A weighted silence settled between us, bracing us for the hard conversation we knew was inevitable.
I took a deep breath. “Casualties?”
Sean stilled, his entire body stiffening, still staring at the horizon, as if looking anywhere but at me would make the truth easier to tell. But it wouldn’t.
“Who?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest, the knot of dread tightening in my stomach.
“Kate,” Sean finally said roughly, and hardly audible.
Fuck! The name hit me like a punch to the gut. “How?”
I really didn’t want the details, but I needed to hear them anyway.
“We dropped into Hunza about an hour after ye and Emma left,” Sean began, sounding hollow, like he was recitingsomething that had been playing on a loop in his mind. “We didn’t realize the Amplifier had already been activated. Radicals were flooding the area before we even had a chance to react. We couldn’t hide properly, and once we were compromised…all hell broke loose. We had no choice. We had to fight our way out.”
He didn’t look at me once, his face a mask of grim composure. He might have been holding back the flood of emotion, but he was barely keeping it in check.
“Kate was the first to translate,” Sean continued, his voice hoarse. “She imploded the moment her haze shot out.”
I shut my eyes, and tried to breathe through the sting, but it clawed its way up anyway. Kate—gone. Just like that.
I wasn’t a stranger to death or grief, but the beginning of every loss still felt impossible—like standing at the base of a mountain I didn’t have the strength to climb.
And Kate, who I’d loved like a true sister, wasn’t just another casualty. Her absence wasn’t something time could fix or I could simply move past—it was a quiet, gaping hole I’d have to learn to live with.
“She took half the Radicals with her,” he added, though sounding bitter, as if victory meant nothing in the face of what we had lost. “Which is how we managed to fight our way through.”
“Fuck.” It was the only word I could manage, the only response that seemed to fit.
“Yeah,” Sean muttered. “Not looking forward to telling Saoirse. I only brought Kate because Saoirse was too drunk to come.”
I nodded, knowing too well what this would mean. Sean hadn’t needed to bring her, and yet she’d paid the price. The guilt in his voice was unmistakable, and there was nothing I could say to ease it.
“Anyone else?” I asked, though I dreaded the answer. The hesitation that followed was a bad sign. A very bad sign.
“Sean?”
He didn’t meet my eyes, his gaze still locked on some distant point. “We lost Enya and Christopher during the fight. I couldn’t even nex for backup with the Amplifier active.”
Bile rose up my throat at the mention of their names. Enya had been with us since we were kids, and although we’d been less close, she was still family. And Christopher—newer to the team—had fit in like he’d always been one of us. And he was Sean’s ex.
“So what did you do?” I asked, while squeezing his arm, needing to hear how he got them out, how he survived when everything had gone so horribly wrong.
Sean finally turned to me, weariness etched into every line of his face but he still carried that familiar spark of determination. “I channeled my inner Jason Statham,” he muttered, a grim smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Figured out a human way to get us out. We infiltrated a human military base, I stole a chopper, and flew up to meet ye.”
He paused and breathed in through his nose, exhaling in a quiet rush.
“When ye and Emma didn’t respond to our nexes, we figured ye two were trapped somewhere,” he continued, his voice hoarse, like reliving it was wearing him down. “The rest of the team hotwired a jeep and drove across the borders until they were far enough to portal out.”
“How did you manage to fly through the Layer surrounding the peak without clearance?”
Sean’s jaw tightened—so hard I thought the muscle might rip itself free. “I’ll tell you some other time,” he muttered, gaze sliding away. His tone made it clear the subject was locked, and I didn’t have the key.
I leaned back, studying him for a beat. I had a feeling Kate’s fingerprints were all over this, so I let it go.
“Fine,” I said, then shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He nodded once.
