“Partners don’t run.” She finally looks at me. Her eyes are dry, hard. The golden flecks seem sharper, colder. “You calculate threat vectors. I calculate outcomes. The outcome where I leave you behind had a zero percent success rate for the mission.”
“Is that all it is? The mission?”
“It’s the variable we control.”
She’s retreating. Going into the data. Dissociating to handle the violence she just participated in. I recognize the look. I’ve seen it in mirrors for years.
It terrifies me.
“Talia.”
I reach out, hitting the emergency stop.
The elevator jerks to a halt between floors. The silence rushes back in, heavy and suffocating.
She blinks, the analyst mask slipping. “What are you doing? We have a timeline.”
“Screw the timeline.” I step into her space. I need to break the shell before she hardens into something she can’t come back from. “Look at me.”
She looks up. Her lip trembles, just once. A crack in the armor.
“I killed those men,” I say. “But you… You stepped into the fire. You didn’t freeze.”
“I had to.”
“No. You chose to.” I cup her face, my thumbs stroking the grime from her cheekbones. My hands are rough, stained with violence, but she leans into them. “You aren’t just an analyst anymore. You’re a warrior. But don’t lose yourself in the math. Don’t turn off the part of you that feels it.”
“If I feel it,” she whispers, her voice cracking, “I’ll scream.”
“Then scream later. Right now, just feelthis.”
I crash my mouth onto hers.
It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet. It’s desperation and blood and the metallic taste of fear. I kiss her like I’m trying to breathe for her. I kiss her like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.
She makes a sound in her throat—half sob, half moan—and grips my vest, pulling me closer. Her body presses against mine, the hard ceramic plates of our armor clacking together, a barrier we can’t remove. I want to strip it off. I want to feel her skin. I want to know she’s alive in every nerve ending.
If I die in this basement… If the bullets find me… I want this to be the last input. Not the noise of gunfire. Not the smell of cordite. This.
Her taste. Her heat.
I break the kiss, resting my forehead against hers. We’re both panting, breathing the same recycled air.
“If we don’t walk out of here,” I say, my voice rough, “know that you were the best thing. The only thing that matters to me.”
“We’re going to walk out of here.” Her eyes are fierce now. The cold logic is gone, replaced by fire. “The probability is low, but we’ll adjust the variables and walk out of here together. You’ll show me then, how much I matter to you.”
“Damn right I will.”
I kiss her one last time—hard, quick—and hit the run switch.
The elevator lurches, resuming its descent.
Ding.
The doors slide open on subbasement three.
The atmosphere changes instantly. The air is colder here. The hum of the servers is a physical pressure against the eardrums.
