Page 116 of Prey

We return inside, and I stop in my tracks when Lucien enters, and a thirteen-year-old girl who’s been completely nonverbal suddenly speaks when she sees him.

“You survived,” she whispers.

She recognizes the damage in him—the hypervigilance, the controlled violence, the way he moves like death is always one step behind. She knows he came from a program like hers.

Lucien kneels in front of her, and for the first time since I’ve known him, his expression goes soft. “Yes,” he tells her quietly. “And so will you.”

By the time we finish and head back to Chicago, the sun is rising. Thirty-seven children safe. Twenty-three Project Architect operatives dead. One facility destroyed, all evidence of their experiments turned to ash.

Jenna starts crying in the passenger seat—silent, devastating sobs with her hand pressed over her mouth. The reality of what those children endured has finally crashed over her. The adrenaline crash is catastrophic. The systematic torture of nearly forty kids who never had a chance.

I pull over at a rest stop and hold her while she breaks down in my arms.

“I keep thinking about their faces,” she whispers against my chest. “That little girl, how she just… clung to me like I was salvation. And that boy with the broken legs, how he flinchedevery time someone moved too fast. How many more are out there right now, Nikolai? How many more children are being?—”

“We saved thirty-seven today,” I interrupt. “Thirty-seven who won’t become what we became. Thirty-seven children who get a chance at a more normal life.”

She pulls back to look at me. “What about the ones we killed? The adults running that place?”

My expression goes cold, predatory. I can’t help it—it’s what I become when I think about the people who choose to torture children for money. “They knew exactly what they were doing. Every single one of them made a conscious choice to torture kids for a paycheck.”

“How many more facilities?” she asks.

“Ezra thinks there are at least fifteen active sites in North America alone. Maybe more internationally.” My jaw tightens. “We’ll burn them all down. Every single one.”

“And save every child we can,” she adds.

“Every single one.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, staring out at the highway. “I’m terrified,” she admits. “Of bringing a child into a world where Prague, Oklahoma can exist. Where almost forty children can be tortured in secret while everyone else just… goes on with their lives.”

I don’t offer false comfort. Instead, I tell her things I’ve never shared with anyone—details about the program, about watching other children die during conditioning. About the subjects who killed themselves years later because the damage went too deep. About the ones who didn’t make it out with us during the escape.

“But we did make it out,” I say finally. “And we turned our abuse into retribution, vengeance meted out for each and every child. We hunt them now. We save the ones who can be saved.”

She leans against my shoulder. “Do you think we’ll be good parents? If I am pregnant?”

The question hits me harder than I expected. I think about Jenna with that six-year-old girl, the gentleness in her voice, the fierce protectiveness in her eyes when the doctor found evidence of abuse. I think about her sitting through that medical exam just so a traumatized child wouldn’t be alone.

“You’ll be an incredible mother,” I tell her honestly. “You already were today—to kids who weren’t even yours.”

“And you?”

I consider it. “I’ll probably fuck it up sometimes. I don’t know how to be gentle without conscious effort. But I’ll die before I let anyone hurt our child the way we were hurt.”

She nods, satisfied with that answer. Because she understands—being a good parent isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being willing to learn, to change, to put your child’s safety above everything else.

We drive home in comfortable silence, both lost in our own thoughts. When we reach the outskirts of Chicago, Jenna’s phone buzzes with updates from the safe houses. The seven-year-old girl is finally sleeping peacefully. The boy who wouldn’t talk has started whispering to one of the teenage survivors. The thirteen-year-old who recognized Lucien is eating solid food for the first time since her extraction.

Thirty-seven children are beginning to heal.

“We should go home,” I say quietly.

Home. Back to The Nexus, to my brothers, to our life. Back to find out if we’re bringing our own child into a world we’re actively trying to make safer, one facility at a time.

Jenna reaches over and takes my hand. “Ready?”

I realize I am. Ready to face whatever comes next—more facilities to destroy, more children to save, more monsters to hunt.