The screen at the front of the conference room snaps over to a system-generated readout.
Reporting Participant: Yara Shelton
Subject: Wren Tanaka-Hollis
Evidence: suspected leak — chat transcripts
Exoneration window: 30 minutes
Jin stands up. "We just proved the screenshots are fake."
The electronic voice comes back.
Insufficient. Subject must additionally establish the reporter's subjective intent to fabricate.
Yara's eyes get bright again.
X is helping me. Wren still dies.
Indie is gripping the edge of the conference table. "That's not how anything works."
Soren is typing at speed. "The scoring back end is locked. I need time."
Twenty-eight minutes on the clock.
I walk over to Yara.
"You said someone sent them to you. Right."
She nods fast. "Right. They sent them. I was tricked."
"Then show me the chat."
She wraps her arms around her phone. "I deleted it."
I step closer.
"Yara. I've known you seven years. Every time you do something bad, you keep an escape route."
She is white.
I drop my voice.
"You are scared X is going to bury you. So you saved insurance. Somewhere."
Her eyes skip wrong.
In the Locked Notes folder. How does she know.
I hold my hand out.
"Give it to me."
"Why should I."
Twenty minutes on the clock.
"Your mom called me last month."
Yara's head snaps up.
I lift my phone. A transfer record, $800, memo Mrs. Shelton hospital bill.
"She told me you'd taken out predatory online loans. The collectors found her house. She didn't want you to know I knew."
Yara's lip starts to tremble.
I keep my voice even.
"You think X is rescuing you. He isn't. The minute you stop being useful he'll publish the debts, publish these fake screenshots, publish every angle he has on you. All at once."
Her defenses fracture.
"If I show you, you can save me?"
"I can't save you from being guilty," I say.
"But I can save you from dying for someone else."
She's crying. She unlocks the phone with shaking thumbs and hands it across. Locked Notes folder. Passcode again. A folder labeled vacation 2023.
Inside: a screen-recording. Signal disappearing-message thread. Sender name: a single character.
X: Do what I tell you. After Wren is eliminated your debts clear.
X: Otherwise you are the next Logan Cross.
I throw the screen recording up onto the conference-room display.
The electronic voice on the PA goes quiet.
The countdown stops at 7:12.
Soren straightens. "Got the ingress."
He hits enter.
The main-house second-floor security feed forces open on the projector.
A man in a slate-gray suit sits in front of a six-screen control rig. A studio-grade voice changer rests on the console next to a half-empty mug. The lighting is bad. The face is unmistakable.
Marcus, in the doorway, says one word.
"Garrett."
The ballroom erupts.
Garrett Shaw. Marcus's younger brother. Co-founder of Pellucid Systems in 2008. Stepped down from the board in 2021 for health reasons. According to the company directory, he has not had access to a Pellucid building in four years.
He has been on this island the entire time.
He looks into the camera and claps, slow.
"Hi, big brother."
Marcus's voice is shaking with something I don't have a name for. "What are you doing."
"Helping you finish the cull. Look at what Pellucid has become. The 2026 roster is rotten worse than the 2021 one."
His eyes go to Soren.
"Theo Whitfield's boy. You grew up tall."
Soren's expression does not move.
Garrett smiles slowly. "Your father was sentimental. He wouldn't let us sell anonymized user data. The company was preparing for IPO. There's no clean road to public markets. Theo couldn't get past that. Inconvenient, in the end."
The room does not breathe.
That sentence — that is an admission, on a live recording, of 2021.
Soren's hand hovers over the keyboard. His knuckles are white.
His thought lands clear.
Got it on record.
Dad. Did you hear that.
Garrett does not look concerned that we have him on camera.
"Recording? Evidence? You think the Coast Guard is getting onto this island."
He taps the console once.
A klaxon comes up outside the boardroom window.
Soundside dock — access denied.
Marine craft systems — locked.
Satcom uplinks — jammed.
Somebody in the ballroom screams.
Garrett smiles at Marcus.
"You used the island to filter staff. I'm using it to filter heirs. Whoever can live through this and bring the truth off the island earns the right to stay at Pellucid."
Marcus turns. "Hollander. Reyes. Where are you."
A small inset video opens on the screen. The detail. Locked in the wine cellar. Doors barred. Neither of them is hurt yet. Neither of them is getting out.
Yara slides down to sit on the floor against the wall. She has finally understood who she signed with.
Garrett's voice comes back over the PA, no longer modulated.
Final round, starts now.
Task: regain communications.
Time: six hours.
Failure condition: full participant elimination.
Drew kicks a chair. "Eliminated. What does that actually mean now."
The PA holds for two seconds.
Literally.
Indie's face goes white. Mateo pulls her behind him.
I look at Soren.
He already has the island's control-system map open on his laptop.
"Control center is on the second floor of the main house. He's got it physically locked. We can't storm it."
Jin: "Backup comms."
Soren pans the map to the north tip of the island.
"Decommissioned spur lighthouse. Pellucid runs a satcom dish on the roof. He killed the link, but the hardware's still there. Needs manual restart. Admin key plus biometric auth on the dish."
Drew stands. "I'll go."
Soren shakes his head. "Needs the admin key. That's me."
He looks at me.
"I'll go to the lighthouse. You stay here. Hold the room."
"No."
He looks startled.
"If Garrett threatened Yara, he threatened other people. You go alone, someone will catch you halfway."
He is quiet.
She's worried about me.
I look him in the eyes.
"Together."
Five of us leave the main house for the lighthouse. Me. Soren. Drew. Mateo.
And Yara. She asked to come.
Tears are still tracked down her face. Her voice is raw.
"I know a back route. Avoids the cameras on the spur road."
Drew lifts an eyebrow. "And we should trust you why."
She doesn't look up.
"You don't have to trust me. I don't want to die."
I can't get this wrong again. I can't get this wrong again.
I don't say anything for her.
Trust is not something you get back with one I'm sorry.
But her route works. We bypass the spur, cut through the maintenance shed and the abandoned mess hall, and come up on the lighthouse from the dune side.
The wind is worse than three hours ago. The flashlights are bleeding cones into the rain.
Soren hands me a key fob with the admin token loaded.
"Once we're up there, I'll splice the input. You type the key."
I nod.
We are halfway up the iron stairwell inside the lighthouse when something heavy comes out of the dark on the floor below.
Mateo goes down hard. A man tackled him from the shadow under the stairwell.
I get the flashlight on him.
Brent Yost. Mid-eng, A-team. Eyes red, rebar pipe in one hand.
"I can't be cut," he says. His voice is wrong. "My family's drowning in debt. I'm sorry."
Drew slings down off the stair rail and goes at him.
Yara screams and stumbles backward.
Two more come up from the floor below. People I know from kickoffs and Slack threads. None of them looking like themselves.
Every one of them is somebody X has been working on.
Garrett turned everyone's weak point into a knife.
Soren grabs my elbow. "Go."
I bite down and run for the stair to the top.
Drew yells after me without turning. "Tanaka-Hollis. Go up. Don't look back."
The hatch to the lantern room is locked.
Soren is on his knees in front of it, panel off, hands moving. The back of his hand catches the edge of the housing and opens up across the knuckles. He doesn't react.
"Small cut," he says.
His thoughts are not as steady.
Don't shake. Don't fail. She's here.
I drop a hand over the back of his and press.
"Soren. Look at me."
He looks up.
"You're not by yourself."
His breath levels. The lock clicks.
We come up into the lantern room. The satcom rack is on the catwalk, the dish above on its mount. Backup battery reads 12%.
Soren splices. I type the admin key.
Authorization failed.
I clear, type again.
Authorization failed.
Third try.
Override authority required. Highest-level administrator authentication needed.
Garrett's voice comes through a small speaker in the corner.
"Soren. Your father was stuck right here, you know. He thought if he could get the proof off this island, he could save everyone."
Soren's hands stop.
Garrett continues. "He didn't think the person who signed off on his disgrace was someone he trusted. But it was."
A document scan opens on the satcom console screen.
A 2021 internal-conduct affidavit. Top of the page: Pellucid letterhead.
Signature block, witness one:
Cordelia Yan.
Quincy's mother.
Something cold opens in my chest.
That is why Quincy is here. That is why she came in person.
Soren shuts his eyes.
So it wasn't an accident.
I close my hand around his wrist.
"Soren. We get off this island first. The truth waits."
He opens his eyes. The red around the irises is a vein-cluster.
"Okay."