Chapter 74

**Calum POV**


This is the first time in hours they took off my blindfold. The underground blacksite is a labyrinthine fortress, carved deep into the bedrock. I look up absently at the flickering fluorescent lights that cast a sickly, yellowish glow, creating an atmosphere of perpetual twilight. Two men clad in full black SWAT gear with tactical vests and everything, drag me through the corridors. The air is thick with a sterile, metallic scent, mixed with a faint, acrid odor of disinfectant. The walls are reinforced concrete, cold and unyielding, lined with steel bars and surveillance cameras at every turn. Yeah, there is no way I’m escaping this.

Security checkpoints punctuate the hallways, manned by guards, their faces obscured by masks. Each checkpoint requires multiple forms of identification and biometric scans, ensuring only authorized personnel can proceed.

I am led through a series of heavy, reinforced doors, each one requiring a unique code to unlock.

The interrogation chamber itself is a stark, utilitarian room, devoid of any comfort. The walls are lined with padded soundproofing material, absorbing any cries or screams that might escape. In the center of the room stands a single metal chair, bolted to the floor, with restraints for the wrists, ankles, and neck. Overhead, a bright, unblinking light casts harsh shadows, illuminating every corner of the room. A table sits nearby, cluttered with an array of ominous tools and devices, each one meticulously arranged.

The guards secures me to the chair, ensuring I am immobile. Once I’m secured, a female inquisitor enters and when the guards leave, the door closes with a resounding thud. The woman is as stale and sterile as this room with straight, dull hair, dead eyes and colorless skin. She sits across from me with a file in hand, offering me an unsettling smile. She is what I imagine the first real-life humanoid robots will look like. She places the blank-faced file atop of the desk.

“My Taylor—”

“Calum,” I say impulsively. “No need for pleasantries.” My eyes signal at the pain-inducing instruments. “We both know where this leads.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” She leans forward to entwine her bony fingers on the steel surface of the heavy-duty table. “I don’t want it to be that way.”

“Then which way would you like it, darling?”

Her face remains impassive but her smile lengthens elastically. “What I wish for is transparency. What we want is to understand the events that unfolded prior to Gaza’s death.”

“Hadassah and I had nothing to do with that.” A harsh tug rattles the chains. I stare at the two-mirror when I say, “Hadassah and I hunt down criminals, we are not tied or affiliated to them.”

She nods understandably. “Okay, but the high-profile events that Hadassah attended arm-in-arm with Orian Moon.” She opens the file and slides out a couple of photographed shots. “It contradicts that claim.”

I slant forward to pursue pictures taken at a rooftop party, professional shots of them poised in front of a backdrop of an NGO. By his hand placement alone, he looks very comfortable with her and her with him.

“This proves that you are all dim-witted.” I pull away to straighten. “Hadassah has spent years during her personal time trying to nail Orian because you all failed to. This is obviously why Orian forced her to attend these parties, so it would cause this kind of confusion. He wants you to doubt her resolve and sell the narrative that she somehow switched sides. Obviously, if she was being kept hidden for all this time, her abduction would have been apparent.”

The instigator’s expression exposes no inclination to being neither swayed nor cynical.

“Then what is apparent, how did this begin?”

At first, my mind resists as I try to stretch my memories back far enough to embrace the genesis. “I won’t bore you with the granular details. But as you know controversy and conspiracies loomed over Zenith. The public adored its CEO and all of his philanthropic efforts. Hadassah was willing to go deeper than anyone would dare. Lionel Collins was her big break and her worst tragedy. This time, she was sanctioned to investigate him. She didn’t waste any time.”

The inquisitor nods responsively, encouraging the explanation.

“Everything unraveled because of a tip from one of her trusted sources about a meet. A gathering with Gaza, Orian Moon and other heavy hitters. We used that time to sneak Hadassah into his yacht—she was searching for evidence that tied him to Orian and their illicit alliance.”

“And she found it,” the inquisitor concludes. “The ledger. In your own words, what do you think it is?”

A clamor of alarms in my mind sends my senses scattering.

The inquisitor's eyes go translucent, a glaze glossed over her gaze in a way that all emotions, all that make us humans dissolve from her eyes. “Calum?” Her voice is stringent. “What is the ledger?”

I shrug helplessly. “I was only able to decode the information about Operation Marathon. I have no idea what else it is because everything else is heavily encrypted.”

She shakes her head reproachfully. “I thought we agreed to be transparent.”

“I am,” I say eagerly. “That was all I was able to decode before your people came in and raided the place, got me shot. And soon after, Orian Moon gutted me like a pig.”

A gleam glints in her eyes like a tale of triumph like she had sprung a trap to back me into astutely answering what they want to know most.

“What is the nexus between Orian Moon and the ledger? Why does he need Hadassah?”

My mouth falls open but nothing comes out.

“Calum?” she says with a chide in her monotone voice. “If you are uncooperative. We will be forced to brand you and Hadassah Moor as traitors. When she is apprehended, and she will be. Hadassah will live out her days in high-security maximum prison. And that is the best case scenario. If you value her life and freedom. I suggest you tell us everything you know.”

I free a tremulous breath. “The ledger is the nexus between Orian, Gaza and Hadassah. I think you’re smart enough to put the pieces together. If one bit of information was about a clandestine operation executed by your agency, I imagine it has nother classified state secrets that any criminal would kill for. That is all I know. Hadassah had the book and the last I know of it, she hid it away as her own insurance policy. She even hid it from me, so all the torture in the world won’t make me tell you something I don’t know.”

She concedes a nod and rises from her seat. She goes for the door and knocks twice. The door opens and she leaves and the two guards return. They unlock me and haul me to my feet as they lead me out of the interrogation room. We don’t go too far before one of them takes out a keycard to unlock a compact cell with sheer rock walls.

“Wait.” I start thrashing in their grip. “What are you doing? How long are you going to keep here for?”
The gate glides open and I throw myself back to make myself heavier, refusing to put in a cage. With joint effort, they hurl me inside and I crash on the ground, pain lancing through my gut, reverberating through me with a ripple that disorients me for several moments too long. My back arches against the ground, my hand pasted on my stomach, tears searing behind my eyes.

The gate locks back into place and the tall dark silhouettes disappear.

“Wait,” I murmur.

I clamber to my feet, heaving and huffing as I hobble to the clutch onto the bars, wilting against the reinforced maw.

“You can’t keep me in here!” I scream back, my words rebounding along the cavernous corridors. I release another deranged yell as I try to shake the bars with futile fervor. “You can’t keep me in here!”