Chapter 224: 225 | He Knows. Abort.
I stopped. Looked back.
He was standing in the center of the arena. Golden light still flickering around him. The hero of a story that had gotten considerably more complicated since I’d shown up.
"Whatever you are." He said it slowly. Choosing words carefully. "Whatever you’re hiding. It’s going to come out eventually. And when it does, you’re going to need allies."
"I have allies."
"You have women who share your bed." His voice wasn’t cruel. Just honest. "That’s not the same thing."
He wasn’t wrong.
The women in my life had chosen to stand beside me despite knowing what I was. Mera and Cheon and Noel and Aurora and Laurana. Even Usagi, who was still figuring out what she wanted from this arrangement. They were loyal and brilliant and dangerous and mine in ways that mattered more than any formal alliance.
But Nolan was talking about something different.
Public allies. Professional connections. The kind of people who could vouch for you when the system started asking questions and your personal life suddenly became everyone’s business.
"I’ll think about it."
"Do that."
I left the arena.
The campus was bustling with students moving between classes. Conversations and laughter and the constant background hum of young people pretending the world wasn’t as complicated as it actually was. I walked through them like a ghost. Present but not participating.
My phone buzzed.
Mera: meeting started. noel is in. vivian looks nervous.
Cheon: monitoring all channels. no unusual activity detected.
Noel: she’s lying about something. i can tell. getting specifics.
Three messages from three women running an operation I’d designed and couldn’t participate in. I hated being on the sidelines. Hated trusting other people to handle things I wanted to handle myself.
But that was the point, wasn’t it?
I couldn’t do this alone. The system had been telling me that since I arrived. The quest required bonds. Real connections with real people who chose to stand with me because they wanted to, not because I’d manipulated them into position.
Another buzz.
Aurora: i told nolan. he took it better than expected. can we talk later?
I stared at that message for a long moment.
She’d told him. Before I had the chance to prepare her. Before we could coordinate our stories or establish a unified narrative.
She’d just walked up to her boyfriend of four months and told him the truth.
Brave.
Reckless.
So completely Aurora that I couldn’t even be upset about it.
Later. Penthouse. After my meeting with Reeves.
Her response came immediately.
i’ll bring food.
I put my phone away.
Kept walking.
The sun was past its peak now. Afternoon light casting long shadows across the campus pathways. Three weeks until the exhibition match. Three weeks until the scouts arrived and my entire future hinged on a performance I wasn’t sure I could deliver.
Three weeks to become undeniable.
Laurana’s words echoed in my head. The politics of being too valuable to touch. The strategy of building so much public support that moving against me became politically expensive.
It could work.
Or it could spectacularly fail and leave me exposed to an NEA investigation while my father’s surveillance team documented every mistake I made.
I found myself at the waterfront. The same stretch of shore where I’d walked earlier that morning. Boats bobbing in the harbor. Tourists taking photos. The eternal motion of a city that never really slept.
Somewhere across the water, Noel was sitting in a café with my sister. Feeding her carefully constructed lies designed to reveal whether Vivian was ally or enemy. Playing a game of corporate chess with stakes neither of them fully controlled.
Somewhere behind me, Mera was shadowed in the In-Between. Ready to extract Noel at the first sign of trouble. Her portals coiled and waiting like springs.
Somewhere in the penthouse, Cheon was monitoring every frequency and analyzing every scrap of data for patterns that might predict what came next.
And I was here.
Standing at the edge of the water.
Waiting.
The system had been quiet all morning. No commentary. No observations about my relationship progress or strategic decisions. Just silence where its voice usually lived.
I didn’t trust the silence.
The system always had opinions. About my choices. About my relationships. About the increasingly complicated web of alliances and obligations I was building. Its absence felt deliberate. Like it was waiting for something.
Or watching for something.
My phone buzzed again.
Noel: vivian just mentioned the blood samples. she knows about the anomalous signatures. she’s offering to help delay the next draw. this matches what she told you before.
Consistent.
Either Vivian was genuinely trying to help and had simply met with Marcus Wei for reasons unrelated to betraying me.
Or she was smart enough to maintain consistent cover stories across multiple interactions with different sources.
The D’Angelo family had always been good at playing long games.
Another buzz.
Mera: something’s wrong. vivian’s heartbeat spiked. she’s looking at her phone.
Then:
Noel: she just got a text. expression changed. asking to reschedule our meeting for tomorrow.
Then:
Cheon: intercepted message to vivian’s phone. origin: marcus wei. content: "he knows. abort."
My blood went cold.
He knows.
My father knew about the meeting. Knew that Noel was there. Knew that we were running intelligence operations against his intelligence operations.
Which meant someone had told him.
Which meant the photographs of Vivian meeting with Marcus Wei weren’t coincidence or innocent encounter.
They were documentation.
Vivian had been compromised from the start.
I was already running before I finished processing. Fingers flying across my phone.
Mera. Extract now. Pull Noel out immediately.
Her response came three seconds later.
Already moving. Portal opening. She’s through.
I stopped running. Braced myself against a railing. Breathing hard.
Safe.
Noel was safe.
Mera had gotten her out before whatever trap my father had prepared could spring.
My phone rang. Mera’s number.
"She’s here." Mera’s voice was tight. Controlled. "We’re at the penthouse. Cheon is running a full security sweep. Noel is shaking but physically fine."
"Vivian?"
"Stayed at the café. Looking confused. Either she’s a very good actress or she genuinely didn’t know what was about to happen."
"The message said ’abort.’ That implies she was part of something that needed aborting."
"Or it implies someone was using her phone to receive operational updates without her knowledge." Mera paused. "Rome. I don’t think she knew."
"You don’t know that."
"No. I don’t." Her voice softened. "But I saw her face when that message came through. She looked scared. Not caught. Scared. Like someone who just realized they’re in deeper than they understood."
I closed my eyes. Tried to think.
Vivian was either a willing participant in my father’s surveillance operation or an unwitting tool being used without her knowledge. Both options were dangerous. Both options changed the strategic landscape in ways I needed to understand before making my next move.
"Keep Noel safe. I’m heading back."
"Rome."
"What?"
"The message said ’he knows.’ That means your father knows we were running counter-intelligence." Her voice dropped. "He’s going to escalate. Whatever he was planning to do eventually? He’s going to do it sooner now."
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