Nothing ever goes according to plan.

  The morning after our meeting with Maya, Mother delivered our "request for an extension." One of Mendez's adjutants came to give the answer, his face as blank and unreadable as a stone wall.

  "The Colonel understands a family's need for spiritual guidance," the adjutant said, his voice a flat, bureaucratic drone. "But the national emergency demands certainty. You have until tomorrow evening."

  One day. Not two.

  It meant our entire timeline had just been shredded. Our plans needed to move at lightning speed, or be thrown out entirely.

  I was in the library, the schematics for Eagle's Peak spread before me, but my mind wasn't on power grids or ventilation shafts. It was stuck on a brutal, simple math problem.

  Time for a courier to find Javier's hideout (assuming he even had one): at least a full day.

  Time for Javier to muster his men and plan a complex assault (if he believed us): two, maybe three days.

  Time to get a message to Father through Mother Rosa's fragile network: a day out, a day back. If it got through.

  We didn't have any of that. We barely had twelve hours.

  The cold truth was this: that humiliating public statement of support for Mendez would happen long before Javier could stir, before Father could reply, before anything we plotted could become real.

  And once those words were broadcast, the last fragment of Father's legitimacy would evaporate. We'd be nothing more than Mendez's puppets, dancing on his strings.

  Uncle Roberto might be freed, or he might just... disappear. Puppet masters don't need to keep promises to their dolls.

  It was a hopeless position on the board. Every move we had required more time than the clock allowed.

  Unless... we could find a way to make time itself move faster.

  My thoughts snapped to Maya. The communications system. Was there a backdoor? A way to send a signal directly, not through some slow-footed courier, but through the airwaves themselves?

  It was a mad idea. Sending a coded message to rebels over the Colonel's own secured network? It was like trying to whisper a secret in the middle of a shouting crowd and hoping only one person heard.

  But insane plans sometimes work precisely because they're too insane to be taken seriously.

  I found Mother Rosa in the pantry, overseeing the weekly inventory—a mundane task essential for keeping up appearances.

  "Can Maya transmit?" I asked, no preamble.

  "She can," Mother Rosa said, not looking up from her clipboard. "Every transmission is logged and monitored. They have ears on every frequency."

  "Is there a blind spot? A test channel, something the technicians ignore?"

  "There's an equipment diagnostic band. For checking signal strength between relay towers. It's rarely used. But if an unusual pattern pops up, the duty tech will see it."

  "And the duty tech?"

  "Could be a loyalist. Could be someone who doesn't care. Or..." she finally met my eyes, "...could be someone who is also just tired of all this."

  It was another layer of risk. But risk was all we had left.

  "We need to contact Javier. Directly. Now. If he's going to move, it has to be tonight."

  "What's the message?"

  I grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote in sharp, block letters:

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  EAGLE. NORTH WING BRITTLE. BEST FEEDING WHEN FJORD FROSTED. UNDERSTAND?

  Simple, but layered. "Eagle" for the fortress. "North wing brittle" pointed to the weak spot Maya had found. "Best feeding when fjord frosted" was the bizarre kicker—a phrase to signal dawn attack, when the mountain cold would be at its peak. "Understand?" was a plea, a hook for a reply.

  "Get this to Maya," I said, pressing the paper into Mother Rosa's hand. "Tell her to broadcast it on the diagnostic channel, aimed at the Sector Delta relay. Three times, five minutes apart, in plain Morse. No military ciphers."

  "If they trace it—"

  "If we don't do this, we lose tomorrow. This is the only move that changes the game."

  Mother Rosa held my gaze for a long moment, her weathered face a mask of calculation. Then, a sharp nod.

  She folded the paper into a tiny square and tucked it into the lining of her sleeve. She left without another word.

  And so, we waited. Again.

  ***

  Eleanor found me in the garden later, on the old bench by the withered rose bushes. Coco was perched on her shoulder, preening as if he'd single-handedly won a war.

  "Coco says he's a hero now," she announced, plopping down beside me.

  "He is," I agreed. "He saved Fantasma."

  "But why did the guard want to shoot Fantasma?" she asked, her small face scrunched in confusion. "Fantasma just brings notes. He doesn't hurt anyone."

  How do you explain paranoid cruelty to a child? "Sometimes, when people are very scared, they see danger in everything that moves. Even things that are just... helping."

  "Like when I thought the coat on my chair was a monster?"

  "Exactly like that. But the coat wasn't real. Fantasma is real, and the guard had a very real gun. That's what makes it scary."

  Eleanor pondered this, kicking her heels against the bench. "So we have to make them not scared."

  "Or," I said, "we have to make them look at something else. Something so strange it breaks their focus. Like Coco. He was so loud and funny the guard forgot to be afraid. He just laughed."

  "So being weird is a superpower?"

  "Sometimes, it's the best shield you have." I ruffled her hair. "You and Coco keep being weird. It might be the thing that saves us."

  She beamed, then hopped up and scampered back toward the house, Coco squawking a dramatic tune from his perch.

  I stayed, watching the twilight bleed into dusk. The clock in my head ticked louder.

  If Maya sent the signal. If Javier was listening. If he understood and decided to act. Then an attack could come just before dawn.

  Right against our deadline.

  Too many ifs. But they were the only ifs we had left.

  ***

  Isabella found me as the last light faded. Her notebook was clutched to her chest.

  "They're checking the animals," she whispered, her voice tight. "Special patrols. They looked in the greenhouse aviaries. They asked the cook about the stable cat. They're looking for anything... unusual."

  Mendez was closing the net. The Fantasma incident had spooked them. Or maybe this was always the plan. It didn't matter. It meant our animal messengers were compromised. Coco would be next.

  "Did they examine Coco?" I asked.

  "Not yet. But they're asking questions. They called him 'that noisy nuisance.'"

  We were running out of moves on the board. But we couldn't stop now.

  "Keep watching," I told her. "And... pack a go-bag. For you and Eleanor. Just the essentials."

  Her eyes went wide. "Are we escaping?"

  "If things go right, or if they go horribly wrong, we may need to move fast. Just be ready."

  She swallowed hard, then nodded, her jaw set. She didn't ask for details. She understood the language of fear now.

  Mother Rosa returned as full dark settled. The lines on her face looked deeper in the lamplight.

  "It's done," she murmured, pretending to straighten a vase. "Maya broadcast it. Three times on the diagnostic band. Low power, like a signal check."

  "Any response?"

  "Nothing on the open channel. But..." she leaned closer, her voice a breath. "Maya said ten minutes after the last broadcast, Sector Delta relay sent a two-word burst on the same frequency. Morse code. 'RECEIVED. FJORD.'"

  A jolt shot through me. He'd heard it. He'd understood. And he'd replied.

  'Fjord.' Was it confirmation? A code within a code? There was no time to decipher it.

  The message was in the wild. Now, everything hung on the temper of a bitter ex-sergeant and the courage of desperate men.

  ***

  Dinner was a quiet, tense affair. Even Eleanor picked at her food, sensing the storm in the air. Afterward, Mother gathered us in the sitting room. The fire was low, casting long shadows.

  "Tomorrow," she began, her voice not loud, but filling the quiet room, "no matter what comes, we face it together. We are Guerreros. We have survived a coup. We have survived being hostages in our own home. We have survived fear. We are still here. That is not an accident. It is a choice."

  Her eyes moved over each of us. "Mateo, whose mind finds paths in the dark. Isabella, whose quiet eyes see everything. Eleanor, whose spirit no cage can hold. And me." She placed a hand over her heart. "I have a love for you that is stronger than any army Colonel Mendez can muster."

  She didn't say Father's name, but he was there, in the space between her words.

  "That is what men like Mendez forget," she continued, her gaze turning toward the window, toward the fortress on the mountain. "They think power is in guns and walls and threats. But the real power... the unbreakable thing... is here. In this room. As long as we remember that, as long as we hold to each other, they have not won. They cannot win."

  It was a rallying cry. And it was the absolute truth. In all my scheming about tactics and codes, I'd almost missed it. Our final weapon wasn't a diagram or a secret message.

  It was this. The four of us. Together.

  And maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.

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