Page 30 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

What?

He wants me to ask. He’s waiting to tell me something, but I’m not going to play his game. A chill does run down my spine, just as he intended.

As planned?

Malia makes a choked sound from her cell.

“Kazakhstan was just the beginning.” He swipes to another feed—this one showing Hank and Gabe in what looks like a planning room, surrounded by tactical gear and maps. “When they rescued you from the reactor, we made sure you left with more than just your research on your USB. Nanobots, Miss Collins. Microscopic machines that have been replicating and spreading throughout Guardian HRS’s systems since the moment you walked through their doors.”

The ground tilts beneath me. Those headaches after Kazakhstan. The way my laptop kept glitching. The way electronic devices sometimes malfunctioned around me. It wasn’t radiation exposure or PTSD. It was this. I was the carrier. The Trojan horse.

“The espresso machine.” Jenna’s voice comes out strangled. “That’s why it kept shorting out. Poor Mike spent days trying to fix it.”

“Hank’s and Gabe’s phones.” I grip the cell bars. “Their batteries kept draining for no reason.”

“My tablet would restart randomly during meetings.” Mia’s clinical detachment slips, voice rising. “We thought it was buggy software.”

“Very observant.” Malfor swipes again, showing another room at Guardian HRS—the tactical planning center. “Every system, every computer, every piece of electronics. All are compromised. All are feeding me information.” He leans closer to the bars. “They’re planning your rescue right now. Their team compositions. Their backup plans. Their contingencies for their contingencies.”

He holds up the tablet so we can see and hear CJ outlining extraction points. The audio is crystal clear.

“Fascinating to watch them scramble.” Malfor’s voice drops to a confidential whisper. “They have no idea I’m already threesteps ahead. That I know their plans before they finish making them.”

“You’re lying,” Stitch speaks from her cell, voice flat. “Guardian HRS systems have quantum-level security protocols. No nanobot could bypass them.”

“No ordinary nanobot, certainly.” Malfor turns to her, eyebrows raised. “But these aren’t ordinary. They’re based on Miss Collins’s quantum entanglement research. Worked like a charm for fusion stabilization. It also allows instantaneous communication across any distance, completely undetectable by conventional security.”

My breath freezes in my lungs. My research. My work. Turned against the very people trying to save us.

“That’s why you need me.” The realization cuts like glass. “The nanobots are deployed, but you need a more robust control system. Something that can’t be disrupted.”

“Exactly.” He tucks the tablet away. “Your friends at Guardian HRS will never find them, because they don’t know what to look for. By the time they realize they’ve been compromised, it will be far too late.”

He steps back, surveying our cells like a collector admiring his specimens. “Rest well. Tomorrow brings much more work. For all of you.”

His footsteps fade down the corridor, leaving us in silence broken only by ragged breathing.

“I did this.” My voice sounds distant, detached. “I brought them inside.”

“We both did.” Malia slumps against her cell wall. “Malikai too.”

“This isn’t on you.” Jenna’s voice hardens. “Malfor planned this. He used you.”

“Doesn’t matter whose fault it is.” Rebel shifts, wincing as her splinted arm moves. “What matters is that Guardian HRS is walking into a trap, and we can’t warn them.”

The reality settles over us like a shroud. We’ve compromised the very people we were counting on to save us.

“What do we do?” There has to be a way to warn them, but I can’t figure out how.

Silence claims the cellblock. Each of us retreats into our own thoughts, the weight of what we’ve learned crushing any remaining optimism. Hours pass. The overhead lights dim slightly—night cycle in our windowless prison.

“You know what this means,” Stitch says.

“No, what?” Mia asks.

“If he’s watching them,” I say, knowing exactly what Stitch is thinking. “He’s watching us. Everything we do, or say, he knows. There’s no way to get a message out. No way that he won’t discover.”

A ripple of awareness passes through the cellblock.