Page 74 of Tag
“She didn’t say,” I murmured, staring down at the drive. “But I think she’s the reason we’re here.”
The girl clung to my side, eyes locked behind us. “He said... if I ran... he’d come back. He said someone worse than him is coming. I grabbed the drive when I ran out.
Tag looked at me, jaw tight. “Graves isn’t the puppet master anymore.”
I nodded. “He’s the puppet.”
70
Tag
She wouldn’t speak.
Not even after we got her into the safehouse and wrapped her in a blanket. Not when Aponi gave her warm tea. Not when I crouched beside her and asked her name.
She just sat there on the couch, curled into herself, eyes flicking between every exit like she was waiting for someone to break in and take her back.
“She’s been trained to keep quiet,” Aponi whispered to me. “Or threatened.”
We hadn’t plugged the drive it in yet. We were waiting on Faron to finish sweeping it for malware.
“Let me try,” Aponi said.
She eased down onto the edge of the couch, close but not touching. “You’re safe here, okay? I promise. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
The girl blinked slowly. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
Aponi gave her a small smile. “My name’s Aponi. This big guy over there? He’s Tag. He may look scary, but he’s actually abig softie who drinks hot cocoa and listens to jazz when no one’s watching.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I do not.”
The girl’s mouth twitched—almost a smile.
“You don’t have to tell us anything yet,” Aponi continued. “But you gave us that flash drive for a reason. If someone’s in danger, we can help.”
The girl stared at her hands. “He said... he said if I ran, they'd kill the others.”
Aponi’s voice went soft. “Others?”
She nodded. “Seven of us. Girls. He had us in different places. Some were locked up. I got out. The others... they didn’t.”
My pulse pounded.
“How long were you with him?” I asked gently.
“Too long,” she whispered. “He said someone was coming to take over. Worse than him. Said I was a loose end. Said they’d make me disappear.”
Faron stepped in, holding up the flash drive. “It’s clean. I cloned it, ran it through a filter. You’ll want to see this.”
We followed him into the ops room. He plugged it in and up popped dozens of files—photos, audio clips, PDFs, blueprints.
But it was the folder labeled“Rec Center”that chilled me.
Aponi’s face. Her schedule. The list of children she worked with. A set of images taken from inside her home. Another from the park two blocks away. One of her car.
Aponi stared at the screen. “He’s been planning something.”
“No,” Faron said, voice grim. “This isn’t planning. This is staging.”
