“I think he’s losing it,” Bones replies. “But losing it can still be a choice.”
Outside, thunder crawls along the horizon. Ghost whimpers into the dark. Hatchet sits against the far wall, eyes open, fingers twitching like they remember the pipe.
If Branson doesn’t come through soon, one of us snaps again.
Maybe this time it’s me.
“Bones…” I finally look at him. “When Branson calls back – anything solid – you come straight to me.”
Bones nods once. “You’ll be first.”
He doesn’t make a promise out of it. Bones doesn’t do vows. He does liabilities. Debts. Leverage.
He turns away and the warehouse swallows him back into its dim geometry.
I sit with the knives a moment longer than I need to. The whetstone drags its whisper down steel. It’s a sound I understand. It’s a sound that obeys. Rain keeps worrying the roof. Somewhere in the dark, Ghost’s voice flutters and breaks against itself.
Hatchet doesn’t move. Snow does – always. Honey shifts like a caged thing.
Valentine’s phone buzzes again and goes unanswered.
I set the blade down, clean, aligned with the others, and stand. The implant aches at the base of my skull like an invisible scar that never fully settles. A reminder threaded through nerve: behave.
I don’t.
Not in my head.
In my head I’m already moving east, already peeling the world apart until it gives me what I want.
I pace off the room’s edges instead. I count breath. I count heartbeats. I count how long it takes Snow to stop hummingwhen Hatchet’s stare catches him and how long before he starts again, quieter, to prove he can.
Time doesn’t pass.
It accumulates.
The call comeswhen the building is at its most silent.
Not morning. Not night. That thin grey in-between where even the rain sounds tired.
The burner rings once and Bones answers before it can hit twice.
“Branson,” he says, voice flat.
Static. Then Branson’s voice, all wire and sleep deprivation. “I’ve got a direction. Not a pin.”
Bones’s eyes flick to me immediately.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He crosses the warehouse to where I’m standing and hands me the phone without ceremony.
“Talk,” Bones says into the space between us, and steps back just enough to watch everyone at once.
I bring the phone close.
“Say it,” I tell Branson.
“East coast,” Branson says. “Legacy infrastructure. Off-books medical site. Mostly underground. Paper trail scrubbed after 2012 but the payments didn’t stop. Something’s still drawing power.”
