Chapter 358: The Wrong Load
Nobody moved for a moment.
"Wait," Rei said, in disbelief, leaning forward from the back seat. "Wait wait wait. You mean..."
"The drive Harlan gave Monique," Nash said, turning the real one over between his fingers, "was fake. Identical on the outside. Empty inside, or with some junk data, I didn’t actually check what I put on it, maybe porn."
"Since when—" Aiko leaned forward too, eyes wide. "Since when are there two drives?"
"Since I handed that one to Harlan," Nash said. "The real one, I kept on me."
Saya, between the two girls, stayed silent for a long moment, trying to piece it together, her mind still tangled up in the adrenaline and fear of the last few minutes.
"So all of that," she said finally, her voice shaking. "The deal, the exchange, that whole show with Monique..."
"Was to get you out of there without having to fight twenty armed guards," Nash said. "And to give Harlan a reason to believe he actually had something."
None of them answered right away, none able to find the next question, the shock leaving them nearly speechless. Rei stared at Nash like she was seeing him for the first time, her mouth hanging open with no sound coming out. Aiko fixed her eyes on the drive between his fingers, blinking over and over, like she expected it to reveal itself as some kind of illusion.
"You had two drives," Rei finally murmured. "This whole time."
"Since before we even left," Nash confirmed.
Silence settled back in, heavy, nobody finding anything more to add, each of them still suspended somewhere between pure disbelief and a realization too big to process all at once.
"You knew he was gonna snap," Aiko said after a moment. "You knew he was gonna lunge at her."
"I knew he’d do something," Nash corrected. "I didn’t know exactly what. But a man with nothing left to lose who thinks he’s finally holding his shot in his hands... that always ends up going sideways one way or another."
Saya was shaking, unable to say a word, her eyes locked on Nash.
Aiko let out a sob, one hand pressed to her mouth, her shoulders starting to tremble, the shock slowly shifting into something closer to tears.
"We actually..." she stopped, unable to finish, shaking her head. "We actually have everything. All the proof. Everything we need to bring Hector down."
"Everything," Nash confirmed, slipping the drive back into his pocket.
A different kind of silence filled the car, heavier now, each of them finally starting to grasp the real scale of what they’d just pulled off — not just surviving the night, not just getting out, but literally holding in their hands the weapon capable of collapsing an entire empire.
Rei sank back into her seat, staring up at the ceiling of the car, her eyes shining.
"This is actually happening," she murmured. "This is actually happening..."
Aiko, still shaken, let out a small, trembling laugh, quickly wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"You’re an actual lunatic," she said, her voice cracking between laughter and tears. "An actual lunatic! Shut up... just shut up!!! When did you even plan all this?! How do you always do this??? Tell me this is some kind of joke..."
Nash glanced in the rearview mirror, a smile spreading across his face at the emotional chaos he’d just set off.
"Come on, let’s not forget the important thing," he said. "It’s the part where you sing: All Hail the King of Rats."
In the living room, every second had been watched in tense, sinking dread the moment Nash handed over the drive, and now — it exploded.
Hina was on her feet in a split second, one fist raised toward the ceiling.
"ALL HAIL THE KING OF RATS!" she screamed, her voice echoing through the whole room.
The subs, huddled by the couch all night, terrified and silent, burst all at once, picking up the chant in unison, completely off-key.
"ALL HAIL THE KING OF RATS!"
Kai jumped to her feet, a wild laugh escaping her as she joined the chant, dragging Miko along by the arm. Miko, tears still streaming down her face, let herself be pulled along laughing, clapping along to the rhythm, completely out of sync with the rest of the group and not caring one bit.
Zayela threw herself at Victoria and Dahlia, letting out a cry of pure joy and tightening her hold all at once, with a strength that was almost frightening, lifting both of them a little off the floor.
"WE WON!" she shouted, nearly spinning in place with both women still clinging to her. "WE REALLY WON!"
Dahlia let out a small yelp of surprise, holding onto Zayela tighter to keep her balance, a laugh tangled with tears escaping her.
Victoria stayed completely still between their arms, suspended, unable to laugh, to cry, or to say anything at all, the shock having frozen her entirely.
That drive, that little black box, that tiny thing sitting in Nash’s pocket somewhere on a road through the Spires — it wasn’t just a tactical win for her. It was the end of a war she’d been fighting since she was a child, since the nights spent scrubbing floors while listening to Hector laugh at her, since the years spent playing dumb just to survive, wearing masks she’d eventually forgotten how to take off. Every humiliation, every act of violence, every night she’d gone to bed wondering if she’d survive to see tomorrow, if she’d ever get to live her simplest dream, all of it had just, in the span of one sentence heard through a speaker, found an answer she’d never truly believed possible.
She let herself be carried, shaken, swept up in Zayela’s momentum without the slightest resistance, her eyes fixed on nothing, still unable to fully believe what she’d just heard.
After about an hour on the road, Harlan’s car pulled up in front of a small abandoned warehouse on the edge of Sector 6, far from the lights of the Spires, far from anything that could resemble help.
Harlan got out fast, circling around the car with jittery steps, wrenching open the back door.
"Get out," he spat, grabbing Monique by the arm and yanking her out without any care.
She stumbled, nearly falling to her knees on the gravel, a cry of pain escaping her as the wound on her temple split open slightly from the impact.
"You piece of—" she started.
"Shut up," Harlan cut in, hauling her back up by the arm, dragging her toward the warehouse door, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh.
Inside, the place was tiny and shabby, a single room with an old desk covered in dust, a laptop sitting on top, a few boxes stacked against the wall — Harlan’s secret hideout, the one he’d kept for years, for the times even Apex wasn’t supposed to know where he was.
He shoved Monique onto a rickety wooden chair, grabbing a length of rope off the desk and clumsily tying her wrists behind the backrest, his movements too fast, too angry to be precise.
"You’re hurting me, you piece of shit," Monique hissed, pulling against her bindings.
"Good," Harlan said, without a shred of remorse, deliberately pulling the knot a little tighter.
He turned away from her, rushing toward the laptop, his hands shaking as he pulled the hard drive from his pocket, fumbling to plug it into the USB port.
"You really think you’re gonna get away with this," Monique said. "You really think Hector’s just gonna leave you alone because you ran off with some data?"
"Shut up," Harlan repeated, not even looking at her, his eyes locked on the screen as it slowly loaded.
The screen finally showed the drive’s contents.
A single video file, a thumbnail slowly appearing.
"Two Men, Six Cups," Harlan read aloud, frowning, unable to make sense of it.
He clicked it, almost by reflex, a preview automatically starting to play in the corner of the screen.
The sound came through before the picture even stabilized, and, oh boy, he wished he were blind and deaf.
Harlan slammed the window shut, frozen for a few seconds.
"What—" he blinked, completely lost. "What the hell is this?"
Behind him, Monique went silent, confused at first, then burst out laughing, a genuine, almost uncontrollable laugh, her head tipping back.
"Oh," she managed to get out between gasps. "Oh, this is— this is perfect."
"Shut up," Harlan repeated, but his voice had lost all its edge, his hands shaking now on the keyboard as he reopened the folder, frantically searching for any other files, anything that might resemble the data he’d been expecting.
Nothing. Just that one file, alone, absurd, and disgusting.
Monique’s laughter gradually settled, but her smile stayed, savoring every second of the panic now clearly written across Harlan’s face.
"No," he murmured, his voice shaking. "No, no, this isn’t possible... The drive. Nash gave it to me in the parking lot, I took it, I kept it in my pocket the whole time, how—"
And then it hit him, all at once, a thunderclap straight through his skull.
It all came rushing back, the way Nash had proposed this whole plan. He’d been the one to hand over the drive, the drive he himself had bought, meaning he was the only one who’d have seen what the model looked like.
There’d been two drives... and he switched them... he switched the drive right before he handed it to me...
His eyes shot to the drive still in his possession. He played me. He used me. He used me as a fucking diversion, took the real drive, and left me here, with her, with nothing. With porn.
"Nash," Harlan murmured, his hands shaking so badly he struggled to pull his phone from his pocket.
"Nash," he dialed the number, holding it to his ear, his heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his own ears.
"Nash," the ringing started. Once. Twice. Three times.
Nobody answered.
"Pick up," he murmured, almost a plea, dialing again. "Pick up, pick up, please—"
Still nothing. The ringing stretched on, endless, before rolling over into an impersonal voicemail.
He hung up, breathing hard, his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him, the reality of his situation slowly seeping into every fiber of his body.
I’m dead. I’m completely dead.
Behind him, Monique let out one last small laugh, soft and venomous, savoring every second of the growing panic.
"Sounds like your little savior dropped you," she said. "What a surprise."
Harlan turned slowly, the phone still clutched in his hand, his face completely fallen apart, panic and despair fighting over every line of his expression.
"He—" his voice broke. "He set me up. He set me up from the start."
"Of course he set you up," Monique said, leaning forward slightly despite her bindings, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "Did you really think a guy like him was gonna trust a rat like you? You were never anything more than a tool, Harlan. Same for us. The only difference is he, at least, knew how to get rid of you with style. Is that gay porn?" She let out one last chuckle. "What a coincidence... That’s about to be your everyday life real soon."
Harlan stood frozen, breathing ragged, his eyes darting frantically between the screen and Monique, tied up but still smiling, still winning despite everything that had just happened.
Something in him was collapsing slowly, layer by layer, Nash’s betrayal, the humiliation of the drive, his entire life reduced, in the span of a few minutes, to this shabby room, this bound woman laughing at him, this silent phone in his hand.
That’s when a sound rang out outside, tires screeching violently against gravel, several vehicles braking at once, doors slamming one after another.
Harlan froze, all the blood draining from his face.
He rushed to the small dusty window, pulling back the curtain with a shaking hand, and his heart stopped cold.
Blue and red lights swept across the crumbling walls of the warehouse, throwing moving shadows over the gravel. Several vehicles had spread out in an arc in front of the building, armed figures already stepping out, taking position, helmets and body armor gleaming under the headlights.
"No," he murmured, barely audible. "No, no, no."
He stepped back, then again, his legs nearly giving out beneath him, his eyes darting frantically from the window to Monique, to the laptop, to that absurd video still open on the screen, like all of it together formed the exact picture of his own ending.
"How," he stammered, shaking his head. "How did they find me, nobody knew about this place, nobody, I—"
He didn’t even finish the sentence, his gaze snapping back to Monique. Was it her? Had he made his final, fatal mistake bringing her along?
Figures were already converging on the warehouse door, their heavy footsteps echoing across the gravel, closing in relentlessly, every second stretching out endlessly while Harlan stood frozen, unable to move, unable to even really breathe.
Monique watched him collapse from the inside, a satisfied smile spreading across her lips despite her wrists still bound behind her.
"You know what happens now," she said, her voice almost gentle, almost tender in its cruelty. "You’re gonna end up exactly like the filthy rat you’ve always been, Harlan."
Her smile vanished, and her eyes darkened.
"In a hole."