Darkness gnawsat the borders of my mind, nibbling at what little clarity I have left, dragging its cold tongue across the inside of my skull. My eyelids feel weighted, pinned shut by something heavy and unseen. It feels like any breath could be my last.
But Estella’s face breaks through the black.
Her name, her eyes, the way she looked at me before she drove the knife in—it forces me to claw upward, fighting the undertow that wants to claim me. I stir, faint noises bleeding into my ears, twisted and warped beneath a high, metallic ringing.
I push through the numbing haze swallowing my body. The agony that once scorched my gut is gone. No flame, no tearing pressure—just a hollow absence, as if someone reached inside and pulled everything out.
Did I bleed out?
Is this what purgatory feels like?
Whatever is happening feels distant, slipping through my fingers whenever I try to grasp it.
“Sir? Can you hear me?” The voice drifts closer, and a shadow forms over me. Just a shapeless blot at first, swimming in and out of the blur. “Yes, he’s waking up. All good.”
I frown, every muscle in my face protesting with stiff, reluctant effort. “What—” The word dies in my throat, shredded by dehydration. My lips are cracked, my mouth sand-dry, my throat tight enough to split. It feels like I’ve been without water for years.
The shadow leaves my field of vision, footsteps shuffling around me. Memory flickers back, sharp and demanding.
Where is Estella?
The man returns, and this time the blur sharpens enough for me to make out the features beneath it. I’ve seen him before—patching Jason up after he sliced his arm on a rusted hook during a rooftop chase on one of the missions. I think his name is Samuel.
I brace my palms against something soft beneath me—a mattress, maybe—and try to push myself upright.
“Whoa, easy. Easy.” His hand presses gently between my shoulder blades, steadying me. “Here. Drink this.”
A cold glass touches my fingers, and I wrap my hand around it, lifting it to my mouth. The moment the water hits my tongue, I lose control. I drink like a man dragged out of a desert, gulping until the last drop is gone, until I’m sucking air from the bottom of the empty glass.
Clarity drips back into me. A low sound leaves my throat because, fuck, it feels like life itself is flowing back into my veins.
“That bitch cut you good,” Samuel says. His dry chuckle scrapes the air like sandpaper.
My lips twitch as something sharp and ugly flares through my chest. I turn my head toward him as he takes the glass away. Under the harsh light, he looks exactly as I remembered: capable hands, steady eyes, the calm of someone who’s patched up too many bodies to be rattled by another bleeding man.
My gaze drops to the torn fabric, revealing a row of new stitches tracking across my stomach, the skin around them flushed and seething. My eyes widen at the sheer size of it.
“I sanitized and stitched it up. You’ll survive,” Samuel says casually. “Good thing she didn’t pull the knife out. If she had, you’d have bled out before I got here.”
Tearing my gaze away from the stitches, I let my head fall back, the thud against the wall echoing through me. My vision drifts over the room, and I pull in a breath—stale air thick with old pain and fresh desperation. Everything feels tight, skewed, suffocating. I need to get out the moment my legs can hold me without folding beneath me.
“Where is she?” I growl, the words scraped from the bottom of my chest.
He scratches the back of his head, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “She’s being handled,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
A spike of awareness cuts clean through the lingering haze. The negative emotion surges, pushing past the drugs still fogging my mind and slowing my thoughts. It takes a long, sluggish moment to catch up with the weight of his words.
Handled.
I turn fully toward him. “What do you mean she’s being handled?” My voice hardens. “Where is she?”
He exhales, long and heavy, and his lips purse into a thin white line. “Look… I’m sorry. But I’m not supposed to tell you anything.”
My nostrils flare, and my fists clench. I look down at my hands, flexing my fingers as the strength slowly creeps back into them. My brain kicks into motion like an old engine sputtering, rattling, then roaring awake. The worry multiplies, swelling until it’s a physical weight on my ribs.
“You do realize I created all of this,” I say through grinding teeth. Samuel looks around sharply, surprise flickering across his brow. “That means you report tome. Not Jason.”
He folds his arms across his chest in a show of authority he doesn’t quite have. “He told me everything, kiddo. You can’t just turn against your own people. Besides, youneedJason. You won’t survive this battle without him.”
