belong.

Recursive loops that appear functional but contain fatal flaws.

Feedback triggers tied to external satellite arrays.

The beginnings of a kill switch, buried so deep within the system’s foundation that it looks like essential architecture.

Each line of sabotage is an act of love. For Gabe, who taught me to think tactically. For Hank, who showed me that patience and precision can topple empires. For the future we’ll never have together.

My pulse hammers as I work, grief transforming into something colder and more focused. Sweat trickles down my spine despite the lab’s arctic chill. The guards stare at my back, but they see only a broken woman following orders.

They don’t see the weapon I’m becoming.

“Your hands are shaking.” Elkin observes quietly, positioning himself to block the security camera’s view of my screen.

“Grief.” The word tastes like ashes. “It has physical symptoms.”

But it’s not just grief making my hands tremble. It’s the adrenaline rush of rebellion, the terrifying thrill of building something that will destroy the man who destroyed everything I loved.

I type ‘Gabe’ instead of a variable name, catch myself, delete it, type the correct syntax. My subconscious keeps trying to memorialize them in code, to leave traces of their names in the digital architecture like flowers on a grave.

“He killed them to break me,” I say softly, not looking away from the screen. “But all he did was give me a reason to be dangerous.”

Elkin glances toward the guards, then back to me. Something shifts in his expression—recognition, perhaps, or respect for what I’m attempting.

“You’ll get us both killed,” he whispers.

“Maybe.” I continue typing, sabotage flowing seamlessly into legitimate code structures. “But he killed them anyway. At least this way, their deaths serve a purpose.”

Hours pass in a haze of keystrokes and carefully controlled breathing.

Every few minutes, grief threatens to overwhelm me—a wave of loss so complete it steals my breath and blurs my vision.

I force myself through these moments by focusing on the work, on the hidden poison I’m weaving into Malfor’s digital empire.

The compile sequence finally completes. No alerts. No errors. The program appears perfect—a quantum communication network ready for deployment. The interface glows green with approval, unaware of the cancer nestled within its core.

Behind legitimate lines of code lies my legacy to Gabe and Hank—a trigger that will blind Malfor’s network when activated, scramble his commands, open backdoors for whoever might come next.

If anyone comes.

“It’s done.” My voice emerges steadier than I feel.

Elkin reviews the final output, his eyes tracking through code that looks flawless to external examination. Only someone with intimate knowledge of quantum entanglement protocols would notice the subtle anomalies, the elegant traps waiting to spring.

“You built a Trojan horse,” he says quietly, something like admiration in his tone.

“I built a memorial.” The correction feels important. “For the men who died trying to save us.”