I tried. It didn’t feel like enough.
“This thing we have going on may be more than you need to deal with. We live unique lives, usually not answering to anyone,usually doing something illegal, usually in a fight somewhere in town. It’s not for everyone, Seraphina.”
I studied his face in the overhead glare, the scar on his jaw a white seam in the shadow. There was blood on his shirt—some of it mine, maybe, but more likely not. His knuckles were split, skin peeled back in a way that looked deliberate, as if he’d gone out of his way to collect a wound for every man he’d killed.
“You get hit?” I asked.
He glanced down, like he’d forgotten he had a body. “Not bad. Nothing that won’t heal.”
I wanted to believe it, but I saw the way he carried his left arm, close to the ribs, fingers flexing every time he moved.
“Liar,” I said.
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes.
The silence stretched. I finished the water and set the cup on the floor. The bulb flickered, threatening to go dark, then caught itself.
I drew in a shaky breath. “I’m not going back to the lab.”
He nodded, as if this were obvious.
“If I do,” I said, “they’ll use me as bait. I’ll be watched. Everything I do, everything I say, will be a trap.”
He considered, then said, “What do you want?”
I nearly laughed. It was the stupidest question in the world, and yet nobody had ever asked it. Not once. Not my parents, not the grant committee, not even Holloway. The answer lodged in my throat, too raw to speak.
“I don’t know,” I said at last. “To disappear, maybe. To not be the only person in the room who knows how things end.”
He nodded again, as if he’d already made his decision.
“You could stay here,” he said. “Nobody would find you. Not unless you wanted them to.”
I almost said yes. The word hovered on my lips, a fragile molecule of possibility.
But I knew how it would go. The world had a way of tracking you down, of mapping your movements, of cornering you no matter how well you learned to hide. The only freedom was the freedom to run, and I was already tired.
Still, the idea was a comfort.
I let the blanket fall away and stood. My knees wobbled, but I made it to the wall, steadying myself on the cinderblock. I traced a line in the dust, just to see if I could leave a mark.
Nitro followed, silent, a shadow at my side.
I leaned my head against the wall, cheek pressed to the cold, and let myself believe for a second that I was safe.
He stood behind me, close enough that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.
“You’re not alone,” he said.
I closed my eyes, let the words soak in.
For the first time, I believed him.
We stayed like that, the two of us, marooned in a bunker built by dead men, the world outside waiting for the next excuse to burn us down.
At some point, I pushed away from the wall and turned, legs shaky, to face him. The breakdown was over, but my eyes still burned, and the taste of salt stuck to my lips. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. The sleeve of the borrowed shirt—whose, I had no idea—came away wet. I felt weak, exposed, but the part of me that usually cared about appearances had gone dormant.
I sat back on the edge of the bed. Nitro hovered, not quite sitting, not quite standing, caught in the limbo between bodyguard and something else. I watched his hands. The knuckles were already scabbing over, dark and uneven. One finger was crooked at a new angle, like it had been broken and set on the fly. He must have noticed me staring, because heflexed it with a faint wince and then tucked it into a fist, hiding the damage.
