Chapter 66: Echoes of Truth
The Academy's medical wing materializes through midnight shadows, Old Ming's noodle shop already a lifetime away. Each step feels like marching toward execution as Nailah's voice echoes in his mind: Trust your instincts.
But his instincts are drowning in Sarah's laugh from hours ago, in Lucas's desperate warning, in memories of dead children with precisely calibrated neural ports.
His nanobots scream warning before his conscious mind catches up. The sterile corridors stretch endless under flickering quantum lights as memories flood his enhanced consciousness: Sarah stitching him up after Rivera, her lullabies in Caribbean Spanish weaving through his neural pathways. Her laugh during rooftop picnics, the quantum-enhanced grapes arcing through air she'd helped him calibrate to catch.
*"Steady those hands, soldier."*
The memory crashes into Kasper with physical force. Sarah's fingers dancing across his neural ports that first night in med bay, their touch expert and sure. Calibrating to exactly 47.3 MHz - the frequency that would become theirs. The air had smelled of antiseptic and jasmine, her perfume cutting through medical sterility as she taught him to trust again after Mirage City.
*"Your aim is perfect. Always has been."* Her voice in memory, warm with pride. *"Just trust your instincts. Trust me."*
Now, three years later, the Academy's medical wing looms before him at midnight. His nanobots scream warning before his conscious mind catches up. The sterile corridors stretch endless under flickering quantum lights, each step feeling like marching to execution.
His neural comm buzzes with Lucas's third warning of the night:
*STAY AWAY FROM MED BAY*
*Intercepted transmission*
*Something's wrong with the frequencies*
He should have listened. But Sarah's urgent message about breakthrough evidence in Javier's case had overridden caution.
*Wrong.*
Everything feels wrong.
***
The recycled air burns his enhanced senses - not the familiar antiseptic-jasmine mix he's breathed through a thousand healing sessions. Not the comforting scent that meant Sarah was near, meant safety, meant home. This tastes metallic. Sharp. Like copper pennies on his tongue.
Like that morgue in Mirage City.
His stomach rolls violently. Cold sweat soaks through his Academy uniform as combat protocols engage against his will, mapping exits and threat assessments even as memories try to drown him:
• Sarah stitching him up after the Rivera mission, singing old lullabies in Caribbean Spanish while her neural connectors danced through his torn flesh
• Her laugh during rooftop picnics last week, throwing quantum-enhanced grapes for him to catch with enhanced reflexes she'd helped calibrate
• That first kiss in Cerro Alegre café, spilled quantum coffee burning his legs but her smile making the pain irrelevant
• Last month's dinner with his family, how naturally she fit, teaching Isabella about medical enhancements with such gentle patience
• The way she'd saved Lucas after the quantum core breach, never hesitating as radiation filled the lab, her hands steady as ever
*Stop.*
*Focus.*
His hands won't stop shaking.
His combat systems try calculating optimal firing solutions even though there's no enemy yet.
*No threat yet.*
*Please, let there be no threat.*
A sense of fear has Gallup Kasper he has to understand why she demanded to meet tonight, right after they'd found new evidence in Javier's case.
***
Sarah's workstation pulses that familiar quantum-blue, her scanner humming at their frequency - 47.3 MHz. Three years of healing, of trust, of love, all calibrated to that exact tone.
Bile rises as his neural ports tingle with muscle memory of her countless careful calibrations. Each point of connection remembering her touch.
"You came." Her smile is genuine - the same one that made him fall in love. The one that carried him through nightmares about Javier. "I wanted to show you something amazing. A new calibration technique for—"
"Level 7 medical protocols." His voice scrapes raw. The words taste like ash. "During Lucas's accident. Those override frequencies... they're military-grade. Restricted to Enhancement Division personnel only. The kind we found in those trafficking victims."
*No.*
*It can't be.*
*Not Sarah.*
Her smile slips. Just a microsecond.
His enhanced hearing catches her heartbeat accelerating from 72 to 89 BPM. Combat protocols flood his system while his heart screams denial.
*No. Please God, no.*
***
His trained mind assembles the pieces like bullets being loaded into a magazine:
• Her impossible surgical precision with military-grade enhancements
• Cross's encrypted files mentioning the Blackwood Protocol
• Costa del Sol "coincidences" - always on call for certain cases
• Those dead kids' neural ports showing familiar calibration patterns
• How she'd known exactly how to treat Javier's wounds...
• The way her scanner matched frequencies from classified ATA files
The world tilts sideways. He stumbles, catching himself on a med table as vertigo hits. Metal cold against his burning palms. Sweat drips down his spine as three years of memories fracture and reform with horrible new meaning.
Each remembered kiss now tastes like poison. Every gentle touch carries hidden purpose. All those nights in the med bay while she accessed restricted files...
"Found the source." Javier's final message burns through his neural pathways. "Not just gangs. It's—"
"Kasper?" She reaches for his neural port - the same touch that's healed him after every mission, every nightmare. Her fingers carrying that perfect frequency that's always meant safety. "You're trembling. Let me help. Your readings are—"
"Don't." The word tears from his throat. Combat training screams distance even as his body aches for her touch. His enhanced vision catches micro-expressions racing across her face - concern, fear, determination, and something else. Something ancient and terrible.
"Your hands." His voice cracks. "They never shake during surgery. Not even during Rodriguez's arterial bleed. Not during Lucas's quantum core breach. Not when we lost half the medical wing during the attack. Only—"
The words feel like glass in his throat.
"Only when you're lying."
Sarah's perfect mask finally cracks. The weight of purpose she's carried since childhood shows through - zealot's fire burning behind healer's eyes.
"The love was real." Raw pain bleeds through her voice. "Everything else - my family's research, Costa del Sol, the ATA... but loving you? That was true. Maybe the only true thing in all of this."
His enhanced hearing picks up multiple approaching heartbeats - six professionals, their cybernetic augments humming at ATA frequencies. Taking position with mechanical precision. The same frequencies he'd detected on those dead kids in Costa del Sol.
Nausea hits as memories realign themselves with brutal new context:
Her expert knowledge of his brother's wounds Her "lucky" timing at the autopsy The way she'd pulled strings for certain cases Three years of gentle lies wrapped in loving truth
His nanobots scream as Sarah's scanner shifts to unfamiliar patterns. The quantum particles in the air dance with frequencies that make his combat protocols surge to life.
"You have to understand." Desperate conviction fills her words. Her hands still reaching for him, still wanting to heal even as she prepares to destroy. "The system is rotting from within. The technological singularity is coming - the collapse of everything we know. The ATA sees what others refuse to face."
She steps closer. The jasmine scent of her perfume mixing with antiseptic - that combination that's always meant safety now turning his stomach.
"We're trying to save humanity from itself. Every enhanced child brings us closer to transcendence. To real freedom. Those kids in Costa del Sol - their sacrifices serve a greater purpose."
"They were children, Sarah." His voice breaks. Combat protocols scream termination while his heart bleeds memory. "Like Miguel. Remember him? The eight-year-old you saved last month? Was he just another sacrifice?"
Her scanner shifts to killing frequencies - a precise 82.6 MHz that his combat systems instantly recognize. But her eyes... God, her eyes still look at him with genuine love.
"The ATA found me when I was fourteen," she whispers. "After the Enhancement Division killed my brother for asking questions. They showed me the truth - about the singularity, about digital salvation. About what humanity could become."
The professional hitters are in position now. Their enhanced heartbeats creating a deadly rhythm through his neural sensors.
"I never meant to love you." Her voice cracks. "It wasn't part of the mission. But you were so... real. So genuine. I thought maybe you could understand. Could see what we're trying to build."
The quantum particles in the air shift as their weapons align. His aim perfect as always. Hers steady with practiced grace.
Their frequencies rise in terrible harmony:
82.6 MHz: Her scanner's killing tone 47.3 MHz: Their healing frequency, corrupted
"The ones who truly love," Sarah's voice breaks on his name, "are the ones who can make the hardest choices."
His enhanced vision catches every micro-expression crossing her face - love, determination, regret, purpose. All the things that made him fall for her. All the lies that will make him kill her.
The medical wing's pristine white walls are about to learn the price of trust.
Quantum light refracts through her tears, scattering memories across his enhanced vision:
Their first kiss Her hands healing him Every shared laugh Every gentle lie
Trust your instincts. Trust me.
Thunder echoed through the medical wing.