In the city of Elmira-where cobbled streets met sleek storefronts and cafés buzzed with student chatter-Dr. Joshua Bennett lived a life of quiet order. At just twenty-five, freshly graduated from medical school, he had returned to Almira University...
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AINA's POV
They were right. They had always been right. I was twenty-three years old, and I'd been carrying the weight of my father's legacy like it was my birthright instead of his burden. Maybe it was time to let it go. Maybe it was time to disappear into another identity, find another quiet life, and let the world's cruelties continue without me.
My fingers drifted across the keyboard almost without conscious thought, muscle memory guiding me to a place I hadn't visited in weeks: elmira.edu.
I don't know what made me do it. Nostalgia, maybe. Or the desperate need to remember what peace had felt like, even if it had been built on lies. The university webmail login page appeared, and I stared at it for a long moment before typing my old credentials.
The account opened immediately. Most of the emails were automated university announcements and spam, but one subject line made my heart stop:
Joshua is missing - urgent
The words hit me like a physical blow. My hands were shaking as I clicked on it, and Mike Rodriguez's message unfolded before me like a nightmare given form.
I was there that night in the parking garage three weeks ago. I saw what happened—the men with guns, the way you fought them, the way you had to leave him behind.
Joshua is missing, and I think it's connected to whatever took you away that night.
The laptop slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the motel room floor. Joshua. They had Joshua. The one innocent thing in this entire mess, the one person who had never asked to be part of this war, and they had him.
I picked up the laptop with trembling hands and read the rest of Mike's message, each word a dagger to my chest:
Ever since you disappeared, Joshua has been different. Worried, constantly checking his phone, always looking over his shoulder. I think he knew this might happen.
He's been lost without you these past three weeks. Don't let him be lost forever.
The sob that escaped me was raw and broken, torn from somewhere deep in my chest. Three weeks. For three weeks, Joshua had been living in fear because he'd made the mistake of caring about me. And now...
I stumbled out of my room, laptop clutched against my chest, and found them all in the living room of the safe house—Felix cleaning his gun at the coffee table, my mother reading in her chair, Sooho hunched over surveillance monitors. They all looked up when I appeared in the doorway, and I must have looked like a ghost because Felix was on his feet immediately.
