"Alaric?"
"Here."
He is sitting at the small, wobbly table near the kitchenette. He is stripped to the waist, the scars on his chest standing out in stark relief against his pale skin. The bandage on his shoulder is smaller now, covering a wound that has turned into a puckered, angry scar. But it is his hands that draw my eye.
He has a deck of cards spread out on the table. He is trying to shuffle them. His left hand moves with fluid, practiced grace. His right hand—the hand that was crushed, burned, and bitten—is a claw. The fingers are stiff, trembling as he tries to execute a simple bridge. The cards spray out of his grip, scattering across the table and onto the floor.
"Fuck!" He sweeps the remaining cards off the table with a violent backhand. The movement is sharp, furious. He grips the edge of the table, his knuckles white, his head bowed. The muscles in his back coil and release, a visible map of his frustration.
I lock the door behind me. I engage the deadbolt. I slide the chair under the handle. Old habits. I pick up the plastic bag of groceries I bought at the gas station three miles down the road. "I got the antibiotics," I say softly, walking over to him. "And whiskey. The good kind. Or as good as they had."
Alaric doesn't look up. "I don't want the whiskey."
"You need it for the pain."
"I need my hands!" he snarls, turning to look at me. His face is gaunt. The beard he has grown—dark, thick, unkempt—hides the sharp line of his jaw, making him look wilder. Like a wolf that has been in a cage too long. "Look at this," he says, holding up his right hand. "The median nerve is responding intermittently. The flexor tendons are scarred. I can't hold a scalpel. I can't span an octave. I can't even shuffle a goddamn deck of cards."
"It's been three weeks, Alaric. Nerve damage takes months."
"I don't have months," he says, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Thorne is dead, but the vacuum... the vacuum is filling. I can feel it. If I can't work... if I can't fight..." He looks at me, his eyes burning with shame. "I am useless."
I set the bag down. I walk to him. I step between his spread knees. I place my hands on his shoulders. The skin is hot to the touch. "You are the mind," I remind him, echoing the words I said in the penthouse. "I am the body."
"The body is tired," he observes, his eyes scanning my face. He's right. I am exhausted. I have dark circles under my eyes that no amount of sleep can erase. My hands are chapped from the cold and the work. I have been stealing—petty theft mostly. Food from the market. Supplies from hardware stores. We are rationing the cash Nyx gave us because we don't know how longit has to last. The encrypted drive with the two hundred million dollars sits in the bottom of my backpack, a useless brick of potential until Alaric can see well enough and type fast enough to bypass the security protocols without tripping a silent alarm.
"I'm fine," I lie.
He reaches out and touches my hip. His grip is weaker than it used to be, but it still sends a jolt of electricity through me. "You were gone for three hours."
"I had to walk to the pharmacy in town. The truck wasn't running."
"You shouldn't be out there alone," he mutters. "It’s dangerous."
"I have the SIG," I say, patting the gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans. "And I have the knife."
"You are a pianist, Elodie. Not a thug."
"I am whatever I need to be."
I pull away from him and start picking up the cards from the floor. "We have a problem," I say, changing the subject. "The pharmacy... the guy behind the counter looked at me too long. He asked where I was staying."
Alaric stiffens. "What did you say?"
"I said I was passing through. Heading to Vancouver."
"He didn't believe you."
"No. He looked at the bruises on my face." (They are fading, but still visible—yellow and green shadows from the factory fight). "He thinks I'm a junkie. Or a battered wife running from a husband."
Alaric laughs, a dark, humorless sound. "Well, he's half right. You are running with a monster."
"He might call the cops. Or someone else. We need to move."
"We can't move," Alaric says, looking at the rain lashing the window. "The truck needs a new alternator. I can't fix it with one hand. And we are low on ammo."
He stands up. He walks to the window and peers through the crack in the curtains. "We are pinned, Elodie. The Syndicate is in civil war. I’ve been monitoring the dark web frequencies on the tablet. It’s a bloodbath. The factions are tearing each other apart to claim Thorne’s territory. If we surface... if we make a blip on the radar... both sides will come for us. One side to kill me for the codes. The other side to kill you for the land."
He turns back to me. "We stay. We heal. We wait for them to kill each other."
