Chapter 14: The Escape Plan

He spent the next day in silence.

Not the numb, hollow silence he’d lived in since she left—but the focused, calculating kind. The kind that filled the space between heartbeats when something mattered too much to risk getting wrong.

He read the note over and over again. He ran a scan of the ink, the pressure marks on the page. It was undeniably hers.

And that meant she had found a way—past the protocols, past the resets. She remembered. Somewhere out there, Sunspot was still waiting.

So he decided to leave.

Not for another test. Not for another lesson.

But for her.

⸻

He started with the floor plans—maps of the facility that he had memorized long ago but never needed. Now he traced them again with new purpose: where the security cameras turned, where the motion sensors were weakest, which hallways had unguarded terminals.

The lab technicians had grown complacent. He was no longer “unstable,” no longer the genius boy under scrutiny. He had become predictable in their eyes—cooperative.

They’d stopped watching him.

And that was their mistake.

He used the night shifts. Reprogrammed one of the cameras to loop a ten-second feed. Spoofed his ID badge to grant himself silent access to the emergency stairwell.

Everything was precise. Everything was quiet.

And then came the hard part: where to go.

He didn’t know where she’d been reassigned. The lab’s internal network was locked down, firewalled. But they hadn’t wiped her old desk terminal yet.

He found it by accident.

Her old desk—Room 2B, still cluttered with scribbled notes, snack wrappers, and a broken pen she always refused to throw away.

The terminal was offline.

But she’d left one thing behind: a portable drive, duct-taped to the underside of the desk drawer.

He plugged it in with shaking hands.

There was only one file on it. No encryption. No password.

Just a short message.

_“If you get this… I’m at the place where we saw the fake stars. You said they weren’t real, but I said they were still beautiful. That’s where I’ll be. Someday.

Come find me, __.”

He remembered.

The fake stars—the planetarium exhibit in the city, during a school trip. She’d dragged him there, saying they were prettier than the real night sky because someone made them for someone else to see.That’s where she was.

That’s where he had to go.

⸻

He left that night.

The plan unfolded exactly as it had to: empty hallways, disabled alarms, and a back exit wired open just long enough for him to slip through.

By the time the lab realized he was gone, he was already walking through the city, the early morning air crisp against his skin. No guards. No syringes. No white lights humming overhead.

Just freedom.

And hope.