The words came out clean and tactical. Lincoln had said them before on other operations, in other contexts. But this wasn’t another operation. Somewhere inside that building, in a space too small to stand, was the person who’d kept him company for two years. The person who typed in waltz time when she was thinking. The person who’d sent him poetry with a cry for help buried in the broken meter.
He knew it was her.
“And if things go sideways?” Derek asked.
“Flash grenades to cover extraction. Theo has four.”
These men had driven through the night because Lincoln asked. He didn’t have words for what that meant—had never been good at finding words for things that mattered. He filed it away. Data to be processed later, when Mercury was safe. When he could think again.
He checked his watch. Patrol was passing the northeast section now. Four minutes starting…now. “We move in ninety seconds. Questions?”
Silence.
“Then let’s go.”
The lock took nineteen seconds.
Lincoln pocketed the bypass kit and eased the door open, Bear already flowing through the gap with his weapon raised. Derek followed, then Lincoln, then Theo pulling rear security. The door closed behind them with barely a whisper.
They moved in formation through the darkness. The interior matched Lincoln’s thermal projections: industrial space carved into makeshift rooms, extension cords snaking across concrete, the hum of electronic equipment somewhere deeper in the building.
Three minutes forty-two seconds until the next patrol pass.
Bear held up a fist. They stopped.
Voices ahead—muffled, casual, two people talking about nothing. A television playing somewhere. Lincoln counted heartbeats until the sound faded, until Bear’s hand dropped and they moved again.
Left at the first junction. The corridor stretched ahead of them, pools of shadow broken by intermittentemergency lighting. Lincoln’s pulse thudded against his ribs, steady but insistent, his body running calculations his conscious mind couldn’t access.
He spent most of his life behind a computer. Preferred it that way. Screens were predictable, code was logical, and data didn’t require small talk. But his father and uncles had never let that be an excuse. Bollingers learned to defend themselves and the people who needed defending—it was nonnegotiable, woven into every family gathering and backyard sparring session.
And the friends who’d become family over the years—Theo, the Linear Tactical crew—had made sure Lincoln’s skills never got rusty. Just because he chose to work at a desk didn’t mean he couldn’t handle himself when the desk wasn’t an option.
Right at the second junction. Past a door with light bleeding underneath—the server room he’d identified on thermal, equipment fans humming behind thin walls. Past a stack of pallets. Past a chair sitting inexplicably in the middle of the hallway, like someone had been interrupted mid-task.
Two minutes fifteen seconds.
The building felt wrong in ways Lincoln couldn’t quantify. The makeshift construction suggested temporary occupation, but the equipment suggested permanence. The sleeping guards suggested routine, but the box suggested something else entirely. Variables that didn’t resolve. Patterns that didn’t complete.
He filed it away. Later. He’d analyze it later.
Bear raised a fist again. They’d reached the northeast section.
The box was exactly where the thermal imaging hadplaced it—a metal container bolted to the concrete floor in what might have once been a loading area. Industrial steel, matte gray, four feet on every side. A heavy latch on the outside.
No lock.
Lincoln stared at that latch and felt something cold move through his chest. No lock because the person inside couldn’t reach it anyway. No lock because whoever had put them there wasn’t worried about any sort of rescue.
Bear and Derek took positions covering the approaches. Theo watched the corridor behind them. Lincoln approached the box alone, his heart thudding so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
Ninety seconds until patrol.
He lifted the latch. Metal scraped against metal—too loud, impossibly loud—but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. His fingers found the edge of the lid and pulled.
The lid swung open.
The woman was curled at the bottom, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around herself. Making herself small. Making herself fit. Auburn hair, tangled and matted. A frame that seemed too fragile for the steel box containing it.
