It was the quietest they'd ever been.
The subway safehouse groaned with age—pipes rattling overhead, the faint hum of fluorescent lights flickering like ghosts trying to warn them.
Neither spoke.
Not yet.
They'd lived a thousand lifetimes in the last hour—flames and bullets, mercy and madness—and for the first time in forever… there was no noise. No threats. No plans.
Just the throb of survival, and the weight of a thousand unsaid things.
Lilly shifted, her body aching, stitched up and pale, but her eyes landed on Sam—haunted, grateful, broken.
Sam leaned down, pressing her forehead to Lilly's. Just breathing her in. Holding her in the silence, trying not to shatter under the weight of everything that almost ended.
Then Lilly's fingers moved, brushing Sam's wrist.
"What the name?" she whispered again.
And this time… Sam couldn't pretend she didn't hear it.
Slowly, Sam pulled the metal plate from her pocket. Bloodstained. Scratched. Barely legible. The engraving burned under her thumb.
She stared at it like it might bite her.
Or save her.
Lilly blinked up at her, eyes widening when she saw it. "You read it already?"
"No," Sam said softly.
"Why?"
Sam then swallowed and said, "Because once I do… everything changes."
Lilly tried to sit up, winced, and fell back again. "Then let it."
Sam hesitated.
The name gleamed in the low light.
And then she read it.
Out loud.
One word.
One name.
Carved into the metal like a curse.
"Ava."
Lilly went still.
Stone. Ice. Silence.
"No," she breathed.
Sam's face cracked. "Lilly…"
"She's supposed to be dead," Lilly said, voice shaking. "She died three years ago."
We saw her on the screen but i didn't believe it but-
Sam shook her head. "Then someone's lying. Because the name was marked with an active asset code."
Lilly sat bolt upright, ripping stitches in the process. Didn't even notice. Blood bloomed again under her shirt.
"You don't know what you've done," she whispered.
Sam reached for her, but Lilly backed away.
"She was my handler, Sam. My first. The one who trained me when I was still bleeding innocence and thinking I was too broken to save."
"You said she died How"
"In the Havana mission"
"She died. I saw her body."
Sam's voice dropped to a whisper. "Then why is her name still in the system?"
Lilly didn't answer.
Couldn't.
Her hands shook so hard she dropped the plate. It clattered to the floor between them.
And in that horrible, yawning silence, Lilly said the words Sam didn't want to hear.
"She's alive."
Sam froze. "What?"
Lilly's eyes—so full of terror, fury, and something else Sam couldn't name—met hers.
"If Ava's alive," she whispered, "then we've been playing someone else's game from the very start."