Chapter 35: Brother's Wrath
The cabin smelled of pine sap, damp earth, and the ghost of woodsmoke. It was a single-room structure, crowded now with six people and their palpable exhaustion. The promised tub, an enormous, claw-footed monstrosity, dominated one corner, its porcelain stained a permanent tea-brown. Levi had it filling before anyone had even shrugged off their jackets, the hot water groaning through old pipes and steaming up the grimy window above it.
Aria was a silent weight against him. The post-seizure lethargy had her in its grip, her movements slow and drugged. He’d guided her to the edge of the tub, his hands firm under her elbows.
“Can you manage?” he asked, his voice low.
She nodded, her eyes downcast. A profound embarrassment had settled over her, a shroud. The others were trying to give her space. Eren and Armin were unpacking ration bars and checking perimeter seals on the windows. Mikasa had taken a cloth and was methodically wiping down the one dusty counter, her back turned. But the space in the cabin was too small for real privacy.
Levi knelt, his knees cracking on the rough-hewn floorboards. He untied her soaked sneakers, peeling them off along with her socks. His fingers were impersonal, efficient. He reached for the hem of her hoodie.
She flinched.
It was a tiny movement, almost imperceptible. But he felt it. His hands stilled. He didn’t look up at her face.
“It’s just me,” he said, the words so quiet they were almost lost in the rush of water.
She swallowed, then gave another nod, this one tighter. He resumed, pulling the damp fabric over her head, followed by her shirt. He worked with the detached focus of a medic, folding each discarded item and setting it aside. When it was done, he helped her step into the deep, steaming water. She sank into it with a shuddering exhale, disappearing up to her chin, closing her eyes.
Levi stood, his own body aching with a tension that had nothing to do with the fight. He snagged a threadbare towel from a hook and placed it, along with a clean set of her clothes from his go-bag, on the milking stool beside the tub.
“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Then you eat.”
From her nest in the water, she made a non-committal sound.
He turned his back, giving her the illusion of solitude, and joined the others at the small table. Armin had his laptop open, lines of code scrolling rapidly. Eren was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, staring at a water stain on the ceiling.
“He’s getting closer,” Armin said without preamble, turning the screen. It showed a map with a cluster of red pins. “Xavier. He’s not just pinging cells. He’s cross-referencing traffic cameras, toll booth data. He’s using scout pattern-recognition on vehicle movements. He’s triangulating.”
“How long?” Levi asked, his voice flat.
“Before he deduces the general area? A day, maybe less. Before he finds this specific cabin? Longer. But he’s motivated.”
“He thinks we’re in trouble,” Mikasa stated, placing a bottle of water on the table.
“We are in trouble,” Eren muttered.
“Not the kind he thinks,” Levi corrected. He pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache behind his eyes was a constant, dull throb. “We need to move the asset.”
A quiet splash came from the tub. They all fell silent for a moment, listening to the soft sound of water being cupped and poured.
“We can’t keep dragging a one-year-old through this,” Armin said, his voice hushed. “Sasha and Connie are capable, but they’re not… they’re not us. They haven’t been hunted like this.”
“He’s safest where we can’t be predicted,” Levi said. “That means constant movement until we remove the threat. There is no ‘safe house.’ Only safer intervals.”
Eren pushed off the wall. “So what’s the plan? We just keep running? Chronos has infinite resources. We have… us. And a baby. And a brother who’s about to blow the whole operation wide open because he cares too much.”
“The farmhouse,” Aria’s voice came from the tub, thin but clear.
They all turned. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, her chin resting on them. The steam had curled the loose hairs around her face. She looked young, and utterly weary.
“What farmhouse?” Armin asked.
“The one outside Binghamton. My grandfather’s. It’s… it’s where Xavier and I went after our parents died. Before the Scouts. It’s been abandoned for years.” She looked at Levi. “You asked about a place they wouldn’t look. A place with no connection. He’d never look for me there. He thinks I hate it.”
“Why?” Mikasa asked.
“Because I told him I did.” Aria’s gaze was distant, fixed on the swirling steam. “Too many memories. He bought it. He stopped suggesting we go check on it. The property is still in my name. Paid off. No digital trail Grandpa wouldn’t touch a bank.”
Levi studied her. “Security?”
“None. It’s a ruin. But it has a root cellar. Stone walls. And…” She paused. “There’s a reason Grandpa bought it. The land. It’s… irregular. Makes satellite imaging glitch. He said it was the iron deposits. I don’t know. But it’s a blind spot.”
Armin was already typing, his fingers flying. “Giving Falco and Gabi the coordinates. They can run a spectral analysis from the old geological surveys. If it’s a natural blind spot…”
“It’s a hole,” Eren finished, a spark of bleak hope in his eyes. “A hole we can hide in.”
Levi walked over to the tub. He crouched down, bringing his eyes level with hers. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure he won’t look there,” she said. “And I’m sure it’s a terrible place. It’s cold and damp and full of spiders. But the cellar is sound. And it’s ours. No one else’s.”
He held her look for a long moment, weighing her certainty against the risk. Her eyes, though exhausted, were clear. This was a strategy, not a panic.
“Alright,” he said, standing. “We rest here for four hours. Then we move.” He looked at Armin. “Tell Sasha and Connie. New rendezvous. And tell Jean to lose Xavier. I don’t care how. Make him think we’re heading for Canada.”
Four hours later, the sky was the dull charcoal of pre-dawn. Aria was dressed, her hair still damp, moving with the careful precision of someone holding themselves together by will alone. Levi handed her a protein bar. “Eat.”
She took it, nibbling on the end. The Challenger was packed, the cabin left as they found it. As they pulled onto the narrow access road, a sleek, black sedan with government plates passed them going the opposite direction. It didn’t slow.
Eren’s grip on the wheel tightened. “That was fast.”
“Not for us,” Armin said, watching it disappear in the side mirror. “They’re canvassing the area. Standard search pattern. They didn’t have the cabin.”
“Yet,” Levi said.
The drive to Binghamton was a silent, tense blur. Aria slept fitfully against Levi’s shoulder, jerked awake by every brake light. They left the highway for county roads, then for a packed-gravel lane barely visible under overgrown brush. Pine branches scraped the sides of the Challenger with long, fingernail shrieks.
And then it appeared.
The farmhouse was a sagging silhouette against the morning gloom. One shutter hung by a single hinge, tapping a random rhythm against the clapboard. The porch roof had partially collapsed. The yard was a sea of thigh-high brown grass and thistles.
“Home sweet home,” Eren muttered, killing the engine.
The silence that followed was absolute and heavy. Aria stared at the decaying structure, her face unreadable. This wasn’t just a hiding place. This was a ghost.
Levi got out first, scanning the tree line, his body taut. The others followed, weapons subtly drawn. Aria walked ahead of them, up the broken stone path. Each step seemed to cost her something. She pushed open the front door. It groaned in protest, revealing a dark interior smelling of mold, animal musk, and forgotten time.
She didn’t go in. She walked around the side, towards a sloping cellar door set into the hill, half-buried by brambles.
“Here,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Levi and Eren heaved the rusted doors open. The smell that wafted out was cold, damp earth, and something else—cleaner, like old stone. Aria took a flashlight from Mikasa and descended the steep, earthen steps without hesitation.
The cellar was small, maybe ten by ten. The stone walls wept moisture in the beam of light. Cobwebs draped from the low ceiling like ragged lace. But it was dry underfoot, the earth packed hard. In one corner sat an ancient, rust-hobbled wood stove. In another, a stack of mildewed burlap sacks.
Aria’s light stopped on the far wall. Not stone, but old, dark wood—a crude set of shelves. On them were a few empty mason jars, a tin cup, and a small, rectangular shape draped in a waxed cloth.
She walked over, her movement strangely reverent. She pulled the cloth away.
It was a book. A ledger. Next to it sat a small, hand-carved wooden horse, its paint long faded.
She picked up the horse, closing her fingers around it. Her breath hitched, just once.
“This was my brother’s,” she said, not turning. “He must have left it… the last time we were here.” She looked at the ledger, then at the shelf itself. She ran her fingers along the edge. “This shelf… it’s newer than the others.”
Levi was beside her in two strides. He examined the joinery. It was rough but solid. He knocked on the wood behind it. A hollow, faint echo.
Without a word, he pulled his knife and worked the tip into a seam. With a pop of protesting nails, the entire shelf unit swung forward, revealing a shallow, hidden compartment.
Inside, nestled in the dirt and dust, were not childhood treasures.
It was a sleek, black Chronos-issue data drive. And beside it, a modern, charged satellite phone.
The group froze. The air left the cellar.
Aria stared at the objects, the little wooden horse still clutched in her fist. The betrayal was so vast, so intimate, it didn’t feel like a shock. It felt like the ground beneath her turning to ash.
“He knew,” she breathed, the words dust on her lips. “Xavier knew about this place. And he’s been here. Recently.”
The satellite phone, as if on cue, began to vibrate.
The satellite phone, as if on cue, began to vibrate.
A harsh, electronic buzz rattled against the wood of the hidden compartment. It was a grotesque sound in the damp, earthy silence. Everyone stared at it, a shared paralysis locking them in place. The little black rectangle skittered sideways like a living thing.
Aria moved first. Her hand, still clutching the wooden horse, darted out and snatched the phone. She fumbled with the answer button, her fingers numb. She brought it to her ear. “Xavier?”
“Aria? Thank god. Your signal just popped—where the hell are you? Levi’s phone is dead, Jean’s giving me the runaround, I’ve got Chronos alerts pinging all over the—”
His voice was a frantic torrent. She cut through it, her own voice low and venomous. “Outside Binghamton. At the farmhouse.”
A beat of dead silence crackled through the line. “What?”
“The farmhouse, Xavier. Grandpa’s. The one I supposedly hate.” Her words were icicles. “The one with the hidden shelf in the root cellar. The one with the Chronos data drive and a fucking satellite phone in it.”
Another silence, this one thicker. She could hear his breath, a sharp intake. “You found it.”
“Was there ever any doubt?” The anger unfurled inside her, hot and sickening. “You moron. You absolute idiot. What did you do?”
“I was trying to find you!” he shot back, defensiveness instantly morphing into shouts. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like? Hearing nothing for months, then getting cryptic messages from Armin about ‘safe houses’ and ‘ongoing ops’? You’re my little sister!”
“And I’m also a scout!” she screamed back, the sound tearing at her raw throat. Eren winced. Levi’s expression didn’t change, but his gaze was fixed on her face, reading every twitch. “You don’t go dark for a reason! You think I’ve been on a fucking vacation?”
“I used the resources I had!” Xavier’s voice was equally loud, a mirror of her own frustration and fear. “I tracked financials, I followed Levi’s business filings, I did what anyone would do!”
“No, you didn’t!” She was pacing now, the damp earth soft under her boots. “You used Chronos technology! You hacked a Chronos terminal, didn’t you? To get a trace on me?”
“How else was I supposed to—?”
“Jesus Christ, how are you this stupid?” She stopped, pressing her free hand to her forehead. The wooden horse dug into her palm. “You think they don’t monitor their own systems for unauthorized access? You left a breadcrumb trail straight to your own doorstep! You led them right to your search parameters!”
“I was careful,” he insisted, but his voice had lost its heat, replaced by a dawning horror.
“You were a neon sign!” she yelled. “You queried my name, Levi’s, the baby’s—oh god, you looked for Leo, didn’t you?” Her voice broke on the name.
The line went quiet again, but this time it was a guilty, terrible quiet. She could see it in her mind’s eye—her brother, alone in some cheap apartment, pounding on a stolen Chronos keyboard, desperate for any digital whisper of his nephew.
“Aria…” he started, his voice small.
“They have you,” she said, the fury evaporating, leaving cold, sheer dread in its wake. “They’ve probably had you for days. They let you run the search. They fed you the data. They let you find this location.” Her eyes swept the dark cellar, as if agents might melt from the stone. “This is a trap. You set a trap for me.”
“No. No, that’s not possible.” His denial was weak, hollow.
“The phone,” Levi said, his voice cutting through the panic. He held out his hand.
She handed it to him without looking. He put it on speaker and placed it on the dusty shelf. His knife was in his other hand, point down but ready.
“Xavier.” Levi’s tone was calm, deadlier for its lack of volume. “Listen very carefully. You are compromised. Your location, your digital signature, your last six months of activity—all compromised. You need to move. Now.”
“Captain, I—”
“There is no time for pride.” Levi’s eyes met Aria’s. She saw the calculation there, the swift, brutal assessment of risk and asset. “You have ten minutes. Grab your go-bag. Assume your apartment is watched. Use the fire escape. Do you have a secondary location?”
“I—the bus station, downtown, the lockers,” Xavier stammered, the reality crashing down on him.
“Go there. Take nothing electronic. Wait for two hours. A contact will meet you. Describe them.”
“Uh… a woman. Red hat. Carrying a… a white pastry box.”
Levi gave a single, sharp nod to Armin, who was already typing furiously on his laptop, his face pale. Armin held up a finger: one minute. He was creating the contact, the identity, the backstory, from nothing.
“Two hours,” Levi repeated. “If no one comes, you leave the city. You disappear. You do not contact anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The man you meet will bring you to us. Do not speak to him. Do not ask questions. Follow his instructions.” Levi’s voice softened, just a fraction. “Your sister is alive because we are careful. Your nephew is alive for the same reason. Keep them that way.”
He ended the call. The silence that followed was absolute, heavier than the earth around them.
Aria was trembling again, but not from a seizure. It was a full-body quake of rage and terror. She looked at the hidden compartment, at the sleek drive that represented her brother’s catastrophic love.
“They used him as bait,” she whispered.
“They did,” Levi confirmed, picking up the data drive. He turned it over in his hands. “And they’ll be coming here to see if the bait was taken. We have less time than we thought.”
Eren was already moving for the steps. “I’ll get the car turned around. We can’t go back up the lane.”
“They’ll have the road watched,” Mikasa said, her hand on the hilt of her blade. “We go through the woods. To the secondary route Armin plotted.”
Armin snapped his laptop shut. “Contact established. Gabi is fabricating a digital ghost for the bus station meet. It’ll hold for a few hours, maybe.” He looked ill. “He pinged this location seven minutes ago, when the call connected. They’ll have a lock.”
The vibration started again. Not the satellite phone.
A low, deep thrumming sound, felt through the soles of their boots before it was heard. The dust on the shelf trembled.
Levi’s head snapped up. “Rotors.”
They were out of the cellar in a heartbeat, scrambling up the earthen steps as the mechanical thrumming grew louder, more defined. It was the sound of a heavy helicopter, flying low and fast, coming in from the east.
The morning sky was no longer gray, but sliced by the piercing white beams of searchlights sweeping across the overgrown field. The tall grass whipped in the rotor wash. The decaying farmhouse seemed to cower under the scrutiny.
“Too late for the woods,” Eren hissed, crouching by the Challenger. “They’re here.”
The searchlights converged, pinning the car and the group beside the cellar doors in a stark, blinding circle of light. A powerful speaker crackled to life, a voice, amplified and inhuman, echoing across the land.
“Remain where you are. Do not move.”
Aria squinted into the light, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. She felt Levi’s shoulder press against hers, a solid line in the chaos. He still had the data drive clutched in his hand.
“Options?” Eren muttered, his body coiled.
“We don’t have the high ground,” Mikasa observed, her voice flat.
Armin’s eyes were wide, scanning the tree line beyond the light. “They’ll have perimeter teams moving in on foot. The light is to fix us.”
The amplified voice spoke again. “Place any weapons on the ground. Step away from the vehicle.”
Levi didn’t look at the others. He looked at Aria. In the blinding whiteness, his face was all sharp angles and resolve. He leaned in, his lips almost brushing her ear, his words meant for her alone beneath the helicopter's roar.
“When I move,” he whispered, “run for the tree line south. Don’t look back.”
Levi’s shoulder left hers.
He moved with a speed that seemed to alter the air itself, a blur of dark clothing against the blinding white. He didn’t throw the data drive. He hurled it, a perfect, spinning arc, straight into the thickest kitchen window of the farmhouse with a crash of shattering glass.
The searchlight wavered for a fraction of a second, the operator instinctively tracking the movement.
"Now!" Levi barked, the word cutting through the rotor wash.
Aria ran.
She didn’t think. Her legs just drove, pistons fueled by pure adrenal terror, pounding across the uneven ground. The tall, wet grass whipped at her thighs, slowing her, each step a sucking pull against the earth. The southern tree line was a black wall, maybe sixty yards away. It felt like sixty miles.
Shouts erupted behind her, human voices now, not the mechanical boom of the speaker. "Stop! Stop or we fire!"
She didn’t stop. The air beside her head snapped, a sharp, crisp sound. Then another, closer to her feet, kicking up a spray of mud and grass.
They were shooting.
Don’t look back. Levi’s command was a drumbeat in her skull. She focused on a jagged pine at the edge of the woods, a target. Her lungs burned. Another shot. This one didn’t snap by. It thudded.
The impact was a colossal, unnatural punch to the right side of her back, just below her ribs. It didn’t feel like being shot. It felt like being hit by a truck made of pure noise and heat. The force lifted her off her feet for a staggering half-step before her legs gave out.
She crashed forward into the mud and thistles, the wind utterly gone from her. A strange, high whine filled her ears. She tried to push herself up. Her right arm wouldn’t cooperate. It flopped, useless. A warm, soaking wetness was instantly spreading across her back and side, hot against the cold morning air.
Footsteps. Heavy, fast, crunching through the grass toward her.
She rolled onto her left side, gasping, the world tilting. A Chronos agent in black tactical gear was silhouetted against the searchlight, rifle raised, closing the distance. Ten yards. Five.
His helmeted face was impersonal, a mirrored visor. He stopped, looming over her. The rifle barrel lowered, not aiming anymore. He was too close to aim. He was just pointing.
The second shot was not a crack or a thud. Inside the roaring silence of her shock, it was a deep, concussive boom that originated in the center of her body.
It entered point-blank, just below her sternum.
There was no more pain. The first wound’s fire was swallowed by a vast, cold nothingness that erupted from the second. She couldn’t scream. The air was gone. Her vision snapped into hyper-clarity—the mud on his boots, a scratch on his rifle’s stock, the morning mist curling past his shoulder—then instantly tunneled, edges bleeding into black.
A wet, gurgling rasp was the only sound she could make.
The agent took a step back, turning his head to shout to his team. "Primary target down! I have a—"
His sentence ended in a choked gurgle of his own.
Levi was just there. He hadn’t run around. He had moved through the space between them. The agent collapsed, his throat opening in a dark line. Levi didn’t spare him a glance. He dropped to his knees in the mud beside Aria.
His face, for one completely unguarded moment, was absolute annihilation. Every calculated plan, every ounce of control, was erased, replaced by a raw, animal terror that stripped him bare.
"Aria." His hands hovered over her, unsure where to touch. The front of her shirt was already a soaked, blossoming crimson. The back was worse, a dark, spreading stain that melted into the earth. Her breaths were shallow, wet hitches, each one a horrible, sucking struggle.
"L...Le..." Bubbles of pink foam formed at the corner of her mouth.
He ripped his own jacket off, wadding it, pressing the dense fabric hard against the terrible mess on her abdomen. It was futile. The pressure made her jerk, a weak, convulsive movement. Her eyes were wide, locked on his, but they weren't seeing him. They were losing focus, the brilliant gray dimming.
Eren’s voice screamed from near the car, followed by the rapid, deafening exchange of gunfire. Mikasa was a streak, blades flashing under the searchlight as she engaged another shape coming from the west.
"Armin!" Levi roared, the sound tearing from a place of pure desperation. "Now! We need a path NOW!"
Armin, crouched behind the Challenger’s engine block, was typing one-handed, his other arm hanging limp and bloody. "Thirty seconds! The trees thin out two hundred yards south, there's an old logging track!"
Levi looked down at her. The wadded jacket was already saturated, warm and heavy. He had seen this before, on other fields, with other soldiers. He knew the tempo of those wet, shallow breaths. He knew what came next.
"No." He said it to her, to the sky, to the god of this wretched world. "You don't get to do this." He slid his arms under her, one behind her shoulders, the other under her knees. He lifted her. She was terrifyingly light. A ragged moan escaped her lips.
He ran.
Not with his usual fluid grace, but with a brutal, staggering sprint, bent over her, using his own body as a shield against any other shots from the house. Mud flew from his boots. Eren and Mikasa closed ranks around him, firing covering bursts toward the shapes moving in the grass.
The tree line swallowed them, the world plunging into sudden, chaotic darkness after the blinding light. Branches slashed at Levi’s face as he plowed forward, his only guide the dim glow of Armin’s laptop screen ahead, held like a beacon.
"Left!" Armin gasped, stumbling over a root. "The track is here!"
It was less a track and more a gash of mud between the pines, but it was passable. The roar of the helicopter was muffled now, thrashing the treetops above, its searchlight stabbing futilely through the canopy.
Aria’s head lolled against his chest. Her breathing was fading, the wet gurgle softening into something worse: a quiet, sighing rattle.
"Stay with me," he ordered, his voice a raw scrape against her hair. "You hear me? Your brother is an idiot. Your son needs his mother. You do not get to leave." He adjusted his grip, feeling the warm seep of her blood soaking through his own shirt, bonding them. "You wanted a pink fucking bathtub. You're going to get it."
She didn't respond. Her body was a dead weight, growing colder by the second. The only sign of life was that faint, terrible rattle deep in her chest.
Behind them, the sharp, metallic pang of a bullet hitting the Challenger echoed, followed by Eren's furious shout. They were still in the funnel. The logging track curved ahead, a darker path in the dark woods.
Levi ran faster, the muscles in his arms and back screaming, every jarring step a potential agony for her. He couldn't think about that. He could only think about the next ten yards, and the ten after that, and the desperate, vanishing sound of her breath.