I press my forehead to hers for half a heartbeat. “I’m here. Nothing was going to stop me. Once I heard you were alive.”
A tremor goes through her. She clutches the front of my jacket with weak fingers, grounding herself. Or grounding me. I’m not sure which one of us is shaking harder.
Cyclone’s voice blasts through the comm, jarring and too loud in the moment.
“Pierce, you located her?”
I force myself to breathe. “I have eyes on Lena. She’s alive.”
Relief explodes across the channel — Beckett swearing under his breath, Raven muttering a prayer, River letting out a long exhale he probably didn’t know he was holding.
My team, The Delta Five, all whisper her name.
“Move to extraction,” River orders. “We’ll converge on your location.”
Extraction.
Right.
If only it were that simple.
A sharp hiss sounds behind us as theChamber Ninedoor finishes unlocking.
Lena stiffens in my arms.
“No,” she breathes. “Ronan, don’t let them take me in there.”
“I’m not letting them take you anywhere,” I growl.
A metallic screech echoes from inside the chamber — something mechanical, heavy, waking up.
My hand goes instinctively to my rifle.
“Lena, what’s in there?”
She shakes her head hard, backing closer to me. “Experiments. Punishment. No one who goes in comes out.”
Cold slices down my spine.
Ascendancy doesn’t do ordinary torture.
They break minds.
Bodies.
Souls.
Not her.
Not ever.
I pull her behind me as the door yawns wider, revealing—
—darkness.
And a long, sterile corridor lined with locked steel cages.
A figure steps into view at the far end.
