There was a storm outside, but it was nothing compared to the one in my chest.
I didn't sleep.
I sat cross-legged on the edge of the metal-frame bed, staring at the file Kylen gave me. Every few minutes I told myself not to open it.
I opened it anyway.
More surveillance photos. Names. Maps. Coordinates.
Faces I didn't recognize but apparently had been watching me for years. One was a girl in a red coat I remembered passing outside a bookstore last month. Another, the old man who always bought coffee at the same time I did every Thursday.
They weren't coincidences.
> I'd been monitored. Managed. Tracked.
And now… unleashed?
I wasn't sure.
A knock tapped lightly at the door.
I tensed.
> "It's Vexa," she said. "I brought answers."
I opened the door slowly. She walked in like she owned the floor beneath her feet.
She sat. Didn't wait for permission.
> "What I'm about to tell you can't be unread, undone, or unknowledged. You want in, or you want out?"
> "I was in the moment my mother died," I said.
Vexa nodded once.
> "Then let's burn the veil."
She opened a folder of her own. Inside were five names. Five factions.
> "Your blood gives you access to Dominion Protocol," she said. "That means whoever controls you… controls global defense systems, rogue nuclear networks, private armies, and two dozen dormant black ops projects your government pretends don't exist."
> "What does that have to do with me?"
> "Your mother used to be one of them," she said. "A ghost operative. She defected when she realized what they were building."
> "What were they building?"
> "Something worse than an empire. Something permanent."
Vexa leaned closer.
> "They called it The Silent Order. A reset. One global chain of command. No governments. No borders. Just one pulse of power. Controlled by a code. Buried in blood. Your blood."
I felt cold all over again.
> "They want to use me."
> "They want to own you."
> "And if they can't?"
> "They'll gut you open and extract it manually."
I swallowed hard.
> "So what do we do?"
Vexa stood and walked to the reinforced wall. Behind a metal plate, she entered a passcode and unlocked a hidden vault.
Inside: files, weapons, and something that looked like it came from another century or another war.
> "We train," she said. "We turn you into what they fear most. A Morgan who isn't running."
> "And then?"
> "Then we hit back."
Kylen entered then, jaw tense.
> "They're already closing in. We have 72 hours max before your face is on every kill screen from Russia to Morocco."
> "What do they think I'll do?" I asked.
> "Die," he said simply. "Or surrender."
I looked between them.
And something inside me snapped.
Not like a thread tearing.
More like a weapon clicking into place.
> "Then we disappoint them."
That night, I didn't cry.
I didn't tremble.
I picked up a weapon for the first time and didn't feel like it didn't belong in my hands.
Vexa watched me.
> "She's ready," she said.
> "No," Kylen replied. "She's still kind."
> "That won't last," Vexa said. "They'll kill it out of her."
> "Then we kill first," I said.
Neither Vexa nor Kylen replied.
They just watched me like something had cracked open in front of them, and they weren't sure if it was a girl or a weapon standing there now.
I didn't flinch.
Didn't apologize for what I said either.
Because I meant it.
Training started before dawn.
Vexa woke me with cold water to the face.
> "Your enemies don't knock politely. Neither do I."
No stretching. No warm-up. Just a blade in my hand and the order to attack her.
She dodged every swing like I was moving underwater.
Then disarmed me in less than a minute.
> "You fight like someone who thinks mercy will save her."
> "You don't know me," I growled.
> "I don't need to. I know your blood. And I know how they'll come for it."
She threw the knife at me again. I caught it this time.
Something in her eyes flickered; approval, maybe.
But she didn't show it.
By noon, my arms felt like lead and my legs wouldn't stop trembling.
Kylen brought me water and silence.
He was watching. Always watching.
Finally, I snapped.
> "What? You think I can't handle this?"
He shook his head.
> "I'm wondering if I should tell you the truth. The whole truth."
> "You mean there's more?"
He leaned against the wall.
> "They weren't just tracking you."
> "Then who?"
> "Every Morgan ever born. Anyone with your blood. The Order either recruited them or erased them."
He stepped closer.
> "And Rhea… you're the last one left."
My stomach turned.
> "So that's why they want me alive."
> "Alive… or opened on a steel table."
The sun dipped low over the safehouse.
Outside the window, a black car passed once. Slowly.
Kylen noticed it too.
> "We're out of time."
> "What do you mean?"
> "They found us. We move at dawn."
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I sat by the window, watching shadows shift across the gravel road, listening for every sound that didn't belong.
I wasn't afraid.
I was awake.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't feel powerless.
I felt sharp.
Vexa handed me a case before lights-out.
Inside: A custom-calibrated handgun. Black steel. Laser-engraved on the grip: "MORGAN" in blood-red letters.
> "It belonged to your mother."
> "She used this?"
> "Only once."
> "Who did she kill?"
Vexa's lips curled into something between a smile and a scar.
> "The man who tried to own her."
I held the gun in my hand.
It didn't feel foreign.
It felt like home.
I stood in front of the mirror just before midnight.
Looking at myself.
At the blade marks on my arm.
The bruises blooming across my ribs.
The wild fire building behind my eyes.
> "They made me into this," I whispered.
> "Now they'll pay for it."
But in the silence after those words, something inside me shifted again. Not rage this time.
Something deeper.
Older.
A stillness I didn't recognize.
Like… maybe this was who I had always been. And everything else, the pretending, the surviving, the silence was just a mask I'd inherited from a woman who died trying to outrun her past.
No more masks.
No more silence.
I sat down and pulled the flash drive from the hidden pocket in my jacket.
Plugged it back in. Opened the video again.
Watched her face.
My mother.
I paused it and stared into her eyes.
Not soft.
Not gentle.
Strategic. Wild. Almost dangerous.
I whispered, "What were you fighting, Mom?"
And the longer I looked, the more I realized....
She hadn't recorded that message as a goodbye.
She'd recorded it as a warning.
> You were never ordinary.
That wasn't comfort.
It was a command.
There was more in the Black File than we'd realized.
Buried beneath code: encrypted voice messages.
Audio logs.
One of them dated the night before she died.
I clicked play.
> "They're moving faster than expected. I burned three aliases today. Kylen's location is still compromised, but he's safe… for now. Rhea has no idea. I had to let her believe I was just her mother. Not a ghost. Not a weapon. Not… this."
My throat closed.
> "If anything happens, if I'm gone, then let her choose her path. But if she chooses war…"
A pause.
> "Then let them remember exactly why they buried me."
I played it again.
And again.
Each time it sank deeper.
Wrapped itself around my ribs like armor.
This wasn't just my bloodline.
It was my inheritance.
> Pain. Power. War. Choice.
At 3:00 a.m., Kylen knocked softly and stepped inside.
He looked at me like he was afraid of what I'd become overnight.
> "Couldn't sleep?"
> "Didn't want to."
He sat across from me, eyes scanning my face like he was trying to find our mother in my features.
> "You look like her," he said softly.
> "That's what they said the day she died," I replied.
He looked down.
> "I was the distraction. You were the endgame. She never told me how much she buried in you. I didn't understand until now."
I closed the laptop and met his eyes.
> "What's Dominion really capable of, Kylen?"
> "Everything," he said. "Data control. Bioweapon commands. Entire blackout grids in fifteen seconds. If someone activates it without restriction…"
> "What happens?"
> "Governments fall. Economies collapse. Empires burn in a day."
We both sat in silence.
I could hear the wind clawing against the safehouse walls.
> "We leave tonight," he said. "We have a route through Novec. Vexa's prepping the car. Once we hit the eastern border, we go dark."
> "And after that?"
> "We infiltrate the Order. One operative at a time. You won't just be carrying the code anymore."
> "What will I be?"
He stared at me.
> "Their reckoning."
Before dawn, Vexa handed me a map, a new identity chip, and a dagger I recognized from my nightmares.
I didn't ask where she got it.
She said, "Your first kill will haunt you. But your second? That's when it gets easier. Be careful what kind of killer you become."
I strapped it to my thigh without blinking.
The SUV was running by 4:00 a.m.
The farmhouse behind us was already rigged to explode.
I glanced at it through the window one last time, the place where I'd buried the last pieces of my innocence.
Kylen drove. Vexa rode up front.
I stayed in the back, watching shadows streak past the road. My mother's voice still playing in my head.
> Let them remember exactly why they buried me.
I whispered under my breath:
> "They should've buried me with her.
Because now I'm what's left."
The file had one last message.
One that hadn't unlocked until I viewed the others.
My mother's voice again, this time softer.
> "If you're hearing this, baby, you survived. But surviving was never the goal, was it? You were meant to rise. Burn the script they wrote for you. And if you must kill… make sure they feel it."
That was the last time I cried.
Not out of grief.
But because I finally understood who I was.