"Not this time." He released my arm, gestured toward the warehouse. "Come on. There's something you need to see."
The smell hit me first.
Sweat. Fear. Human waste. The unmistakable stench of too many bodies packed into too small a space for too long. I gagged,forced myself to keep moving, following Tyler deeper into the warehouse's maze of corridors.
We passed bodies—Devil's Dust, mostly, dropped by Phoenix's assault. We passed crates stamped with shipping codes, stacked floor to ceiling. We passed a room filled with weapons that made my stomach turn.
Then Tyler opened a door, and I understood why he'd spent eight months in hell. The room was large—maybe fifty feet square—and filled with cages. Not metaphorical cages. Actual metal enclosures, the kind you'd use for large dogs, stacked two and three high. And inside them...
People. Women, mostly. Girls. A few young men. Hollow eyes, dirty faces, bodies curled in positions of defensive surrender. Some looked up when we entered. Most didn't react at all. "Oh god." The words came out strangled. "Oh god, Tyler."
"This is what Viper's been running." His voice was flat, controlled, but I could hear the fractures underneath. "This is what Chen's been protecting. For years, Kai.Years."
I moved without thinking. Dropped to my knees beside the nearest cage, found the lock, looked at Tyler desperately. "Keys. We need keys!"
"Irish is working on it." He crouched beside me, and I saw his hands were shaking. "We'll get them out. All of them. That's why we're here."
A girl in the cage closest to me—couldn't have been more than sixteen—reached through the bars. Her fingers were thin, bird-boned, trembling. I took her hand, held it gently.
"You're safe now," I told her. "We're going to get you out."
She didn't respond. Just stared at me with eyes that had seen too much.
AXEL
I found them in a room full of cages.
The smell hit me first—the stench of human misery concentrated into something physical, something that coated the back of my throat. Then the sight: metal enclosures stacked like shipping containers, and inside them, people. Women. Children. Hollow eyes staring at nothing.
And Kai, kneeling beside a cage, holding a girl's hand through the bars.
For a moment, I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. I'd seen atrocities before—mass graves in Afghanistan, villages burned to ash, the aftermath of violence that served no purpose but cruelty. I'd thought I was numb to it.
I wasn't. "Kai."
He looked up. Relief flooded his face when he saw me, followed quickly by something harder. Determination. "We need to get them out," he said. "Irish is finding keys."
"I know." I crossed to him, cupped his face in my hands. His skin was cold. Shock, maybe. Or rage held too tight. "Are you okay?"
"No." He didn't pretend. "But I will be. After."
I kissed his forehead. Pulled back. Looked at the cages—at the evidence of Viper's empire, the human cost of Chen's protection. "Where is he?" My voice came out wrong. Too calm. The kind of calm that preceded violence.
"Viper?" Tyler appeared in the doorway, blood on his face. "Intel said top floor. Main office."
"Then that's where I'm going."
"Axel—" Kai grabbed my arm. "Be careful."
"I'll be fine." I covered his hand with mine. "Stay here. Help them. That's what you came for."
"And you?"
I looked at the cages one more time, at a boy who couldn't have been older than twelve, curled in the corner of his enclosure, not even looking up. "I came to end this."
Irish appeared behind Tyler, keys jangling in his hand. His face was pale beneath the battle grime—he'd seen the cages too.
"Found these on a dead guard," he said. "Donnie’s securing the exits. Upper floors still have hostiles."
