Page 136 of The Atom Between Us

I pocket the crumpled note—my proof, my last chance—and slip into the hallway, shutting the door behind me.

The adrenaline does its job. I move fast, letting muscle memory take over...

I turn the next corner and nearly run into Rosie...

She sees my face and the half-tucked shirt and laughs. “Rough night, Captain?”

“Where’s Maven?” I don’t wait for an answer. I already know. I push past her...

Rosie follows, not even pretending to be subtle. “What’s the rush?”

“Dee’s gone,” I say, over my shoulder. “She left a note.”

Rosie’s cup lowers by an inch. “She was supposed to wait for all of us, stick to the plan we laid out,” I say, my voice tight.

Rosie shrugs. “You know Doc. She’s never met a protocol she wouldn’t break, but she always knows what she’s doing. Im sure she’ll be fine.”

This isn’t about protocol. This is about guilt. I slam my fist on the concrete wall, hard enough to sting and draw blood. She thinks she played a role in the experiments. She thinks she has to pay the price so I don’t have to. Well she’s fucking wrong.

Maven’s planning room is at the end of the hall. I don’t bother knocking. The door isn’t even closed. Inside, Maven is hunched over a table littered with printouts and loose circuits...

“She did it, didn’t she?” Maven says, reading my face in an instant, their eyes already glittering with fury. “The Sphere just kicked an error log. Someone broke protocol and accessed the core directory. Tell me that wasn’t Diana.”

I toss the note onto the table. “It was.”

Maven studies the crumpled paper, then nods and gestures for me to sit.

I don’t. My hands are already finding and checking my sidearm.

Maven turns to Rosie, who’s already leaning against the frame. “Get the others. Council wants a full meet, we do it in ten. No delays.”

Rosie nods, gone in a flash.

“Ten minutes is ten minutes too long,” I snarl, already halfway to the armory. “Tell them to make it fucking quicker. I’ll go on my own if they lag. I don’t give a shit about the team; I just want to find Diana.”

Maven waits until the footsteps fade, then leans in. “What’s your plan, Captain? And make it honest.”

My moral calculus is brutally simple: The Zone can burn, but she can’t die.

“She is the mission, Maven. The Sphere was cracked. She wouldn’t have risked leaving unless she had the solution in her pocket. It’s an assumption, but a safe one: she has the virus. I will break any rule, I will sacrifice any team, I will start a fucking war right here in the Sanctuary if it means I get her back before she sacrifices herself.”

Maven’s lips curl, almost a smile. “Sure. It’s just the mission, right?”

I don’t answer. The rage is hot enough to burn, but underneath it is something cold. The old fear, the one that says you’re never enough.

“We’ll need every asset,” I say, voice steady. “Every runner, every patch of network we control. I need a clean path to the Node, and I need a team that will put her safety over the mission parameters.”

Maven nods. “Already in play. She’s smarter than us,” they say, almost gentle.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “She’s alone. And she thinks she deserves to be.”

Maven reaches for the intercom. “Full alert,” they say. “All nodes and all runners. Priority intercept on Diana — Authority will try to lock the node and seal the tunnels if they smell sabotage.”They pause, then add: “Secondary: prep the East tunnel. We may need to move.”

I leave the room before I can say something I’ll regret.

In the armory, Rosie is already laying out hardware...

She looks at me, then at the mess of gear. “You want me to go non-lethal?”