I crossed the distance in two strides.
My fist connected with his jaw before he finished processing what had happened. He went down hard, skull cracking againstthe tile, and then I was on top of him—knees pinning his arms, hands finding his throat, the monster finally, finally unleashed.
"People who matter?" The words came out guttural, barely human. "She's the only person who matters."
I hit him again. Felt bone shift under my knuckles. Again. Blood on my hands, warm and real and not nearly enough.
What followed was not quick.
I made sure of that.
Brand had spent years taking people apart with surgical precision. Clinical. Painless for him, if not for them. He'd never felt what his victims felt—the terror, the helplessness, the knowledge that their bodies were just inventory to be harvested.
I gave him a taste.
His screams echoed off the sterile walls. His hands—those steady surgeon's hands that had opened so many people up—made wet sounds when I broke them. Every strike was deliberate. Controlled. The monster wasn't raging; it was methodical.
For Maya. For Frank. For every person who'd ended up on these tables.
"Kostya." A voice from somewhere behind me. "Kostya, that's enough."
I didn't stop.
"Kostya." Hands on my shoulders now, pulling. Nikolai's voice, harder this time. "He's done. She needs you. Kostya, she needs you."
Maya.
The name cut through the red haze like a scalpel through flesh. I looked down at what was left of Brand—still breathing, barely, face unrecognizable, hands ruined—and felt nothing.
Nothing except the desperate need to touch her, to hold her, to verify that she was still alive and whole and mine.
I stood. My hands were slick with blood—Brand's, maybe some of the guards', impossible to tell anymore. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
Maya was on the table.
I moved to her side, and up close, I could see everything they'd done. The IV line feeding into her arm. The restraints holding her in place. The black surgical marks traced across her abdomen, charting incision points, mapping organs.
But her chest was rising and falling. Breath moving through her body, slow and steady. Heart beating. Lungs working. Everything still inside her where it belonged.
"She's sedated," someone said—Maks, I registered dimly. "Should wear off in a couple hours."
I was already unbuckling the restraints. Wrists first, then ankles, then the straps across her hips and chest. Freeing her from the table where they'd planned to kill her piece by piece.
She didn't stir when I gathered her against my chest. Just lay there, limp and warm and alive, my jacket—my jacket, she'd been wearing it when they took her—still wrapped around her shoulders under the hospital gown.
"I've got you," I whispered into her hair. She smelled like antiseptic and fear-sweat, but underneath it, there was still vanilla. Still Maya. Still home. "I've got you, kitten. You're safe now."
Nikolai appeared beside me. His tactical gear was spattered with something dark—not his blood, I noted distantly. Other people's. "Medical team is two minutes out. She should be checked before we move her."
"No." I held her tighter. "She doesn't stay here. Not another second."
He looked at me—really looked, seeing whatever I'd become tonight—and nodded once. "We'll have them meet us at the compound."
I carried her out of that room. Past Brand's broken body. Past the guards I'd killed. Past the cold storage units and the surgical equipment and all the infrastructure of a nightmare.
The night air hit us as we emerged from the building. Cold, clean, nothing like the sterile horror we'd left behind. Maya stirred slightly against my chest, making a small sound—not quite consciousness, but something. A response to the change in atmosphere. A sign that she was still in there, still fighting her way back.
"Hold on," I told her, climbing into the back of the SUV. I positioned her across my lap, head against my shoulder, my arms wrapped around her like I could physically protect her from everything that had happened and everything that was coming. "Just hold on. I'm not letting go."
