Hook raises an eyebrow, a ghost of a smirk tugging at his scarred mouth. “That’s my girl. Peter, grab the incendiaries. If we’re leaving, we’re leaving a ghost story behind.”
I stand up, pulling Wendy with me, keeping her tucked under my arm. I grab the small, heavy canisters from my belt—the ones meant to erase everything. Every fingerprint, every DNA strand, every memory of the hell we just survived.
“Burn it,” I tell Hook.
He clicks his radio. “Lost Boys, fall back to the rally point. Set the timers. We’re going dark.”
We move through the kitchen toward the back door, the smell of gasoline and ozone beginning to fill the air. As we step out into the freezing night air, the first incendiary detonates in the foyer. A white-hot roar of magnesium and fire erupts, swallowing Viktor, the white wallpaper, and the blood.
I don’t look back. I keep my eyes on the dark tree line, my hand locked in Wendy’s. We’re moving into the shadows, three miles of forest between us and the life we’re stealing.
“Keep your head down, darling,” I whisper as the first heavy rounds from the .50 cal start chewing through the roof of the house behind us. “The world thinks we’re burning. Let’s let them believe it.”
Wendy
The world has narrowed down to the sound of my own ragged, whistling breath and the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of Peter’s boots on the frozen earth.
Everything hurts. It’s a deep, vibrating agony that starts in the marrow of my bones and radiates outward, every muscle screaming as the last of the adrenaline from the hallway burns off. My lungs feel like they’ve been lined with sandpaper, and the cold night air is a serrated blade in my throat.
I’m crashing. The withdrawal is clawing its way back into my skin, turning my sweat into ice and making the shadows of the trees dance and warp. But I don’t stop. I can’t.
“Keep your eyes on my back, Wendy,” Peter’s voice comes through the dark, low and steady. He’s a mountain of shadow ahead of me, moving with a terrifying, silent grace despite the weight of his gear. “Just one foot in front of the other. Don’t look at the trees. Look at me.”
I grab the back of his tactical vest, my fingers cramping into the nylon. I’m stumbling, my knees buckling over hidden roots and slick patches of rotted leaves. Every time I falter, Peter’s hand is there—a crushing, grounding weight on my arm, hauling me back up before I can hit the dirt.
Behind us, the sky is glowing a sickly, bruised orange. The safe house is a funeral pyre, the fire so hot it’s probably melting the coins in the duffel bags. But the noise—the relentless, heavy thump-thump-thump of the .50 cal—hasn’t stopped. They’re chewing the forest apart, blind-firing into the dark, hoping to catch a piece of us.
“Status!” Hook hisses from the flank. He’s a ghost in the brush, his rifle raised, his head swivelling like a wolf’s.
“She’s flagging,” Peter rasps, his grip tightening on my waist as I lurch sideways. “We need to slow down.”
“We slow down, we die,” Hook snaps. A branch cracks somewhere to our left—not the wind, not an animal. “They’ve got thermals, Peter. If we don’t hit the creek in five minutes to mask the heat, they’re going to pinpoint us and drop a mortar on our heads.”
I look back. Through the skeleton-fingers of the trees, I see the beams of flashlights. Long, white fingers of light stabbing through the dark, sweeping across the forest floor. They’re closer. So much closer.
The phantom itch returns—the memory of the needle. My brain is screaming for the numbness, for the white light that makes the pain go away. I want to lie down in the dirt and let the cold take me. I want to tell Peter to leave me, to take the money and run until he hits the ocean.
But then I remember the sound of the bullet hittingViktor’s skull. I remember the way the air felt when I realised I wasn’t a doll anymore.
“I’m… okay,” I gasp, my voice a broken, wet mess. I shove Peter’s hand away and stand upright, the world spinning in nauseating circles. I pull the handgun from my waistband, the metal freezing against my skin. “Keep moving. I’m right behind you.”
Peter looks at me for a heartbeat, his eyes dark and unreadable behind the soot. He doesn’t offer me words of comfort. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay. He just reaches out, grabs the back of my neck, and pulls my forehead against his for one bruising, desperate second.
“That’s my girl,” he growls. “We reach the water, we’re invisible. Hold on, Wendy. Just five more minutes of hell.”
We plunge deeper into the thicket, the thorns tearing at my face and arms, drawing blood that I’m too numb to feel. The ground begins to slope downward, the air growing thick with the scent of stagnant water and mud.
Suddenly, a flare ignites overhead.
The forest is flooded with a blinding, artificial white light. Everything is exposed—the raw, bleeding truth of our escape.
“Down!” Hook bellows.
I hit the mud hard, the breath leaving my body in a wheeze. Above us, the canopy disintegrates as a hail of lead begins to rain down. They found us.
The world is screaming.
The white glare of the flare overhead turns the forest into a high-contrast nightmare of bone-coloured trees and pitch-black shadows. Then comes the lead. It isn’t just gunfire; it’s a storm. The canopy above usshatters, raining splinters and shredded leaves down on my back as I bury my face in the freezing, foul-smelling mud.
