She looked up.
Green-hazel eyes found his face, and Lincoln’s brain did something it had never done before.
It stopped.
No calculations. No analysis. No pattern recognition or probability assessment or logical framework. Just…loss of signal. A gap in the code where processing should be. He was looking at her face, and his mind had simply…stalled.
Two years of wondering. Two years of imagining possibilities, constructing hypothetical models, preparing himself for whatever reality might reveal. He’d been ready for herto be older. Younger. Plain. Beautiful. Ready for any variable.
He hadn’t been ready forthis—for the way her eyes held his, for the particular architecture of her face, for the simple devastating fact of her existence. His brain couldn’t categorize it. Couldn’t reduce it to data. She was justthere, real and present and looking at him, and every equation he’d ever trusted had gone silent.
“Mercury?”
Recognition crashed across her features—confusion to disbelief to something that looked like it might shatter her entirely.
“Binary?”
Her voice was barely a whisper. Hoarse. Broken. But the rhythm underneath was hers, unmistakably hers, the same cadence he’d learned to read through two years of keystrokes.
“Can you walk?”
She tried to move, to get up, but her legs buckled.
“I’ve got you.” Lincoln reached down and lifted her, one arm under her knees, one behind her back. She weighed almost nothing. “I’ve got you.”
Her fingers closed on his tactical vest, digging into the fabric. “You came. You actually came.”
“You sent coordinates. I received them.”
“I didn’t think—” She was trembling against him, shaking so hard he could feel it in his own bones. “I haven’t been in our chats. I was afraid you would think I ghosted you. That you wouldn’t see it.”
“I saw it.”
“Linc.” Bear’s voice in his ear, sharp and low. “Movement. Patrol’s early. Thirty seconds.”
Shit. Lincoln turned toward the exit route, Mercury pressed against his chest. He could feel wetness seepingthrough his shirt—tears or blood, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the twenty yards between them and the door.
“I’ve got her,” he said into comms. “Go. Now.”
He ran.
Fifteen yards. Ten. A shout echoed behind them—someone had found the empty box. The sound multiplied, more voices joining, footsteps heavy and fast on concrete.
“Flash out,” Theo called.
“Cover your ears and keep your eyes closed.” He pulled her closer, turning his face into her hair as the corridor exploded into white.
Screams. Cursing. Bodies hitting walls.
Lincoln ran again, keeping her pressed tight against his chest. They burst through the northeast door into cold night air, but he didn’t slow down. The fence was thirty yards away. Bear was already there, holding the cut section open, waving them through.
Derek first. Then Lincoln with Mercury clutched against him. Theo. Bear.
Behind them, warehouse doors banged open. Shouting. But no pursuit—they’d been caught flat-footed, still reeling from the flash grenades, still trying to understand what had just happened.
The vehicle was fifty yards out. It felt like fifty miles. Lincoln’s lungs burned. His arms burned. Mercury had gone quiet against his chest, her breath shallow, her grip on his vest loosening.
“Stay with me,” he said to her. “We’re almost there.”
