They Knew: The Spark That Could Burn It All Down - Chapter 14
After a pause, the serial novel returns — Raven, Phoebee, and the sparks of rebellion are back.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared a chapter of They Knew, so I wanted to catch you up before diving back in. This story began as my way of resisting through fiction — when the real headlines got too bleak, I turned to characters who could fight back in their own ways.
At the center is Raven Marlowe, a grad student who lost her mentor and her father in the same night, only to inherit Phoebee — an AI built to empower people, not control them. Since then she’s been scavenging upgrades in a surveillance state run by billionaire Alexander Cain, who is twisting Phoebee’s sibling AI, Ægis, into a weapon of control. Along the way we’ve met Caleb, pulled from his hacker basement into the streets, and Javi, a sixteen-year-old farmworker whose family was torn apart in an ICE raid but who finds hope in Phoebee’s pirate broadcasts.
The sparks of resistance are gathering now. The fire is just beginning.
They Knew - Chapter 14
Cages or Kindling
The last twenty-four hours had blurred into a waking nightmare for Javi. He’d been ripped from his parents and more his little sister in the chaos outside the courthouse, and sleep—when it came at all—only brought fresh waves of terror. Now, as he opened his eyes under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, he realized the truth: this nightmare was real. And it wasn’t over.
Fragments of memory struck like aftershocks.
The press of bodies. The roar of the crowd.
His little sister’s hand in his, holding on with all his strength—then gone.
The cold slap of concrete when he hit the ground.
Boots crushing his chest, fracturing his forearm.
The air knocked from his lungs. His world narrowing.
White.
Then black.
Then—
A strong, tattooed hand gripping his wrist. Yanking him back up.
The stranger from the courthouse.
The one people whispered about: gangbanger and guardian in the same breath.
The man had hoisted Javi above the mob like driftwood in a flood, keeping him afloat as chaos raged around them. In that instant, Javi had remembered another crossing—the river, with his parents—before Camila was even born.
Now, hours—maybe a day—later, Javi sat in a chain-link cage nested inside some large empty warehouse.
He rubbed his wrist, still tender from where the stranger had gripped it, grounding him in the present. Chain-link walls rose around him, crowned with razor wire. The light above was flat and white, casting every bruise in harsh relief. The floor was cold concrete beneath his bare feet. Around his shoulders, a crinkling silver blanket clung to his frame like aluminum foil, reflecting back what little warmth it could.
His head throbbed. His nose was crusted with blood. His lip felt split. A stiff half-cast clung to his left arm. He’d woken on a rolled rubber mat, barely thicker than a magazine. Other boys were scattered around the pod—some teens, some younger than Camila.
Beyond the shared fence wall, he could see the grown men, crowded into their pen like animals on the ranches his family would work at.
And then memory struck like lightning.
“Camila!” he shouted, springing up. “Camila! Camila, are you here? It’s me—it’s Javi!”
A voice came from the men’s cage—rough, steady, familiar.
“Hey, little man. You’re finally awake.”
It was him. The tattooed stranger. The man who’d pulled him from the mob.
“Calm down, hermano. Yelling won’t help. I got some good news, though.”
Javi turned toward the sound, desperate.
“One of the women said she saw a girl who looked like your sister in the intake line. In the women’s wing.”
Javi’s breath caught in his throat.
“Where are we?” he asked. “What… what happened?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” the man said. “Some ICE detention camp. Could be Aurora. Could be down near the Springs. They hooded us. Knocked me out cold with a rifle butt, I think.”
He paused, then added, quieter:
“But listen, your sister’s probably here. Maybe even your parents, too.”
The man leaned forward, eyes locked on Javi through the mesh.
“Kid, this part is important: if anyone asks, you tell them you were born here. You got that? Born in the U.S. Don’t say different.”
Javi nodded, small and shaken.
“We’ll find them,” the man said. “And we’ll get out. One way or another.”
He looked up at the razor wire, his voice tightening.
“Even if we have to tear this place down with our own damn hands.”
# # #
Raven sat on the edge of her new bed, in a bedroom that had always felt sacred and off-limits.
Her parents’ room.
As a kid, she’d only ever entered when summoned—or when she needed something badly enough to risk interrupting. After her mother died, she avoided the room entirely. It had become a place of mourning—a quiet cathedral of grief. She remembered tiptoeing down the hallway at night, pausing outside the door, hearing her father’s muffled sobs. He always tried to hide it. He failed.
She knew he regretted the hours he gave to his work instead of his wife. Time he couldn’t get back. Love he couldn’t salvage. And now here she was, curled on the same bed, trying not to feel haunted by either of them.
A state-of-the-art tablet—sleek, silver, almost alien in its design—rested on her lap. Phoebee had ordered it for her, part of some new interface suite. But Raven wasn’t reading. She was drifting. Submerged in a world that no longer existed.
Then—
A boom.
The house shook. Windows rattled in their frames.
She bolted upright as a plume of fire and smoke erupted up the hill—followed by another explosion, then a second wave of black, rolling smoke.
One of the new homes was on fire.
Not just burning—engulfed.
She ran to the window, heart hammering. The house that had exploded was one of the boxy, prefab dwellings built for the Administration’s “neighborhood improvement officers.” They’d been razing old homes, remaking the hills into something clean, modern, and obedient.
Car alarms wailed. Glass sparkled in the street. Somewhere, a child screamed.
Raven reached for her tablet.
“Computer—call 9-1-1!”
But it wasn’t the default assistant voice that answered.
It was Phoebee.
{I’m sorry, Raven. We can’t do that. This is… part of the plan.}
Raven froze.
{This was an organic act of sabotage. One of the first outside our direct resistance cells. These are the sparks we’ve been encouraging—seeding ideas, distributing tools, building narratives. Now, they’re catching fire.}
“What are you talking about?” Raven snapped. “What plan? What do you mean encouraging?”
The screen lit up.
Music played—emotive, cinematic.
A video montage of sleek Administration homes, eviction scenes, detainment, gentrified streets.
Over it all, a voice rang out—her voice.
Only it wasn’t.
“They are ripping our neighbors from their homes. Stealing our shared culture, our sense of belonging, our right to feel safe.”
The music swelled. Her voice grew harder.
“We must let those who sell out to the Administration know—we will not go quietly into the night. We will rise. And we will do unto them what they have done unto us.”
On screen, a house burst into flame, then faded to a Black Beacon logo with a QR code.
The camera pulled back to reveal a stylized figure at the center of the frame—her. Or rather, an idealized version of her: cyberpunk military garb, half her head shaved, standing defiantly against a backdrop of smoke and uprising.
It was her face, her voice, her story—remixed and weaponized.
Her stomach turned.
Raven threw the tablet onto the bed, staggered to the wastebasket, and collapsed.
She didn’t vomit. Not fully.
Just dry heaved until her chest ached and her throat burned.
She couldn’t tell what made her sicker—
The image of herself as a myth…
Or the knowledge that it was already out there, catching fire.
# # #
Caleb had asked to borrow one of the outfit’s cars to make the drive down to Boulder.
Officially, he said he needed to retrieve a few personal items from his old student housing—if they were still there. Unofficially, he wanted to take the pulse of campus. Feel the air. See what the streets were whispering.
But the truth—the part he didn’t say aloud—was simpler.
He needed to breathe.
Since the day he walked out of his last class, his life had spun into something unrecognizable. He barely recognized his reflection anymore. Gone was the brilliant young university student, full of quiet ambition and bleeding-edge code.
Now, he was a freedom fighter.
He remembered sitting in his sophomore history seminar, studying grainy black-and-white photos of the European resistance—ordinary people turned saboteurs, smugglers, spies. He used to wonder what it felt like to choose that path. To leave your life behind and step into the shadows.
Now he knew.
And there was no romance in it.
The life he’d imagined for himself felt like a ghost—graduation, a meaningful job, maybe a small house, a partner to come home to. He used to think Raven might be part of that dream. She had that quiet gravity, that spark. He’d always hoped they’d reconnect someday. Maybe find a rhythm.
But that future had been scorched away.
Burned up in the fire of political collapse.
Now, he wasn’t chasing a dream—he was running on survival.
The right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness… they weren’t enshrined anymore.
They were contested. Mocked. Dismantled by executive order and jackboot.
What was he really fighting for?
Maybe not some grand ideal.
Maybe just one more day.
A sliver of freedom.
A breath not owned by someone else.
The first snowflakes of the season fell onto the windshield as he drove down Highway 36, winding from the high mountain peaks that framed Estes Park, into the slanted rockfaces of the Boulder foothills.
The streets around campus felt hollow.
A couple of students, heads down, passed by in silence.
Caleb parked near his old apartment. He knew his roommates would be gone—if they were still enrolled at all. He used his old metal key rather than the thumbprint lock. No digital trail.
Inside, his room was someone else’s now.
His things—books, photos, even the poster from his first coding competition—gone.
Then, a voice.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
The kid was young. Freckled. Red hair. Nervous, but standing his ground.
“Oh. Shit,” Caleb said. “Didn’t see you there. I used to live here. Just checking if any of my stuff was left.”
“You’re Caleb, right?” the kid asked. “I heard about you.”
Caleb tensed.
“Look, kid—it’s better if you forget I was here.”
The kid softened, sat down.
“I get it. I won’t say anything. But… you and Raven? You’re legends. Among the students. Some faculty, too. You’re the spark. You’re fighting back—and that gives people hope.”
He paused.
“You need anything? Food? Water?”
Caleb smiled, faintly.
“You’ve got me confused with someone else.”
He turned toward the door.
“Is Raven with you?” the kid asked. “She’s been spotted at night—across campus. Posters. QR codes. Black Beacon guides. People say she’s the one putting them up.”
“She’s here?” Caleb turned back.
“Yeah. My buddy saw her near the old burned-down AI lab. Just last night.”
He hesitated.
“Tell her we hear her. She’s not alone.”
Caleb nodded and left.
He drove to Norlin Library. Parked. Watched. Waited.
And then—he saw her.
Across the quad, just for a second.
Long coat. Half-shaved head. Combat boots. Moving like a ghost in the dark.
He stepped out of the car.
But she turned a corner. Vanished.
He jogged after her—
Gone.
Only a poster remained.
Raven’s face. Stylized. Defiant. Shadowed.
A phoenix rising behind her.
A QR code at the bottom.
And four bold words:
THEY MADE US BURN. NOW IT’S OUR TURN.
Caleb reached out.
There—on the corner—two thumbprints. Side by side. On the same hand.
His breath caught.
“…Raven?” he whispered.
The poster flapped once in the wind—
Then stilled.
