The Time We Have is measured in hours now.
Victoria stands in the doorway of her apartment, looking at the destruction that has been wrought in her absence. The place has been torn apart, every drawer opened, every closet emptied, every piece of furniture moved and examined and discarded. They were looking for something, she knows. They were looking for the evidence that she had hidden, the proof that would bring down everything they had built.
They did not find it. She had moved it days ago, when she first started to suspect that her enemies were closer than she had realized. The evidence was safe, distributed across multiple locations, protected by the kind of security that she had spent her entire career learning to circumvent.
But they would try again. They would come for her, for the evidence, for the story that she was about to break. And she had to be ready.
The call comes at midnight. The voice is familiar, a voice she has heard many times in the past weeks, a voice that belongs to someone who has been guiding her through the labyrinth of conspiracy and betrayal.
“It’s time,” the voice says. “The story breaks tomorrow. All of it, everything, the whole network laid bare. But there’s one more thing you need to know before it happens.”
“Tell me.”
“Your mother didn’t die in a car accident. She was murdered by the network, by people who are still alive and still powerful and still doing exactly what they have always done. She was murdered because she was about to expose them, and you are about to do the same thing. But this time, Victoria, you’re not alone. This time, the truth is stronger than they are.”
The line goes dead, and Victoria stands in her destroyed apartment and thinks about her mother. About the woman who had worked in secret for years, who had gathered evidence and built cases and never stopped fighting even when it cost her everything. About the woman who had loved her and protected her and left behind a legacy that was about to change the world.
She thinks about Eleanor, gone now, possibly dead, possibly just hidden until the time was right to reappear. She thinks about Sebastian, missing but not forgotten, his fate tangled up in the same conspiracy that had claimed so many others. She thinks about Maren Blackwood, the ghost in the machine, the man who had been waiting for exactly this moment for longer than she could imagine.
And she thinks about herself. About the woman she has become, the work she has done, the choices she has made. She is not her mother, but she carries her mother’s mission. She is not a hero, but she is about to do something heroic.
The time they have is limited. The time they have is all they need.
Tomorrow, the truth comes out. And nothing will ever be the same.