BLOODCAPE
Chapter 96 – The Quiet Between Breaths

Chapter 96: Chapter 96 – The Quiet Between Breaths

The rooftop was too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. Not the sort that blanketed a city after midnight, where soft hums and distant sirens folded into a lullaby. This was different.

This was the silence of something waiting.

Tessa stepped into the cold. Her breath caught as the door sealed behind her with a soft hydraulic hiss. No one followed. No cameras blinked. The surveillance in this quadrant had been down for weeks—"maintenance issues," the Academy claimed. But nothing here ever broke by accident.

Her boots crunched against the gravel-tiled roof, each step louder than it should’ve been. Every sound felt magnified—her pulse, her breath, the soft, traitorous crinkle of the folded file in her hoodie pocket. A printout. Half a symbol. The crest of the Solar Paragon Unit, barely visible through the sweat on her hands.

Across the rooftop, Hernan Vale stood at the edge.

One foot braced against the railing. Shoulders squared. Collar fluttering like a flag caught in wind. The city sprawled below them in fractured rhythm—neon signs, blackout zones, emergency lights blinking from a subdistrict two clicks away. He didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

"You came back without reporting in," she said, her voice tight.

"I do that sometimes," he answered, flat and calm. Like a man stating a routine.

Tessa moved closer, her body tense, unsure if she was approaching a person... or a faultline. Her fingers twitched — not in fear, but in instinct.

"Hernan." Quieter now. "Look at me."

He didn’t.

So she reached out, fingertips brushing his sleeve. A soft, deliberate touch — like she was trying not to spook a predator.

He turned.

The moonlight scraped along the angles of his face. Not bruised. Not bloodied. But pale, and far too still. His eyes didn’t register surprise. Or guilt. Or fear.

Just awareness.

"I saw something," she said.

He didn’t blink.

"Something I wasn’t supposed to."

A long pause.

Then: "Then you shouldn’t have looked."

Her breath hitched.

"You knew?"

His voice dropped lower. "I know a lot of things, Tessa. Most of them useless. Some... dangerous."

He didn’t ask what she saw.

Which meant he didn’t need to.

She stared at him, searching for a lie, a crack — anything. But his face was carved from exhaustion. From weight. Like he’d been carrying a secret so long it had become a part of his bones.

"You’re not who you say you are," she said.

He gave her a smile. Small. Controlled. Just a flicker of expression stretched over something jagged.

"And you are?"

Her jaw locked. "I haven’t been hiding bodies."

"No," he said. "You’ve been hiding questions."

The wind picked up between them. Harsh. Cold. It didn’t interrupt — it listened.

They stood there under the flickering halo of the moon, two silhouettes caught in standoff. Two ghosts holding truths neither could name aloud.

Finally, Hernan looked away.

"Go back inside," he said.

"I’m not leaving."

His shoulders tensed. Barely. But she saw it.

"Then don’t lie to me," he said, still facing the city.

The words weren’t sharp. They weren’t a threat.

They were something worse.

A quiet permission. Mean it — or walk away before she couldn’t.

The silence crackled between them, brittle as frost.

She opened her mouth. Thought of telling him everything — the footage, the file, the mirrored movements, the child beside Solaris. But no words came.

So she stepped back. Once. Twice.

And turned.

The door hissed open behind her.

She didn’t look over her shoulder.

Not even once.

But Hernan did.

As the stairwell swallowed her shadow, his gaze narrowed. She’d seen something. She hadn’t asked what it meant.

Which meant she already knew.

And she hadn’t run.

That was the problem.

People who ran were predictable.

People who stayed?

Those were the ones who made things complicated.

—

An hour later, Hernan sat on the floor of his room.

Cross-legged in the farthest corner, back pressed against the cold alloy under the window slit. Lights off. Even the standby blink of the wall console had been blacked out.

Only the datapad in his lap lit the room — glowing green code flickering against his face like an old war film.

He hadn’t moved since she left.

Not physically.

But inside, something had shifted. Hardened.

He was listening.

Not to the hallway or the dorm.

To her voice, replaying in his head. Her hesitation. The way she said his name like it didn’t belong to him anymore.

The datapad vibrated.

The final layer fell.

Encrypted gibberish bled away, replaced by something colder. Simpler.

PROJECT INHERITOR: ACTIVECLASS: BLACK-TIERACCESS CODE: UNKNOWNSTATUS: AWAKEOBSERVATION LINK: TRACE CONFIRMEDINTERCEPT: 00:19:42 AGOSUBJECT: RED

He stared.

Red?

That wasn’t him. Not his alias. Not his tag.

He cross-referenced the signal path.

TRACE ORIGIN: DORM WEST / ARCHIVE TERMINAL 12B

That stopped him cold.

That wasn’t his terminal.

That was hers.

Only one cadet used that machine at night. One with a stolen access key. One who asked the wrong questions.

Tessa.

He was on his feet before he even realized it, chair clattering across the floor. His hands flew across the interface.

Keystroke logs. Subnet pings. Thermal residues.

She’d found something.

No. Worse.

She’d accessed the Solar Paragon archive.

His stomach dropped.

Then — another alert.

MATCHED CREST UPLOAD DETECTEDFLAGGED UNDER: INHERITOR / REDLOCATION: USER_MIRRORED_VIEWPOINT – LIVE RECORD DUPLICATED

He froze.

Someone else had watched her do it.

A mirror trace.

A shadow system.

Whoever created Project Inheritor hadn’t just built a failsafe.

They’d built a snare.

His thumb hovered over the [PURGE TRACE] option.

One tap. That’s all it would take to erase the signal. Tessa’s breach gone. Her digital fingerprint scrubbed.

She’d be safe.

No one would know.

Except... someone already did.

And if he purged it now, the system would flag him. Not as unknown.

But as active.

A threat.

Just like they did to Solaris.

Just like they always did to anomalies they couldn’t control.

He locked the pad.

Didn’t set it down.

Didn’t breathe.

He just whispered:

"She’s in this now."

Not regret.

Not fear.

A calculation.

—

Far below the dormitories, deeper than cadet records dared to track, two blinking lights flickered to life on a terminal not listed in any Zodiac briefing:

RED: ACTIVEWHITE: UNKNOWN

And the system watched back.

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