Page 141 of Jax
Across the room, Stella stood with one hand braced on the table, the other on her hip, sleeves pushed to her elbows. She wasn’t absorbing the intelligence. She was memorizing it. Carrick pulled up the internal render and asked for sensory markers—sound, scent, texture. She didn’t hesitate. Her answers came fast and crisp, like memory lived in her bones.
“We’re estimating ten men,” Carrick said. “Two on perimeter patrol. One rotation. Sniper tower at the northwest corner, likely unmanned except during cargo windows. The rest will be inside. Surveillance is looped. Two-minute blind spot between resets.”
“That’s our entry window,” Niko said. “Tight, but doable.”
Bellamy stood then. Quietly. She moved to the edge of the projection and pointed to the hallway Stella had described earlier, one that had no architectural match in the official blueprints.
“What’s this?” she asked. “You said you heard water. What kind?”
Stella didn’t hesitate.
“Running. Constant. Like pipes. But high. Maybe overhead.”
“Second floor plumbing?” Sully asked.
“Could be,” Carrick said. “Or it’s being pumped. Reservoir system in one of the annexes, maybe. We’ll need to assume locked doors between levels. Possibly vertical access only.”
“I remember steel stairs,” Stella said. “Narrow. Loud. They echoed when someone climbed them.”
Carrick logged it. Another red mark. Another possible alert zone.
The air had shifted. Not toward fear, or even hope. Toward purpose. Each breath moved with focus, clean and exact, the kind that replaced sleep, replaced food, replaced softness withsomething sharp. We were etching bone into the plan now, the scaffolding of a mission clicking into place with quiet, surgical certainty.
And at the center stood the girl who had once been caged in that place. Not fragile. Not reclaimed. She was the one mapping the ruin.
It shifted mid-strategy. Not with a crash or sudden halt, but like a knot cinching quietly under the surface. A pressure. That thing you feel when silence is pregnant with something unspoken. The planning hadn’t stopped, routes still mapped, contingencies stacked, but every move felt a little thicker than before.
I sensed it before I saw it. Stella’s stance adjusting, her shoulders lifting, not tense, but resolute. She stepped forward without urgency, as if pulled by something larger than choice.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
No tilt in her voice. No breath of plea. Just a sentence placed like fact.
Sully froze mid-check of the bolt cutters. Bellamy straightened in her seat. Deacon shifted, just slightly. And Niko, steady at the board, didn’t look at her.
Not right away.
“No,” he said at last. Not loud. Not cruel. Just absolute.
Stella didn’t retreat. “You need someone who knows it from the inside. Someone who remembers the blind corners. The weight of the air. The places the map doesn’t account for.”
“That’s why we’re listening to you now,” Carrick said, still at the laptop. “That’s the role you’re already playing.”
She shook her head. “That’s the role you’re letting me play. Not the one I’m choosing.”
Niko turned to face her. “You think this is about choice?”
“I think it’s about risk,” she said. “And I think you’ve already decided I’m too much of one.”
He didn’t answer. Not right away. But the silence said enough.
She stepped closer to the table, bracing her palms on the wood. Her sleeves were pushed up, faint rope marks still etched into her skin, her body holding a memory she hadn’t set down. I caught the tremor in her fingers, not fear. Containment. The kind that built when you held something too long without letting it breathe.
“You’re not going,” Niko said again. “It’s not up for debate.”
“I’m not trying to run the op,” Stella said. “I’m not asking to carry a weapon, or breach a door. I’m asking to be there. To be present in the place that gutted my life.”
Her voice didn’t crack. If anything, it sharpened.
