The pipe lies by my boot, harmless now, obscene anyway.
Waiting doesn’t make us calmer.
Waiting makes us feral.
SHE CAN SCREAM INTOTHE VOID
Love Is A Weapon - Letdown
Nightshade
Steel whispers against the whetstone.
I told Valentine we would need weapons to get Kayla back, and thankfully he obliged.
The warehouse hums around me – bodies pretending to sleep, silence pretending to be peace. Rain claws at the tin roof, steady as a dying clock. Ghost mutters to someone who doesn’t exist. Honey turns on his cot and grinds his teeth. Bones paces ten feet like he’s trying to wear a door into the floor. Snow hums that child’s tune, softer now, because even he understands he’s closer to being killed than laughed at.
Hatchet is still but not sleeping.
We are not built to wait.
I lay my blades out in order – not because I need them, but because order keeps my hands from becoming the problem. There are ampoules too, lined like glass teeth, each one a promise of something irreversible.
Hatchet broke the fragile shape of ‘control’ earlier. The sound of pipe on bone still echoes behind my eyes. I should have stopped him sooner. I knew he was going to snap, but I didn’t. Maybe because I understood.
A breath shifts behind me.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Bones.
I don’t turn. “Didn’t try.”
He steps into the edge of the light, eyes sunken, the kind of tired that makes men reckless. “Branson called,” he mutters.
My body goes still. “Now?”
“Brief. No coordinates. East ping again. Legacy band. He’s tracing it.”
“How long?”
“Hours.” He shrugs. “Maybe a day.”
“Hours I can work with.” A day I can’t.
Valentine’s phone buzzes across the room, again. Seytan. Again. He lets it ring out. The sound drills into the quiet.
“She’s not going to stop,” Bones points out, eyes on Valentine.
Valentine’s voice is dry. “She can scream into the void.”
“Containment’s just a slower kind of murder,” I reply.
Valentine looks at me like I’m a problem he hasn’t decided whether to solve or use. “Then we need to hurry up and find her before Seytan does.”
I smile without warmth. “Working on it.”
Bones shifts. “Snow’s been near the doors. Near the radios. Near anything that might turn into an exit.”
“You think he’s feeding someone?” I ask.
