Chapter 36: Atlas
Iknow something’swrong before the horn.
It’s not a sound.It’s not a sight.It’s the way Wren’s shoulders go tight while the rest of the bench rides the swell of the crowd.Everyone else surges with the goal-that-nearly-was; she goes still.The still she gets when her body hears a thing her brain hasn’t named yet.
The period ends and the place detonates—horn, lights, bodies surging for beer and bathrooms—and all I hear is the thin wire in my head that means move.
I don’t peel my gloves.I don’t unclip my helmet.I jump the threshold first and cut straight for the bench gate.Kael clocks it; he angles toward her without taking his eyes off the ice.Finn is still chirping with a rookie, grinning like he’s running on battery acid, and then he looks over and the grin dies in a clean line.
I take the tunnel in three strides, shoulder-check a camera guy by accident, mutter sorry without slowing.Wren steps back from the boards and into the shadow of the doorway like she remembered we taught her to make her own cover.I put myself in the light between her and everything else.
“What happened?”I ask, voice low.
She shakes her head.“I— I don’t know.”
Not a lie.A reflex.
“Try,” I say.
Her mouth trembles and sets.She’s not crying.She’s bracing.“I thought—” She swallows, throat working.“Section 118.Two rows off the aisle.He wasn’t watching the ice.”
“Describe him.”
“Tall.Dark coat.Cap.Still.”She breathes like she’s counting steps between panic and language.“I looked away.When I looked back, he was gone.”
Kael is there now—quiet, direct, not crowding.“You want cameras to sweep.”
It’s not a question.She nods.
“On it,” he says, already flicking his gaze toward the head trainer who has a radio in his hand and a line into ops.Kael doesn’t grab for it.He doesn’t need to.The message moves because he wants it to.
Finn slips in close on Wren’s other side, hands steady on his stick like he forgot to put it down.“You’re okay,” he says, gentle.“Breathe with me.”
She does.I watch the rise and fall, measure it against the thud in my own neck.The light over the tunnel hums.The ice crew trundles past with shovels.The building keeps being a building while every muscle in me is arguing for war.
The radio crackles—a voice from ops I can’t hear, then the trainer, then Kael’s eyes flick to me.“They’re pulling the angles now,” he says.“We’ll get stills if there’s anything.”
“Good,” I say.I don’t trust my voice to carry more without breaking.
Wren’s fingers are white on the mouth of a water bottle.I take it, loosen the cap, put it back in her hand.“Sip.”
