The first spotlight cut through the treetops like a blade.
Aris and Riot hit the ground at the same time, bodies flattening into damp earth, lungs burning from the sprint. The chopper passed right over the relay station with a roar, light spearing the concrete shell they'd just abandoned. The beams swept the clearing, then began to crawl toward the tree line.
"Too close," Aris whispered, tasting metal in her mouth.
Riot shifted just enough to look at her, face streaked with dirt, pupils wide in the dim. "They'll circle. They always do a spiral pattern—wide, then tighter."
"How many minutes?"
"Five. Maybe less."
"Then we move now," she said. "Deep into the trees. No straight lines, no open ground."
He huffed a laugh that wasn't really amusement. "You're getting good at this."
"Learning from the best."
"From the most hunted," he corrected.
They crawled first, keeping low until the glare swept past them, then pushed to their feet and ran—no talking, just the sounds of branches snapping underfoot and their own ragged breathing. The woods here were wilder, thicker. Roots grabbed at their boots, low branches whipped their faces, but the cover was dense. Good for hiding. Bad for speed.
Behind them, another chopper joined the first. Two sets of rotors now, overlapping, pounding the air.
"They brought backup," Aris said, ducking under a branch.
"Means Merrin's scared," Riot answered, though his voice was tight. "We rattled him."
"Or he's done playing nice."
"Assuming he ever was."
They climbed a ridge, hands grabbing at slick rock. Aris's thighs burned, lungs protesting, but she forced herself up, grabbing the back of Riot's hoodie to keep him from slipping when his foot skidded on wet moss.
"Careful," she hissed.
"Was seeing double for a second." He blinked hard. "Whispers are back."
"How bad?"
"Like being in two rooms at once. Here with you, and back in Westhaven's morgue. Not ideal."
She squeezed his shoulder, fingers digging in. "Stay here. Morgue can wait."
He nodded once, like he was agreeing to an order, and that helped—gave him something solid to push against.
At the top of the ridge, they dropped again. From here, Aris could just see the relay station through gaps in the trees—floodlights now washing over the concrete, figures moving like small black ants below. Trucks. Armed men. Merrin's reach, in headlights and uniforms.
"Can they track us by heat?" she asked.
"Not well in this canopy," Riot said. "Too much interference. They'll sweep the obvious routes first—roads, clearings."
"So we stay in the worst terrain."
"Exactly."
He pulled one of the files halfway out of his pack, staring at the edge of a page where Merrin's name appeared over and over in sharp, angry ink. "These alone put him away for life, you know that?"
"If anyone believes us," Aris said. "Or cares."
"They will. Once they see the signatures, the dates, the casualty reports." His jaw clenched. "I didn't imagine any of it."
"I never thought you did."
He glanced at her. "You did at first."
"Yeah," she admitted. "I did. I had to. It was easier than admitting I'd been part of something like this."
Riot looked away, toward the lights below. "You were a resident. They used that. You weren't the one writing protocols."
"I was the one running compressions when they went wrong," she said quietly. "And signing off on forms after."
"And I was the one pulling the trigger when they put me in the field wired wrong." He met her eyes again. "Doesn't mean we stay their weapons."
The chopper swung closer again, spotlight crawling up the ridge behind them. Instinct kicked in. Aris grabbed his wrist. "Down."
They pressed into the shadow of a fallen tree, bark digging into their backs. The beam passed overhead, slow, almost lazy. Aris felt Riot's heart thudding where his chest pressed against her shoulder, his breath shallow.
"This feels like being hunted," she said, keeping her voice barely above the wind.
"This is being hunted," he replied. "Difference is, this time we've got their playbook."
"How long until those pills wear off?" she asked.
"Couple hours. Less if we keep sprinting." He frowned. "You're tired too."
"I'm fine."
"You always say that right before you crash," he said. "Saw it at Westhaven. You'd skip meals, skip sleep, then pretend you weren't shaking."
"Hypocrite."
"Absolutely." He shifted, winced as a rock pressed into his ribs. "We need shelter. Somewhere they won't think to look. We can't outrun choppers all night."
"Caves? Cabins?"
"Old logging cabins, maybe. Hunters sometimes leave shacks out here." He scanned the dark like he could see through trees. "Risk is, if there's shelter, there's a chance someone else is using it."
"Someone who might call the cops as soon as they see us," Aris said. "Or someone who knows how to keep their mouth shut if we don't scare them."
"Always a gamble."
They lay there in the damp for a few more minutes, listening to the choppers move further east, then west again, broad arcs looking for movement. Finally, Riot spoke.
"There's a creek that runs north from here," he said. "Old rule—if you're being tracked, move by water when you can. Harder for dogs, harder for footprints. We follow it until we find anything with a roof."
"Or until we collapse," she said.
"Yeah. That too."
They slid down the far side of the ridge, picking their way more carefully now. It was darker under the trees, branches woven so thick the sky was just a dim smear. After half an hour, Aris heard it: the faint rush of running water.
"Found your creek," she said.
"Good." Riot's relief was obvious in his shoulders. "We follow it upstream. Less chance they thought to look that way—they'll expect us to head for roads and towns."
They walked along the bank, sometimes on slick rocks, sometimes ankle-deep in freezing water. Aris's toes went numb, but she kept going. Riot stumbled once, catching himself on a tree trunk.
"Whispers worse?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Just tired. It's like having a radio in my skull—Merrin's voice, Subject 47, your code calls. Volume's down right now. Still there, though."
She wanted to fix it for him. Rip the wires out of his brain. Instead, she said, "Once we get far enough, we can find a real doctor who isn't on Merrin's payroll."
"And tell them what?" Riot said, half amused, half bitter. "'Hi, I'm the failed prototype of a classified memory weapon program, and this is the resident they tried to break with guilt—can you write us a prescription?'"
"If we have these," she said, patting the pack with the files, "we don't have to start with that line."
He smiled, brief and tired. "Fair point."
They walked until Aris's legs felt like they didn't belong to her. The creek curved, and there it was—almost invisible until they were close. A shack. Old, hunched between trees, half-sunk into the bank like it had been forgotten a long time ago. Broken window. Door hanging crooked. No smoke, no light.
Riot held up a hand. "Stay here."
"Riot—"
"Just for a second." He crept forward, checked the door with careful fingers, then eased it open. Paused. "Empty. Smells like mold and raccoons, but empty."
She followed. Inside was one room—rotting cot, old wood stove, a table missing a leg, everything dust-choked. But it was four walls and a roof.
"This'll do," he said.
"It's disgusting," she answered.
"It's hidden," he countered. "And right now, that matters more."
She couldn't argue with that. They pushed the door mostly shut, moved the table in front of it as a makeshift bar. Riot dropped his pack with a grunt and lowered himself onto the cot, which protested with a creak but held.
"Pills?" she asked.
"Last dose," he said. "Then we ration what we've got left. Don't want to run completely dry."
She handed him water and one pill, watching until he swallowed it. His hands shook more than he'd admit.
"Lie down," she said.
"You ordering me to bed again?" he tried, but it came out weak.
"Yes. Doctor's orders."
He lay back, eyes on the low ceiling. She sat at the edge of the cot, just close enough that their shoulders touched.
"You could've left," he said quietly. "When we hit the beach. Or when we got to Black Harbor. You had chances."
"And do what?" she asked. "Go back? Pretend I didn't know any of this? Pretend I didn't watch them do this to you?"
"You could've made a deal." He turned his head toward her. "You're the kind they keep. Clean record, brilliant, good for PR. 'Look, we didn't do anything wrong—our doctor stayed.'"
She thought of Merrin's eyes on her in the Greyvale office. "No. He would've kept me until I was useful, then buried me next to you."
Riot studied her in the dim light that leaked through the broken window. "So you picked the running option with the guy whose brain is a live grenade."
"I picked the option where I wasn't watching you die in restraints," she said. "Again."
Something in his expression shifted—softened, then hardened in a different way. "We'll make this count, then. These files? They're not just proof. They're leverage."
"Leverage against who?" she asked. "Merrin's one guy. Mnemosyne had funding."
"Funding leaves trails," Riot said. "Email chains. Wire transfers. Names. Someone signed off on all this. And someone will care enough to bury them if they think the story goes public."
"You trust anyone to do the right thing with this?"
"Trust? No." He closed his eyes briefly. "But I trust self-preservation. Someone out there is more scared of exposure than they are loyal to Merrin."
Aris leaned back against the wall, let her head rest beside his. "So we find them. Use this to force them to turn on him."
"Yeah."
"While outrunning choppers and hiding in raccoon shacks."
"That too."
He was quiet for a while, breathing evening out as the pill started to take hold. "If I start talking nonsense," he murmured, "or if I slip… just remember most of it's echoes."
"I know," she said.
"If I say something that hurts—"
"I know," she repeated.
He let out a breath. "Okay."
He drifted not long after, eyes finally closing, his body going heavy beside her. Aris stayed awake, listening to the woods, to his breathing, to the distant, faint possibility of rotors. She stared at the files spread between them, Merrin's signature looping over so many lives.
"Tomorrow," she whispered to the paper. "We start breaking you."
Pills dragged him under—breathing evened out. Aris stayed up, files splayed, Merrin's loops condemning lives.
"Tomorrow," she muttered to the ink. "Your turn to burn."
Twig snap—right outside. Close. Human deliberate.
Riot's eyes flew open—instant alert. Hand clamped her wrist hard. "You hear that?"
Aris went still. Footsteps. Slow circle around the shack. Gravel crunch under boots.
Not chopper ground crew. Too stealthy.
Someone knew exactly where they were.
***
**Author's Note**
Thanks for reading Chapter 13 of *When the Quiet Breaks*. The chase is on pause, but only barely—relay proof in hand, they've got a plan: find whoever's more afraid of exposure than loyal.