“I owe you,” I whisper to whatever ancient thing is listening. “Twice now.”
I ease the door open. Slow, controlled, waiting for alarms that still don’t come.
The corridor stretches empty under industrial lighting. Steel catwalks overhead. Concrete floor worn smooth by decades of boots. Exposed rock walls where facility construction meets raw mountain stone.
Equipment scattered along the walls: geological survey tools, sample containers, field research gear masking what this place really is. A prison. A research facility. A black site where the Syndicate does things that would make the councils declare war if they knew.
I’m halfway down a hallway when I realize the shoulder wound has stopped pulsing blood. More help from my unseen ally?
Thank fuck.
I move fast and silent. Boots soundless on concrete. Every sense straining for threats I can’t fight.
I pass other holding cells; all empty. Doors closed, lights off. Just storage now for prisoners who’ve already been processed or executed or moved to deeper levels.
Then I spot one with dim light beneath the door.
My breath catches before conscious thought catches up.
I know who’s behind that door.
Know it the same way I knew the helicopter was going down before instruments confirmed it. The same way I’ve known for three days in these mountains that keeping her alive matters more than mission parameters or tactical advantage or countless years of creating barriers.
I risk a glance through the small observation window.
Ember.
She sits in a metal chair bolted to the floor. Silvery cuffs glow blue around her wrists; brighter than the ones they used on me, more power required to suppress whatever hybrid magic burns inside her. Her head’s bowed, pale hair falling forward to hide her face, but I know the set of those shoulders. The way she holds herself, even caged: spine straight despite exhaustion, chin lifted just enough to show she hasn’t broken.
There’s a smudge of dirt across her left cheek. Blood dried at the corner of her mouth where someone must’ve hit her. Her jacket’s torn at the shoulder, showing pale skin and the edge of a bruise blooming dark across her collarbone.
My hand lifts toward the glass before I catch myself.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look up. Just sits there in that cold cell breathing and waiting for whatever comes next.
And I’m standing here free while she’s still caged.
Every instinct I have—every protective impulse that’s kept people alive for three centuries—screams at me to break through that door right now. Tear the cuffs off her wrists. Get her out of this mountain before dawn comes and the transport takes her somewhere I can’t follow.
My fingers find the door mechanism. Cold steel. Electronic lock that should be impossible without proper credentials.
But the mountain opened my cell. Maybe it’ll open hers too.
I start to push—
But then logic cuts through desperation.
What if that strange power doesn’t help this time?
She’s secured with suppression cuffs I can’t remove without tools I don’t have. Breaking her out triggers immediate facility-wide alert. Automated systems I can’t disable, guards I can’t fight, security protocols designed for exactly this scenario.
We’d have seconds. Maybe a minute, if we’re lucky.
Then guards flood the corridors. We’re cornered in passages I haven’t mapped, outnumbered by operatives with weapons and strength, while I’m running on empty and she’s suppressed.
We’d be recaptured within five minutes.
Both of us scheduled for execution instead of just me.
