Page 127 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Twenty minutes later, in a command van outside
the ruins of the safe-house, the Curator leaned over
the playback screen.
“Subject Talbot escaped.”
An aide nodded. “But we have the core chamber
data. Fragment Eleven and part of Twelve. And we
secured Subject Borges alive.”
The Curator’s smile deepened.
“Perfect. The rebel becomes the poster child.
Through her, the world will hear our script and
mistake it for freedom. We’ll build the False Word.
And when it launches, no one will know the
difference.”
In the olive grove, Henry and Carolina emerged,
scraped and breathless. The sky above was
bleeding into sunrise: gold smearing into blue.
“We lost Jinji,” she said.
“Not for long.”
He pulled the small drive from his coat and
plugged it into Carolina’s tablet.
The spiral glowed. Eleven fragments lit up:
complete. The twelfth blinked faintly.
“The Silent Directive. The last piece,” she said.
He sat, back against an ancient olive tree. “I
remember now. What it was meant to do. The
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