They didn't sleep that night.
Not because they weren't exhausted — they were...But sleep felt like too much of a risk, like the moment they closed their eyes, something would shift, and they'd wake up behind again.
So instead, they planned.
The map Kiran pulled up on the burner terminal was incomplete — fragmented satellite data stitched together with underground schematics, most of which were smuggled out by someone who probably didn't survive the handoff.
Zayaan studied the screen with sharp focus, his thumb pressed against his lower lip in thought. "Sublevel 3 is here," he said, circling a section near the core of the facility. "But getting there means passing through two biometric checkpoints and a lab firewall coded to internal IDs."
"I still have mine," Kiran said. "But it's flagged. I'll trip alarms the second I try to use it."
Arwa leaned forward, tracing the path on the map with her finger...Her voice was calmer than it had any right to be. "Then we clone a clean ID. Use mine."
Zayaan blinked. "Yours? You think it's still active?"
"I think they never expected me to come back. Which means they haven't disabled it yet."
Kiran looked at her, impressed. "That's a risk."
Arwa looked back, steady. "So is breathing."
The silence that followed wasn't heavy. It was mutual understanding. They were all too far in now for caution to be anything more than strategy.
Zayaan tapped the screen. "We enter through the service duct here — the one off-grid. You and I go in. Kiran stays outside, runs interference. We get in, extract the core data, and get out in under 30 minutes."
"Thirty minutes?" Kiran raised a brow. "That's tight."
Arwa stood, started pacing, but it wasn't nervous. It was kinetic. Something in her had fully switched on now.
"They trained me for this," she said. "Whatever I was before… it wasn't passive. I know how to move like them. I know how to disappear."
Zayaan tilted his head slightly. "You're sure?"
She stopped, looked at him — really looked.
"I'm remembering things I didn't know I had the right to remember. That means something. I don't think they just erased me. I think someone hid pieces of me on purpose. Buried like landmines. So that if I ever got out…"
She paused.
"I'd be dangerous."
Zayaan gave a small nod. "Then let's be dangerous."
Kiran handed Arwa a small device — a palm-sized reader with a cracked screen. "This will let you access the original archives once you're in. It can only be used once — you'll have maybe ten minutes before the encryption resets."
Arwa pocketed it. "That'll be enough."
They packed in silence after that — minimal gear, comms units, a pair of clean vials for DNA bypass. When Kiran left for the van to prep her uplink, Zayaan and Arwa remained in the low amber glow of the safehouse.
Just the two of them.
Zayaan finally broke the quiet. "When we go in there… we might not find what you want."
"I'm not looking for what I want," Arwa said. "I'm looking for what's true."
Zayaan gave her a long look. Then quietly, "You've changed."
She half-smiled. "No. I think I'm just waking up."
He hesitated. Then finally reached for her hand.
Not for comfort.
Not for grounding.
Just to remind both of them they were real.
And still here.