Page 97 of Thorne
He leaves me with the ache in my body, the silence in the room, and the absence of the man who keeps collecting what I owe.
26
The Loop
THORNE
"Lily stays."
Ghost stops mid-stride across the loading bay, his eyes flicking from the SUV to me. Forest and Skye are doing final checks—coolers secured, comms tested, route confirmed. Lily is in the doorway behind me, Theodore clutched in one hand, her face a pale moon in the shadows of the hall.
"We discussed the logistics." Ghost's voice is level but carries the weight of command. "Splitting the assets makes us harder to hit. Phoenix is tracking the ML-273 signature. If they find Lily and Stratton in the same coordinates, we're giving them a one-stop shop. My call is to move Lily."
"Then your call is putting my daughter in a glass box." I step into his space. I don't outrank him, but I'm the one who vetted this perimeter. "You want to put the one thing Phoenix is willing to burn cities for on a public highway with a two-man element? I don't care if Forest is a god; out there, they have zero backup and six hours of exposure."
"They're ghosts. They know how to disappear."
"Not from an AI that owns the satellites, Ghost. The moment that SUV hits the asphalt, she's a target." I gesture back towardthe house. "In here, she has us. She has the Cerberus, a hardened perimeter, and Faraday shielding. You want to protect Lily? You keep her behind the wall we built. We stack bodies in these hallways before they ever touch her."
Ghost's jaw tightens. He's running the tactical math—the risk of a concentrated strike versus the risk of an ambush on the move. He looks past me at Lily, then back at the SUV.
"If I keep her here, and Phoenix moves on this location with everything they have," Ghost warns, "there's no secondary extraction. We're all-in. You certain you want to bet her life on a static defense?"
"I'll bet on this team before I bet on a highway and a prayer," I rasp. "She stays."
Ghost holds my gaze for a long second, measuring my resolve against the mission profile. Finally, he gives a sharp, single nod. "Fine. She stays. But I'm putting the perimeter on Condition Red. If a bird so much as flies over this roof, I want it identified or dropped. Brass, Torque—double the exterior sensor sweep. Now."
Lily appears at my elbow then, her fingers hooking into the pocket of my tactical pants.
"Daddy?" Her voice is a small thread in the cavernous bay. "Is the mountain man taking me away?"
I crouch down, my knees cracking, and put my hands on her shoulders.
"No, Lily-bug. You're staying right here with me."
"But Julianna said the blood needs to go to the doctors." She looks at the cooler Skye is holding. "To help the other kids."
"The blood is going," I promise, smoothing her hair back. "Forest and Skye are going to be the couriers. But you? You have more math to learn. And Theodore told me he isn't ready for a road trip."
She holds up the stuffed dinosaur, inspecting his button eyes. "He says the engine is too loud for his ears."
"See? Tactical decision." I stand back up, acknowledging Ghost with a look that saysthank you, even if the words don't follow.
Lily tugs my sleeve. "I made something for Forest. So he doesn't forget us."
She holds up the folded paper. I take it, open it carefully.
It's a purple dinosaur: Theodore's likeness rendered in crayon, surrounded by numbers. The multiplication tables she's memorized spiral around the dinosaur's head like a halo. In the corner, a check mark. Her own.
"The numbers will keep him safe," Lily explains. "Julianna says math is like armor. It protects your brain from getting confused."
I fold the paper back up. "You want to give this to him yourself?"
She nods solemnly and takes off toward Forest at full speed.
She crashes into Forest's legs, and he crouches down to receive the drawing with the gravity of a man accepting a military honor. He examines it: the dinosaur, the numbers, the check mark, with the same attention he'd give a tactical map.
"I'll guard it with my life, little warrior." His voice carries across the bay.
