Chapter 12
title: "Chapter 12" wordCount: 2295
I couldn't move.
My father's face stared down at me through the smoke and shattered glass, older than I remembered, scarred in places that hadn't been scarred before, but unmistakably him. The same crooked nose broken twice. The same gray eyes that looked through problems instead of at them. The same way he tilted his head when examining something broken.
"Get up." His voice was rougher than I remembered. Smoke damage, maybe. Or years of not using it to talk to a son who thought he was dead.
My legs didn't work. The restraints were off but my body had forgotten how to stand. Kess was screaming something behind me, words that didn't form into meaning through the ringing in my ears.
He grabbed my arm. Pulled. I stumbled forward and my knees hit gravel and broken glass and I was standing, somehow, his hand still gripping my bicep hard enough to leave marks.
"We have thirty seconds before the backup unit arrives." He wasn't looking at me. Was scanning the road, the tree line, the burning wreckage of the transport vehicle. "Maybe less."
"You're dead." The words came out flat. Wrong. Like I was reading them off a card.
"Clearly not." He released my arm. Moved past me toward the wreckage. Toward Kess.
I turned. Watched him crouch beside her, his hands moving with the same efficiency I remembered from a thousand repair jobs, checking her pupils, her pulse, the way her left arm was bent at an angle that made my stomach twist.
"Dislocated shoulder," he said. "She'll live."
Kess's eyes were wide, tracking between him and me and the dead driver still slumped in the front seat. "Who the fuck is this guy?"
"Language," my father said absently, the same way he used to when I was twelve and dropped a wrench on my foot.
"That's not an answer." Her voice was shaking but she was still talking, still asking questions, still being Kess. "Remy, who is this?"
My mouth opened. Closed. The words were there but they wouldn't come out because saying them would make them real and I wasn't ready for them to be real.
My father stood. Wiped his hands on his jacket, leaving dark smears that could have been grease or blood. "We're leaving. Both of you. Now."
"Where's Thorne?" I managed. My voice sounded like someone else's.
"Dead or dying. The thermal lance went through his seat too." He said it the way he used to say 'the compressor's shot' or 'the welds won't hold.' Just a fact. Just another broken thing. "Doesn't matter. His people will be here soon and they won't be interested in conversation."
Kess tried to stand. Gasped. Sat back down hard. "My shoulder—"
"Will hurt worse if you're dead." He moved toward her again, faster this time. "I'm going to reset it. This will be unpleasant."
"Wait—" she started.
He didn't wait. Grabbed her arm, rotated, pulled, and something made a sound like a branch snapping. Kess's scream cut through the ringing in my ears and suddenly I could move again, was moving, was between them with my hands up.
"Don't touch her."
My father looked at me. Really looked at me, for the first time since pulling me from the wreckage. His expression didn't change. "Her shoulder was dislocated. Now it's not. You're welcome."
"You don't get to—" I stopped. Started again. "You don't get to show up and start giving orders."
"Someone has to." He stepped around me. Headed for the tree line. "Vehicle's a quarter mile north. We walk fast, we make it before the drones arrive. We don't, this conversation becomes academic."
He was already walking. Not looking back. Like he knew we'd follow.
Kess was on her feet, cradling her left arm, her face pale but her jaw set. "Remy. We should probably—"
"I know." The words tasted like copper. Like blood. "Here's the thing. I don't trust him."
"Yeah, well, I don't trust the people who just tried to arrest us either, so maybe we take our chances with the guy who can punch holes through armored vehicles?" She was already moving, following him, limping slightly on her right leg.
I looked back at the wreckage. At Thorne's body, or what I could see of it through the shattered windshield. At the driver, definitely dead, his blood painting the dashboard in patterns that looked almost deliberate.
Then I followed.
The vehicle was a cargo hauler, old model, the kind that ran on combustion instead of System power cells. Illegal in most districts. Untraceable in all of them.
My father opened the back doors. Gestured. "In."
"Where are we going?" Kess asked.
"Somewhere else." He was already climbing into the driver's seat. "That's all you need to know right now."
I stayed on the ground. Kess was already halfway into the cargo bay, moving with the kind of trust I didn't have, couldn't have, wouldn't let myself have.
"Get in, Remy." My father's voice came through the open driver's window. Still not looking at me. "Or stay here and explain to Thorne's people why you're standing next to their dead colleagues. Your choice."
"It's the only choice you've given me." My hands were shaking. I shoved them in my pockets. "Since you showed up. Since you—" The words stuck. "Since you came back from being dead."
The engine started. Rough idle, cylinder three misfiring. Needed new plugs. Maybe new rings.
"I was never dead," he said. "Just gone. There's a difference."
"Not to me there wasn't."
He turned then. Finally. Looked at me through the window with those gray eyes that saw through everything. "I know. Get in anyway."
Something in his voice made my legs move. Made me climb into the cargo bay next to Kess, who was sitting with her back against the wall, her shoulder clearly hurting but her eyes alert, watching everything.
The doors slammed shut. Locked from the outside.
Darkness. Complete. The kind that pressed against your eyes.
"Well," Kess said. "This is either a rescue or a kidnapping and I'm honestly not sure which."
The vehicle lurched forward. Accelerated. The engine noise was loud enough to make conversation difficult but not impossible.
"He's my father," I said. The words came out easier in the dark. "Was my father. Is my father. I don't know the right tense."
"The guy who died when you were sixteen?" Her voice was careful. The way you'd talk to someone standing on a ledge.
"He didn't die. Apparently." My back was against the wall, my knees pulled up, my hands still shaking. "He just left. And let me think he was dead. For seven years."
"That's—" She stopped. Started again. "That's really fucked up, Remy."
"Yeah."
We sat in silence. The vehicle turned. Turned again. The suspension was shot, every bump translating directly into my spine.
"My mom left when I was eight," Kess said suddenly. "Just walked out one day. No note. No explanation. Just gone."
I turned toward her voice in the darkness. "You never mentioned that."
"You never mentioned your dad was maybe alive." She shifted. I heard her wince. "Guess we both have secrets."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because I didn't know. You knew and didn't tell me."
"I'm telling you now." Her voice was closer. She'd moved. Was sitting next to me, her shoulder touching mine. "Bet you a sandwich this is the weirdest day either of us has ever had."
Despite everything, I almost smiled. "You'd lose that bet."
"Yeah, probably." She was quiet for a moment. Then: "What are we going to do?"
"I don't know." The truth. The only truth I had. "The thermal dynamics are off."
"What?"
"Nothing. Something my dad used to say." Used to. Still did, apparently. "Means the situation doesn't make sense. Too many variables. Too much heat."
The vehicle slowed. Stopped. The engine cut off.
Footsteps. Coming around to the back.
The doors opened. Light flooded in, blinding after the darkness. My father stood silhouetted against it, a tool in his hand I didn't recognize. Something that hummed with power that felt wrong, felt System-adjacent but not quite System.
"Out," he said. "We're here."
"Where's here?" I didn't move.
"Somewhere Thorne's people won't find you. Somewhere we can talk." He stepped back. Waited.
Kess climbed out first. I followed, blinking against the light, trying to orient myself.
We were in a warehouse. Old industrial district, judging by the architecture. The kind of place that had been abandoned when the System made manufacturing obsolete, then repurposed by people who needed space the System didn't track.
The warehouse was full of equipment. Workbenches. Tools. Half-assembled devices that looked like they'd been pulled from a dozen different sources and cobbled together into something new. Something that shouldn't work but probably did.
"You've been busy," I said.
"Seven years is a long time." My father set the tool down on a nearby bench. Turned to face us properly. "Long enough to build something. Long enough to prepare."
"Prepare for what?" Kess asked.
He looked at her. Then at me. "For the day when the System decided my son was interesting enough to test. To evaluate. To potentially recruit or eliminate depending on how he performed."
The words hit like a physical thing. "You knew. About Thorne. About the arrest."
"I knew they were watching you. Have been for months. Since you started showing up on their scans as someone with potential." He moved to one of the workbenches. Started organizing tools with the same methodical precision I remembered. "I didn't know they'd move this fast. Didn't know they'd stage something this aggressive."
"But you were ready anyway." My voice was flat. "You were watching. Waiting. Following."
"Yes."
"For seven years."
"Yes."
"While I thought you were dead."
His hands stopped moving. "Yes."
Kess was looking between us, her expression unreadable. "Okay, so, not to interrupt this extremely tense family reunion, but maybe someone should explain what the actual fuck is happening? Because from where I'm standing, we just got fake-arrested by one shadowy organization, then violently rescued by another shadowy organization that happens to include Remy's supposedly-dead dad, and I would really like to know which side is trying to kill us and which side is just really bad at communication."
My father almost smiled. Almost. "I like her. She asks good questions."
"Don't." The word came out harder than I intended. "Don't act like you know anything about my life. About who I spend time with. You gave up that right when you—" I stopped. The words were too big. Too sharp. "When you left."
"I didn't leave." He turned to face me fully. "I was removed. Extracted. Taken by people who needed what I knew and didn't care about what I'd lose in the process."
"Bullshit." My hands were fists. "You could have sent a message. Could have let me know you were alive. Could have—"
"Could have gotten you killed." His voice was sharp now. Cutting. "Could have painted a target on your back that would have made Thorne's little test look like a friendly conversation. Could have brought down the same people who took me onto the son who had his father's skills and his father's potential and his father's extremely inconvenient knowledge about how the System actually works."
The warehouse was silent except for the hum of equipment and my own breathing, too fast, too shallow.
"What knowledge?" Kess asked quietly.
My father looked at her. Then at me. "The System isn't what people think it is. Isn't what the government says it is. Isn't even what most System users believe it is." He picked up a tool. One I recognized. One that had been in our garage when I was twelve. "It's not a gift. It's not evolution. It's not humanity's next step."
"Then what is it?" I asked.
He set the tool down. Walked to a covered object in the corner of the warehouse. Pulled the tarp off.
Underneath was a device. Massive. Complex. Built from components that looked System-made and components that looked handcrafted and components that looked like they shouldn't exist at all.
"It's a cage," he said. "And I've spent seven years building the key."
Kess moved closer to the device. Her eyes were wide. "Is that—"
"Don't touch it." My father's voice was sharp. "Not yet. Not until you understand what it does."
"What does it do?" I asked.
He looked at me. And for the first time since pulling me from the wreckage, I saw something in his expression that looked like the father I remembered. Something that looked like regret.
"It breaks people out," he said. "Or it kills them trying. The testing isn't conclusive yet."
The device hummed. A low sound. Growing louder.
"Dad," I said. "What did you do?"
"What I had to." He moved toward a control panel. "What someone had to. What—"
The warehouse doors exploded inward.
Figures in tactical gear poured through. Six. Eight. Ten. More behind them.
Thorne walked in last, his suit torn and bloody but his expression calm, measured, exactly the same as it had been in the transport vehicle before the thermal lance punched through his seat.
"Hello, Marcus," he said to my father. "It has been a while."
My father's hand was on a switch. "Not long enough."
"We have decided," Thorne said slowly, "that your son is more valuable than we initially assessed. We have also decided that you are more dangerous than we initially assessed. These two facts create an interesting problem."
"Here's the thing," my father said. "I don't care about your problems."
He flipped the switch.
The device screamed to life, and the world turned inside out, and I saw—